Word: perots
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When Ross Perot addressed an NAACP audience as "you people" last year, the nation's newsrooms echoed with charges of racism. But now, when he exploits "dirty Mexican" caricatures to garner opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Fourth Estate is silent...
...picture Perot paints of Mexico ignores that nation's growing trend toward democratization and modernization. To rally opposition to NAFTA, Perot often relies on a portrait of Mexico as dirty, corrupt and backward. He uses border pollution as a code to conjure up stereotypical images of filthy Mexicans. (Though few would have guessed he is a closet tree-hugger, Perot is not above dressing in green when it suits his needs...
Implying that Mexicans can't be trusted, Perot refuses to believe that Mexico will comply with environmental regulations Clinton attached to NAFTA--despite the enforcement mechanisms, including trade sanctions, that the agreement contains...
...Perot's distrust of Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's promise to increase wages in Mexico also betrays his belief in Mexican corruption. He regularly points out that Mexican workers earn one-seventh what U.S. laborers make. But he dismisses President Salinas' commitment to raise the minimum wage as Mexican productivity increases, suggesting that Salinas is corrupt and untrustworthy...
...Finally, Perot presents an outdated portrayal of Mexico as backward, in order to counter arguments that NAFTA would create an open Mexican market for U.S. products. Challenged on his claim that NAFTA won't increase U.S. exports to Mexico, Perot casually claims that Mexicans are too poor to buy anything. "Let's do business with a country whose people can buy things," he said in last night's debate with Vice President Al Gore...