LATIN AMERICA: Anti-FTAA Activists Set to Redouble Efforts

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jan 3 (IPS) - Activists in Latin America and the Caribbean opposed to the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) have pledged to redouble their efforts this year against the initiative, which they see as an attempt by the United States to expand its influence over the region.

''Yes to Life, No to the FTAA!'' is the slogan that has brought together labour, indigenous, human rights and leftist activists and sectors of the Catholic Church across the region in a heterogeneous movement that seeks to block the creation of the continent-wide free trade zone through protests and demonstrations.

The last round of talks on the FTAA will begin in March in Mexico, and is to end with a final agreement in late 2004, which would go into effect by late 2005 or early 2006 after it is ratified by the parliaments of the 34 participating countries.

The FTAA, which was first proposed in the early 1990s by the United States and immediately embraced with enthusiasm by nearly all governments in the Americas, will create a free trade zone stretching from Alaska in the United States to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of Argentina.

All of the countries in the hemisphere are involved in the initiative, with the exception of Cuba.

But the anti-FTAA movement argues that it is a plan designed by government and big business in the United States to expand and strengthen U.S. influence over the rest of the nations of the Americas, and that it is merely the latest expression of ''neo- colonialism.''

However, the majority of the governments disagree with that argument, and several have already sought trade agreements in line with the FTAA.

For example, Chile signed a bilateral trade deal with the United States last month, while the nations of Central America are seeking a similar agreement with that country.

Anti-FTAA activists meeting in November in Havana in the Second Hemispheric Meeting of Struggle Against the FTAA agreed to step up their fight in 2003. ''The fundamental condition for defeating the FTAA is for the people to mobilise,'' they declared.

In October, hundreds of people marched through the streets of Quito with the aim of blocking the 12th meeting of the committee of FTAA trade negotiators and the seventh ministerial meeting of trade ministers of the Americas.

But the protests were suppressed by Ecuador's security forces, and the trade negotiators agreed to a strict timetable for implementation of the FTAA.

Leonel González, a member of the committee that organised the gathering in Havana, admitted that despite the intensified efforts against the free trade agreement in the past few months, ''there is still great ignorance about the FTAA'' among social activists.

That is precisely what many government spokespersons in the Americas complain about regarding opposition to the free trade initiative. They argue that critics are not even interested in learning about the many benefits that the FTAA could bring.

In an informal survey organised by around 60 different social organisations last September, nearly 10 million Brazilians said they were opposed to the creation of the Americas-wide free trade area.

But independent observers said the survey did not reliably reflect the views of Brazilians, because it was directed towards those who had already taken a stance against the FTAA.

When the last round of talks opens in the southern Mexican city of Puebla, where a swanky new convention centre has been built for the purpose, the government and business representatives will have an advanced draft of the final agreement on the table, which will only need finetuning.

Agreement on the content of the FTAA draft document has been reached among a majority of the participating countries, said Germán de la Reza, an expert in integration issues and a professor at Mexico's National Autonomous University and Metropolitan University.

The only thing that can stand in the way of the agreement entering into effect in 2005 is the political variable, he predicted.

New actors critical of the free trade initiative will join the fray this year, and will play a key role in the struggle, according to anti-FTAA activists.

For example, Brazil's new President Luiz Inácio ''Lula'' da Silva, a leftist former steelworker, took office Wednesday, and retired colonel Lucio Gutiérrez will become president of Ecuador on Jan 15 at the head of a coalition of left-leaning and indigenous groups.

Both have expressed reservations about the FTAA, which they share with presidents Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Fidel Castro in Cuba.

But even if Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, and other countries oppose the FTAA, it will not be easy to block the initiative, said Argentine Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

''Stopping the FTAA will be possible only if we who oppose it are able to unite in a collective Latin American movement. But we must generate new ways of doing politics,'' he added.

In the early 1990s, when Mexico was negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and the United States, a broad social movement protested the new free trade deal, but was unsuccessful in its attempt to block its implementation.

NAFTA entered into effect in January 1994, and now even has the support of some of its one-time critics, like Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda, a former leftist militant.

De la Reza recommended that activists study the FTAA initiative with ''more thoroughness and less passion,'' in order to better understand its possible effects. He also said it is a mistake to blame a majority of the social, economic and development problems of Latin America on the opening up of the markets.

''A large part of the problems facing countries in the region are the result of internal problems, not the liberalisation of trade,'' he argued.

But he acknowledged that the FTAA model is designed to benefit the United States first and foremost, because import duties in that country now average around three percent, and are set to shrink to below two percent in 2004.

Tariffs in Latin America, on the other hand, average 10 percent, which means this region will make the biggest concessions to free trade, de la Reza pointed out. (END/2003)