The ambivalent results of the eighth ministerial summit in Miami, which we will analyze further on, together with other elements that are developing in the region, create a new stage on which it has maintained until now a “final stretch” of the FTAA negotiations in 2004; this is the reason for the struggle of the Continental Social Alliance (CSA) on this land.  This demands a strategic restructuring on our part that should culminate in the hemispheric encounter that will be held in Havana at the end of January.  This document aims to offer a point of entry for that reflection.  The document is divided into two parts: in the first, there is a brief analysis of where we are, of the situation and the campaign we have waged up till now, and of the political and social context of the continent, as well as the official process; in the second part, we will outline what our strategy should be and what work must be achieved in this next period.

WHERE WE ARE

The CSA and the Campaign

1) Schematically – and all schemes serve to create order, but they clearly have their limitations – we can say that after Miami there opened a “third (and definitive?) phase” in the struggle against the FTAA which we began in Belo Horizonte in 1997.  During the first stage that we tackle here – and that passed through the First Summit of the Pueblos in Santiago de Chile, and through many other events, initiatives, and meetings in Costa Rica, Toronto, etc. – we defined the core of our opposition of the FTAA; we constructed the base of the Social Continental Alliance (like an unpublished act that perhaps we have not valued in all its depth); we continued, giving this organism structure without abandoning its open, diverse, and horizontal nature; we initiated a diffusion of education about the threat that the FTAA represents, and we countered it with a highly representative social structure.

2) We could say that the “second phase” – and we will naturally cover this in more depth – began with the Second Summit in Quebec and concluded this November 2003 in Miami.  Some elements of this period are the following:

a) In Quebec we consolidated a common vision that the FTAA cannot be “fixed;” that is to say, a clear opposition or alternative vision to the hemispheric “free trade” project.

b) As was shown in Quebec itself, with new involvement of social and national actors who had not previously participated in the struggle, the capacity for action grew significantly.  In those months that followed Quebec this became even more apparent.

c) In Quebec, we also decided that “representation” wasn’t enough, but that the information and struggle surrounding the FTAA should be taken to diverse sectors of the population, through organizations, that we should stimulate greater participation by the people so that their voice would not be heard through indirect representation, but directly.  As such, we resolved to spearhead the initiative for a Continental Popular Consult that would facilitate us and at the same time oblige us to meet the preceding objectives, as well as helping us to gain legitimacy.  The discussion of this initiative posed the need for not just a consultation, but with a planned campaign at its side.  This drove us to spearhead national and hemispheric initiatives that permitted the involvement of more social forces in each country and was reflected in the creation of the Continental Coordination of the Campaign against the FTAA, built on the foundation of the CSA but with more networks, organizations and countries, creating an even more active dynamic.  At the same time, nonetheless, this provoked a certain overlap, ambiguity, or even “schizophrenia,” between the role of the Campaign and the CSA which needed to be resolved.

d) As soon as the Consult discussed it, it became clear that a plebiscite on the same day on a continental scale, or even conducted in the same manner, would not be possible, so a process that would be both flexible and long was agreed upon.  This exercise culminated with a report in Miami.  It is clear from this distance that the process wasn’t just flexible and diverse, but also unequal in its results.  In some countries the process developed with success, but in others they never reached the level that we hoped for.  This happened for many reasons: the different political and social conditions in each country, the disproportionate force of heavily involved organizations, the lack of involvement of some organizations, the international networks didn’t put forth their full effort or were not able to go from their bases to a national scale, the lack of correspondence of the initiative with the movement’s priorities, the incomprehension of the utility of an initiative of this kind in some countries, etc.

e) Despite the problems indicated above, the initiative of the Campaign and the Consult did create a jump in public knowledge on this theme, gain visibility, and bring important popular sectors in many countries to participate, educate about the FTAA’s reach and consequences, contribute to the multi-sectoral articulation, facilitate major actions in some regions, connect it with other sensitive themes in popular struggles, etc.  The struggle against the FTAA definitely has a more solid base and superior reach to that of the previous period.  In this sense, the Campaign and the Consult have advanced.

f) There were also advances at the parliamentary level, although we certainly did not succeed in articulating a parliamentary front on a continental level that is stable and active.

g) The monitoring of the negotiations and the nourishment of alternatives have occurred on a regular basis, even if the discussion of alternatives for the Americas is still not sufficiently socialized.

h) The recent events of Miami showed that, even in the United States, a strong movement against the FTAA is developing and that social pressure is playing a role in the evident conflict of official negotiations.

The Context

3) During the same period, the campaign against the FTAA coincided with a new wave of popular struggles and resistance against neoliberal globalization on the continent.  In Canada, they have are actively resisting privatization of public services; in the United States we have seen enormous mobilizations against the war, against migration, and resistance to meetings of multilateral organizations; in Mexico, there is a significant peasant struggle for food sovereignty and against NAFTA, as well as a long struggle, successful thus far, against the privatization of electric energy, which was expressed recently in an enormous mobilization of 200,000 people from a ample social and political spectrum against neoliberalism; in Central America, there are movements against the privatization of social security, against the Puebla-Panama Plan, and against the free trade agreement with the United States; in Columbia, even with the long-standing civil war, popular movements are beginning to revive; in Venezuela, major popular sectors continue resisting efforts of the United States and its allies to control the country with its dictates; in Ecuador, the popular indigenous movement has had important successes and now confronts the disconnect with the government it helped to bring to power; in Brazil, the peasant and labor movements are so strong that they have been able to advance like never before, even in the political sphere; in Argentina, the new experiences of resistance and popular organization continue to be a source of hope in the face of the neoliberal disaster; in Bolivia, there was a popular revolt in defense of the sovereignty of natural resources, and against the FTAA, which caused the fall of the puppet government of Washington and injected enthusiasm for the struggle of resistance throughout the continent; the victory of Cancun against the WTO was able to call into question the neoliberal agenda of “free trade” and its institutions, and constitutes a favorable turf for the struggles that come to this land, as we have seen in Miami, even though they tried to avoid us.

