Ten Reasons to
Oppose the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)
by Kathy Ogle
This article is based on interviews held
during EPICA's May 26-June 8 travel seminar in Nicaragua and Honduras,
especially two interviews in Honduras with: the Bloque Popular,
a broad coalition of Honduran grassroots organizations , and the
Honduran Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations
(COPINH).
If one was to rely only on information
from the mainstream media in the United States or Central America,
one might come to the conclusion that free trade agreements are
inherently beneficial to poor countries and that the Central American
countries are eager to embrace as many such agreements as possible.
What we heard on our recent trip to Honduras and Nicaragua, however,
indicated that the opposite may be true. While Central American
government representatives do show willingness to sign on to such
agreements, grassroots organizations of the poor are anything
but happy about that fact. We heard from many people who feel
as though their very existence and culture are being sacrificed
to the gods of free trade.
The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA),
currently being negotiated among all countries in the Americas
except for Cuba, is targeted to take effect in 1995. Like
its newly proposed counterpart, the Central American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA), this trade agreement would essentially eliminate
tariffs and other trade barriers in order to allow what its proponents
call a more "free" exchange of goods between countries.
In Honduras, our delegation spoke with representatives
of several grassroots organizations. Two of these groups are highlighted
here in terms of their reaction to the proposed FTAA. They
are the Bloque Popular, a broad coalition of Honduran
grassroots organizations, and COPINH the Honduran Civic Council
of Popular and Indigenous Organizations. COPINH is a member of
the Bloque Popular. They gave us the following reasons
for opposing the FTAA.
1. Negotiations have not been an inclusive
process. Only government and business representatives
have been involved in the discussions around the FTAA, and grassroots
groups have experienced the process as an exclusionary one. As
Juan Barahona of the Bloque Popular said "It has been
hard for us to educate ourselves about the content of the FTAA.
We have had to do a lot of work to find out what, exactly, they
are proposing." People are not told who their government
representatives to the FTAA negotiations are, and they do not
have a way to influence them directly. Indigenous groups
feel especially unrepresented and unheard. "Before we started
our marches and demonstrations," said Berta Cáceres of COPINH,
"they used to say that indigenous groups did not exist."
2. The FTAA, like other "free"
trade agreements, protects large corporations and their interests.
Making trade "free" means eliminating tariffs and other
measures once designed to protect small companies from unfair
competition with corporate giants from other countries. Under
the FTAA, the governments of developing countries would no longer
be able to protect their local industries by putting tariffs on
cheaper imported goods. Nicaraguan shoemakers would have to compete
with Payless Shoes. Honduran corn producers would have to
compete with agro-business in Kansas. While the FTAA would
also allow goods produced in countries like Nicaragua and Honduras
to be exported without tariffs to consumers in the United States,
it is clear that only the largest Nicaraguan companies will be
able to survive in this kind of open competition.
Patent laws included in the FTAA also protect
big business at the expense of people. Under FTAA type provisions,
patents would protect such things as commercial seeds that are
genetically altered so that grains from one year's harvest are
not fit to use as seeds the following year. Genetically
altered seeds would not only oblige farmers to buy seed from multinational
companies like Monsanto every year, they would also threaten the
existence of native strains of grain, which are necessary for
long-term food security.
Patent laws would also make it possible for
businesses to patent such things as traditional medicine and plants
and make it a crime for indigenous people to continue using these
substances without paying for them.
Most grassroots organizations we talked to
in Nicaragua and Honduras believe there is a place for protectionism
in developing countries, especially to protect food security and
small national businesses. José Martínez of the Bloque
Popular said, "They want us to play by the rules that
are set up to benefit people who have more money. For our very
survival we have to say no to that. If we are going
to have a future, we have to quit being the countries that make
other countries rich."
3. One of the unspoken assumptions of free
trade is that there is a level playing field on which all countries
can "freely" compete. One only needs to travel
out of the business district of the major cities in any Latin
American country to realize that this idea is indefensible.
Corn farmers in rural areas do not have the technology or large
landholdings that would allow them to compete with Kansas corn-growers,
yet they will be even more vulnerable if they are driven off their
land through this "free" competition. Clearly, putting
peasant farmers out of business is not the answer to Honduran
development needs.
The indigenous Lenca women we met from southwest
Honduras live in areas of 80% illiteracy and extremely high levels
of infant and maternal mortality. The women of COPINH―
many of them unable to read and write―drew us pictures of
their reality. Some drew schools and health centers that
they could reach if they walked for several miles. Others
drew children with diarrhea and pregnant women who could not reach
the clinics. There were pictures of women carrying firewood
on their heads, schools crumbling from lack of maintenance, men
in jails for protesting their loss of lands, women planting corn
and beans and squash while taking care of their children. "Sometimes
we only eat tortillas with salt," said one, "because
that is all we have."
These are countries that need intensive investment
in social services, and protection
of subsistence and small scale income-generating
activities not "free" trade. As Congresswoman Doris
Gutierrez said, "The way free trade is being presented, it's
like asking a lame person to run a race with someone who has two
good legs."
