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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #13-01 Free trade Area of the Americas: Who Would Benefit?
March 28, 2001

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2001/1301.html

Phillip Babich: This week on Making Contact...

Lori Wallach: The goal of the trade agreement is not to really open up trade between the countries but rather to open up the capacity for corporations to produce and get their goods back.

Jaggi Singh: Even though you're representing the interests of people, corporations and business in general have got such influence in the process that representatives are willing to ignore that, ignore our concerns and approve these agreements.

Phillip Babich: There's been widespread opposition to free trade agreements around the world. In April 2001, high-level negotiators from dozens of countries will meet to discuss one of the largest free trade compacts ever proposed. On this program, we take a look at the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement, and efforts to derail it.

I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact: an international radio program, seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information.

It's been seven years since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, took effect. What are some of the results? Chuck Mack, Teamsters vice president of the Western Region, was one of the early opponents of NAFTA. He says that the effects in the United States have been detrimental to workers.

Chuck Mack: There are probably close to 400,000 jobs that have been lost since NAFTA. And the discouraging part of this is that we were given such rosy projections and forecasts by those that supported NAFTA. I mean, it was going to mean increased democracy between countries and job growth all around in Mexico; a harmonization of labor conditions and environmental conditions at the top, as opposed to the bottom. And just the opposite has happened. There's been significant job loss, environmental impacts, a deficit with Mexico for the first time. And as we suspected, the lot of workers in Mexico has not improved. It's gotten worse. And so if there's a commonality, and I guess a common denominator in this, it's that working conditions on both sides of the border have deteriorated.

Phillip Babich: In Mexico over eight million people have sunk into poverty, since NAFTA went into effect. The percentage of Mexicans living below the poverty line nearly doubled between 1994 and 1997, from 34% to over 60%. Likewise, the number of under-employed and unemployed totaled 65%. Meanwhile, the number of maquiladoras--factories inside so called free trade zones--have increased accounting for the majority of Mexican exports. According to independent reports, work conditions and pay in most maquiladoras, which produce everything from clothing apparel to electronic equipment (frequently for large multi-national corporations), are abysmal. Carlos Beas is the coordinator of the Union of Indigenous Committees in the Northern Zone of the Isthmus in Oaxaca, a coalition of eighty-five indigenous groups. Beas says that free trade has brought more poverty to peasant communities in Southeast Mexico.

Carlos Beas: (translated) Agriculture in Mexico is virtually destroyed. Only a few sectors exist, which are for export, like strawberries and asparagus. Therefore the situation of poverty has grown amongst the peasant communities in Mexico. And this has generated more violence, more tension but also a large migration toward the north of the country and to the United States. In just the year 2000, more than 600 Mexicans died trying to cross the border to the United States. Many of those Mexicans who died at the border of the US came from the southern part of the country, a region very rich in natural resources but devastated by government politics, which haven't respected the conditions of work in the southern region of Mexico.

Phillip Babich: According to Beas and other critics of free trade, the biggest winners of NAFTA are not people, but transnational corporations. Corporate executives are heavily involved in negotiations around trade agreements, and some observers charge that concessions that governments make to corporations essentially turn over decision making power to these private entities. For example, when countries sign onto free trade agreements, they are required to reduce spending on health care and education, or to privatize publicly owned services, changes that can benefit corporate interests. Ramon Antipan has lived in Canada for over twenty years but is originally from Chile, and part of the Mapuche indigenous community there. He says that privatization of public services are among the changes that free trade has brought to Canada.

Ramon Antipan: Some of the effect has been the privatizing of public services. It has an effect on schools, although they haven't privatized it per se completely, but they've been cutting on funding. So as a result of that, beginning with the university what they've been doing, they've been increasing the tuition fees. Where for example, here at the University of Alberta, I believe it's around 4000 just to issue a fee, so obviously the effect on people is tremendous. Those who have money, obviously, are the only ones who can access a good education.

Phillip Babich: Antipan, who works with the Canadian postal service, adds that government efforts to privatize the postal service succeeded only in part.

