The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brasil in February, 2002, ratified the need to carry out a Continental Campaign against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).  Organized society from each country would have to organize a popular consultation that the 34 governments of the American Continent (all except for Cuba) refuse to carry out.  The campaign’s central objective is to prevent the governments from signing the FTAA. 

On May 26 and 27, 2002, there was a meeting of Networks in Quito Ecuador to prepare for this campaign.  The following groups participated in this meeting:  Continental Social Alliance, ALAI, Friends of the Earth, CLACSO, CLOC, Convergence of Movements of the Peoples of the Americas (COMPA), CPUSTAL, Hemispheric Meetings Against the FTAA, Grito de los Excluidos/as Continental, ICEM, JOC América, Jubilee South, OCLAE, Red de Mujeres Transformando la Economía (REMTE); as web as other national organizations and networks such as ACJR (Chile); ANAP (Cuba); CTC (Cuba); ART (United States) ; CETRAPIN (Ecuador); CNPA (México); Coordinación Nacional Campaña contra el ALCA (Brasil); Consejo Unidad Popular (República  Dominicana); Congreso Laboral Canadiense (Canadá); CONAIE  (Ecuador); CONFENIAE (Ecuador); Centro Memorial Dr. Martín Luther King Jr. (Cuba); CUT (Brasil); CEOSL (Ecuador); Coordinadora de Movimientos Sociales (Ecuador); CONFEUNASSC (Ecuador); CTE Federación Sindical Mundial (Ecuador); Diálogo 2000; Jubilee South (Argentina); ECUARUNARI (Ecuador); FDMCT"BS"  (Bolivia); FENOCIN (Ecuador); FSM (Ecuador); Fundación María Luisa Gómez de la Torre (Ecuador); Fundación Solon (Bolivia); FEPE (Ecuador); Grito dos Excluidos (Brasil); JOC (Paraguay); JOC (Ecuador); Jubileu Sul (Brasil); Kensington Welfare Rights (Estados Unidos); Movimiento Afroboliviano (Bolivia); Movimiento Boliviano de Lucha contra el ALCA (Bolivia); NEHUEN (Chile); MST (Brasil); OPIP (Ecuador); PACS (Brasil); PAPDA (Haití); PLADES (Perú); RENAGECO/ACJR; REMTE (Chile); Red Jubileo (Perú); RQIC Québec (Canadá); REMTE (Perú); RMALC (México); Red de Acción Ciudadana frente al Comercio e Inversión (El Salvador); and REBRIP (Brasil).

During this event strategies were defined for the entire hemisphere, and agreed to construct national and regional Coordination for the campaign, carry out a week of action against the FTAA on the last week of every month starting in July of 2002.  The groups also agreed to carry out protests in each country facing the VII Ministerial Round of the FTAA and the VII Business Forum of the Americas that would be carried out at the end of October and beginning of November, 2002 in Quito, Ecuador, during which government officials and businesspeople planned to finish the final draft of the FTAA.  It was also agreed that in October, 2002, we would carry out a Continental Day of Demonstrations Against the FTAA in all of the countries with activities, debates, information, mobilizations, etc.  The period for the Popular Continental Consultation would be carried out between September 2002 and March 2003, although officially the governments cancelled the Summit of the Americas scheduled originally to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in April of 2003.

In this way, the networks and organizations from the different countries began to launch their respective FTAA consultation campaigns, after which Brasil carried out their consultation with the support of a brigade of 150,000 volunteers who collected the votes of 10 million people, 98% who voted against the FTAA.  Each country would carry out the consultation in different ways, through voting booths and tables in public plazas, sectoral or thematic assemblies, polls, meetings of farmers, indigenous people or other organizations, through previous education campaigns, etc.  All of the campaigns would have to comply with the following objectives agreed upon by the networks: 

“To make the preparation, organization and execution of the Campaign of Consultation an effective instrument in order to:  increase qualitatively the information, dissemination and education about the FTAA and it’s effects among the general population, starting with the grassroots of the participating organizations, improve the conditions for organization and mobilization of the peoples of the Americas against the Neoliberal project of free trade that the FTAA represents, to create a mechanism that permits the voices to be heard and the direct participation of millions and millions of people of the entire continent, to gain strength, legitimacy and social representation in order to destroy the FTAA project.  That is, that any tactic is valid only if it is useful for the compliance with these objectives, that we must do the work of getting the information out to the people, because a fundamental objective of the consultation initiative is to obligate ourselves to inform, educate and organize in the broadest manner possible, our respective communities and populations.”  

