A large crowd of upset Mexican farmers has recently protested against NAFTA, claiming their livelihood is at stake. Subsidized grains from Canada and U.S. flood the market in Mexico, making it unprofitable for native farmers to live off their land. Reality has apparently struck Mexico too late, namely 14 years.

Free trade is exploitation. Powerful corporations lobby this policy through to be able to move their production around between countries and take use of cheap labour. It's a way of selling mass produced junk to as many people as possible, to a cost as low as possible. This means that the industry does not serve the function of keeping the national economy stable and strong -- it only benefits those who sit at the top of the machinery and those who've invested in their stocks. The rest of us slave and pray that our job will still be there tomorrow.

How many Americans have lost their job because of their company moving overseas to China, where it's cheaper to produce and manufacture goods? How many Americans have lost their job because the company's annual income didn't meet the requirements of analysts and stockholders, leading to a downsize of labour? How many American workers have been replaced by cheap labour from Mexico and elsewhere?

Free trade and globalization hurt us all. Ultimately it's not the Mexican's fault that Americans have become unemployed, neither can Mexicans blame Americans for exporting cheap grains. Not even the multinational corporations should be targeted. The devil behind the scenes here is the system itself that makes our countries dependent upon crazy export/import agreements and floods our economies with cheap products, forcing our workers out of job.

In other words, the problem does not lie in exchanging goods per se but making our economies dependent upon import of cheaper goods that we impossibly can compete with. Both Mexican and American workers have suffered enough from this. The industry needs to stay and operate at home. Not anyone should be allowed to become a stockholder and indirectly force the company to downsize its labour. The speculation market is unstable and exploitative.

While Mexicans protest NAFTA, Americans protest Mexicans. They've already realized part of the problem, and seeing more of their industry leaving home, they will also realize that globalization is a destructive force that only few people profit from, while the rest starve. Mexico is slowly beginning to taste of the same medicine; so there is hope for a future agreement on ending free trade, after all.