Central Americans protest globalization on Columbus Day

Saturday's protests in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica signaled the beginning of an eight-day campaign against the Mexican-sponsored initiative known as the PPP. That protest is to be followed by a hemisphere-wide program of demonstrations against the FTAA set for Oct. 20-31, activist Jorge Salazar told EFE here. The laissez-faire policies associated with globalization put the interests of commerce above those of human beings, Salazar said.

In Guatemala, demonstrators denounced the PPP and FTAA while blocking roads at strategic points in the northern province of Peten, which borders both Mexico and Belize. "The investment needed to put Central American infrastructure on a par with that of Mexico within the PPP is an effort that we Central Americans cannot afford," he added.

Daniel Pascual, a leader of the National Coordinator of Peasant Organizations (CNOC), which helped organize the protests in Guatemala, told EFE the PPP is dangerous because it would rob indigenous communities of control over their natural resources.

Protests in Honduras, which took place in several cities and along the country's borders with Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, also targeted the International Monetary Fund for criticism. Matias Funes, chairman of the leftist Democratic Unification (UD) party, who took part in a protest in Tegucigalpa, told EFE that the FTAA was not a trade initiative, but a political and military plan to benefit the United States and Canada. The natural resources of the Central American countries will be devastated if the PPP's costly infrastructure projects are carried out, while indigenous peoples will be treated as virtual chattel, Funes said.

The Tegucigalpa protest was joined by about 2,000 demonstrators from various groups. The Honduran-based Central American Resistance Coordinating Committee said that under the FTAA, slated to become effective in 2005, "U.S. goods and capital will flow freely, but not Latin American men and women, who are viewed as a nuisance by the United States."

In El Salvador, hundreds of trade unionists and members of groups belonging to the Civil Society Forum staged rallies at a score of key road junctions to repudiate both the PPP and FTAA. Activist Victor Mejia, leading a group blocking the road to Comalapa, said citizen involvement "is necessary to say no to free- trade agreements, no to Plan Puebla-Panama, in a campaign called Central American Resistance Day." About 300 Nicaraguans and 100 Costa Rican held peaceful rallies against the PPP and FTAA under the watchful eyes of police in the respective capitals. No protests were staged in Panama.