4) These advances of the social movement have translated into important changes in the political scene of the continent.  Venezuela maintains a government that, apart from the political approximations that you see, is clearly independent from the will of Washington; in Ecuador, the popular movement has sufficient weight to bring victory for an “allied” government (which nonetheless has defrauded them); in Brazil, Lula’s government surged from the popular worker’s movement with a historical triumph in the most important country in Latin America, representing an enormous opportunity and confronting at the same time an enormous challenge and responsibility to be at the forefront of offering a political alternative to the neoliberal model in Brazil and the hegemonistic strategy of the United States in the continent; in Argentina, a new government arose from the greatest crisis that country has seen and aligned itself with a policy not subordinate to the United States in the Mercosur block with Brazil; in Bolivia, as we’ve already mentioned, the popular movement succeeded in tossing from the country a government contrary to its interests and now is a vigilante of enormous weight on the new government that is calling for the development of independent politics.  These political changes together clearly signal a new stage, without guarantees, but much more favorable for social movements than in the past.

The Official Process

5) Despite the evolution described in the political and social scene, and the pressure exercised by the campaign against the FTAA, until recently governments were only “encouraged” to present the process as something a little more “transparent,” by making available the drafts of the text in negotiation and attempting to simulate greater attention to “participation” of civil society.  Certainly, our efforts have meant that governments feel, and are, more watched.

Nonetheless, now there is no doubt that the scene in which the FTAA negotiations were developing has been disturbed.  The conflicts that have been slowing the process, most notably between Mercosur and the United States, can simply be called the “Cancun effect.”  The rise of a block of Southern countries, even with all its inconsistencies and limitations, opened a route that would not simply blindly follow the wishes and agenda of the major powers and placed the FTAA negotiations on more favorable turf for the southern countries.  True, the United States was able to immediately divide the Latin American block and has been able to pull various countries from the block and add them to its entourage of unconditional countries.  In these deeds, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela are alone in the possibilities of an alternate vision to the United States, and even between Venezuela and Mercosur there are substantial differences.  Of course, this does not even begin to deal with lesser countries and their potential – some governments could take advantages of these circumstances to place their interests, which do not necessarily coincide with Washington’s, on the table.

The Miami meeting clearly showed the ambivalent or contradictory character of the current situation.  To avoid entering into a detailed analysis of the results, we simply reproduce here parts of the declaration that the CSA adopted in Miami:

“The final declaration of the eighth ministerial meeting of the FTAA in Miami has confirmed the failure of the original project of the FTAA, in spite of the efforts made to present a supposed end to the stagnation of the negotiations and a success of the ministerial meeting, seeking to escape the ghost of Cancun.  The reality is that the lack of consensus present in the WTO meeting in Cancun has also been in Miami.  It is clear that the United States government does not have greater capacity to impose its agenda as general ‘consensus.’

Nonetheless, the ‘success’ found could become even more dangerous than the original scheme, since as well as maintaining positions and anti-democratic forms for the acquisition of the FTAA, the U.S. also proposes a ‘flexible scheme’ of negotiations that translates into a bilateral environment, which makes it impossible to reach a common minimum and leaves many countries in a position of negotiation even more disadvantageous.  Overall, all topics can still be negotiated, that is to say, the danger that commercial exchange may impose super-constitutional rules over economies in terms of investments, services, intellectual property, government contracts, etc., still exists.”

If what they intend to do is create an FTAA “lite” or “a la carte,” or an FTAA initially devoid of some of its worst aspects, but it does finally exist at the end of 2005, we still leave the door open to even more inequitable bilateral negotiations.  It seems as though very few countries are willing to maintain their opposition to some aspects of the agreement to the end – even now, it seems as though no country, with the possible exception of Venezuela, is willing to risk a political confrontation with the U.S. over the creation of the FTAA.  This could become extremely difficult because the FTAA could seem acceptable, or at least more difficult to question, but at the same time the FTAA would have a legitimate existence that would make it possible to add the more offensive aspects to the agreement that we are currently trying to prevent.  The perspective of trying to prioritize the strengthening of Latin American blocks for negotiating with the United States, which Brazil supports, can be positive for developing countries, but it leaves to luck the countries that do not negotiate as part of a block with a distinct vision and it is simply not strong enough to pose a global alternative to the FTAA, which will end up exacting its price from all of us.

In any case, at least openly on the inter-governmental level, the negotiation of the FTAA is no longer in question.  Even worse, with every passing day trade agreements, bilateral mega-projects, and plans continue to piece together the puzzle of “free trade,” backed by the growing presence of the North American military.  The gravest case is the signing of the free trade agreement between the United States and Central America (CAFTA).  Of course, this aids greatly in paving the way for the FTAA, as well as placing the majority of the continent under the influence of “free trade” controlled by North American corporations.  Moreover, free trade agreements are beginning to proliferate between Latin American countries and the European Union.  As the EU redoubles its efforts to break into the competition in America, it seems to offer an alternative path, but at the end the supposed rules of “socialist Europe” do not offer a counterweight and these agreements also reinforce the “free trade” model.

 Hector de la Cueva

Note: Hector de la Cueva is a member of the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade.  This document was the basis for discussion in Havana, Cuba during the Third Hemispheric Encounter of the Struggle against the FTAA (January 26 – 29, 2004), and from this analysis came the declaration and action plan.  For its importance, we are disseminating this document in order to provoke reflection and the search for alternatives to the FTAA.

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