Poor Mexicans Protest Rising Tortilla Prices

The French Revolution began not because of the social inequalities among the nobility, the clergy and the emerging middle class but because the people were hungry. Queen Marie Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake,” when told the peasants had no bread, but that didn’t mean they had full stomachs. Earlier this week, an estimated 75,000 gathered in Mexico City to protest a 400% increase in the price of tortillas, the main source of calories for Mexico’s poor. The Mexican government is appropriately nervous.

The newly installed Calderon government is a free-trade, pro-business administration that finds itself in a very awkward position. The president believes in letting the market set prices, but the supply of corn to make tortillas has shrunk. Amanda Galvez, of Mexico's National Autonomous University, told the Associated Press that poor Mexicans eat about 14 ounces of tortillas a day, from which they get about 40% of their protein. A pound of tortillas costs about 45 cents, and the minimum wage works out to about $4 a day. Thus, a family can spend a third of its income on tortillas alone.

The Calderon government came to power in a close and disputed election. One banner in the square where the protest occurred read, “Calderon stole the elections, and now he’s stealing the tortillas!” The leftist ex-candidate for president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told those at his own protest (held because the organizers of the main event refused to let him speak – theirs is a nonpartisan movement), “Mexico needs a transformation of the magnitude of the Mexican Revolution.” Then, the Associated Press said he “demanded wage increases, subsidies and fixed prices for basic foods, and the cancellation of a clause in trade agreements that would lift restrictions on imports of corn and beans starting in 2008.”

What has become of the corn that used to be so plentiful thanks to the 1994 North America Free Trade Agreement that brought cheap American corn to Mexico? The Calderon government blames hording and promises a crackdown. If that were true, the market would rapidly fix the problem. Instead, the Americans are using their corn to make ethanol for their SUVs. The interconnected nature of the world is on glorious display here. Because America wants to wean itself from Middle Eastern oil, it is driving up the cost of food for Mexico’s poor, which will result in more illegal aliens in the US. The policy failure that is Iraq-Nam will be a cause for more illegal immigration into the US.

Of course, the real problem lies not in the US nor in the terms of NAFTA. The problem is the Mexican political, economic and social structure that still suffers from the diseases of corruption, racism (having lots of Indian ancestors is a major social disadvantage compared to having only a few), wealth and income disparities, and a weak educational system for most. Mr. Obrador is right that it will take a revolution to change this. The question is whether it will be a prudent and positive revolution from above or a violent, bloody, messy one from below.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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