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January 2, 2008
Farmers Protest Trade Pact
at US-Mexico Border

Mexico City
Dozens of farmers formed a "human wall" on a bridge over the border between Mexico and the US to protest the complete opening of agricultural trade under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), EFE news agency reported Wednesday.

The accord signed by Mexico, the US and Canada has been in effect since Jan 1, 1994. Beginning Tuesday, the sales of corn, beans, sugarcane and powdered milk are duty-free among the NAFTA members.

The protest began Tuesday on the Cordoba-Americas Bridge that connects the Mexican city of Juarez with El Paso in Texas, according to Victor Quintana, adviser to the Peasants Democratic Front (FDC).

Two of the four lanes for vehicles between the US and Mexico were blocked by 200 peasants, said Quintana, a leftist member of Congress from Mexico's Chihuahua state.

About six months ago the FDC launched its campaign "No corn, no country, without beans either" to complain that with the agricultural element of NAFTA going into effect, Mexican peasants will go broke.

At the beginning of the protest, activists read a document titled "Chamizal Plan" which "calls on the nation to begin a new stage in the struggle to preserve food sovereignty, defend Mexicans' social advances and guard natural resources", Quintana said.

January 2, 2008 

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