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Globalization
and "Free" Trade Report
prepared by Anne Montgomery, September 2001
Colombia: Demanding Wealth, Supplying Death The Channels of Exploitation Remain Open The Effects of Centuries of Austerity Plan Colombia: Ensuring Access to Resources Plan Colombia: A Convergence of Corporate Interests Colombia and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) An Alternative Vision of Freedom and Globalization
"We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population…In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction…We should cease to talk about vague and - for the far east - unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization." George Kennan, U.S. State Department Policy Planning Study, 1949 It has been said that colonization was one of the first steps in the globalization process. For the Europeans, colonization fueled industrial growth by utilizing cheap labor to extract raw materials. This new division of labor, where one actor took everything and gave nothing, was only sustainable through the use of force. In areas where anger and resistance were fierce and the contested resources were desired more than labor, massacres aimed at extermination were most useful. Globalization began, not because international actors came together to conduct a voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange, but because colonizers had the firepower to coerce the colonized into a completely asymmetrical relationship. The first global connections established a system where resources and capital flowed from the colonized to the industrializing colonizers. While the era of colonization has passed, certain fundamental patterns remain. The colonizers, today's "developed" nations, still seek to control access to inexpensive resources. Profit maximization is the name of the game, therefore, unequal relations of exchange are desirable. Because the more unequal the exchange the greater the profit, the most successful players on the global stage are those who are most willing and able to impose these asymmetrical relationships on developing nations. Hence, although globalization has made international exchanges more numerous than ever before, resources and capital increasingly flow in one direction. This is illustrated by the fact that the gap between rich and poor countries continues to widen. Currently the net worth of the three richest families in the world is greater than the combined gross domestic product of the 43 poorest nations on earth.1 One person's right is another person's duty, and the freedom to take indefinitely is accompanied by the duty to give indefinitely. Powerful economic actors possess many rights and freedoms but are allotted few responsibilities and perform few duties, while less powerful beings have fewer rights, little freedom, and many duties. This distribution of freedom and obligation is so skewed that while some live gluttonously, others die of hunger or are killed for challenging the superfluous resource ownership of the powerful. The celebration of the liberty and prosperity that many living in developed nations enjoy is largely divorced from an understanding of the price that others have paid and continue to pay to make these privileges possible. The dominant voices are those coming from corporate America. For them, neoliberal policies and a decrease in the political regulation of their activities increase their freedom and prosperity, but the converse is the imposition of duty on others: namely the citizens of countries where profit maximization is carried out without restrictions. Environmental degradation, human rights abuses, harassment and even murder of union leaders, activists, and representatives of non-governmental organizations are all by-products of unregulated corporate freedom. The unrestrained drive for profit demands death of those who get in the way. In some places, the right to maximize profit is, in fact, accompanied by the duty to die. Colombia: Demanding Wealth, Supplying Death "We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We the living are the askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people." Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America In Colombia, homicide is the leading cause of death. Each year, over 300,000 people are murdered. It is no accident that the largest percentage of these deaths are found in the economic poles of the country: the emerald zone of Boyaca; the gold mines in Antioquia; the coal mines of Cesar and La Guajira; the petroleum zones in Santander, Arauca and Casanare; the regions of commercial agriculture; and during the period known as La Violencia (1946-1965), in the coffee zones. It is in these regions that the contradictions of globalization and neoliberalism are exposed. Great wealth and great poverty sit side by side, both sprung from the same seed. Those who have been impoverished battle to regain what they have lost, and those who have been enriched hire private armies to defend what they have gained. In this battle for resources, competition is as fierce, or dare I say it, as healthy as it can get. There are no rules and the ends justify the means: On both sides, the demand is for death. And, as always, it is the poor peasants who are doing most of the dying. In Colombia, the demand for resources and profit is greater than the demand for human life. Hundreds of years have not changed that pattern. From colonization to globalization, the few have enforced asymmetrical relations of exchange on the many. Today, international financial institutions maintain these patterns by enforcing "freedom" and increasing liberalization of the channels of extraction. For some, both the elites in Colombia, and foreign corporations profiting from operations, such as Occidental Petroleum, BP-Amoco and others, this allows the accumulation of great wealth. For others, especially poor rural Colombians and those dwelling in the urban shantytowns, the result is either a slow death from denial of basic necessities, or a quick death by private killers hired to clear resistant peasants out of the way of economic progress. Whatever the pretext for Plan Colombia, in actuality, it is securing corporate access to inexpensive resources. In recent years, emiseration of the average Colombian has resulted in an increased popular resistance to the implementation of neoliberal economic policies. Consequently, there has been a corresponding increase in the levels of violence used against such elements as guerrillas, peasants, union leaders, and human rights activists who challenge a system of economic relations that ships resources needed for survival off to foreign lands under the label of "free trade". But "free trade" refers, as it always has, to the freedom of large financial players to engage in the maximization of profit without concerning themselves with the annoyances of environmental, labor, or human rights regulations. Environmental