Fair Trade Soap Box

This is the second entry for today...read the first one (below) first then you'll know why I'm all riled up! ;-)



NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)

CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement)

OK, so if you're here, reading, you don't mind the soapboxiness of this entry. Sometimes things get me so riled up. I know... "Amy, you never get riled up over anything." Yeah, yeah.

If I have to sum up my frustrations with so called "FREE" trade (for one, nothing is free, someone ALWAYS pays in one way or another - and let's see if we can guess if it is the rich, white Americans or the poor brown/black _____ans -fill in the blank- that pay) it is with the following example. Haitians used to farm their own rice. To explain the magnitude of that crop, rice is eaten at least once or twice a day by those Haitians that can afford it. Don't ask me the year this began because I don't know, however, our first trip to Haiti in 2003, I noticed the gigantic bag of rice, I'm guessing a 20-30 pound sack, and it had an American flag printed across the entire spanse of the sack, approximately 2ft. tall, 18in. across. On the other side it says in big letters "U.S.A. RICE." As if the big flag didn't tip someone off.

In asking questions, I found out that years ago, our government-subsidized rice farms had arranged to start exporting the surplus rice (pay attention here...SURPLUS + government subsidized) to Haiti and undercutting their local farmers' price with our subsidized rice. Well, the economy followed logical and predictible sequence of events and now there are practically no more rice farmers in Haiti. And this garbage happens in every developing country that we muscle into, er, I mean negotiate "free trade" agreements with. Ever heard of the EZLN/Zapatista movement in southern Mexico? Coincidence that their rebellion started on the day NAFTA was initiated in 1994? Their farmers have been put out of business too. Funny thing, some of them come to work illegally in the US...just desserts? I think so.

Here's how this soapbox relates to Spain...one thing I've noticed is that things are made here. 'Here' meaning that if not in Valencia, if not in the neighboring state, if not in Spain, then likely in Europe somewhere. It is weird to turn your knife over in restaurant and see "made in Albacete" (a neighboring city), true story. The overall quality of every product is much better here than in the US. Yes, you are starting to see an influx of Chinese imports, but you can still very easily find local and national goods. What a concept. Employment is a big deal to Spaniards I've noticed. They like to keep people rather than automate/downsize things. Service is a lot more personal in shops, particularly the local mom-n-pops. Shoot, we got here and two days later we were downstairs in our housewares store and they already knew who we were and they said Elvira, our landlady, had purchased all our appliances there and if we had any problems we could just come down and let them know and they'd come up and help us. Uh, excuse me? Wow.

I guess all I'm going on and on about is that I think that being in the US we don't even know what we're missing in not having products made in the USA. I don't feel this global economy is all it's cracked up to be as a "free" trade system, because that is a misleading term. I truly try and purchase things like fair trade coffee, tea and chocolate in the US. It can be more expensive or more difficult, but it is worth it knowing that more of what I'm paying is going to the right person (the farmer). I shop at fair trade stores too like Global Exchange. But one more thing I'm going to try hard to do is to buy things that are made in the USA, in order to support our local/national economy and not buy things from China or elsewhere, that will break easily and will need to be replaced soon anyway, filling landfills and costing more money. I think that is only going to get more difficult unless people start changing their purchasing habits.

Wow, if you've made it this far you are a true friend! Stepping off the soapbox for now. You never know when it will return, but I'll be less riled for a while.

ps-If any of this is incoherent, it is late here and I'm going to bed! Gimme a break!