Focus on... The Americas
- FTAA -
US foreign economic policy is quickly developping the
idea of a Free Trade for the Americas (FTAA). At a
meeting which was held in Denver, Colorado at the end
of June the date of 2005 was set for negotiations to be
concluded...
Mickey Kantor, the US trade representative, pronounced the
Denver meeting 'a marvellous start'. Here the joint
declaration was seen as 'an essential step in laying the
foundation of the FTAA' whose principles 'will ensure that all
play by the same rules'. However, Denver was not quite the
beginning of the process. Some six months earlier 34 heads
of state had met in Miami and agreed to work for 'Free
Trade' over the coming decade. Two weeks later the
Mexican peso collapsed.
Mr Enrique Iglesias of the Inter American Development
Bank said after the Denver meeting that, 'It was important to
have a success to erase the perception that Miami was
wiped out by the peso crisis'. Mr Iglesias' apparent optimism
that Mexico would prove a one off is not seemingly shared
by some ministers from the other 33 countries involved.
Brazil in particular seems anxious about linking itself too
closely to the North American economies. The NAFTA
countries would account for 82% of the overall market
against the 11% of the Mercosur countries and despite US
protestations that the FTAA would be consistent with global
trade rules Mr Luiz Felipe Lampreia is still concerned about
the fact that since 1989 Brazil's exports to the US have not
risen largely because of US protectionism in the agricultural
sector.
Brazil is clearly concerned about whose rules all will be
expected to follow. Indeed NAFTA seems to be in troublee
at the moment for reasons which compliment Brazilian
concern. The Financial Times says they have 'quietly
shelved' plans for further customs tariff reductions and
Canada seems to think that the US has 'lost interest in the
exercise'. Apparently no further talks have been planned.
MEXICO
At the back of it all is the still reverberating economic crisis
in Mexico which began 19th December last. According to the
FT (6/10/95) the current recession after the peso's collapse
has been deeper than any expected it to be. Economic
activity 'plunged' 10.5% in the first half of this year. More
than 1,000,000 jobs have gone in a country that needs to
create the same number every year to acount for a growing
labour force.
The main winners have been what the FT calls the Big
corporations who have low debt and established export
markets. Exports - unsurprisingly -are up by a third. So an
export led recovery? Starting to sound familiar?
On the other hand small businesses - heavily in debt to the
banks - have gone into a tail spin dive due to a rise in
interest rates from 30 to 120%. Indeed the number of
bankruptcies was threatening the very system. The state
had to come to their rescue with a bail out package
representing some 3 or 4% of GDP. Meanwhile 10% has
been slashed from public expenditure to pay for it all.
As we say the hope is that Mexico will prove to be a one off.
This seems unlikely. It is more a question of who and when.
This is seemingly realised by those economists who advise
the IMF and G7 etc. They are currently discussing how to
deal with such crises when they happen. Thinking seems to
be moving towards giving the IMF a higher profile in these
situations - going in to bail out the economies which end up
on the rocks in return for acceptance for the usual austerity
programmes which are forced upon these countries. The
expectation would seem to be that something will happen
sooner rather than later with perhaps the next crisis
somewhere in Eastern Europe.
But also fault lines have been showing up in other parts of
Latin America particularly between the more successful
trading partners. In the first half of this year similardifficulties
to those which hit Mexico have occured between Argentina
and Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela and also within the
Central American Common Market.
The UK also had a taste of this medicine not so long ago.
The idea of economic union (be it EU or FTAA) is supposed
to help stop these kinds of crisis. It didn't help Mexico and it
didn't help the UK - the two cases are not so dissimilar.
Although both have now reached some kind of stability (for
how long is unclear) the whole affair has awoken some
others who may find themselves shedding similar amounts
of blood to the dangers of this kind of integration and
exposing themselves to foreign capital (here today gone
tomorrow) and running out onto an uneven playing field.
Mexico tried to pretend the earth was flat. She paid her price
and she took a fall. Unfortunately it's always the little folk
who pick up the bill.
Bolivia
Gunning for the Cocaleros
One of the new bogey men for Western governments
these days is of course the 'narco-trafficker' and the
West demand of those governments in the producing
countries a certain firmness towards their peasantry.
What does this all mean in practice? Bolivia gives us an
example where, under pressure from Washington, the
security forces have set out to destroy the coca
plantations. Fair enough? These same peasants were
miners until the mid 80s when the IMF reconstruction
projects began to bite. Growing coca seemed the only
logical solution to their plight...
Filem=F3n Escobar a former member of the FSTMB
Bolivian miner's federation points out the difference between
coca and cocaine, 'The Andean world was born with the
coca leaf thousands of years ago and the coca leaf and
coca chewing are part of our culture', he says. 'The
transformation of coca leaf into cocaine is a problem of the
industrialised countries who discovered that cocaine could
be extracted. Yet we Bolivians are the victims'.
