FTAA Opposition: Northern Protectionism or Southern Ideology?

 
Opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas remains strong despite Congressional approval of Trade Promotion Authority. The opposition is not narrow or protectionist, as current and past US administrations have liked to portray. In fact, the driving force against free market, corporate-led globalization continues to be the less developed economies. They feel left out and bullied by the liberalization of markets, and they are taking their fight to the United States this fall.

The Latin American opposition has been buoyed by the Brazilian "anti-FTAA" plebiscite held during the first week of September. Results are to be announced in a large public rally on September 17. (See http://www.jubileubrasil.org.br/index0.htm). The same organizations involved in this effort are joining many others from Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico to provide some first-hand and dramatic reasons for the US to increase its anti-FTAA activities. Speaking tours are being planned by many organizations this fall, including one by a key group in the Brazilian plebiscite, the MST, or landless workers movement. With an estimated 1.5 million landless members organized in 23 out of 27 states in Brazil, the MST considers itself the largest social movement in Latin America. It seeks to inspire poor people's movements around the world with alternatives to globalization and models for sustainable development. (For more information in English, see www.mstbrazil.org or www.globalexchange.org). The MST has an extensive US support network and, like similar networks from Guatemala and Mexico, it will be sending a "tour" of representatives to speak across the country on the evils of free trade and its impact on the lives of the poor in Latin America. More information about the anti-FTAA campaign is available on the Hemispheric Social Alliance website, http://movimientos.org/noalca.

In the United States, the Alliance for Responsible Trade is continuing its own campaign as part of the overall HSA effort with a series of public meetings focusing on the link between local issues and globalization. This is part of a strategy to link community-based organizations to the anti-FTAA efforts. Plans are in place for Chicago/Wisconsin and California tours, featuring town meetings, and arrangements for a New England portion are under way. Coordination between these and other initiatives will be one focus of the September antiglobalization protests in Washington, D.C. The dynamics of this movement can be glimpsed at http://www.peoplesconsultation.org.

Although all of these movements are aiming to defeat the FTAA, they will also have to deal with upcoming debates under Trade Promotion Authority's abbreviated Congressional format. The first experience should come shortly as the Chile-US FTA nears completion. Despite recent defeats in the United States, however, the fight against corporate-driven free trade is very much alive in Latin America. Political contests in the region this fall, including presidential elections in Brazil and important political decisions in Argentina and other nations, will be a deciding factor in the role of the southern front of opposition to the free trade efforts of the US administration.