Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ARGENTINA: Second ‘No to the FTAA’ Campaign Kicks Off

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 1 2004 (IPS) - More than 130 non-governmental organisations in Argentina launched a campaign Thursday for a second ”popular vote” against the FTAA Americas-wide free trade area.

However, this time the coalition is not only expressing its opposition to the FTAA, but has reached agreement on issues that it will advocate: defence of the country’s natural resources, the renationalisation of privatised public enterprises, and more equal distribution of the wealth.

”We don’t only plan to make clear what we do not want, but also for the first time we have agreed on issues that we do want” to promote, Clara Algranati, coordinator of the second popular ‘No to the FTAA’ (Free Trade Area of the Americas) vote, told IPS.

Agreement on specific issues to advocate was reached after a series of meetings of student, labour, religious, environmental, women’s, and human rights groups, organisations of small farmers and the unemployed, associations of small and medium businesses, and leftist parties in all of the country’s 23 provinces.

Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a prominent Argentine writer and activist, took part in the launch of the campaign with his signature, as did the president of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association/Founding Line, Nora Cortiñas – two of the most prominent faces of the ‘No to the FTAA’ coalition.

Leaders of the Argentine Workers Central trade union and the Argentine branch of ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens) also participated.

The first ‘No to the FTAA’ popular vote was held Nov. 20-26, 2003 as part of a region-wide mobilisation against the project for hemispheric integration. In Brazil, the participating organisations got 10 million people to vote on the free trade area promoted by the United States.

Popular votes were also held in Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela, and several Central American nations.

Each national campaign took on its own characteristics. While in Brazil people were only asked what they thought about the FTAA, respondents in Central America were also asked to express their views on the free trade treaty that five countries in that region are negotiating with the United States.

In Argentina, the first popular vote, a kind of awareness-raising campaign on the impact of the FTAA, posed three questions: whether Argentines supported the free trade agreement; whether they agreed that the foreign debt should be paid off; and whether they agreed with allowing the United States to install military bases and hold joint military exercises in Argentina.

In this country of 37 million, more than 2.2 million people took part in the first popular vote. Of that total, 96 percent said they were opposed to the FTAA, 88 percent that they were against paying off the foreign debt, and 97 percent that they were against authorising the United States to set up military bases here or permitting U.S. troops to enter the country.

In Algranati’s view, the public opposition to free trade successfully held up progress in the FTAA talks, as well as in the negotiations between the European Union and Mercosur (Southern Common Market) bloc. She said civil society has basically been excluded from the EU-Mercosur talks due to the lack of access to information, an aspect that activists have frequently protested.

The talks on a free trade area to go into effect in late 2005 among all nations in the hemisphere except Cuba did run into difficulties in November 2003, when the FTAA ministerial meeting in Miami, Florida only reached agreement on a watered-down version of the accord dubbed ”FTAA lite”.

Now the groups forming part of the ‘No to the FTAA’ coalition have reached agreement on five questions they will advocate and four aspects to which they are opposed.

And instead of holding a plebiscite-like popular vote, they have produced a petition, which will be posted at signature-collection tables in public spaces around the country.

”We do want: life; sovereignty over our territory; recovery of our natural resources and privatised companies; fair distribution of the wealth; and an alternative form of integration of our nations, based on solidarity,” says the petition.

”We do not want: the FTAA or other free trade accords that undermine our sovereignty; to pay off the illegitimate and fraudulent foreign debt; U.S. military bases or joint military exercises in our territory; or a single poor household in Argentina,” it adds.

”Opposition to the FTAA brought us together, but now we want to incorporate new issues like the fight against poverty, because our organisations see that even with economic growth, no progress is being made towards a more just distribution of the wealth,” said Algranati, a sociologist with the Latin American Council of Social Sciences.

But more than just collecting a certain number of signatures, what the activists want is to produce a tool – in this case the petitions – that each organisation can use to prompt a public debate and raise awareness on the issues in question, said Algranati.

”We want people to have a tool for promoting debate, generating awareness, and above all for organising against neo-liberalism” and the free-market economic model, she said, adding that ”Society must participate in consolidating democracy.”

According to one of the coalition’s documents, ”The FTAA is not a free trade project, but a fundamental element in the U.S. project of domination and plunder of natural resources, aimed at turning Latin America into a market of consumers, and suppliers of natural resources.”

The United States wants to impose standards that would hamper the ability of countries in the region to exercise control over foreign investment and ensure that transnational corporations receive the same treatment granted to nationally-owned small and medium firms, argues the coalition, which was created in April 2002.

In September 2003, the Roman Catholic bishops of the Mercosur countries – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with associates Bolivia and Chile – met in the Uruguayan capital and issued a statement describing the FTAA as a ”neo-colonialist” plan that will hurt the poor in Latin America and will not respect the sovereignty of nations in the region.

According to a May 2003 study by the Fund for Economic and Social Development (FUNDES) – a network that provides advice and support to small and medium-sized companies in Latin America – the FTAA will pose a risk of 7.9 on a scale of zero to 10 for small export companies in Argentina, which will have to compete with U.S. products.