By Raj Patel and - -
(580 words) OAKLAND, May 1 2003 (IPS)

United States banana republicanism is alive and well, and coming back to Guatemala, the US\’s first banana republic, writes Raj Patel, Policy Analyst at Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy, based in Oakland, California. From May 12-15, United States Trade Representative Robert Zoellick will be negotiating a new deal with Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua known as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). In this analysis for IPS, the author writes that farmers in the region vehemently oppose the agreement. They recognize that they stand little chance of being able to compete against the massively -subsidized US agribusiness machine. The 2002 US Farm Bill apportioned USD 180 billion in new subsidies over ten years; the total GDP for all five countries last year was just under USD 140 billion. The loudest cries of protest have come from the agricultural sectors in these economies. But the luxury of dissent isn\’t one afforded to the five CAFTA countries: if they agree to CAFTA by the end of the year they will simultaneously commit themselves to the FTAA. At a time when criticism of US foreign policy is deemed \’\’giving comfort to the enemy\’\’, the grievances of the least powerful are likely to be swept under the rug. Protests by farmers in Central America continue to be censored, ignored, or met with retribution.

United States banana republicanism is alive and well, and coming back to Guatemala, the US’s first banana republic, run by the United Fruit Company as a US-sponsored fiefdom for most of the twentieth century.

Between May 12 and 15, United States Trade Representative Robert Zoellick will be negotiating a new deal with Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua known as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). These countries export USD 7.3 billion in goods to the US and import USD 9.3 billion from the US, in unadjusted 2001 figures.

This is the latest US offensive in the area. The aim of the deal, on paper, is to increase the volume of trade between the US and these five countries. Yet in the absence of any free trade agreement, the US managed to export over USD 9 billion in goods and services to them in 2001. Figures on how this might change as a result of CAFTA are disputed; the number of opinions on possible outcomes is slightly higher than the number of economists studying the question.

Farmers in the region, however, are clear on their position: they vehemently oppose the agreement. They recognize that they stand little chance of being able to compete against the massively-subsidized US agribusiness machine. The 2002 US Farm Bill apportioned USD 180 billion in new subsidies for the industry over ten years. By comparison, the total GDP for all five countries last year was a little under USD 140 billion.

The loudest cries of protest have come from the agricultural sectors in these economies. In El Salvador, for instance, the National Association of Agricultural Workers (ANTA) has condemned CAFTA. In Mexico, the effect of CAFTA’s progenitor, the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has been to devastate the rural economy, where poverty is systematically higher, the prices paid to farmers are lower (because of the dumping of subsidized US crops), and prices of staple food items are on the rise.

The majority of Central American farmers see themselves, as they have been so often in the past, as pawns in a wider game of US politics. For Zoellick, CAFTA is a stepping stone to the more comprehensive Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), an ambitious plan to neoliberalise the entire Western hemisphere.

The FTAA is, it would seem, too ambitious for most of the rest of the Latin America. In a recent plebiscite on the FTAA, organized by church groups and non-profits, 98 percent of those polled, or 10 million people, said that they didn’t think their government should sign the agreement.

But the luxury of dissent isn’t one afforded to the five CAFTA countries: if they agree to CAFTA by the end of the year, as Robert Zoellick would have it, they will simultaneously commit themselves to the FTAA. This is why US undersecretary for international trade, Grant Aldonas, recently commented, ”The only countries that are likely to show up [to the FTAA] are the ones already in the [CAFTA] process.”

In recent weeks, Nicaragua has made dissenting noises about the agricultural provisions in the agreement. But it is unlikely that the voices of the Central American farmers will be given much credence. At a time when criticism of US foreign policy is deemed ”giving comfort to the enemy”, the grievances of the least powerful are likely to be swept under the rug. And so it is that the protests by farmers in Central America continue to be censored, ignored, or met with retribution. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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