FTAA THREATENS WORKERS THROUGHOUT THE AMERICAS
By Leslie Feinberg
March 1, 2001
A laid-off DaimlerChrysler worker. A liberation fighter in Colombia.
A teenaged Mexicana in a "free trade zone" maquiladora sweatshop. An Indigenous farmer in Chiapas.
A Cuban Young Pioneer.
What do they share in common? They are all up against the determination of U.S. transnational corporations and banks to squeeze every possible penny of profits out of the people, land and resources of the Americas.
But on April 20-22, the growing anti-capitalist movement that emerged out of the clouds of teargas at the Battle of Seattle will again challenge plans by monopoly industrialists and bankers to super-exploit this hemisphere.
This time the fight for economic and social justice will take place in Quebec City, Canada. The anti-globalization forces plan to mass there, as well as in far-flung border demonstrations--from Tijuana, Mexico, to Buffalo, N.Y.--to protest the Summit of the Americas.
This summit draws together the heads of state and trade ministers from every country in the Western Hemisphere except socialist Cuba. Their agenda: the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Free trade might sound innocuous. But in reality, the FTAA is a declaration of intensified class warfare against the workers and peasants of this hemisphere.
It's modeled on the North American Free Trade Agreement. It is designed to squeeze even more sweat and blood out of the already super-exploited.
Its implementation also aims to bolster the Pentagon's strategic military hegemony from Anchorage, Alaska, to the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego, Chile.
FREEDOM OR FREE TRADE?
The "Free Trade" Area of the Americas is misnamed. It is really a form of protectionism that ices out U.S. imperialism's Japanese and European economic rivals.
To farmers and workers throughout this hemisphere, freedom means at the very least a full stomach, a roof over their heads, and relief from grinding toil, poverty, bigotry and repression.
To the titans of industry and Wall Street bankers, it means freedom of trade. That means the right to trample any barrier or restriction on trade and commerce that impedes their ability to absorb the local markets of other countries.
NAFTA, the FTAA and similar trade pacts establish a legal framework that allows U.S. transnational corporations to march in and overwhelm domestic economies of countries that have been purposefully kept technologically underdeveloped by imperialism.
NAFTA, for example, has meant a wave of layoffs in the United States and Canada. At the same time, it has brought more poverty and more sweatshops to Mexico as companies move factories there to take advantage of cheaper labor. At the same time, the flood of U.S. agricultural goods into the Mexican market has swept small farmers there off their land.
The FTAA surpasses NAFTA in its depth and breadth. The trade pact would open the economies of 20 nations in the Americas-- all except Cuba--to greater economic penetration by U.S. corporate capital by the year 2005.
It would expand the right of corporations to sue any government that dares to limit their profits or their right to privatize health care, education and other services.
Workers organized into unions are one of the FTAA's targets.
Clearly U.S. moguls' dream to rule this hemisphere economically and militarily holds great dangers for all workers, peasants and oppressed peoples.
This exploited and downtrodden class that produces all the wealth makes bank ers' eyes gleam. But this is the class that--united--can stay the hand of imperialism.
NO BORDERS IN WORKERS' STRUGGLE
What political course is in the interests of workers--in North America, and particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean?
Workers in the United States are justifiably worried about the loss of tens of millions of manufacturing and other jobs in the last 30 years due to plant closings. The bosses have shifted many of these jobs to low-wage areas, particularly in Latin America and Asia.
How can this flight of capital be arrested?
The capitalists claim the principal barriers to production are high tariffs, import duties, taxes. But these are merely symptoms of a deeper crisis: profit-driven economies based on private ownership of the wealth they produce.
Taxes and tariffs may slow down or accelerate the circulation of capital. But production for profit under capitalism outstrips consumption. And so it is this profit- mad economic system itself that leads to overproduction and war.
Capitalism is paved with competition for inroads into new markets. That is what leads to trade wars. And that is the path, slippery with workers' blood, that led the imperialist rival powers into two world wars.
The expansion of U.S. capitalism in any direction of the compass will not benefit working people in this country. It will only deepen the suffering of the most oppressed here and around the world.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union noted in a December resolution that NAFTA resulted in the loss of 400,000 jobs from the United States and plummeting living standards for Mexican workers.
U.S. workers living in the belly of the beast need to take the lead in demonstrating solidarity with workers everywhere against an economic system that cannot meet the needs of the laboring majority and the oppressed.
The April 20-22 protests offer an opportunity to build just that kind of class-based coalition.
The ILWU resolution supported the Quebec protests against the FTAA and encouraged members to take part. The resolution noted: "The globalizing policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have already extended the harm of the free market to some of the farthest corners of the world. But instead of satisfying international capital's greed, it has only whetted its appetite for more."
The United Electrical union also passed a resolution supporting the anti-FTAA protests. "Their plan promises to benefit multinational corporations, while destroying good jobs, weakening unions, devastating national economies, sending people into deeper poverty and destroying the environment," read the resolution.
It continued: "The trade ministers of the FTAA fear an interruption in the negotiations could halt the entire process. Tens of thousands of working people and their allies in the student, farm, environmental and human-rights movements succeeded [in disrupting the WTO in Seattle]. We do have the power to stop the FTAA."
Capitalism is the one barrier that stands in the way of genuine "fair trade"--a planned economy based on cooperation among the workers of the world. All out to build the anti- capitalist movement on A20-22!
Want to take part in the April 20-22 actions in Quebec City, Buffalo, Vermont, San Diego and Tijuana? For information contact the International Action Center, 39 W. 14th St., Suite 206, New York, NY 10011; phone (212) 633- 6646; or visit the Web site www.iacenter.org.
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