The world economic war has led to the formation of processes of commercial integration or world economic blocks promoted by their principal actors: the richest countries of the world, led by the Group of Seven (G-7), which includes the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Japan, along with the most powerful Multinational Corporations (MC) from these same countries.  These multinationals are forming great monopolies and oligopolies (vast production and sales in the hands of a small number of corporations) to control different branches of economic life.  The biggest corporations, which boast the highest contribution to the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), are represented by the arms, oil, gas, electric, banking, automotive, telecommunications, food and medicine industries, those controlling genetic patents and the distribution of water, and finally drug trafficking.  These companies generate profits equivalent to the budgets of many countries where poverty abounds, and which continue to rely on the extraction of  raw materials, external debt and cheap sources of labor – their only riches.  The poor nations of the South have paid more than US$800 billion to the countries of the North of just in interest on their national debts.

Wal-Mart is the corporation with the biggest profits in the world, at the cost of destroying local economies in order to control the market and regional prices.  Close behind come the four biggest oil companies: Exxon-Mobil Oil, BP Amoco, Shell and Chevron-Texaco; or in the food industry, such as Monsanto and DuPont; or pharmaceuticals, like Novartis and Bayer; or automotive, like General Motors; or banks, like City Group and BBV.

These fundamental actors construct the framework of the world economy, their security system, and impose rules that may seem democratic and are supposedly for the benefit of the entire planet, but in reality ensure their own interests and rights at whatever cost.  These actors find allies in secondary actors such as the presidents of countries that agree to free trade agreements, privatizations, tax hikes and the elimination of subsidies.  But they are also finding allies in the local business sector who have not yet been absorbed by the big fish.  Finally, there are the smaller local businesses, which, without power, naively believe that they too will get a piece of the pie, part of the benefits of this fictional free trade.  They believe in it, that is, until they find their products unable to cross borders.

Very few local business-people know the terms of the free trade agreements.  They have not listened to the experiences of those from other countries or even from their own country, where thousands and thousands of businesses, even larger-scale ones, have closed up shop, creating unemployment and sinking into debt and poverty without the ability to compete in a market that was created without their participation.  Of course they were not consulted or heard, since the rules were made not for them but for huge agricultural exporters, multinationals which benefit from enormous government subsidies.

In addition, these fundamental actors find that their allies consume their dreams and swallow their speeches, and turn into their most fervent and combative defenders.  These are, for example, some civil organizations and NGOs that defend the neoliberal model and justify their discourse by arguing that the project can be a humanizing one.  For them, it’s easy to influence the highest levels of power, something that seems impossible for those groups with relatively little economic or political power.  These groups consider that countries as poor as El Salvador can find advantages in free trade agreements with the United States, even if Mexico has not found its way out of the mire of poverty, unemployment, bankruptcy and a destroyed countryside.

These fundamental actors also find some of their principal allies in grassroots, urban, workers’ or rural and indigenous organizations that feed the mechanism of foreign debt at everyone’s expense.  These are groups that receive and encourage projects from the World Bank or the IDB, dividing themselves, demobilizing themselves, smoothing and justifying their discourse.  At the same time higher taxes and privatizations are imposed, and soldiers dispatched, people are sold the right to use the water of their rivers, or forced into an exploitative maquiladora, where they receive wages that keep them in poverty.  Also, behind their backs plans are being made to eliminate their health and educational systems, their pensions and retirement funds and to privatize their culture and ceremonial temples.  Part of the strategy of these institutions is figuring out how to expel people from their own lands in order to extract the gas, oil, water, wood, plants and animals.  Retirement savings are stripped so that companies get richer, and so the government can “save” them with the taxes that the people paid in the first place.

In order to act, these fundamental actors have created their own stage, a “supernational government” where the sovereignty of the nation is null.  This highest stage is the World Trade Organization (WTO), created in 1995, where the majority of the 135 governments of the world see their sovereignty stripped in the interests of these larger actors.  There are also smaller but no less important stages where these same interests are imposed and put into practice.  Among these are the annual meeting called the “Economic Forum of Davos,” the Association for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the structure of the United Nations (UN), hostage to the interests of the United States, China, Russia and Europe.

The fundamental actors and their stages have created two powerful tools to support their project and force the governments and countries of the third world to execute the policies that assure their interests: the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  We have already talked about and analyzed these organisms (see the index of bulletins at www.ciepac.org).  They use the powerful mechanism of generating external debt of the poor countries and other tools of development to impose their conditions, called the Politics of Structural Adjustment (PSA).  And these projects are not the product of chance.  They’re not natural or inevitable like biological processes.  The neoliberal model is the product of certain interests which are being imposed.  That means that it’s not the only way of doing things – another world and another form of integration is possible.

