• Deliberations in the presence of President Fidel Castro at the 2nd World Meeting of Struggle against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), attended by nearly 1,000 activists from 41 countries in order to organize a continental platform of struggle against the project
• COLLAPSED industries, unemployment, lack of benefits for the working class, weakening economies and workers’ organizations, loss of social and labor rights and the reinforcing of the transnational empire: an gloomy panorama hidden within macroeconomic figures. However, a clear analysis was provided by specialists and activists from the United States, Canada and Mexico on the first day of the 2nd Hemispheric Meeting of Struggle against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, attended by President Fidel Castro.
It would be an error to believe that the FTAA is dead, and Washington has various strategies for putting it into practice, noted Karen Hansen, international coordinator of the Alliance for Responsible Trade in the United States (ART).
The Bush administration is advancing in bilateral agreements with governments receptive to its pressures or in favor of the model, warned Hansen, also an analyst from the American University of Washington, explaining that this is its way of clearing the road for establishing the FTAA, a project considered threatening not only from the economic point of view, but also from that of health and education services.
President Bush is not interested in free trade but in freedom of movement for the transnationals that would allow them to enter and leave countries as they wish and increase their profits; the approval of agricultural subsidies responds to that model, given that 80% of these subsidies benefit the large companies, noted Karen Hansen, who has been a member of the Alternative Policies Group for 12 years.
She clarified that in addition to the U.S. administration’s position on the FTAA, the posture of Congress, which is very divided on the issue, should likewise be discussed. She added that there was much debate in Congress concerning the treaty’s negative effects on people, given that its members come under pressure from their electorate due to diverse problems.
She stated that although public surveys reflect little opposition to free trade in the United States, there is a lot of concern among the popular sectors. She pointed out that Canada has advocated an emergency summit in Mexico for next year, where propaganda will be made in favor of the FTAA, but noted that the upcoming meeting of American Trade Ministers in Miami should be taken creative advantage of by activists to observe the response of local Florida interests on issues such as immigration.
According to Hansen, the publication of the FTAA text is a weapon of struggle, it contains many arguments and instruments that promote its rejection. She confided to Granma International that she became a more radical thinker when she participated as a volunteer in the Peace Corps in a rural area of Paraguay during the Stroessner dictatorship and realized how Latin Americans lived and suffered.
Also participating in the deliberations currently underway at the International Convention Center are Carlos Lage, vice president of the Council of State; Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Parliament; Felipe Pérez Roque, minister of foreign affairs; José R. Balaguer, head of the International Relations Department of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party; and Pedro Ross, general secretary of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC).
Nearly 1,000 activists, analysts, trade union leaders and organizations opposing the FTAA are attending the meeting, which concludes at the close of this edition, with the articulation of a program of continental resistance to the project.
DANGER OF BILATERAL INVESTMENT AGREEMENTS
Pablo Solón, a representative of the Bolivian movement against the FTAA, stated that there is no unified negotiation taking place, but multiple ones: discussions with the World Trade Organization, regional treaties and bilateral investment agreements. In his opinion, the core of the FTAA can be found in the chapter on foreign investments, which establishes mechanisms for supra-national agreements outside of the legal framework of the countries concerned, something that can already be appreciated in the bilateral investment treaties.
He cited what occurred in his country when potable water services were privatized in Cochabamba by the International Water subsidiary, whose main branch is in the Netherlands, and which belongs to the Bechtel transnational, the fifth largest in the United States.
That transnational is now suing Bolivia for the popular revolts prompted by a 300% water price increase. The lawsuit presented by the U.S. consortium demands $25 million USD, when in reality its investment was only $500,000 USD in water services to the population of Cochabamba.
Solón warned of the International Committee for the Solution of Investment Differentials, describing it as an instrument of the World Bank. He informed that in 1996 there were only 1,100 bilateral investment treaties in the ICSID, but now there are more than 2,000, and transnationals have brought 110 suits against nations.
In Bolivia, 17 bilateral investment treaties have currently been established; if the FTAA is approved, then parties that are not in agreement will come under the jurisdiction of an arbitration panel nominated by the World Bank. Each party designates its lawyers and has no participation in the deliberations, which are secret and constitute the inquiry, Solón commented. The lawyers for each party then inform the government in question of the decision, without that government having any legal power in the face of a transnational suing for compensation.
He announced that gas in Bolivia is about to be privatized by the transnationals and the country has to be prevented from handing over its natural energy resources. “We have seen that the FTAA is a monster,” he pointed out, “but contradictorily, it has had one positive effect: that of continental unity.”
MODERN VERSION OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES
Tom Hasen, coordinator of the U.S. anti-FTAA movement, spoke on behalf of his delegation. He expressed solidarity with the five Cubans unjustly imprisoned in his nation and also denounced the blockade on Cuba.
Free movement of transnational capital and an effective blockade for human beings, is how Juan José Gutierrez, coordinator of the U.S. Latino Movement, described the implantation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Those are sufficient arguments to prevent its expansion to the entire American region, as is being attempted at the moment, he added.
Pressure on the U.S. workforce growing steadily, particularly for the 12 million illegal workers, highlighted the Latino Movement coordinator. In his opinion, U.S. immigrants are the modern version of slaves, and he attacked the fact that each year two million people are deported from a country that proclaims to be the freest in the world.
Growing inequalities in Canadian society, where only 20% of the country’s inhabitants have had a rise in income due to the NAFTA, were exposed by Karen Keenan, a lawyer with Canada’s United Borders Coalition.
She explained how her country had to remodel its economy in order to readjust to the NAFTA’s demands, causing secure employment to fall, part-time work to increase, and the contraction of foreign labor in southern Canada.
Integration outside, disintegration inside, is how Quebec University expert Dorval Brunnell sees the result of the NAFTA in his nation. He revealed how the economic restructuring adopted by Canada in order for it to adjust to the agreement’s norms had unleashed a dislocated economy.
Commercial exchange among Canadian provinces has fallen, whilst separate relations with U.S. states has risen. He gave the example of energy distribution via the NAFTA, where each Canadian province is linked to a U.S. state’s gas consumption as part of the norms of the agreement.
MEXICO: DECEPTIVE STATISTICS
The myth that Mexico has benefited from the NAFTA is government propaganda, affirmed Mexican specialist Alberto Arroyo, who related how it had been announced that his nation would be transformed into a First World country thanks to the agreement. But what was really being sought was economic reactivation after years of zero growth. IMF recipes advised Mexico to put everything in the hands of foreign investors if it wished to expand and export.
But large figures are deceptive, he warned, because although exports have tripled, the reality is that the Mexican economy is a springboard for the transnationals’ commercial export operations.
We have $1 trillion USD in exports per year, but they’re not Mexicans exports - their content is not Mexican nor are they owned by Mexican producers. Whereas previously, 90% of the value of every dollar corresponded to the Mexican workforce, the current participation is only 30%.
This huge export volume has not helped the Mexican economy to expand. Nor has it had a positive influence in attracting foreign capital to Mexico. The nation’s banks are all foreign-owned. The two national financial institutions tried to survive but were bought up by the United States and Spain. There is not one single commercial Mexican chain, he added, because all were bought by foreign capital.
They promised more and better jobs for the Mexican society but in reality jobs have only been created for 60% of those eligible to work, without including the unemployed who are waiting for a chance to work, Arroyo highlighted. But it is not the number of workers that worries the expert, it’s the fact that they are not receiving their labor rights: there is no social security, no guaranteed health service, no vacation pay and no bonuses.
The effect of the NAFTA in Mexico has only been to bring islands of successful foreign entrepreneurs to an enslaved country.
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