MEXICO CITY - Leaders of pro-farm groups called for everything from a "national strike" to protest marches Monday to protest the lifting of most agricultural tariffs Jan. 1 under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
After a monthlong truce with the government on the issue, some in Mexico's fractious and divided farm movement seemed eager to capitalize on what they call the threat of an invasion of U.S. products. But others acknowledged that the rhetoric might be getting too heated.
"We're not going to take it anymore, unless we get some kind of agreement by Feb. 5, then there will be a national strike," said Daniel Contreras, a leader of the National Peasant Confederation in the southern state of Colima.
While it was unclear exactly what a farmer's strike would look like — many fields in Mexico are empty and awaiting spring planting — Contreras told the government news agency Notimex that the protests could involve blocking border bridges, highways and seaports.
Contreras and other radical farm leaders are calling for a re-negotiation of the NAFTA accord to grant greater tariff protection for Mexican farmers. U.S. officials have said they would be loath to accept any far-reaching changes in the pact, negotiated in 1993.
A similar strike threat was issued late last week by Francisco Hernandez Juarez, leader of the National Workers' Union, or UNT, who suggested his union could shut down telephone service in Mexico if the farmers' demands are not met. But Hernandez Juarez appeared to back off that threat Monday.
"I couldn't really talk about a national strike, but you can be sure that the UNT is strong enough to make itself felt," Hernandez Juarez told the newspaper Reforma.
On Monday, farmers announced blockades and protests in several Mexican states, mainly outside government agricultural offices. The farmers had planned to block bridges on Mexico's border with the United States on Jan. 1 — the day the tariff reductions took effect — but on Dec. 31 they agreed to a 20-day truce for talks with the administration of President Vicente Fox.
Farm groups say they cannot compete with larger U.S. farms and more generous U.S. farm subsidies. Most Mexican farms are tiny — with less than 12 acres (5 hectares) — and many are technologically backward and have dried up, marginal land.
Those problems may have more of an effect on Mexican farms than U.S. competition, experts say.
Some note that many of farm groups leading the current protests are linked to the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which negotiated NAFTA and presided over a decades-long decline in farm incomes.
Some observers say the PRI may be fomenting the protests in hopes of making a comeback in 2003 congressional elections, while the leftist Democratic Revolution Party may try to revive its political fortunes by radicalizing the conflict.
"Unfortunately, the restarting of the proletarian wrath against NAFTA is taking place in a context increasing colored by partisan and electoral issues," columnist Julio Hernandez Lopez wrote in the newspaper La Jornada.
Writing in the newspaper Milenio, columnist Guillermo Valdes asked whether the farm leaders "really want a better deal for farmworkers ... or are they simply looking for ways to reinforce their diminished power and legitimacy?
"Hasn't the farm problem been simplified and tainted with ideology enough," Valdes wrote, "when people say that the whole answer is to renege on NAFTA?"
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