NAFTA and Its Consequences

Alyshia Galvez’ Eating NAFTA, has provoked conversion surrounding the consequences of the 1994 NAFTA deal on both sides of the border. Her book allows the reader to question not only where our food comes from but also incites them to question who the people behind our food are. More specifically she narrows in on the dynamic of the decline of the Mexican rural ways of life and the upward success of American trade and supply. This book has allowed me to understand why now in 2020, the relationship between the United States and Mexico is so complicated. The influx of Mexican migrants is due to a switch in demand for American products, like corn syrup, soda, canned goods, processed foods. For years, Mexicans living in indigenous communities and on farms have stopped harvesting corn that is native to Mexico and use American corn instead. With this practice has come a decline in the quality of taste and nutritional value of corn products. Also, the new and upcoming Mexican society has viewed the practice of corn farming as primitive, leading more farmers to stop cultivating corn, and switch to finding work elsewhere. This displacement due has led to a plethora of unnecessary repercussions like obesity, unfair pay, lack of rights, and families being separated by the U.S government at the border. Today thousands of Mexican migrants have made a living in the United States, leaving their families and friends behind– working most notably restaurants advancing the types of food offered in American cities. Some like Edgardo Martinez from Puebla has used his rural skills to farm in Staten Island. “His customers seek him out because well he has not been through the organic certification process, he uses no chemicals on his crops, using compost and relying on the richness of the soil to provide all his plants need. He describes the emotion of his customers as contagious when we find products that they remember from their homelands” (190). This is what I call “displacement leads to community.” Martinez has improvised by not only using his skills to farm and plant rare vegetables but also to provide chemical-free produce. Martinez is someone who has spent the majority of his life providing for his family through his business in Mexico. He was a fruit wholesaler, and therefore he knows what fruits should look and taste like. The praise that he receives for his farming on Staten Island should have been the praise received in Mexico. But under circumstances, NAFTA has allowed Martinez to create a new community in America. Vegetables like papalo, verdolagas, tomatillos, and calabazas are not easy to find in a local grocery store but if people know where to get they will go out of their way to get it. Alyshia Gálvez mentions Martinez’s story to illuminate how hard it is for people to leave Mexico for a new way of living. Above all, the main theme of her book it that capitalism has infected Mexico, and due to its strict boundaries, people have been forced to preserve the food traditions that distinguish Mexico from the rest of the world.