The year 2004 presents difficult challenges for the governments of the continent as well as for its inhabitants as a whole.  At the continental level, the national (Mexican) level and the state (Chiapas) level, the elements that will define the paths of the year that has just begun are entwined.  At the same time, gigantic continental movements are being prepared.

OUR CONTINENT

The defeat of the World Trade Organization’s Fifth Ministerial Meeting carried out in Cancun, Mexico in September 2003, has shaped the latest strategy of the United States’ government with respect to the continent.  The objective of President Bush now focuses on achieving the signing of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement during 2004 so that it can begin in January 2005.  This will mark the guidelines and rhythms of the governments of the continent as well as political events.  This theme will be the key, the principal agenda and the central axis of social mobilization during the present year.

With the Monterrey Summit in the of January 2004 and with the attendance of all the leaders of the continent – except for Cuba – the race to sign the FTAA begins.  From this point forward the economic and political processes of the region with accelerate.  The pressure now is on the economic blocs: the Carribean market (CARICOM), the Central American market (MERCOCEN), the Andean market (Andean Community), the Southern market (Mercosur) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  Nonetheless, the United States continues with its actions to impose its commercial agreements on Central America and it is advancing south.  And with this advance, the continental poverty rate that is already at 50% of Latin Americans according to conservative data, advances, in a continent with 800 million people.

The White House’s strategy of “Common Energy Security” is one of the centers of attention.  However, two large countries, Venezuela and Brazil, with petroleum and gas, represent obstacles to the United States’ agenda.  Add Argentina which is opposed to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) imposition of structural adjustments.   Curiously and in a parallel manner, the region, while highly indebted, is becoming more militarized.  The United States’ army is pressuring Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil to maintain the presence of American military troops and permanent bases in their nations and in the Mercosur region headed by the Brazilian economy.  Its tight relationship with Chile permits the United States to have an important ally in the Cono Sur region which has been rebelling against the politics of Washington.  For its part, Venezuela is witnessing the growing presence of the American military at its borders with Colombia while the White House awaits the overthrow of President Hugo Chavez.

In parallel to this process, popular and social mobilization grows in all of the regions as do the increase in repression and the criminalization of social demonstrations painted as terrorism.  Large popular, social, indigenous and peasant movements are carried out in all the countries of the continent.  The gas that the United States claimed for extraction from Bolivia and with the financing of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), resulted in the fall of the president there a few months ago.  Peru’s president Toledo is losing credibility and legitimacy as is Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador and Aristide in Haiti.  In Colombia the instability continues and in Honduras the popular movements against the IMF’s policies , the petroleum, mining and electrical industries that attempt to take over the lands at the cost of heightened poverty to the people, have resulted in movements but they have also resulted in the dead fruit of repression.  Banks, rivers, petroleum, gas, biodiversity, lands and electrical energy are becoming prisoners of theft by large transnational corporations with alliances to the government.  Latin America and the Carribean possess 31% of the world’s potentially usable water, 23% of the potentially arable land, 23% of the forests and 40% of the animal and plant species in existence (Report from the United Nation’s Development Program on “Human Development).  The FTAA goes with everything and against everything.  Now, it is sufficient to just change national laws so that they are in agreement with the dismantling of the state and legitimatize and legalize this appropriation of capital and wealth.

In his book, “Globalization and Its Discontents”, Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, ex-Chief of economic advisors during the Clinton government and ex-official of the World Bank (WB) accuses the IMF and the WB and the WTO of deterring from their original objective and to be working now to convert themselves into a type of global government – anti-democratic, colonial, with no transparency and little efficiency – one which makes decisions affecting millions of people without even consulting those affected.  What news!  Yet it appears that a person such as Stiglitz must say it so that others finally believe what so many say and have said for many years.

MEXICO

The Legislative Congress gave a new reversal to Vicente Fox’s presidential plan which attempted to comply with the agenda defined by the IMF.  This agenda has been in doubt since the beginning of the Fox administration.  That is, the agenda to comply with the adjustment policies following the large loans granted to the Mexican government.  The first axis centers on Fiscal Reform.  The president tried to increase the taxes for 2004 with the goal being to pay part of the nation’s external debt but Congress denied him.  The president’s option then was to announce the immediate lay-off of 50 000 bureaucrats which adds up to 150 000 laid-off to date according to the words of their leader.  This will aggravate the unemployment situation of the country for this year.

The second axis has centered on Energy Reform.  Again Congress and national movements have denied the privatization of the electricity industry.  Nonetheless, although constitutional changes were not achieved, the government is already handing over electrical energy to transnational companies as well as investment in the petroleum sector which has already suffered major internal changes.  Thus, as during the time of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari who laid down the base for privatizing land before signing NAFTA, Vicente Fox is trying to do the same with strategic resources before the anticipated signing of the FTAA in 2005.  If Mexico does not privatize gas, petroleum and electrical energy it will be difficult for this model to advance.  To these privatizations we can add the privatization of water and biodiversity.  It appears that the latest generation of privatizations involves strategic resources.  Just the same, Joseph E. Stiglitz has signalled that the government of Vicente Fox will be committing an error if it wagers all on the privatization of strategic sectors.

