From: nicanet@nyxfer.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.culture.mexican
Subject: Mexico News Update 1/3/93
Date: 4 Jan 93 23:38:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:4uJVwB2w165w@nyxfer.uucp:-406838368:000:4535
Nf-From: nyxfer.uucp!nicanet    Jan  4 15:38:00 1993


Subject: Mexico News Update 1/3/93
From: nyxfer!nicanet (NicaNet NY)


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

excerpted from...

         Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York
       339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499

             Weekly News Update #153, January 3, 1993


MEXICAN ACTIVISTS CALL FOR "NAFTA OF SOCIAL CONSENSUS"

The Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC) has endorsed a
"Proposal for a Tri-National Declaration of Human Rights" which
Mexican activists want included in the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) as a condition for its ratification. The
declaration spells out specific rights for workers from the three
countries covered by NAFTA--Canada, Mexico and the US--and their
families: complete freedom of movement between the countries,
educational, cultural and linguistic rights, the right to
unionize and to strike, and the right to due process in
deportation proceedings.
 
The declaration, drawn up by the Seminario Permanente de Estudios
Chicanos y de Fronteras, part of Mexico's National Institute of
Anthropology and History, also prohibits the "exercise of the
police power" of any of the three countries in the national
territory of any of the others, and provides for all three
countries to ratify the American Convention of Human Rights, the
UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol,
and the International Convention on the Rights of Immigrant
Workers and their Families. [Text of declaration posted on NY
Transfer 12/28/92] (Late last month UN High Commissioner for
Refugees Sadako Ogata filed a friend-of-the-court brief in
support of Haitian refugees in a suit before the US Supreme
Court; the brief charged the US with violating the 1967 UN
Protocol in its treatment of Haitian boat people. [NYT 12/31/92])
 
The declaration proposal reflects efforts by the RMALC, described
in an op-ed by member Manuel Carcia Urrutia, to use the free
trade debate to "open up the possibility of greater knowledge and
understanding of the realities of the three countries," and to
develop a "NAFTA of social consensus," "a platform that would
link social movements of the three countries." [La Jornada
12/20/92]
 

MEXICAN GOVERNMENT WARNS OF UN INTERVENTION THREATS

"Mexico is opposed to a small group of countries having control
over the global destinies of the community of nations," according
to a recent statement from the Mexican Foreign Ministry. The
statement warns that "some countries are interested in turning
multilateral organizations into instruments for intervention" in
the affairs of other countries. The statement calls for "the
restructuring of the entire system of international
organizations."
 
The Foreign Ministry's strong language is in line with Mexico's
opposition to a recent change to the OAS (Organization of
American States) statutes which would automatically exclude any
nation which other members feel violates the principals of
"representative democracy." Mexico denounced the OAS action: "In
the name of a non-existent new international order, specific
democratic models are being promoted that impose on sovereign
nations norms of conduct regarding the way in which they conduct
their internal affairs or their relations with other countries."
[Inter Press Service 12/28/92] Mexico has also renegotiated its
debt agreement with Cuba and is extending a $300 million credit
line to Mexican businesses for investment in Cuba. [LJ 12/20/92]
A diplomatic source says that US president-elect Bill Clinton
will definitely meet with Mexican President Carlos Salinas de
Gortari before Inauguration Day, probably in Little Rock, AR,
during the second week of January. [LJ 12/27/92]

                               -30-

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