Relaciones internacionales.indb - HOMINES

ALINE FRAMBES-BUXEDA
12. THINGS TO COME; SUBORDINATE INTEGRATION
AFTER 90s AND AFTER 1996.
NAFTA is logically characterized by the dominant role of the United
States. Instead of a “real or complete integration project” NAFTA is a
“subordinate regionalism” effort, and thus a strategy necessary for the
economic and hegemonic recuperation of United States’ “global leadership”
or “global hegemony”. 61 Integration, in this sense, may be (at least
momentarily) an obstacle to multilateral trade agreements and production,
in fact a negation of “globalism”.
If NAFTA is to be successful, lasting and useful to the United States
and all of the Americas, it is very important to understand that United
States is obligated to promote more prosperous and stable neighbors South
of it’s borders. Nonetheless, this will not be easy to achieve. In fact, only
some selected few social sectors and industries will improve their standards
of living and increase their accumulation of wealth in all three countries
as a result of NAFTA.
Due to it’s characteristics and inherent problems, “subordinate integration”
probably is not a long-term, durable or permanent integration
process, but rather a short and medium-term method of resolving certain
actual crises intrinsic to economic growth in capitalist development in 1994
and beyond. Subordinate integration between Puerto Rico and the United
States is a good example to study.
In spite of “integration” and “globalization” (whatever that was in
1994, 1995 and 1996) all of the Americas have suffered years of economic
recession, and also have been greatly transformed by the 1982 debt crisis.
Regional identity between 1990-2000 was characterized by societies where
living conditions were in constant decay. We have already mentioned that
informal and marginal sectors are growing in urban areas; real unemployment
increases in global terms. These social groups are related to vast
sectors of people affected or involved in crime, petty delinquency, drug
traffic, bureaucratic corruption, prostitution and growing contamination
of the countryside forests and cities. Education and health care are in very
poor shape. However, at the same time, social polarization is occurring due
to integration and its modernization of certain favored economic sectors
and its destruction of others. 62
Mass media and electoral democracies are successfully in control of
mass public opinion. Thus, almost everyone is fascinated by the prospect
61
Lucrecia Lozano, “La Iniciativa para las Américas, el comercio hecho estrategia,”
in: Nueva Sociedad, Caracas, May-June 1993, pp. 98-111.
62
Agustín Cuevas, “América Latina ante el fin de la historia,” in: Puerto Rico en
América Latina, A. Frambes-Buxeda, Compiler, San Juan, 1994, pp. 60-67.
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