Regarding credibility, the campaign states, “ If the legitimacy of the consultation is based on popular participation itself, and no matter what we do, the governments deny our legitimacy, it is fundamental to gain credibility in the public opinion of the consultation, within our own conditions and even with our limited resources.  In the meeting, some elements were proposed:  All participants in the consultation should be accredited, with some kind of identification, so that it will be clear that the people who voted in the consultation actually exist (…)” 

At the Network meeting, a common question for the Continent was formulated so that the results can be added together on a hemispheric level:  “Do you agree that the government should sign on to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)?”.   It was also agreed that every country could formulate other questions of a national character or related to the FTAA, such as the Puebla Panama Plan, foreign debt, agriculture, structural adjustment, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), other free trade agreements, militarization, Colombia Plan, privatization, etc., that should be included on the same ballot.  It was proposed that the campaign should be decentralized, but using common elements and slogans, and also one website.  Members would also develop informational bulletins, popular materials to share between regions, and other type of creative tools, instructionals, etc.  These materials as well as the ballots and information about the campaign can be found at www.noalca.org, www.asc-hsa.org, www.ciepac.org, or the following e-mails noalcaprensa@yahoo.com.mx (for members of the press) and asc@laneta.apc.org

The Presidents hope to sign the FTAA in 2003, ratify it between 2004 and 2005, and want it to enter into effecct on January 1, 2006. Therefore, a  continental mobilization is urgent, because once it enters into effect, the governments will look to increase it’s coverage to include new products every five years.  In recent bulletins we have already discussed what the FTAA will mean not only for the people in general, but also the disaster for businesses in each of the nations. 

So, this is how we arrive at the mobilization in Quito, Ecuador, where the VII Ministerial Round of the FTAA and the VII Americas Business Forum took place from October 27- November 1.  More than 15,000 people from the Americas converged there in the framework of Continental Resistance to the FTAA.  The government’s response was the same:  a strong repression unleashed against women, men, children, indigenous people, campesinos, activists and people of all of the sectors.  More than 5,000 police guarded the governmental officials and businesspeople who behind society’s back keep negotiating the lives of millions of Latin Americans.  After this impressive mobilization, the participants emitted the Declaration of Quito which we reproduce here: 

Message From The Peoples Of The Americas Protest March To The Meeting Of Ministers Of Economy And Trade In Quito, Ecuador
 (Message translated by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch)

The men and women - indigenous peoples, workers, campesinos, students, urban community residents, citizens, children , youth, adults and seniors - representatives of the popular organizations of our beautiful Republic of Ecuador and of all the countries of our America gathered today in the streets of Quito, have come to raise our voices, the voices of a million inhabitants of our continent, to express our decisive and complete disagreement and opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) which you are currently negotiating.

The FTAA has no legitimacy while negotiations are taking place behind the back of society, in an antidemocratic, almost secretive fashion, protected by an offensive police and military cordon whose access is limited to a handful of powerful businessmen. There is no information, let alone consultation with the population, or even with National Congresses.

The FTAA cannot but strengthen social exclusion and the deterioration of the environment as long as it solely takes into account the interests of the large transnational corporations, particularly the US companies and their local partners, while formally, explicitly and completely ignoring the needs and demands of society and the environment. This is based on an unacceptable premise that the rules of trade and investment are matters for businessmen, and should not concern the peoples whose destiny is at stake.

The FTAA cannot but deepen the inequality between nations, and the polarization of society within those nations, as long as it is based on the NAFTA model. After nine years of coming into effect, NAFTA has signified a veritable social disaster, and a severe loss of sovereignty for the least developed country among the signatory nations. In the text of the FTAA, which you have released with great delay and reticence, the worst aspects of NAFTA are being repeated and even deepened: It gives equal treatment to countries that are totally unequal, which will in turn only produce even more inequality. It gives equal treatment to small Latin American producers and large North American Corporations. It makes the impoverished Latin American agricultural producers compete with the large and highly subsidized Northern producers, thus ensuring our loss of food security and sovereignty. It grants extraordinary rights to corporations permitting them to sue states for any measure that limits their insatiable thirst for profits.