Ramon Antipan: They managed to privatize a portion of it, like the direct service to the public, serving, maintaining a corps of services across the main city, basically on the ???? privatize... You go to any, for example, shopping mart, they have some private outlets where you can buy your stamps; you can mail your mail or buy some other purchases. But as far as mobilizing of the postal worker, with the support of some of the community groups, we were able, actually, to stop the push for privatization.

Phillip Babich: One of the top priorities of the Bush administration is to accelerate negotiations for an expanded version of NAFTA, known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA. This agreement would involve all countries in the Western Hemisphere, except for Cuba. Its proponents hope to see it go into effect in the year 2003.

Lori Wallach is the director of Global Trade Watch -- part of the Washington DC based advocacy organization, Public Citizen. Her group has been in the forefront of the anti-free trade fights in the United States.

Lori Wallach: The beginning of the NAFTA for the Americas, the FTAA, was in Miami in 1995, at what was called the Summit of the Americas. And all of the NAFTA boosters of Mexico, Canada and US corporate and government called a summit of all the governments of the 30+ hemisphere countries, and said, "Hey, you should all do NAFTA. We've done NAFTA -- let's launch it now!" And they started off these negotiations. And then, as NAFTA's results started to become apparent, and NAFTA politically became poisonous, they stopped talking about it. They kept talking with each other, but they stopped boosting it. And they've been quietly negotiating ever since.

Phillip Babich: Wallach adds that there were two fundamental goals that participating countries agreed to in the initial negotiations for the FTAA.

Lori Wallach: One, was recognizing that the political unpopularity in every one of the 30+ countries would sink these agreements where the topics being discussed, done in broad daylight, they decided to do on the sly and all signed confidentiality agreements. And so, for instance, some of the countries have released their country's positions, but no one has let anyone see what the actual negotiated text is. And the second thing they agreed on is that while intellectual property rights, protections for corporate investments, the free flow of capital but not people would all be basic principles of the agreement. There would be no consideration of democracy, human rights, labor and environment. And interestingly, some of the Caribbean countries and some other countries raised the idea...hm-m...democracy should be part of this. And the US, amongst others, said, "Nope, can't have any negotiations about that". And that was it.

Phillip Babich: Carlos Beas, in Oaxaco, Mexico, says a hemispheric agreement such as this has many implications for the indigenous communities in southern Mexico, including increased oil production. Also new infrastructure will be needed to support the large corporations that will be operating in Mexico.

Carlos Beas (translated): New highways, new pipelines, new exploitation of the forest and new eucalyptus plantations in the region, more industrial petrochemicals and fewer resources for local agriculture. Fewer resources for local indigenous cultures. In other words, the impacts of one integrated market at a continental level are going to be greater in negative terms because they're not considering the interest and necessities of our local economies, of our regional economies. One example is the train, which up until two years ago transported products from the peasants of the region. Now, it only transports large volumes of products, which go from one country to another country. It's to say, the train which functions in our region, doesn't serve us any more. It only serves to transport merchandise.

Phillip Babich: Indigenous groups in Mexico and throughout Latin America have been involved in efforts against free trade since NAFTA was first proposed in 1993. Clemente Ibe Wilson is involved with the Kuna Youth Movement. Off the coast of Panama, the Kuna indigenous people live with a unique autonomy that many indigenous people do not enjoy around the world.

Clemente "Ibe" Wilson (translated): We have physical borders for our territory. Inside our territory only Kuna people live. Business can only be made or can only be done by the Kuna. Land cannot be sold to anybody that is not Kuna. Land can only be sold to Kuna. With that, I don't want to say that the Panamanian government doesn't pressure us. There's a lot of pressure, so that the Kuna will offer up their lands for exploitation by corporations. And they have tried using blackmail and bribery and other gifts in order to try and use these lands of the Kuna, but the people have rejected it.

Phillip Babich: Ibe adds that "globalization" and "free trade" are just new terms for what he views as imperialism.

