The Secretary of Defence was calling from Mexico City, and he had bad news.
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Two hours later he was on the telephone, listening to news of a development that would shatter not only that legacy, but his successor’s presidency and his party’s age-old iron grip on Mexican politics and which, later - much later - would begin to shake the legitimacy of the global free trade project itself. Mexico had officially entered the modern world, and Salinas was celebrating his legacy. With the sound of those bells, NAFTA had created, for the first time in history, one great borderless free market between Mexico, Canada and the USA. As the bells rang, Salinas and Colosio raised glasses of champagne and toasted the official arrival of NAFTA - the North American Free Trade Agreement - which, at the stroke of midnight, officially came into operation. They don’t care that we have nothing, absolutely nothing … There is no peace or justice for ourselves and our children … But today we say: Ya basta! Enough is enough!”įive hundred miles away, Mexico’s president, Carlos Salinas, and his anointed heir, Luis Donaldo Colosio, were celebrating the New Year in an exclusive holiday resort on the Pacific coast. “We are the inheritors of the true builders of this nation … denied the most elemental preparation so they can use us as cannon fodder and pillage the wealth of our country. “We are the product of 500 years of struggle,” he read as, in the background, more gunfire and palls of smoke indicated that a rebel column was storming the police headquarters. It was a declaration of war against the Mexican government: one which, on that same morning, would be read aloud to the people of six other towns in Chiapas which this “EZLN” had also claimed as its own. As they did so, on to the balcony of the Municipal Palace emerged a masked figure. More from this author The West has lost its virtueĪ small group of guerrillas raised a flag in the middle of the elegant square - a black flag, printed with four red letters: EZLN.
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