4. Corporate power virtually replaces State
power under the FTAA, but corporations do not take on any
of the essential duties of providing social services, protecting
the environment, or maintaining law and order. Under the
FTAA, multi-national companies who move their operations to a
developing country would be required to pay little or nothing
in the way of taxes to the local governments. And, under provisions
similar to NAFTA's Chapter 11, they would even be able to sue
local governments should those governments enact environmental
or labor legislation that would eat into their profits! Governments, which have already been stripped of many
of their sources of income in the 1990s wave of privatizations,
would be weakened further under the FTAA and have even less money
with which to provide crucial health and education resources to
their people.
"Businesses come in and pay virtually
no taxes," said José Martínez of the Bloque Popular.
"Even now, all of the mining companies in Honduras together
only pay the ridiculous sum of 50,000 lempiras in taxes
to the government (US$ 3,125). But in the Valley
of Siria alone, where there is an open pit mine, the Honduran
government spends more than that every year just on taking water
out to the communities, since all of the community water sources
have been contaminated by the mines."
5. The economic ideology accompanying the
FTAA is neo-liberalism, and Central American people have had a
negative experience with this ideology for years.
Neo-liberalism weakens the state's ability
to put any restrictions on corporations, and frowns on state ownership
of income-generating activities and services. In countries where
many government leaders are also the corporate millionaires, laws
have passed quickly to sell-off national industries at bargain
prices to private enterprises. Key government services including
electricity and telecommunications have been privatized and even
such basics as water, health, and education may be put into the
hands of companies who would sell them only to the people who
can pay for them. "The privatization of education will condemn
the majority of our people to illiteracy," said Juan Barahona.
Melba Leticia Landa, union leader of the Honduran
Social Security Institute and member of the Bloque Popular,
told us about their struggle to keep the social security system
from being privatized. "Business people want to privatize
social security because they know they can make a good business
out of it," she said. "But if we lose key public services
like the Social Security Hospital, people who don't have money
to pay for a doctor now will be even less likely to get medical
coverage in the future."
Central American corporations have not been
able to show that they are more efficient and less corrupt than
their government-run counterparts. And they have not been able
to lower prices for consumers. According to José Martínez, "When
we hear theories about how privatizations are going to lower prices,
they sound like they are from another planet. According
to economic theory, the two private cement companies we have now
should be competing with each other to bring prices down. Instead
they have made an agreement with each other to keep prices higher,
and the price of cement has gone up 500% since the industry was
privatized."
Neoliberalism also frowns on labor unions,
minimum wages, and other ways for laborers to "artificially" raise
their wages, and insists that Central Americans should employ
their "comparative advantage" of being able to offer cheap labor
to foreign-owned companies.
Central Americans have also been told that
their comparative advantage does not lie in agriculture.
Even countries with extensive fertile lands like Nicaragua and
Honduras have been forced by agreements with the World Trade Organization
(WTO) to abandon support of and subsidies to their agricultural
sectors. Instead, according to theory, they should import their
basic grains from the United States. Nicaraguan and Honduran farmers
being displaced from their lands are having a hard time accepting
this policy which was imposed on them. The fact that US
agribusiness recently received the largest subsidies in history
makes this kind of neo-liberal medicine that much harder to swallow.
6. Free trade agreements do not include
free movement for labor. Nicaraguans and Hondurans with
failing farms and small businesses unable to compete with the
giants eventually make use of a final escape valve, which is immigration
to other countries like Costa Rica and the United States in search
of jobs. Yet, the only option available to most immigrants
to the United States is that of undocumented or "illegal"
immigration. They are thus forced to take great risks to
cross the border only to become part of the vulnerable and exploited
U.S. immigrant underclass.
7. Women and children carry the heaviest
burden of increasing poverty.
Central American women carry the heaviest burden
of neo-liberal and "free trade" policies. The
majority of formal jobs being created in places like Nicaragua
and Honduras are relatively few factory jobs for women in maquila
assembly plants. Since these jobs do not pay enough to support
a family and since extended family networks are rent asunder by
rural-urban migration, single mothers who work long hours at the
maquila are still living in poverty at the end of the day.
Other jobs for women such as childcare and domestic service pay
even less. Married women often lose their spouses to immigration
as the men look for ways to bring in more income. In the midst
of all of this, women are expected to single-handedly continue
their traditional unpaid domestic labor and childcare. Who loses
the most? Children who grow up on the streets as both parents
work longer hours.
8. Development plans like the Plan Puebla-Panama
that accompany the FTAA are also destructive. Large
projects like hydro-electric dams, oil pipelines, highways and
airports provide the infrastructure that corporations want to
maximize their profits. They are not consulted with the
population they affect, and they threaten to eliminate fertile
lands, slash irreversibly into biological corridors, contaminate
the environment, and take land away from indigenous peoples. Corporations
benefit, but do not pay for these projects.
COPINH has protested such development projects.
From 1993 to 2002, they have led marches of 5000-20,000 people
demanding protection for the environment, and for the culture
of indigenous people. "Some people in the government pitied
us at first," said Berta Caceres, "but they got angry
when we started demanding our rights. We want true social justice,
a revaluing of indigenous contributions."
