Go to the link for Pan American Post to see the reports in major US papers
highlighted. In contrast to the “cost of doing business in Mexico” yawns
and who cares? Does anyone challenge the basic assumption that Walmart
benefits ordinary people in Mexico or elsewhere? Is it an unquestionable
benefit to provide cheap products made by people paid terrible wages in
China, India, Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras and elsewhere to people in
Mexico (and many in the US also) who have seen domestic manufacturing
destroyed by free trade policies over the past 18 years? Does anyone think
that small business people in Mexico benefit from a rotten system that
requires street vendors and sellers of second hand clothes and other goods
to pay bribes to get a spot in a flea market, or worse, who must pay
protection money to keep from being beat up or killed?  Small businesses in
Juarez now are being destroyed by extortion and the cruelty of the criminal
gangs (often allied with the police) that threaten and carry out threats by
burning and killing. molly