Massive protests are planned against the extension of the North American Free Trade
Agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico to other Latin American countries. Naomi Klein
explains why in an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail Wednesday, March 28, 2001.
"On April 6, trade ministers from the 34 countries negotiating the Free Trade Area
of the Americas will meet in Buenos Aires. Many in Latin America predict that the
ministers will be greeted with protests much larger than the ones that exploded in Seattle
in 1999.
The FTAA's cheerleaders like to pretend that their only critics are white college kids
from Harvard and McGill who just don't understand how much "the poor" are
"clamouring" for the FTAA. Will this public display of Latin American opposition
to the trade deal change all that?
Don't be silly.
Mass protests in the developing world don't register in our discussions about trade in
the West. No matter how many people take to the streets of Buenos Aires, Mexico City or
Sao Paulo, defenders of corporate-driven globalization just keep on insisting that every
possible objection lobbed their way was dreamed up in Seattle, by somebody with newly
matted dreadlocks slurping a latte.
When we talk about trade, we often focus on who is getting richer and who is getting
poorer. But there is another divide at play: which countries are presented as diverse,
complicated political landscapes where citizens have a range of divergent views, and which
countries seem to speak on the world stage in an ideological monotone.
In North America, we are finally hearing the debates about whether or not more of the
same model of deregulation, privatization and liberalization will protect our heath and
education and water systems. In Western Europe, the foot-and-mouth inferno is putting the
entire model of export-oriented industrial agriculture on trial.
And yet such diversity of public opinion is rarely attributed to citizens of Third Word
countries. Instead, they are lumped into one homogenous voice, channelled by dubiously
elected politicians or, better yet, ousted ones such as Mexico's Ernesto Zedillo, now
calling for a global campaign against "globophobes."
The truth is that no one can speak on behalf of Latin America's 500 million
inhabitants, least of all Mr. Zedillo, whose defeat was in part a repudiation of NAFTA's
record. All over the Americas, market liberalization is a subject of extreme dispute. The
debate is not over whether foreign investment and trade are desirable - Latin America and
the Caribbean are already organized into regional trading blocs such as Mercosur. The
debate is about democracy: what terms and conditions will poor countries be told they must
meet in order to qualify for trade and investment?
For the past two decades, these terms and conditions have been negotiated and enforced
by the IMF and the World Bank in exchange for loans. Social services have been privatized,
user fees introduced, agricultural subsidies cut (while richer countries kept theirs),
hard-won land-redistribution programs abandoned, and minimum wage controlled - all in the
name of becoming "investment ready."
Argentina, the host of next week's FTAA meeting, is currently in open revolt over
massive cuts to social spending - almost $8-billion (U.S.) over three years - that have
been introduced in order to qualify for an IMF loan package. Last week, three cabinet
ministers resigned, unions staged a general strike, and university instructors moved their
classes to the streets.
Though anger at wrenching austerity measures has focused primarily on the IMF, it is
rapidly expanding to encompass trade deals such as the proposed FTAA. The Zapatistas began
their uprising on Jan 1, 1994 - the day the North American free-trade agreement came into
force. Seven years later, three-quarters of the population of Mexico live in poverty, real
wages are lower than they were in 1994, and unemployment is rising. No wonder the
Zapatistas were able to draw 150,000 supporters to the streets of Mexico City earlier this
month.
And despite the claims that the rest of Latin America is clamouring for a NAFTA to call
its own, the central labour associations of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay
-representing 20 million workers - have come out against the plan. They are now calling
for countrywide referendums on membership in the FTAA.
Brazil, meanwhile, has threatened to boycott the summit altogether, furious at Canada's
dirty trade war and wary that the FTAA will contain protections for drug companies that
will threaten its visionary public health policy of providing free generic AIDS drugs to
anyone who needs them.
Defenders of free trade would have us believe in a facile equation of trade =
democracy. The people who will greet our trade ministers on the streets of Buenos Aires
next week are posing a more complex, and challenging, calculation: how much democracy
should they be asked to give up in exchange for trade?"
Via Campesina, a global network of small farmers organisations, will mobilise on
the 17 April for an International Day of Protest on the impacts of the WTO Agreement on
Agriculture on small farmers in developing countries.
Since 1994 the WTO agreement has forced developing countries to lower tariffs and on
agricultural imports while both the US and Europe make direct payments to farmers which
are not outlawed by the agreement. Exports at subsidised prices have undercut local crops
in developing countries once tariffs are removed. Under the rules of the WTO Trade in
Intellectual Property Rights Agreement, transnational corporations are patenting
traditional seeds and developing genetically modified crops which also exclude small
farmers. These trends cause unemployment and mass urban migration, and can undermine food
security leaving developing countries dependent on imported food.
Via Campesina is calling for an end to subsidised imports, and to the patenting of
traditional seeds and use of genetically modified crops. They are calling for the
development of food security policies and sustainable farming methods for small farmers.