It opens up to privatization and loss of national control areas vital for the development of a nation such as energy, education, health and even water; basic public services cease to be rights and simply become commodities leaving our future up to the whims of the marketplace;

It legalizes the robbery of traditional knowledge and opens up property rights over living beings and their reproduction by making them subject to patents leading to the destruction of our identity and diversity.

When all is said and done it puts at risk any possibility for states to have the capacity to enact a national plan for genuine development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The FTAA is nothing less than a supranational economic constitution through which we would end up handing over the sovereignty of our nations to US hegemony.

We are not against trade and agreements between countries. We are in favour of a model distinctly different from the model that they wish to impose on us through the FTAA. We are in favour of sovereign and democratic agreements that truly guarantee just, equitable and sustainable development for each of our nations.

It is for all these reasons, Ministers, that we came here today, not to "dialogue", because your governments have been closed to genuine dialogue and to listening and to taking into account the sentiments of civil society. This will not change because you deign to receive us today or because you want your photo taken with representatives of the people. We came here to demand that you suspend the FTAA negotiations and turn over to the people, with whom the sovereignty of each nation resides, the decisions that affect the future of our countries.

In so far as your governments refuse to go beyond unacceptable simulated consultations we have taken into our own hands to conduct a Hemispheric Popular Consultation through which millions of men and women from throughout the hemisphere can say "yes" or "no" to an FTAA. We hope that the voices we bring here today and those that will arise through our popular consultation will be heard. If not, you will put the future of the Americas at serious risk.

Yes to Life! No to the FTAA! Another Americas is Possible!

Here ends the text of the Quito Declaration.

THE CHIAPAN PEOPLE’S CONSULTATION

In coordination with the Mexican Committee of the Continental Campaign against the FTAA, various social organizations of Chiapas decided to form a Chiapan Committee, which includes the following groups:  Alianza Cívica, la Red de Defensores Comunitarios por los Derechos Humanos, CIEPAC, Global Exchange Chiapas, CAPISE, COMPITCH, Edupaz, and others. The campaign began on October 12, 2002, and will end on March 18, 2003.  We adopted the ballot with the continental questions and the national questions which are as follows:  

1. Do you agree that México should continue under the Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada? 

2. Have you been informed and consulted by the government about the negotiations to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)? 

3. Do you think that the government should sign on to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)? 

4. Do you think the Mexican government should continue promoting the Puebla Panamá Plan (PPP)?

5. Do you think that the condition of women’s lives has improved due to the free trade agreements? 

Thousands of informational pamphlets have been printed and distributed about the FTAA for the Chiapan campaign, along with posters and popular material as part of the campaign of consciousness raising and information dissemination.  Thousands of ballots have also been distributed for individual voting and for community, neighborhood, communal land owners or organizational votes, and are circulating in indigenous communities and city neighborhoods.  These materials can be acquired in the offices of Alianza Cívica or downloaded from the official website of the Mexican Committee.  

The Chiapan Committee invites all groups to carry out the campaign according to the tactics and creativity in each region.  Ballots should be delivered to Alianza Civica which will do the state counting and send the results to the National Committee.   Further information on the campaign can also be obtained at their office at the following address:  Calle Diego Dugelay 46-C, Barrio del Cerrillo, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas. Phone number 6785523, alianchis@laneta.apc.org. Information and materials can also be obtained at the CIEPAC office:  Calle La Primavera No. 6, Barrio de La Merced, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, phone number 6745168, or at www.ciepac.org, ciepac@laneta.apc.org

To date, thousands of people from indigenous communities, campesino groups and other sectors have carried out their processes of education, information and voting.  This process is still underway.  We invite all teachers, students, and the public in general to participate by voting and organizing the consultation with your neighbors, family and friends, photocopying the ballots and remitting them to the offices of Alianza Civica in San Cristobal de las Casas.

PARTICIPATE!
WE MUST STOP THE FTAA!
ANOTHER INTEGRATION IS POSSIBLE!

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