The Turning of the Screw

“The freedom to shop has become the major obligation of citizenship.” Henry Giroux

Well, here we are, the year 2014. The turning of the calendar, the turning of the screw. I’ve been thinking about the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, as it’s more commonly known, and the many promises made by then president Clinton about the glorious new economic order that NAFTA would usher in. More jobs for Americans. Solid labor and environmental protections. More trade and a larger market for American goods. Almost none of this came to fruition, and in fact the exact opposite happened. US manufacturing jobs vanished, wages for US workers flat lined, our trade deficit ballooned, and the environment has taken a pummeling at the hands of resource extractors. NAFTA disrupted Mexico’s agricultural economy, decimating family and indigenous farmers, and driving thousands of people into cities in order to find work, only to discover that the number of people in search of work exceeded the number of jobs available. For many Mexicans there was no choice but to head north, across the border. Now the financial titans and their lobbyists and lackeys are cooking up another trade agreement, a much larger one this go round, called the Trans Pacific Partnership. If you’ve never heard of this beast, don’t feel bad – it has largely been negotiated in secret, with large swaths of it given little exposure to the congressional representatives who are supposed to protect our interests. Mr. Obama, that staunch defender of the ruling elite, is pressuring Congress to abrogate its responsibility for negotiating trade treaties and give him “fast track” authority to make the TPP a reality. Heaven help us if this comes to pass.  

A few days ago my wife and I were out running errands, driving here and there to buy some “stuff” we need to live, and when we got home with all the booty, I realized that we had purchased food items at three different stores: Costco, Trader Joe’s and the Fresh Market. The latter is a new store for us, recently opened on Milpas Street where the Scolari’s grocery store had operated for years. The Fresh Market (owned by Associated Food Stores, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah) opened to some fanfare after a major renovation of the building: new façade, wrought-iron railings, an upscale appearance for the white folks who dwell up on the hill. Inside, there are new lighting fixtures and soothing classical music to put shoppers in the right frame of mind – or perhaps to calm them while they fondle $7 blocks of Italian cheese or $18 bottles of chardonnay. Most of the fruit, I noticed, is from outside the US – tomatoes from Mexico and grapes from Chile. Many kinds of imported pasta, an olive bar, dozens of specialty coffee blends, micro-brewed beer -- everything the well to do need to throw a chic party on the Riviera or behind the walls of a Montecito villa. I don’t see the largely Latino population who live all around the Fresh Market shopping at the store, any more than I see them making the trek uptown to Whole Foods, where the contents of one bag might run $50.

And that was the point of my ruminations, the great good fortune my wife and I and our children enjoy, even though, by the lofty standards of the Platinum Coast, we are paupers. To be honest, I felt a little stab of guilt; my shopping aids and abets a system that kills people and destroys the planet on which we all depend. The great capitalist machine, a perverse monstrosity, produces glaring extremes of wealth and poverty, and makes it feasible to import grapes from Chile at less cost than grapes grown in California.

Exploit or be exploited, win or lose, thrive or perish. The screw turns and the hard edge of the world becomes ever harder.