"We are now struggling against the El
Tigre hydro-electric dam as well as the Zuzuma and Chaparral dams.
These are mega projects being financed by the World Bank and the
InterAmerican Development Bank. These are the projects they
care about because they take electricity to the big companies,"
said Berta Caceres.
Our delegation pressed the issue a little farther.
"People say that these kinds of project bring good things,"
we said. "They bring electricity and commerce and progress.
They say this is development. What don't you want it?"
A quiet woman named Vicenta answered. "This
development was not designed for us. They want to move us
off our lands in order to build the dams. We will be displaced.
The electricity is not for our communities, it is for the big
companies. If they wanted to generate electricity for our communities,
they would do so in other ways, not with these mega projects.
Our children and our grandchildren will inherit nothing if we
lose our lands. And we would be foolish to think that the government
would take care of us. On the contrary, the government is
trying to get rid of indigenous people by displacing us! According
to the plans that these people make, my community in San Francisco
Opalaca is supposed to be a center for refugees displaced by the
dam. But they didn't ask us about this, and we are not in agreement!!
They want us to stop farming and go to work in their factories.
If there are new jobs like these, they may help some people for
a while, but what happens in the long term if we give up our land?
What will our children do?"
9. An alarming degree of militarization
is accompanying the FTAA, CAFTA and the Plan Puebla Panama.
There is increased military presence in all of the Central
American countries including more joint exercises with the United
States. There is more activity in U.S. military bases in the region,
and Nicaragua is now, for the first time, sending soldiers to
the infamous US Army School of the Americas to receive training
in military-civic coordination. This militarization seems an inherent
part of economic policies that are imposed. Indeed protests against
trade agreements and mega-projects have already been violently
repressed in many countries.
On March 24, 2002, the 22nd anniversary of
the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero coincided with the
arrival of President Bush in El Salvador and his first effort
to launch the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). People
from COPINH and the Bloque Popular tried to travel to El
Salvador to participate in commemoration and protest activities,
but were held at the border for hours. When they were finally
allowed into El Salvador, COPINH women reported being photographed
by U.S. military people.
"We have struggled against militarization
and against U.S. occupation," said Berta Caceres. "So
now the government is calling COPINH a dangerous organization
with terrorist tendencies. It's not hard to see that they are
trying to impose their plans on us against our will."
We asked if the Bloque Popular thought
there would be repression as the movement to oppose the FTAA gained
momentum. "Definitely," said Juan Barahona. "As
we raise awareness in the people about the negative effects of
the FTAA and as more and more people get involved in this struggle,
the government will respond with repression."
10) "Free" trade is not the only
alternative. People are calling for sustainable local
and national development plans that help the people, not a corporate
extractive development plan with the purpose of helping companies.
Supporters of the FTAA like to promote it as
the only economic policy alternative in the continent. In
reality, alternatives can and do exist. The Hemispheric Social
Alliance has already come up with a comprehensive document, critiquing
and offering alternatives to the FTAA.
In Honduras, the Bloque Popular is saying
no to the FTAA and yes to more positive agreements between Latin
American countries. They are in favor of developing the
internal market of each country as a priority. "We could
decide that we're going to accept the maquilas, for instance,"
said Jose Martinez, "but that they would have to pay taxes
and play by our rules."
On June 1, 2002, the Bloque Popular
held a national assembly with groups from all over Honduras to
help grassroots organizations better understand the content of
FTAA.
The Bloque Popular now has an action
plan to oppose the FTAA. "We have planned a series of activities,"
said Juan Barahona. "Our main objective is to have
a plebiscite, a referendum, at the end of next year, so the people
can manifest their repudiation of the FTAA and so that the government
will be forced to take this into account and decide not to sign
the FTAA."
COPINH is part of the Bloque Popular.
They have also been involved in struggles to gain communal titles
to land and to sign agreements to protect biodiversity. Among
other achievements, they have participated in a strong and emerging
indigenous movement, have gained recognition legally, and struggled
against racism. Since 1993 they have participated in more
than 40 direct actions of protest, pilgrimages, sit-ins and hunger-strikes
to bring visibility to their causes. They are not ready
to say that the FTAA is inevitable.
"NO to the FTAA"
There is a debate among those
who oppose the FTAA as to whether it should be rejected outright
or whether grassroots roots groups should focus their energies
on getting environmental and labor protection clauses passed as
part of the agreement. Bloque Popular members have
opted for outright rejection of the agreement.
"Negotiations didn't work with the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)," they said.
"Neither environmental nor labor clauses have worked. Mexicans
were promised more jobs under NAFTA. They said that their exports
would increase and that poverty would be reduced. But what the
Mexicans have now are fewer jobs, huge environmental problems,
and an enormous vulnerability including legal vulnerability.
That's the best example that we have on which to base our opposition
to the FTAA. "
"If the "light" opposition wins,"
said José Martínez, "the FTAA will be approved and they'll
cover up and make certain laws a little nicer-put a little makeup
on them. The difference is that with the FTAA approved as it is,
we'll die tomorrow. With an FTAA that's fixed up a little, we'll
die the day after tomorrow. We think we have a right to a different
choice. "
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