The Children Of Nafta

This is a journalistic chronicle of contemporary labor wars and organizing on the United States/Mexican border. Based on gripping firsthand reports, this book investigates the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on those who labor in the agricultural fields and maquiladora factories on the border.

By the Lake of Sleeping Children explores the post-NAFTA and Proposition 187 border purgatory of garbage pickers and dump dwellers, gawking tourists, and relief workers, fearsome coyotes, and their desperate clientele. In 16 indelible portraits, Urrea illuminates the horrors and the simple joys of people trapped between the two worlds of Mexico and the United States—and ignored by both. The result is a startling and memorable work of first-person reportage.

Mexican cuisine has emerged as a paradox of globalization. Food enthusiasts throughout the world celebrate the humble taco at the same time that Mexicans are eating fewer tortillas and more processed food. Today Mexico is experiencing an epidemic of diet-related chronic illness. The precipitous rise of obesity and diabetes—attributed to changes in the Mexican diet—has resulted in a public health emergency. In her gripping new book, Alyshia Gálvez exposes how changes in policy following NAFTA have fundamentally altered one of the most basic elements of life in Mexico—sustenance. Mexicans are faced with a food system that favors food security over subsistence agriculture, development over sustainability, market participation over social welfare, and ideologies of self-care over public health. Trade agreements negotiated to improve lives have resulted in unintended consequences for people’s everyday lives.

Created from NAFTA, for the first time, provides an in-depth examination and analysis of the structure, functions, and performance of the NAFTA institutions from their inception to the present day.

'Free Trade and the Environment' examines the impact of international economic integration on the environment, taking as a case study the experience of Mexico, as it transformed itself from one of the most closed economies in the world to one of the mostopen.