“Reading like a Poet” between the Lines of the Cultural Exemption and the Mexican Exception

Abstract

In REMEX: Toward an Art History of the NAFTA Era, I argue that the North American Free Trade Agreement/ Tratado de Comercio Libre del América del Norte/ Accord de libreéchange nord-américain (NAFTA/ TLCAN/ ALÉNA), billed as a trilateral agreement to eliminate continental trade barriers between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, represented the most fantastical inter-American social allegory of the late twentieth century.1 Although NAFTA technically went into effect one minute after midnight on January 1, 1994, the continent’s NAFTAfication encompassed the treaty’s contentious negotiation, signing, ratification, and the fifteen years of its implementation from 1994 to 2008. Because the agreement unfolded in the wake of Mexico’s 1984 Faustian pact with the World Bank, wherein Mexico was granted a loan in exchange for its adoption of significant neoliberal reforms, NAFTA’S asymmetrical effects were anticipated: Mexico’s “economic penetration” and US exceptionalism were treated as paired foregone conclusions. Objections to the treaty subsequently assumed distinct shapes in the two nation-states.