Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
When Mexico signed the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC, it agreed to combat forced labor within its territory and refused to import goods made with forced or child labor. Article 23.1 of the Agreement reflects the affirmation of the International Labor Organization (ILO) to eliminate “all forms of forced or compulsory labor” and “the effective abolition of child labor…”.
Article 23.6 of the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC makes commitments regarding forced or compulsory labor by stating that “The Parties recognize the objective of eliminating all forms of forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory child labor. Accordingly, each Party shall prohibit, through measures it deems appropriate, the importation into its territory of goods from other sources produced in whole or in part by forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory child labor”.
In the case of forced or compulsory labor, it should be noted that the commitment assumed by the Parties through the Agreement refers both to the interior of each of the signatory countries and their production practices, as well as to the importation of goods from abroad produced in whole or in part with forced or compulsory labor, including child labor.
In May 2023, the Ministries of Labor and Social Welfare and Economy published a lengthy 23-page instruction entitled “Guide for the implementation of the mechanism to restrict the importation of goods produced with forced or compulsory labor”. As indicated in its title, the official document refers exclusively to the “importation of goods produced with forced or compulsory labor”.
At its core, the document states that “the Government of Mexico reaffirms its commitment to the eradication of forced or compulsory labor in global supply chains and to the fight against unfair competition practices that affect Mexican companies and the productive dynamics of the North American region, and places our country at the forefront of nations that have adopted a new paradigm in foreign trade, based on human rights and respect for the dignity of people, especially among historically disadvantaged sectors”.
The following paragraph of the document states that with this procedure, Mexico complies with the obligation established in Article 23.6 of the T-MEC regarding forced or compulsory labor, including child labor.
This last point on compliance with the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC is relevant to highlight that the United States insisted on including these articles on forced labor in the Agreement and that it also includes international supervision on freedom of association in our country. Mexico complies with a provision that neither proposed nor wanted to be included in the Agreement. But today, in the context of U.S. and Canadian litigation against Mexico over the energy, corn, medicines, and mining sectors, the López Obrador administration opted to try to appease the North’s growing anger. This document, presumably suggested by the Ministry of Economy as directly responsible for the negotiations with the United States on the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC, aims to appease some of the frictions Mexico is facing with its northern partners.
The main focus of the document is to condemn forced or compulsory labor, including child labor, in other countries while trying to divert attention from the domestic situation in Mexico, as the National Institute for Statistics Geography and Informatics (INEGI) registered in 2022 that 3.3 million girls and boys work in Mexico. The ILO has estimated that 379,000 adults are engaged in forced labor in Mexico, mainly in the agricultural and maquila industries. This figure is the highest for all of Latin America. These data exclude such new phenomena as the arrival of hundreds of thousands of foreign migrants desperate to survive, given their status as transient migrants seeking to cross the border into the United States.
The U.S. organization Polaris conducted a Diagnosis of labor trafficking in Mexico, which showed a devastating balance of what it calls “labor trafficking”, as equivalent to forced labor. It is a post-pandemic study where it points out that those who suffer the most from this problem are women, migrants, indigenous people, and minors. Some factors that facilitate this situation in the country are the high levels of marginalization and informality, temporary migration, and reliance on cheap labor, together with the corruption of authorities, impunity, organized crime, and the tightening of border controls.
In other words, an institutional and governmental scaffolding endorses, sustains, and strengthens the existence of forced or compulsory labor, even child labor, in Mexico. And this is not even remotely touched by the document proudly delivered by the Ministries of Labor and Social Welfare and Commerce to the unsuspecting partners of the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC.
An additional aggravating factor calls into question the veracity of the López Obrador government’s commitments. Mexico has resorted to hiring an unknown number of Cuban doctors to make up for alleged staffing shortages in Mexico’s health care system. They were hired first during the Covid 19 pandemic, primarily in Mexico City, and subsequently, a much larger group, apparently spread throughout the country. There is no official information on the number of doctors and under what conditions they were hired.
The United Nations has denounced the Cuban medical missions as “forced labor”. UN rapporteurs document that “many Cuban doctors working abroad are reportedly exposed to exploitative working and living conditions, inadequate salary payments…subjected to pressure and monitoring by Cuban police abroad”. They are forced to work up to 64 hours a week, the Cuban government expropriates between 75% and 90% of their salary, they live under surveillance by Cuban authorities while living abroad, they are stripped of their passports, professional documents (such as medical degrees) and any other form of identity to turn them into “non-persons”. And if they manage to escape the surveillance of their authorities or captors, they are stripped of their nationality for eight years while their families on the island suffer persecution, expulsion from educational centers, the threat of imprisonment, and dismissal from their jobs.
Furthermore, Mexico proposed a candidacy to head the Pan American Health Organization, whose presence would have meant legitimizing the Cuban medical missions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Knowing this, the region rejected his candidacy resoundingly. The failure directly resulted from the Mexican public policy of promoting the Cuban medical missions, despite the UN ruling on their evident “forced labor” character.
There is a flagrant contradiction between the document presented to the T-MEC partners on the prohibition of the importation of goods produced by forced labor and the conduct of the Mexican government, which not only does not attack the phenomenon but, as the case of the Cuban doctors demonstrates, finances this form of modern slavery with public funds. And it projects Mexico as a nation incapable of accepting and resolving its contradictory internal and external political behaviors with transparency and congruence.
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