The G-7 includes some of the biggest investors in the World Bank and the IMF, and therefore sets the conditions for loans and define the type of structural adjustment for each country.  It also controls other regional economic tools such as the IBD, under the strong hand of the U.S.; the Asian Development Bank, under the predominating influence of Japan; and the African Development Bank, under Europe’s influence.  These banks also accelerate, apply, experiment or impose policies on their debtors in the line of the general economic project.

All of this is what we call the elements of the circuit of the current – and for some the last – expression of the capitalist system, which for many finds itself in agony, the so-called neoliberal model.  In the struggle of financial power for the resources and riches of the world, in an world economy in crisis, three economic blocs are fighting it out.  The European Union (EU), composed so far of 15 countries under the leadership of Germany, France and the United Kingdom, and whose hegemony includes more than 20 countries of the region.  The Asian economic bloc, the so-called “Asian tigers,” headed by Japan and China.  and the American economic bloc, under the United States.  All, however, are at the mercy of petroleum prices imposed by the Arab and Islamic world, which could be a fourth bloc – “fundamentalist,” against the “West” and especially against the imperialism of the U.S.

Neither the European nor Asian bloc has recovered from 10 years of stagnation and economic crisis, during which the U.S. has been able to continue imposing its economic and monetary policies through the IMF.  For its own part, the Mexican economy crashed with the “tequila effect” in 1994, followed by the crisis of the “Asian tigers” in 1997, then Russia in ‘98, Brazil in ’99 and the crisis in the U.S. leading up to and accelerated by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  Then, the crisis in Argentina, Uruguay and their neighbors in 2002, followed by Mexico once again and now Venezuela and Colombia, dragging with them, kicking and screaming, American and Spanish electric and gas multinationals.

If the highest stage of negotiation-imposition of the policies and rules that rule planetary commerce is the WTO, like a worldwide umbrella, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is its most perverse continental application in one of the world’s economic blocs.  The neoliberal project in its maximum expression is the FTAA.  The Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP) is its regional application.  And the Free Trade Agreements between two or three countries are the first step.  The upcoming meeting of the WTO will be in Cancun, Mexico in September 2003, where the most important agenda for the powerful leaders will be to control foods, agriculture, markets and prices as well as worldwide patents where anything can be turned into merchandise, eliminating public goods and privatizing all of existence.  The world society’s agenda should be to stop this aberration at all costs and to construct a just system of world integration.

A military project corresponds to every economic megaproject, a strategy to guarantee the accomplishment of its objectives, its interests, if they should happen to encounter strong opposition on the part of those who are and will be affected.  On a global level, the armed wing of the WTO’s world economic project is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  There, the most powerful armies of the world, obviously including those of the G-7 member countries, are joined together.  In the continental project of the FTAA, the military wing is the Plan Colombia (PC); in the regional project of the PPP, it’s the Northern Command (NC) and the integration of the police and the armed forces into the fiscal proposals for the region.

In this way we can see that the FTAA is the sum, relation, coordination and projection of the most perverse form of integration-subordination.  We can sum it up in this way:

FTAA = WTO + NATO + G-7 + IMF + WB + IDB + SAP’s+ NAFTA + FTA’s + PPP + PC + NC.

We can see, then, the process of the FTAA.  Just as the governments of the United States and Canada convinced Mexico, under the administration of then-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, to sign NAFTA and put it into effect on 1 January, 1994, the Zapatista uprising emerged in Chiapas.  In December of that year, twelve months later, the U.S. government held the “First Summit of the Americas” in Miami, Florida.  There, the 34 supposedly “democratic” governments of the American Continent met in order to impose the idea of uniting the economies of the Western Hemisphere under a single “Agreement” of “Free” “Trade,” and to finish negotiations in the year 2005.  The final agreement would be called the “Free Trade Area of the Americas.”

The U.S. excluded Cuba from the butchery.  The 34 attending countries were: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Dominicana, Ecuador, El Salvador, United States, Granada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, San Cristóbal and Nieves, Santa Lucía, San Vicente and las Granadinas, Surinam, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela.  Only the president of Cuba and the current mandate of Venezuela have dared to openly and publicly challenge neoliberalism and the FTAA.

In order to advance this process, Free Trade Agreements between the countries of Central America are being established; among them, between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada; between the Caribbean countries; between South American countries; and between South, Central and North American countries.

In the First Summit of the Americas in 1994, the U.S. – in only three days – easily convinced the presidents of the Continent to accept two basic and very extensive documents.  These included the “Declaration of Principals,” which spoke of “development,” “prosperity,” “democracy,” “free trade,” “sustainable development,” “eradicating poverty and discrimination,” “conserving the environment,” etc.  And, effectively, these have remained “principals” and “declarations.”