Clemente "Ibe" Wilson (translated): The consequences and the effects of what will happen with this trade are the same that we have been suffering for the last 500 years. Before it used to be robbing of our gold and of our silver. Now they're robbing us of our knowledge, of our biodiversity, of our dreams.

Phillip Babich: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or would like to reach any of our guests, we'll be giving out our toll free number at the end of this broadcast.

Critics of the Free Trade Area of the Americas say that this new agreement will likely increase the privatization of water resources and services. Private corporations are gaining control of water resources all over the world. In 1999 the Bolivian government turned over the water system in Cochabamba, the capital, to Aguas del Tunari, a subsidiary of the US-based Bechtel Corporation, one of the largest engineering firms in the world. Marcella Olivera is an organizer with The Coalition for the Defense of Water and Life, or La Coordinadora, a grassroots effort that forced the government to reverse its decision to privatize the water.

Marcella Olivera: This issue became an issue that no longer concerns just this sector or that sector of society. It suddenly affected everybody, because everybody started receiving their water bills and everybody realized we're all getting "jacked" in this situation. So in March of 2000, we had a popular referendum. Like a combination of taking a poll, but almost like a referendum, that was put together by La Coordinadora, that asked the population of Cochabamba, "What are your opinions? What do you think we should do, given these circumstances?" And a consensus, coming from a very strong majority was, "We need to get rid of Aguas del Tunari. They need to leave Cochabamba."

Another result of the referendum was that people had also said the government needs to listen to what our concerns are, and has to incorporate us into this decision-making process. Nevertheless, the government chose not to pay attention, and things came to a head in April because of this governmental stance. All along we had been negotiating with the government. We had been trying to find some sort of agreement, a settlement at the table. We had even negotiated with Aguas del Tunari, said, "Let's look at this contract, let's see if there are places where we can find some sort of compromise." But at no point did we get a response to this. So things came to a head in April, when the population as a whole decided to take to the streets, with the recognition that, "They're not listening to us...they're simply not listening to us... so the only recourse we have at this point is to go out into the streets."

Phillip Babich: The Bolivian government canceled its contract with Bechtel due to a massive popular uprising. The water system is now back under public control, and is by all accounts, in better shape than it's ever been, delivering potable water to people who never had access to clean water before. But its future is in doubt, since the water utility has accrued a massive debt. Bechtel has filed suit against the Bolivian government for breaking the contract, and is seeking compensation for lost profits. If negotiators get their way, a provision of the FTAA will allow for corporations to sue governments for any impingement on profits, or potential profits, resulting from contract cancellations or nationalization of private industries. Such a provision can be found in a number of bilateral treaties around the world.

Another provision likely to be included in the FTAA is NAFTA's process for resolving disputes between countries. According to Antonia Juhasz, program director of the International Forum on Globalization, an anonymous tribunal makes decisions in secret. She says that this process is problematic because it lacks any public review or input.

Antonia Juhasz: The people who sit on the tribunal that makes the decision -- their only qualification is their knowledge of trade and trade policy -- they could have a direct conflict of interest in the case and that wouldn't matter. The case is decided behind closed doors. There's no public input. The people, who are the ones who raise the question in the first place, would have absolutely no rule in the process whatsoever. And this is the legal structure that would be imposed through the trade agreement.

Phillip Babich: Chuck Mack, Teamsters vice president of the Western region, says one example of a dispute between the US and Mexico reveals a number of problems with this process. It involves cross-border trucking, part of NAFTA that envisioned no borders for transportation between Canada, Mexico and the United States. It was supposed to take effect right away. The provision has been stalled since 1996 because of a dispute between the United States and Mexico.

