Quebec, City under siege

April 23, 2001

The three day so-called "Summit of the Americas" in Quebec City, Canada, has been convened as this column is being written.

Leadership from some 34 countries of North, Central and South America are expected to attend from April 20 to April 22. Only Cuba has been excluded.

The major task is to put together the largest possible trading bloc stretching from Canada in the north to Chile and Argentina in the south which, in fact, would guarantee for the participators in this trading bloc, a market of some 800 million people and an annually turn-over of goods and services to the value of some eighty-six billion US dollars.

That's the figure that is presently being bandied around. The actual numbers will probably come after year 2005 when the whole inter-hemispheric trade shebang is due to kick off. The result will mean the effective extension of what was known as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area) to involve the entire hemisphere.

The new acronym will be FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) and the purpose as to be expected will be to develop "free markets" and free trading practices throughout the hemisphere and institute all the now well known trade liberalisation measures therein.

The Caribbean states have been included this time. Our Prime Minister, Basdeo Panday, is attending. The questions are: What shall be the position of the Caribbean Community? Have Caricom met and hammered out a common position that advances a Caribbean regional perspective in context of this wider hemispheric trading bloc?

Where shall our banana producers of the Caribbean stand in this new move given the power of the United Fruit company of the USA and given its hold on the Chiquita brand out of Ecuador? And shall we allow them to leave out Cuba while within the Caricom we glibly mouth the importance and significance of Cuban inclusion?

To date there has been no such approach from these small-island states who are presently woefully incapable of competing in such a large context due mainly to the fact that they are geographically minuscule economies of scale that lack the modern infrastructure so essential for business development today and historically never possessed in sufficient depth a native investor, risk-taking, social milieu and have had to depend traditionally on direct foreign investment and stimulation.

But even that is a two-edged sword for the very presence of foreign direct investment as the major force and factor of economic activity, though stimulating and very necessary, is at one and the same time a block to the deepening of native productive factors.

What seems most unfair to countries like ours and in our predicament is that we are forced by international lending agencies like the IMF,World Bank etc, to liberalised our trade policies, level the playing-field to all comers, remove all barriers of protectionism when the very metropolitan "big countries" who push this approach were the very ones who utilised all forms of economic protectionism when they were at our present stage and level of development. The fear is that, given such an approach, we shall always remain in relative terms, underdeveloped.

The history is there to show how the European mercantilist philosophy which was an outgrowth of their sense of nationalism and nation-building, led to "closed-shop economies" and provided them with the protection necessary to build solid, integrated home-economies capable of competing on a world basis and how by then they came to be developed to the point where world Free Trade became for them, an absolute.

In terms of economic development and nation-building we are still in the baby stages but we are being asked not to protect toddling native forms and institutions.

The late Julius Nyerere said it best when he asked how can we expect an African car manufacturer to compete in today's market place with the likes of Ford and General Motors?

The FTAA, that this summit conference in Quebec is supposed to establish, shall be riddled with such contradictions for the 34 countries represent varying levels of economic development, and there will need to be extensive and serious negotiations unless we accept allowing the US, Mexico and Canada and such the like to dominate and exploit the weaklings of the Hemisphere.

Of course the forerunner to this hemispheric thrust has been the sudden interest in and acceptance of Latin American music and dance, which were always present but ignored as economical products.

Today mainstream US cannot get enough of Ricky Martin, Selena(deceased), Jennifer Lopez, the macarena and lambada etc.

As we said last week culture is always the first weapon of penetration. For hundreds of years the "Americano Gringos" were not welcomed. Now all that has to change according to corporate demands.

Interestingly, as we write, the Summit is under siege. Protesters, just as they had done at the WTO conference in Seattle last year, turned up and are attempting to shut the proceedings down.

Already clashes have taken place, some 8,000 police and other security personnel have been called out to battle the protesters who seem equipped to withstand the tear-gas and rubber-bullets.

Groups like the Independent Research Collective, Front for Social Justice, radical Trade Unions, human rights organisations and environmentalists etc, have posted Web sites calling on all concerned to find a way to say "no" to the economic strategies implied in this new move.

The protesters organised on Thursday last, a "Peoples' Summit" out of which came demands that the FTAA summit be held in public rather than behind closed doors, that corporate power must not be allowed to dominate at the expense of "sovereignty" and the requirements of "local communities".

They expressed concern that workers' rights not be eroded by the dictates of global capital, that trade be equitable and that economic development be sustainable given the fragility of the environment of this planet.

Everywhere the corporate world shall be faced with the demands for direct mass democracy. That is, the prevailing political tendency in this particular period of globalisation.

Not surprisingly, none of the 34 leaders has risen to the occasion. None have sought to engage the demands of the protestors. The Canadian Prime Minister seems bent merely on apologising for the conduct of the violent protesters, while Bush mumbles about being "neighbourly" and "keeping neighbourhoods intact", for that and that alone is his understanding of this hemispheric bloc: a friendly neighbourhood is one's best protection from enemies.

The "boys in the hood" all over the US can surely relate to that . The point is though that Western Europeans have pulled their bloc together; the Japanese are destined to lead a Pacific Bloc; China remains anybody's guess and though fluid, is a very large, attractive market that has yet to be deepened productively, and Putin seems to be attempting to revive Russian Nationalist sentiments which is not really far-fetched given the rekindling of Lenin's popularity.

A strong, tightly-linked Western Hemisphere is the answer to the slowing down of the US economy and eventuality that may arise on the other side of the globe.

Yet the FTAA cannot merely be an extension of US hegemony and corporate power. There are masses of people throughout the continent and they must count.

Jorge Luis Borges the renowned Argentine author and poet is fond of saying that the "US is a country with no name, she has usurped the name of an entire continent for herself", to which we can add that she has also appropriated the ideal of democracy (spelled with a capital "D") unto herself, projecting herself as though synonymous with democracy,

when in truth and in fact, democracy is an ideal that humanity has struggled for from time immemorial whether existing under political-economic systems of tribalism, communalism, feudalism, slavery, capitalism, state-capitalism disguised as "socialism" etc. Democracy is a process of decision-making that is a way of life.

The acid test for the FTAA shall come when the very US Congress, that comprise lobbies for specialised interest and specific economic sectors, shall have to consider accommodating similar products, eg farm products, that are produced cheaper elsewhere in the hemisphere. Then we shall known for sure who stands for "corporate power" and who for democracy.