Annotations for People: Perot-ross 1930-2019

My own feeling, my own personal feeling is that if we work at it, that we'll be able to get a treaty that's good for the country and good for Mexico.

That's Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, commenting on the present status of the North American Free Trade Agreement. At this point, congressional approval of NAFTA is still in question. Mexico and Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, have a lot at stake in NAFTA's becoming a reality, as do many Hispanic entrepreneurs in this country. In Dallas, Latino business and civic leaders recently met with the Mexican president trying to counter the arguments from a certain Texas politician that NAFTA will mean major job losses. Brian Shields prepared this report.

Dallas billionaire, Ross Perot is spending millions of dollars to go on national television to stir up opposition to NAFTA, but members of the Dallas Hispanic Chamber believe the treaty will be beneficial for their businesses. During a recent visit to Dallas, Mexican president, Carlos Salinas, asserted there's no time to waste.

I have been asked, "Why NAFTA?" Because this is the only way how we will be able to compete in the world in which we live. "Why now?" Because we are late, late when other regions in the world are getting together to increase the efficiency and competitive capacity.

To my business, it would probably help it tremendously. I've been in business now for 12 years, doing business back and forth through Mexico, and we have had quite a bit of product going back and forth. The prices generally will then be lowered on some of the items that we now are paying some duties in.

Opposition to NAFTA in the United States centers on concerns that higher paying jobs north of the border will disappear to be replaced by very low wage employment in Mexico. Such arguments are coming not only from supporters of Ross Perot, but also from grassroots Hispanic groups such as San Antonio's Fuerza Unida, if you're a loss of American manufacturing jobs that now employ Latinos here. However, President Salinas insists the treaty will have the opposite effect.

NAFTA is also a wage increase agreement, because with increases in productivity, we will be able to increase wages in Mexico more than they have been growing in the past four years.

Between Ross Perot and opponents of free trade in and out of the Congress, right now, the agreement appears to be in trouble, but Jorge Haynes with Laredo's International Bank of Commerce insists the opportunity is too important to allow it to slip away.

If we should decide not to adopt NAFTA, which is something I don't want to think about, I think we will be going backwards in our relationship with Mexico rather than forwards.

Even now, before NAFTA's implementation, business people in Texas are actively trading with their colleagues south of the border, and if the trade agreement is going to work, it will be up to individual entrepreneurs to lead the way. It's a trail already being blazed by many Hispanic-owned businesses, such as John Montoya's. He's the president of World Dallas International, a trading services company, and for him, the rewards of the agreement are quite clear.

We heard him speak at the White House with the three former presidents reassuring people. Now the question, is it going to be enough? If it's enough to...

Both sides in the ever-escalating battle over the North American Free Trade Agreement are rolling out their big guns with President Clinton calling on three former presidents to declare their support for NAFTA while opponents from Labor to Ross Perot garner more votes against the trade treaty. Latinos are on both sides of the issue playing critical roles according to NPR reporter Richard Gonzales.

In the pro-NAFTA camp, the major player is Congressman Bill Richardson of New Mexico. He is the chief deputy whip for the Democrats, one of the leaders trying to save the NAFTA. In the anti-NAFTA camp, I think that the one of the leading players is California Congressman Esteban Torres. Torres is interesting because he could possibly go over to the other side and support NAFTA if the administration were to accept his proposal for a North American Development bank, which would go to help fund border cleanup and worker retraining throughout the country for people who get hurt by NAFTA. But until now, the administration has been just kind of leading him along, saying, "Yes, Mr. Congressman Torres, we will consider your bill," but they've yet to sign onto it.

NPR reporter Richard Gonzales. He says, "Cuban American Congress members remain opposed to the trade agreement." In California, three of several bills seeking to limit immigration and access to services by the undocumented have been approved by the state legislature. Armando Botello has more.

We got a little song we sing; "we'll remember in November, when we step into that little booth."

I'm Maria Hinojosa. The long, drawn-out, and hard-fought battle over the North American Free Trade agreement finally came to an end when the House of Representatives, after more than 10 hours of debate, approved the controversial treaty by a vote of 234 for NAFTA, 200 against. Latino USA's Patricia Guadalupe has been following the debate on Capitol Hill. She prepared this report.

[Background—natural sounds—Congressional proceeding] On this vote the yeas are 234, the nays are 200, and the bill has passed.

There were no last-minute surprises in the Hispanic caucus since all the Latino members of Congress had announced beforehand how they would vote. All members east of the Mississippi River voted against a treaty, including all the Puerto Rican members, Democrats Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, Nydia Velazquez of New York, and Hispanic caucus chair Jose Serrano, also of New York, as well as the Cuban American members of Congress from New Jersey and Florida. All those west of the Mississippi River, that is, every Mexican American member of Congress, with the exception of Democrat Henry Gonzalez of Texas, voted in favor of NAFTA. Among the members voting for the treaty was Democratic Representative Frank Tejeda of Texas. During the hours of the debate, he likened a yes vote, to a vote for economic progress particularly for future generations.

If we reject NAFTA, we limit their future potential. We must press NAFTA and teach our graduates by example. We must also send the willing message, that the United States instead remained the world's economic leader.

But neither Congressman Tejeda's words, nor those of other pro-NAFTA representatives did anything to convince the three Cuban American members of Congress, who have all along objected to signing an agreement with Mexico. They oppose Mexico's diplomatic relations with Cuba. Lincoln Diaz Ballard, a Cuban American Republican from Florida, added that he voted against NAFTA not only because of Cuba but because he considers the Mexican government with the same political party and power for over 60 years to be undemocratic.

And that's the problem with the Mexican government. They, they're a long-standing rotating dictatorship. They steal elections every six years. And when we sign an agreement with them, who are we signing agreement with? A group of families, or a group of people? So that's why we need to, we should have announced from the beginning that we're doing it. We want entrance into a common market of hemispheric democracies. We didn't do that. That's a fatal flaw.

The final vote was not as close as some had expected with 16 more than the 218 needed for passage. Some analysts say the intense lobbying by the Clinton administration in the last few days, along with Vice President Al Gore's good showing in the debate with Ross Perot convinced many of the undecided members. Raul Hinojosa, an economist at UCLA and a member of the Pro-NAFTA Coalition known as the Latino consensus, also thinks that the opposition to NAFTA lost steam as the final vote neared.

What's happened is that the White House has had an incredible momentum in the last week and a half of a lot of undecideds, which is way, by the way, exactly how the public has shifted. A lot of the undecided vote went to NAFTA in the last two weeks. I think what was clear is that the opposition was very strong, but it wasn't growing anymore, and therefore what we're seeing is that the vast majority of the undecided then shifted over with the President on this issue.

The NAFTA treaty now moves onto the Senate where final approval is expected easily. If accepted by the governments of Canada and Mexico, the North American Free Trade Agreement would go into effect next January, creating the largest consumer market in the world. For Latino USA, I'm Patricia Guadalupe in Washington.