On a broader scale, since the early 1990s Mexico's infant mortality rates have dropped from 40 to 31 per thousand, and life expectancy has risen by two and a half years. Studies over a longer period of time find literacy rising and child labor rates dropping by nearly a third. This historic transformation has touched the whole Western Hemisphere. Since the early 1980s, virtually every country in Latin America has cut illiteracy and infant mortality, in some cases by half. These effects are evident in the policies and governments of nations.
Governments devote more of their resources to health and education.
Every one of the 34 nations now participating in the FTAA has joined on the basis of a free choice made by an elected, democratic government. And they are clear in greater long-term economic security. More recently, it helped farmers and manufacturing workers in all three members avoid the worst of the consequences of the Asian financial crisis. South American trade arrangements, notably Mercosur, did the same, helping to stabilize the economic recovery now underway in Brazil and Argentina. The lessons are very clear.