However, in place of abundant development and prosperity in Latin America and the Caribbean, we find poverty and exclusion.  Increasingly, the governments of the continent are increasing the military budget, eliminating social spending and privatizing the strategic resources of the Nations, who thereby losing their sovereignty in weak democracies in crisis such as Peru, Haiti, Guatemala, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, El Salvador, Mexico and even the U.S., to name a few.  In addition, the external debt weighs heavily on the people and no signs of sustainable development or non-conformity are seen.  Violence has erupted again on the continent.  The very governments of the countries involved, the World Bank and the IMF acknowledge these realities and data about poverty.  They’re not made up.

The second document of the “First Summit,” which was approved a few hours, was a “Plan of Action” composed of four large parts with more than 20 strategic lines, among them to strengthen democracy, promote human rights, ecology and the participation of society and especially women, to fight corruption, drugs and terrorism, to free up commerce, infrastructure, energy resources and the communications sector.  It was also defined that the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), the Pan-American Health Organization (PHO), the World Bank, IBD and all the active organisms of the United Nations in the region would support the FTAA.

In the three days of the summit, there was enough time to elaborate an agenda of meetings, high level conferences (economic and treasury ministers and vice-ministers from each country), and between governments and business-people called the “Forum for Commerce and Business.”  They created their worktables and negotiations that we, citizens excluded from this debate, pay for with our tax money.  The governments did not form a Work Group to consult society or discuss topics related to Human Rights, Environment, Labor issues, the increase in military spending, etc.  They did not convoke the continent’s indigenous populations, violating Agreement 169 of the International Labor Organization, that requires the consultation of the people that will be affected by the projects.  The only ideas that “indigenous people” evoke are profits from cheap labor, greed for the riches of their lands, cultural folklore that can be exploited through tourism, but above everything fear because they are organized, resisting and mobilizing themselves.

For the government of the U.S. and the other 33 countries of the Western Hemisphere, the FTAA is, as the documents say, the “creation of the most ambitious scheme of free commerce since the epoch of the Uruguay Round.  This likewise implies the most important effort of regional integration to take place between developed and developing countries, with the common goal of achieving free trade and the investment of goods and services based on reinforced and disciplinary commercial rules.”

If you are one of the skeptics, one of the ones who don’t want to believe, one of the ones who has swallowed the official discourse and doesn’t want to drop the neoliberal spirit, ask yourself a few questions:  Have read the text of the NAFTA treaty?  Have you read and opened your eyes to its effects during the last eight years?  Do you know how much unemployment, rural flight, poverty, budget cuts and factory closings have increased and how much public spending has fallen?  These data are not inventions – the very organizations you claim to trust are saying them: the UN, the INEGI, the CONAPO, the IMF, the World Bank, the FAO, the UNIFEC, the IBD, the governments, etc.

But also ask yourself if you’ve read the text of the Free Trade Agreement between Mexico and the European Union, and how this will result in the tariff reductions and the opening of borders for diverse sectors and products (fish, tomatoes, oranges, chicken, wood, books, steel, plastics, shoes, clothing, nails, screws, weapons, military tanks, paints, mangos, bananas, gas, etc., etc.)  How it will affect the rural and indigenous populations, tenant farmers, teachers, citizens in general, tradespeople and every type of business-person?  Have you thought about how freeing up the agricultural sector in 2003 will affect Mexico?

Also ask yourself if you’ve read the texts of the PPP, if you know what is happening in South America with the Plan Colombia, how Central America is in crisis or how the World Bank, the IBD, the IMF or the WTO function in the poor countries that are trying to make alliances to stop the machinery of the powerful.  If your answer to all these questions is “I don’t know,” then find out!  Check out the next bulletin, where we’ll give you millions of reasons to be against the FTAA...

But if all this is already clear to you, or you already knew it, what are you waiting for? Join in the Popular Continental Consultation on the FTAA?  Participate!  Look for information at www.ciepac.org.

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE!

Note: If you wish to be placed on a list to receive this English version of the Bulletin, or the Spanish, or both, please direct a request to: ciepac@laneta.apc.org and indicate whether you wish to receive the bulletin in plain text or as a Word 7 for Windows 95 attachment.

Note: If you use this information, cite the source and our email address. We are grateful to the persons and institutions who have given us their comments on these Bulletins. CIEPAC, A.C. is a non-government and non-profit organization, and your support is necessary for us to be able to continue offering you this news and analysis service. If you would like to contribute, in any amount, we would infinitely appreciate your remittance to the bank account in the name of:

CIEPAC, A.C.
Bank: Banamex
Account number: 7049672 Sucursal 386
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México.
You will also need to use an ABA number:
BNMXMXMM

Thank you! CIEPAC

Telephone:
in México: 01 967 674 5168
from outside Mexico:: +52 967 674 5168