CAMPESINOS IN ECUADOR CONFRONT THE FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS

NUESTRA MUNDO NO ESTA VENTA
CAMPESINOS IN ECUADOR CONFRONT THE FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS
By Justin Ruben

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NOTE: Author Justin Ruben will speak tommorrow:
A REPORT FROM THE FRONTLINES WITH JUSTIN RUBEN & LEILA SALAZAR
THURS OCT 3, 8PM
Artists' Television Access
992 Valencia Street, SF
$5 sliding scale no one turned away for lack of funds.
Benefit for the SF Independent Media Center and
the Bay Area Social Forum/Action for Local/Global Justice
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TRICK OR TREAT
Context and Update on the Quito mobilization

Ecuador`s indigenous people, peasant‚farmers, labor unions, women’s groups, students, environmentalists, and neighborhood organizations have already deposed two presidents who tried to implement neo-liberal. Again and again, when faced with
privatizations and cutbacks in social services, people here have blocked highways across the country, filled the streets of Quito and the provincial capitals, seized radio stations and airports, and generally with a resounding NO. On January 21, 2000, when the President announced a plan to dollarize the economy, they took over the Congress and set up a new government presided over by the indigenous movement and other social sectors (which lasted until the military seized control). In short, groups here are fiercely committed to the struggle against neo-liberalism, and have a very impressive capacity to mobilize.

Incredibly, it is the very site of these mobilizations that 34 commerce ministers from North and South America have chosen for their negotiations, on October 31st and November 1st. And they are being joined by America´s greatest corporate crooks, who have organized the 7th Americas Business Forum in Quito at the same time, to ensure that their 34 ghostwriters stick to the plan. They hope key pieces of the FTAA will be finalized in Quito, so it can take effect within a few years. And they want to show that the countries of Latin America, already devastated by 20 years of „free-market‰ reforms, are nonetheless lining up to sign on for more of the same.

Ecuador`s social movements have other ideas. They say the FTAA represents a death sentence for small farmers, indigenous cultures, local food systems, and endangered forests, that it will create a whole new set of rights for transnational corporations at the expense of local communities, that it will deal a devastating blow to the productive capacity of small countries like Ecuador. They also plan to use the summit to protest against the militarization of the region under ths auspices of Plan Colombia, which they view as the military arm of the economic domination strategy encoded in the FTAA.

For months they have been preparing a welcoming committee of sorts. The National Campaign Against the
FTAA, a coalition that includes most of the nation´s social movements, is bringing tens of thousands of people to Quito. They plan to surround the summit with a "ring of diversity" and, they say, to shut it down. There is another, smaller coalition that is talking about bringing about 10,000 more, with the same goal. The World Social Forum and the Hemispheric Social Alliance are also planning a counter-summit social forum to explore alternatives to the FTAA.

One way or another, the groups here vow, the negotiators will not accomplish what they set out to do. And the world will see that the people of Ecuador have unequivocally rejected the FTAA. Judging from mobilizations, the potential for severe repression is very real, as is the possibility that the meetings will be dramatically disrupted. It may well turn out that locating the FTAA summit here was the greatest miscalculation since the WTO decided that Seattle would be a nice place to meet.

The coalitions here are calling on people throughout the continent to join in. They have declared October 27 through November 1 to be Continental Days of Resistance Against the FTAA (see below for their call to action). Of course, anyone who can make it here is welcome. Groups are planning on coming from Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, the U.S., Canada, and Europe, among other places.

But most people cannot and will not make it to Quito. Ecuador`s social movements are calling on their counterparts throughout the continent to take local actions in solidarity with the mobilization in Ecuador, and to support it in various ways. Already, groups are planning actions in San Francisco, Massachusetts, Portland, and on campuses across Canada, in India, Europe, and the other Andean countries. (There are undoubtedly more actions we have not heard about).

But, by and large, organization is still lacking. The end of October could see marches, lock-downs, student, social forums, blockades, teach-ins, die-ins, puppet processions, and work stoppages from Anchorage to Ashville. The end of October could see groups in North and South America coordinating actions, applying international pressure if there is serious repression in Ecuador, providing resources that are desperately needed for the mobilization in Quito, and laying the groundwork for even stronger cooperation in the future. There is still time to make this happen. But time is running out.

This is global capital`s most important meeting of the year, and a powerful coalition of indigenous people, and workers are mobilizing to shut it down. Now they are asking norteamericanos to join in. People in the North American "global justice
movement" have been talking for several years about the need to take leadership from frontline communities in both the North and South. October could be an unprecedented opportunity to do just that, by organizing local actions that strengthen continental networks of resistance at the same time as they build connections to union locals, community groups, immigrants rights organizations, etc.

We just need to make it happen.



The following call to action was put out by the National Campaign Against the FTAA (Ecuador), a coalition of most of Ecuador´s social movement organizations and many NGO´s, including the CONAIE (the national indigenous federation), the CONFEUNASSC-CNC (the most powerful national campesino organization), the CEOSL (the largest labor federation), the Campamento Internacional Permanente Por la Justicia Social y la Dignidad de los Pueblos, Acción Ecológica, ALAI, and other groups.

CALL TO ACTION
Continental Days of Resistance Against the FTAA October 27 to November 1, 2002

Quito, Ecuador, May 28, 2002

The networks, continental campaigns, and social organizations of our respective countries, committed to the campaign against the FTAA, call for continental participation and support for the Days of Resistance and Struggle against the FTAA that are planned for the city of Quito, from the 27th of October to the 1st of November of this year.

In the moment that the ministers of commerce of the 34 countries of America (with the exception of Cuba) meet in Quito, behind closed doors, to continue negotiating the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the social movements and Peoples of our continent will meet in Ecuador in order to show our complete rejection of this model of integration that our governments, committed as they are to neo-liberalism, would like to impose on every one of our countries.

Under the false pretext that the FTAA will bring progress and well-being to our peoples, our governments have committed themselves to negotiating a type of integration that will consolidate the hegemony of the U.S. via political, economic, and military domination. They hope to put this plan of integration, which stretches from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, into effect by 2005.

As was demonstrated in the second Peoples Summit in Québec and in the massive mobilizations in Porto Alegre, the fight against the FTAA must continue on all fronts because:

The FTAA will bring our peoples more social exclusion, more unemployment, more poverty, more debt, including the end of the minimal social gains workers have realized through struggle.

The FTAA will also bring a greater level of militarization and control of the natural resources of the continent, through the imposition of Plan Colombia, the Andean Regional Initiative, and Plan Puebla Panamá.

The FTAA will strengthen the domination of larger economies over smaller ones. The U.S. and Canada alone represent almost 80% of the combined GDP of the continent, the other 33 countries sharing between them the remaining 20 percent. In this context, we know that a model like the FTAA, whose principal goal is to permit massive investment by transnational corporations, will only weaken further our economies, eroding the sovereignty of the nations of the Americas and impeding any development based in diversity, multiculturality, equity and social justice.

For these reasons, for our right to sovereignty, for the right of our peoples to just, democratic, environmentally-sound development, for justice, for life, against neo-liberalism, against debt, for an end to militarism and the domination of the United States over our continent, we will all be united and present in Quito to STOP the FTAA. We will be in Quito so that the Ministers of Commerce and their partners hear our total rejection of this model of imperial domination with which the U.S. is hoping to consolidate its domination over all the continent.

These days in Quito will be days of struggle and resistance, as well as days of popular education, reflection, analysis, of cultural and artistic expression that represents the multicultural and multi-sectoral richness of our struggles. We will be thousands, coming from all 35 countries, making our voices heard, in order to say, loud and strong:

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