Apr 14 2009
Relocated: Border Town
Monday, September 29, 2008
Border Town
So I saw Border Town on Showtime yesterday and it really made me think. What happened in Juarez is a tragedy, and a disaster. Hundreds, if not thousands, of women killed, and nobody paid attention. Not the government, not the media, not their employers. Nobody. It made me think about the “costs” of free trade, capitalism, and development. I then started thinking about other cases (granted, mostly also in Latin America), and really evaluated my own thoughts on it.
In some ways, it made me question my own conservative political and economic, pro-American views. In the end though, it reinforced them. Not to say that America has always been perfect. But instead, to point out that what America needs is not a changing of our worldview or priorities, but a strengthening of them.
What I see happening in the world because of American involvement is sad. But, it mostly falls into two camps. Countries where we have promoted free trade and other free market economic ideas, and countries where we have promoted liberal democracy as a political system. The problem is that in most of those cases (d certainly the ones we read about in the paper), the two don’t go hand in hand.
Liberal democracy does not work in places where the government is totally entrenched in the economy. Where firms are nationalized, or the government has powerful taxation authority, a vote can easily be bought or intimidated. It simply won’t work. In particular, countries whose governments own or control very profitable industries (oil, etc.) which employ large portions of the population. Or countries where the government is heavily vested with powerful unions or foreign companies which own or control those industries.
On the other hand, as we’ve see time and time again in Latin America, free trade cannot exist where the population is not truly free. Mexico is far from a dictatorship in any traditional sense of the word. At the same time, however, one political party was in power for decades. When they were finally ousted, the new President continued using many of the same techniques, simply reversing the direction. The government is corrupt and somewhat decentralized. This threatens people’s individual freedoms in a very serious way. In particular, the freedom of the press, and people’s freedoms to a) know what is going on in their country, and b) have their stories told.
When I was in Acapulco, the drug wars escalated to the point where the police chief disbanded the police and left the state. The Federales were called in. A friend e-mailed me about this. Oddly enough, a Google search in Spanish turned up one article about this situation, from a newspaper in Spain. In English, several dozen stories were out. This is obviously not coincidence. Free market economics only work (in my opinion) in certain circumstances. One, everyone must have equal opportunity. This is something we grapple with even in the United States. Second, people must have the ability to make choices. While nobody is holding a gun to people’s heads and telling them what to do with their lives in much of Latin America, the ability to make choices is more than just freedom as such. It also includes the ability to make informed decisions. In a region full of media repression and misinformation, this cannot exist.
So I would argue, after seeing this movie, that America does not need to back off of either our crusade for liberal democracy or our crusade for free trade and free market capitalism. Rather, it needs to make both stronger and join them together. We cannot continue to impose democracy on the Middle East without economic reform to go with it. The Democracy will never last. We cannot continue to impose free trade on Latin America while allowing repressive or somewhat repressive regimes to remain in office. The costs, to us, to the people of the countries we involve ourselves in, and to the world, are too great.
Posted by Zach at 7:03 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: border town, free market, free trade, juarez, latin america