Chuck Mack: The Clinton Administration said that they were going to prohibit cross-border trucking, that the trucks that were coming across the border from Mexico were of questionable quality from a safety standpoint. And that from a driver standpoint, Mexico was not meeting the same regulations and requirements, safety requirements, that the United States requires for drivers. And so in the interest of highway safety they were not going to open the borders up until there was a demonstrable evidence that the motoring public was not going to be at risk and placed in peril. Mexico filed a complaint with the NAFTA tribunal, a resolutions or grievance tribunal, and the panel found that even though there isn't a regulatory system anywhere near ours for driver safety in Mexico--even though the checkpoints are almost nonexistent--that the treaty required opening of the borders. And they found in favor of Mexico and has essentially ordered the United States to comply with the treaty and to open the borders to cross-border trucking.

Phillip Babich: Out of the three and a half million trucks that enter the United States at the Mexican border annually, only one percent is inspected. And half of those are taken out of service for violating safety standards. Mack says this is an example of lowering of standards, or so-called "harmonization," a common result of free trade agreements such as NAFTA.

Widespread opposition to free trade has generated strong coalitions of people who have found common ground in countries where governments have implemented free trade policies. Seattle, Washington was the setting for one of the most important battles over trade in December 1999, during the annual meeting of the World Trade Organization. The WTO is a powerful group comprised of over 130 member countries, and makes decisions on trade policy. Protesters from around the world traveled to Seattle, organized counter summits and disrupted the meeting. They helped to focus international attention on a process that many corporations and government officials hoped would remain private. But for demonstrations against the FTAA at the Summit of the Americas meeting in April 2001, organizers have a different strategy in mind, according to Lori Wallach, from Global Trade Watch.

Lori Wallach: The whole strategy of the Quebec City meeting is different, which is to say, for Seattle the goal was to bring people from all over the world to Seattle and to make statements there. The strategy for Quebec City is, of course, our friends in Canada are doing national-level organizing to have an impressive crowd in Quebec City. But around the world the organizing is focused on solidarity events in numerous cities and numerous countries during the days of the Quebec City summit. So that we can bring the political awareness and the heat about FTAA back home on the parliamentarians, officials, press and publics in the 30+ FTAA countries where the decisions are going to be made. So intentionally our Canadian friends are saying, "Hey, unless you live in those few northern states in the US, don't come here. We'll have a crowd. Make sure people at home know about it. Make sure your own parliament's on top of it. Do your thing at home and be just as noisy as you can. We'll all do it on the same day." And that's the strategy.

Phillip Babich: In Quebec City, organizers are preparing for the Summit of the Americas with plans for a "People's Summit" and other demonstrations. Correspondent Luka Palladino of radio station CKUT spoke with some of the activists involved.

Luca Palladino: In April, Quebec City will be besieged by a multitude of activist groups and coalitions trying to counteract or abolish the Summit of the Americas. One of those groups, the Hemispheric Social Alliance, composed of non-governmental organizations and trade unions, is organizing the Second People's Summit, an alternative to the Summit of the Americas. Richard Langlois, trade unionist and organizer of the People's Summit:

Richard Langlois: (translated) We are not saying that we are against free trade; we are saying that we are for an opening, a free trade that takes into account all of the facets of human development.

Luca Palladino: Hector De La Cueva is with the Hemispheric Social Alliance Secretariat based in Mexico.

Hector De La Cueva: (translated) The Hemispheric Social Alliance was created to make the process more democratic. Firstly, we wish to break the secrecy in which the negotiations are being held. We demand more information, more transparency and above all, that the people be truly consulted. In other words, that the agreements become democratic. Secondly, the negotiations must take into account social consequences. The social aspect must be included not as a clause, but as an integral part of the negotiations. The impact of the agreement must be studied and workers' rights, environmental rights and human rights and general social rights must all be protected. Thirdly, in any negotiation, inequality must be taken into account, inequality between countries. That asymmetries between countries be analyzed so that these differences might be protected and that mechanisms of compensation might be established for less developed countries if they want to have a just trade system and just relations between countries.

Luca Palladino: Other coalitions such as the People's Global Action have a different vision, calling for ending, not reforming globalization. The People's Global Action is an international network of smaller local activist groups. Nicolas Lefebvre Legault, who is part of a neighborhood activist group in Quebec City that is affiliated with the People's Global Action, says the FTAA will disempower local communities.