CHIAPAS

The southern region of the country began the year with a new push for the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) by the governors of the region.  The two pillars that would sustain the project are communications and energy.  Accordingly, highway infrastructure will be an investment priority as will the theme of electrical energy generation and the creation or amplification of hydro-electric dams.  The Parota dam in Guerrero, the Benito Juarez dam in Oaxaca, the Usumacinta dam in Chiapas are just glimpses of what is to come this year, as is the transystematic highway in Oaxaca.

In concrete terms, in Chiapas the harassment of the Meetings of the Good Government of the Zapatista Caracoles (regional centers) increases in parallel with that of militarization and paramilitarization in distinct regions.  The EZLN’s 20-10 anniversary (twenty years since its foundation and ten years since its public launch) shows another milestone of the movement.  The processes of autonomy grow stronger working against neoliberalism, working for land, resources, food sovereignty, human rights, access to water and electrical energy, access to health and education.  As well, they contest the state’s political life with their legitimacy before the illegitimacy of the “legitimate” authorities.  The tree that gives fruit rains stones and so in the year ahead we will see an increase in violence and the police, military and paramilitary harassment of the autonomous municipalities which have already felt such weight in their six months of life.

For its part, the government of Pablo Salazar continues with its galloping neoliberal march.  Its support decided in favour of the PPP and its attraction to maquiladoras are justified as a great help to the people so that people do not have to emigrate to the United States.  To this end, it believes it better to bring the exploitation of manual labour to the doors of their homes.  The policy to kill the countryside and the peasants and the indigenous peoples continues to convert exporting agri-transnationals into the apparent solution to poverty in this sector.  Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont, International Paper among others have the countryside in their hands – the dream of Conservation International over Montes Azules or Coca-Cola over water.  McDonald’s, Sams Club, City Club among others, continue their advance into more cities just as the WB and the IDB do in the countryside.  The Chedraui company announced the installation of a super store in San Cristobal de Las Casas, near the municipal cemetery where they will put a halt to the small and medium-sized local businesses.  The privatization of water has been signed by the state government and the municipal presidents of the major cities in the area.  The next step will be the sources of water as has happened with the privatized rivers of Chile, Argentina and Honduras.

THE PANAMA DECLARATION

Given the framework of what would come in 2004, on December 12, 2003 in Panama, the Gathering of the Cry of the Continent’s Excluded was held.  Owing to its importance and in this context we are reproducing it’s declaration here:

THE CRY OF THE CONTINENT’S EXCLUDED
For work, justice and life

In Panama City representatives of the Continental Coordination of the Cry of the Excluded , coming from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil, gathered to reflect upon the conditions of economic, social, political and cultural exclusion to which millions of Latin American and Carribean inhabitants are subject and which demands feasible directions for resistance and the construction of popular integration alternatives.  In this way, in order to evaluate our work to-date and to replant our perspectives on the actions that we take in support of the most impoverished, we state that:

1.  We are part of the cry of survival of our people: our people suffer generalized unemployment, hunger, lack of land and other productive means, evictions and the forced displacement of millions of rural and urban peoples.  Just as the southern nations do toward the northern nations, people change to migrant life in search of a means of sustenance; they suffer violence in all its forms; violence against women, violence due to a lack of access to basic health services, education, housing, potable water and electricity among other things, violence for racial or religious reasons, armed violence be it from conflicts from within or from outside national territories – all forms of exclusion under which millions of people can hardly extend their lives in the midst of such unnecessary pain.

2.  We are part of the cry of resistence of our people: our people, in the midst of their multiple pains, resist in a courageous and growing manner the advancement of domination in all its forms:  we resist the payment of external debt. We resist the “free” trade expressed in projects such as the FTAA, the NAFTA, the PPP and the institutions such as the IMF and the WB; we resist the imposition of the privatization of public services such as water, health, education, electricity and telecommunications, energy sources and biodiversity among others; we resist the growing militarization of our continent which reflects the absolute failure of an economic model that its promoters defend with blood and fire; we resist the development of projects financed and at the service of big money such as reservoirs, hydro-electricity, mega-highways, mineral and wood exploitation, the appropriation of our ancestral knowledge, etc..  This resistance is also expressed through our art and our culture which pierce the struggles of the continent just as water pierces our rivers.

3.  We are part of the cry of our people to occupy their place in the construction of their own future: our people, through creative and innovative forms of resistance, not only reclaim their place in their own history but they construct it daily.  This is expressed in the cries for a life with dignity, for justices and participatory democracy, in the composition of Latin America and the Carribean, for the real respect of human rights.  New social subjects which add to the old and new social forces such as peasants, indigenous peoples, Afro-Americans, workers, ecologists, social workers, students, women, youth, along with many popular expressions, enrich, with their struggles, this aspiration to and the reality of making a future of common hope with their own hands for Latin America and the Carribean.