In 1991 the coca growers of Bolivia held huge
demonstrations trying to persuade their government not to
give in to US pressure to allow military personnel into the
country to train the Bolivian soldiers in anti-drugs activity. As
Escobar says, 'The aim of the US is not to fight drug
trafficking but to destroy the raw material. It is easier and
cheaper for them to destroy coca in Bolivia than to reduce
domestic demand for cocaine. The US president says that
he agrees with alternative development plans but that he
has no money to fund them. But, hell, can they afford
military solutions!'
Pressure from the US embassy in La Paz continues in
1995. According to the Americans in January 1992 45,000
hectares were being used to grow coca and this figure has
now risen to 48,000 whilst the Bolivian legal system allows
for only some 12,000 hectares for production for traditional
consumption mainly in the Yungas region. The Americans
maintain that this surplus will produce 93 tonnes of Cocaine.
So an 'offer you can't refuse' was delivered to the
Bolivian authorities on 8th March this year: the Bolivian
government was to eradicate 1,750 hectares before the end
of June, come up with medium and long term plans for
further eradication and sign a new extradition treaty.
Otherwise she could look forward to an international
economic embargo from the IMF, World Bank and indeed all
those organisations where the US enjoys a near veto on
policy decisions.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the government of Sr Sanchez
set about to do what was demanded and it was left to the
peasants to try to stand up to the blackmail. As the
government announced its short term eradication plan on
the 8th of April 850 self-defence peasants committees were
set up and immediately took possession of the access
routes to the coca production zones in order to resist
militarization.
NARCO-TRAFFICKERS
Senator Bob Dole is going to find it hard to sell Bolivian
peasants to the US public as evil narco-traffickers who
simply intend to get rich at the expense of the bored
American youth who turn to drugs as an answer to the social
problems they have to live with. We are not talking about
drug barons and we are not talking about evil individuals
seeking to poison the American youth. The reasons the
peasants produce the leaf are, however, equally
comprehensible to all those who consider their plight over
the last few years.
Bolivian land refom in 1953 gave the peasants some
land on the Altiplano... but not enough to feed their families.
The choice was therefore a simple one and the peasants
moved south to spontaneously take over land in the forest of
the Amazon basin - a terrain which gave control problems
(and still does) to the authorities.
In the 1980s a number of factors came together.
Droughts in the Altiplano pushed more peasants south; tin
mines were closed as part of neo-liberal economic policy
putting 23,000 of the 27,000 miners on the economic
garbage heap and an explosion in the demand for cocaine
took place.
According to the laws of Comparative Advantage the
solution was obvious: as the peasant organisations got their
act together and parcelled out the land each family was
given one or two hectares, a third for their own needs and
the other two thirds for the leaf the income from which would
mean the difference between getting by and starving. The
only other solution would have been a revolutionnary
redistribution of land in favour of the peasants allowing them
a development away from the system of international trade
which is founded on neo-liberal economics.
Such a solution is, however, unthinkable. The idea of
some form of independent development for the Bolivians
cannot be permitted. Firstly, the peasantry must suffer the
internal inequalities of land ownership, as is the case
throughout Latin America, which is necessary for Big
Brother's interests to the North - who can then have in place
a reliable ruling class who will keep the people in check and
enslave them to the overeaching economic demands of the
global market. Secondly, they must be made to provide the
primary goods and commodities at low cost on which the
North depends. In its attempt to achieve these ends the
military option is the preferred one.
THE PEASANTS RESIST
When the Bolivian government announced its capitulation to
US demands tension and anger began to mount. The
cocaleros organisations announced they wouldn't uplift a
single plant unless alternatives were on offer. The
authorities were only offering compensation of between
2,000 and 2,500 dollars per hectare less than what could be
got from coca production in a year and the future would be
one of producing goods for foreign markets where the prices
were insulting to the farmers.
Confrontation was in the air. On 11th July military units
moved into one of the coca producing areas and the
cocaleros decided to resist. Their underground committees
were already well used to siege tactics. Three days later
about 100 peasants and committee members were arrested.
The situation grew worse. The cocaleros cut off the access
routes. The military re-opened them using force against
resisters. Someone threw a home made bomb. 21 police
and civilians were injured. The usual kind of police response
followed. Homes were raided, folk were beaten up and
children were pressurised into revealing names of
sympathisers.
The people took to the streets and marched to Aroma
to demonstrate peacefully demanding the liberation of those
who had been arrested. This they finally achieved at the end
of July but the situation is still tense, 'In 1985 we were
kicked out of the mines' says one cocalero, 'and up there
there was no land for us. So that we wouldn't have to beg we
asked the government for work. They threw us out onto the
streets. In order to feed our families we came to this corner
of the country. Now they want to move us on. We won't
move. If they want to get us out they'll have to kill us first'.
The situation has reached a kind of stalemate. Whilst
the authorities rely more and more on strong arm tactics the
cocaleros threaten to respond in kind and enjoy
considerable public sympathy. The prospects for a peaceful
outcome look bleak with the US backed military being
accused more and more of human rights abuses and the
number of farmers killed by the anti-drug police force is on
the increase.
FREEDOM PRESS
http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/Freedom