Nicolas Lefebvre Legault: (translator) We are fundamentally against because the FTAA because it delegitimizes the political powers and reinforces the judicial powers. It gives rights to companies that did not have these rights previously. If a collectivity no longer has the possibility to create laws or to control its own political destiny, there is a problem. The political power that a collectivity has remains very important. It is clear that within the context of free trade, especially with NAFTA being used as a model for the FTAA, that political power is denied.

Luca Palladino: Jaggi Singh, part of the CLAC, also known as the C-L-A-C Anti-Capitalist Convergence, also takes a more radical view on globalization.

Jaggi Singh: The FTAA and the Summit of the Americas is about one particular vision of the world, and that is a vision that sees human beings as human capital to be exploited. It sees ecology and the natural environment as a resource. It sees it as lumber, it sees it as oil, it sees it as natural gas. And it sees culture as simply as a commodity. In simple terms, it's a vision of the world that looks like Disney, tastes like Coke and smells like sh--. Our vision, if I could presume to speak about a different vision, is about freedom, it's about social justice, it's about economic justice, it's about ecology, it's about autonomy and a lot of other ideas that are really at odds with the Summit of the Americas and the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Luca Palladino: One point most organizations and activists agree on is the excessive nature of the security measures put in place by both federal and provincial governments for the Summit of the Americas. These measures represent the largest security operation in Canadian history and include a security perimeter restricting access to the Summit of the Americas activities and a nearby prison that has been emptied just for the occasion. Jaggi Singh...

Jaggi Singh: They're not security measures, they're scare tactics in Quebec City. If it was about security, for example, protecting the lives of the leaders, nobody is threatening the actual lives of the leaders. And if they were concerned about protecting the lives of the leaders, they'd move their summit to a ski resort, off on a cruise ship somewhere... you know, somewhere small and isolated, but they could still have a nice photo op, and have the mountains in the background, or the sea in the background. They'd do that. What they are doing for the Summit of the Americas is having it in a major city. What they're saying is, "We control the city," literally, and they're taking it over, a 3.8 kilometer no-go zone. People in Quebec City are forced to go into an office and provide proof that they live there, or they can't enter that zone. That's not about security. That's about controlling public space.

Luka Palladino: Nicolas Lefebvre Legault's neighborhood activist group will be caught in the security perimeter.

Nicolas Lefebvre Legault: (by translator) There are already workers that have been given a holiday during the summit because they have a past that jeopardized national security. There will be 5000 cops in downtown Quebec City, including 800 riot cops. Eight hundred riot cops is quite exceptional. The police have already started to try contacting globalization activist groups. About a dozen activists have been individually approached by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. They wanted interviews. They wanted to know what was being planned. It sends shivers down your spine.

Luca Palladino: United and divided, civil society will be present in Quebec City to meet the leaders of the 34 nations of the Americas. Jaggi Singh sees the convergence in Quebec City as part of the unfolding story in the anti-globalization movement.

Jaggi Singh: It didn't start in Seattle, and it sure as hell isn't going to stop with Quebec City.

Luka Palladino: For Making Contact, I'm Luka Palladino in Quebec City.

Phillip Babich: And that's it for this edition of Making Contact: A look at the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Thanks for listening. And special thanks this week to Rosalyn Faye for editorial assistance. Thanks also to Sandra Alvarez, Mateo Nube, Ananda Estevea, Fernando Pastor, and Wendy Call for translation. We had voice-over assistance from David Minkow and production assistance from Monica Lopez.

Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law, executive director. Associate producers, Stephanie Welch and Shereen Meraji. Senior advisor, Norman Solomon. National producer, David Barsamian. Women's Desk coordinator, Lisa Rudman. Prison Desk coordinator, Eli Rosenblatt. And, I'm your host and managing producer, Phillip Babich.

If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or if you would like to reach any of our guests, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That's 800-529-5736. You can also go to our website at radioproject.org. That's radioproject.org.

Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we'd like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter trio. 'Bye for now.