And, as we form part of the cries of our people which are really only one cry, we call on the social and political organizations of Latin America and the Carribean and the whole world to:

a) Approach and assume the reality of the millions of excluded of our continent and of the entire world, share their pains, their lacking, their needs.  Come to understand the deep economic, political and cultural roots of their condition of exclusion such that in direct living with the most impoverished of our brothers and sisters, allows us to act and to direct our forces along the road of compromise and liberation.

b) Maintain and increment, in all places, times and all forms possible, the resistance to a social and economic model of exclusion, a model which is expressed in terms of projects and institutions at the service of big transnational capital but which never benefit our people.  Multiple and incessant resistance will allow us to construct this other possible world along with that to which we are bound.

c) Convert ourselves into active subjects in the construction of our own future, because it is we who make our own history.  To this end we should strengthen our ability to act and to make popular alternatives so that, from our daily resistence, we make the necessary leap towards a world of justice, work, life and freedom.

d) Articulate struggles with those of other brother/sister organizations on the national, regional and international fields.  Organizations linked as a network strengthen the forces that we produce and allow us to develop adequate responses to social phenomena, responses that affect and at the same time amply surpass local and national fields.

e) Recover and value historically, the struggles of our people as one of the rights of inter-culture, as a symbol of the flourishing of the arts and cultures of all the continent, live cultures that are opposed to the artificial and lifeless culture that comes to us from the powerful.

We are committed to:

a) Giving continuity to the continental force which, in 22 countries, has been expressed in the national cries of the conferences carried out in the past five years since 1999 up until now and which originated in Brazil in 1995.

b) Making certain, in daily life, that our ways and style of work are not converted into a hollow discourse but rather a social, living practice with roots and deep motivations.

c) Working with and from the excluded peoples of Latin America and the Carribean.

d) Developing actions that consolidate the Continental Coordination of the Cry of the Excluded (in particular actions of disclosure and formation), understanding this as a space to articulate plural and multiple faces.

e) Developing regional preparatory workshops from the “Cry” conferences in 2004.

f) Promoting in our respective countries active participation in the distinct activities of national and continental character that are carried out during 2004 and 2005 – especially the Hemispheric Gathering in Struggle Against the FTAA and Neoliberalism in Havana, Cuba (January 2004); the Continental Cry of the Excluded conferences (September-October 2004); the Social Forum of the Americas (Quito, Ecuador, July 2004) and World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (January 2005), among many others.

We sign this in Panama City, Panama, the 12^th of December 2003: Carribean “Cry” Coordination, Dominican Republic; PAPDA/Jubilee South, Haiti; CNCP (APAL), Martinique; Comité Pro Niñez Haitiana, Puerto Rico; FCOC, Mexico; Centro de Estudios Internacionales, Nicaragua; Encuentro Popular, Costa Rica; Pastoral Social Cáritas, Unión Campesina Capireña, CEPAS, Pastoral Social Cáritas Colón, Equipo Misionero Costa Abajo Colón, Equipo Misionero Costa Abajo Colón, Vicariato de Darién, and the Movimiento Campesino en Defensa del Río Cobre, Panama; Bolivia “Cry” Coordination and the Centro de Estudios y Apoyo al Desarrollo Local, Bolivia; Diálogo 2000 / Jubilee South, Comunidad Pasionista and the Cry Coordination, Argentina; The Secretariat of the Continental Cry of the Excluded, Servicio Pastoral dos Migrantes, the Secretariat of the Continental Cry of the Excluded and the Pastoral Social CNBB, Brazil.

For work, justice and life
Another America is possible!

CONTINENTAL SOCIAL AGENDA 2004

Continental society is preparing to mobilize.  For details you can consult www.ciepca.org

-January: Movement against the Monterrey Summit, Mexico; Third Hemispheric Gathering against FFTA in Cuba; Third World Social Forum in India in the context of the Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

-February: Mobilization in turn at the Ministers Meeting on the FTAA.

-March: Third Chiapas Gathering against Neoliberalism.

-April: Continental mobilization against the IMF, WB and the IDB as the bank marks its 60^th anniversary.

-May: Mobilization of the Continental Campaign against the IDB as the governors of the IDB meet in Lima, Peru; Continental Gathering of Women in Managua, Nicaragua.

-July: Fifth Mesoamerican Forum against the PPP; Fourth Week for Biodiversity and Culture and the Third Mesoamerican Forum against Dams in San Salvador, El Salvador; Social Forum of the Americas in Quito, Ecuador.

-August: Continental movement in turn at the FTAA Minister’s Meeting.

-September: Mobilization in turn at the meetings of the IMF and the WB in Washington; National Gathering Against Dams in Mexico.

-October: Continental Conferences - The Cry of the Excluded.

-November: Mobilization on the continental day against militarization;

Welcome to the year that comes.

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