Touted as a development model that would generate jobs and raise living standards on both sides of the border, NAFTA in fact has done the opposite. A year and a half after it went into effect, people in North and South America are linked as never before. But the benefits flow only one way -- upward -- leaving workers, communities and the environment even more marginalized. PNS associate editor David Bacon is a California writer specializing on labor and immigration issues.

Even its harshest critics didn't expect the shock waves NAFTA set off during its first year and a half: an armed uprising in Chiapas; the meltdown of the peso and the gutting of Mexican living standards; the discovery of new clusters of anencephaly along the border; union-busting in the maquiladoras -- the hits just keep on coming.

The biggest hit of all is that NAFTA has accelerated the export of capital, not the export of goods and services. Promoted as a development model that would create jobs and improve living standards on both sides of the border, it's done the opposite -- with only corporations reaping the benefits.

USA-NAFTA, the agreement's corporate boosters, made extravagant promises about the 100,000 American jobs exports to Mexico would generate during the first year alone. Today, the group estimates that only 535 U.S. jobs were created by the agreement.

On the other hand, some 34,799 newly laid-off workers filed claims for NAFTA-related Trade Adjustment Assistance during the first year of the treaty. Another 34,000 applied during the first five months of this year. But the Department of Labor has certified less than a quarter of these claims in states like California. Critics say it has a vested interest in keeping the numbers low so as not to embarrass the administration.

Meanwhile the U.S.'s $3.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico in 1992 turned into a $8.6 billion deficit in the first six months of 1995. And foreign investment in Mexican plants and equipment -- mostly from the U.S. -- soared (by $8 billion in the first half of 1994 alone). General Electric's Mexican plants alone increased their sales in 1994 by 18 percent to $1 billion. CEO Jack Welch told Business Week that General Electric's future lies in Mexico.

The Zenith plant, the last television factory in the U.S., once employed 4000 workers. In 1987, its Missouri workforce agreed to an 8.2 percent wage cut to keep the plant open. The company left anyway, closing the doors on February 24, 1995. Zenith is now one of the largest maquiladora employers on the border.

The same threat was used last year by Leviton Co. in Rhode Island. The company threatened to move production of electrical outlets to Mexico, and as a result, members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers agreed to a contract with a wage freeze for two years, and 12 hour shifts paid at straight-time rates. In Webster, New York, Xerox Corporation won a 50 percent base pay reduction for new employees, and in El Segundo, a 20 percent cut for 700 workers with the same threat.

Two events, a year apart, define NAFTA for Mexicans. As the treaty went into effect on January 1, 1994, farmers n the south took up arms to protest its implementation. What purpose does economic development serve, the rebels asked, if it does not better the lives of all Mexicans, especially the poor?

Mexicans got their answer a year later. Newly inaugurated President Ernesto Zedillo was forced to devalue the peso as almost his first act in office. Interest rates climbed to 30 percent, as Zedillo agreed to a package of reforms mandated by the International Monetary Fund as the price for a $20 billion bailout organized by President Clinton. IMF conditions included further privatization of national enterprises, measures to hold down inflation, and the use of oil revenues to guarantee repayment, making them unavailable for economic development.

Ordinary Mexican workers paid for the crisis with their standard of living. Prices are rising at a government-estimated annual rate of 42 percent this year. A worker at the Zenith television factory in Reynosa, across from Texas, now earns an average weekly wage of 135 pesos, worth $19.27. Bus fare to and from work is seven pesos a day.

Groups monitoring environmental and labor conditions in the border region, notably the Tijuana-based Border Workers Regional Support Committee, report new clusters of anencephalic births (babies born with partial or no brains) in three separate locales -- Brownsville/Matamoros, Eagle Pass/Del Rio and Tijuana. Despite promises to enforce environmental cleanup, these groups say neither government is willing to rock the boat.

NAFTA's agreement to enforce labor standards has also been embroiled in controversy since the treaty's passage. Three complaints were filed in the last year and a half alleging labor law violations in Mexico, and one alleging violations in the U.S. But with Mexico seeking foreign investment at almost any cost, the labor side agreement is basically toothless.

There is no doubt that the global operations of large corporations and financial centers are linking people together across borders in North and South America as never before. Indeed, despite the negative evaluations of NAFTA as a development model, the Clinton Administration wants to expand it to include Chile.

What's really needed are people-to-people relationships aimed at forcing governments to give precedence to the needs of workers, communities and the environment over the trade imperatives of the corporate world.