concerns aside, history proves that such an increase in exploitative potential will provoke anger and resistance, violent repression, and an intensifying cycle where the resultant demand is death, and there is already enough of that. The Channels of Exploitation Remain Open "Latin America is a region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our time, has always been transmuted into European- or later United States-capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power." Eduardo Galeano, The Open Veins of Latin America Colombia, like the rest of Latin America, was violently colonized by the Spanish. The indigenous groups were subdued and forced into labor in the mines. The land and the people were raped and the valuable stones and minerals were shipped back to the coffers of the Spanish crown. Independence brought little change for most of the population. Land, resources and wealth remained concentrated in the hands of the American-born Spaniards who inherited power. Even the long and bloody La Violencia affected little change. The peasants took up arms and shed their blood, but when all was said and done, it seemed that their lives had been tossed away for little more than political posturing. The elites of the Liberal and Conservative parties made their peace and maintained their connections to foreign interests. The peasants still were given nothing (see, Fifty Years of Violence). But resistance had been mobilizing and violence intensified against the exploitative relations of "exchange". Humiliation, misery and a desire for revenge birthed guerrillas from the ravaged peasant masses. They rallied behind a platform of social justice and violently demanded wealth redistribution and land reform. Although the government conceded to peace negotiations with some groups, there was no significant redistribution of land or resources. New official economic positions merely affected superficial changes, and, even while the Colombian economy grew consistently under the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) regimes, wealth continued to accumulate in the hands of the elites at the expense of the poor. In the 1980s, for the first time, there was a significant challenge to the balance of power in Colombia and the established oligarchy's hegemony over economic life. The cocaine industry inundated entrepreneurial drug barons and cartels with U.S. dollars. The new lords of the drug trade expanded their might by funding private armies, a practice that originated when large landholders and cattle ranchers took advantage of the lack of government presence in the countryside to create death squads to combat the guerillas and clear peasants off desirable lands. Like the private militias of the past, the new paramilitaries secured access to resources through force. In Colombia, money can buy anything, even life can be bought for a price: If the price of your life is lower than the profit to be made from the resource you refuse to relinquish, you die. These are market forces working more freely than people in the United States, with the exception of the North American Indians, have ever experienced. The Colombian government derives most of its revenue by taxing licit export production that is largely regulated through regional and bilateral trade agreements and taxed upon entry into the U.S. market. On the other hand, the drug baron's export profits are illicit and therefore evade taxation and price caps meant to keep capital in the United States. The drug trade, unencumbered by state regulation, is actually free to distribute profits back to the producers in developing nations. The drug trade initiated a convergence of interest between the United States and the Colombian government against the power of this "free" drug trade. Colombia's elites needed help defending themselves against the encroaching economic power of the drug lords. Washington needed to reverse the flow of capital back into the United States. In 1989, President Virgilio Barco placed a quarter of a million dollar bounty on the heads of cartel leaders and called for U.S. help to fight the drug cartels. Not coincidentally, in this same year he folded to International Monetary Fund (IMF) pressure to initiate a strategy for opening up the Colombian economy. In 1990, Barco's successor, President Cesar Augusto Gaviria, undertook massive reforms, including the apertura, or "economic opening," that paved new avenues for wealth extraction. The administration dismantled a protectionist system that, under ISI, had been used to promote the development of domestic industries. Tariffs, trade barriers and subsidies were reduced or eliminated and public enterprises were privatized. Customs procedures were simplified (which further facilitated the drug trade), restrictions on foreign ownership of local banks were done away with, the need for authorization on foreign investment was eliminated, foreign interests were given free reign to repatriate profits, and portfolio (often short term speculative capital) investment was given unconditional tax exemption. In the middle of 1991, the financial market was also opened, which meant that monetary and exchange rate policies could no longer be determined by the state and were, instead, subject to the forces of international financial movements. True to form, the liberalization of markets let loose massive swells of capital and deregulated their movement. They were now free to be sucked right out of Colombia…and they were. Falling tariffs and the elimination of domestic subsidies decreased the relative price of imports. Rich Colombians took advantage of the lower prices of imported luxury goods; private consumption skyrocketed while private savings dropped to its lowest levels ever. From 1992-1994, private international debt went from $3.5 to $8.5 billion.2 Meanwhile, a large influx of foreign capital (not to worry: one hundred percent can be repatriated) was spurred by the expectation of a Colombian oil bonanza. This generated an appreciation of the domestic currency that threatened exports by decreasing their competitiveness. Because of the liberalization of financial and capital markets, the only policy lever available to the government was the use of fiscal policy to control inflation. However, as the government's budget was dwarfed by the huge sums of money sloshing through the hands of drug traffickers and private corporations, fiscal expenditures were ineffective. The balance of trade deteriorated from a $2.3 billion surplus in 1991 to a $2.4 billion deficit in 1994.3 Furthermore, while the economy was opened to foreign producers, it quickly closed for many domestic manufacturers, especially those who could only afford small or mid-scale production. The technological efficiency of industries in developed nations made foreign imports more competitive. Besides the inherent advantages of large-scale production in driving down prices, foreign corporations were also the recipients of subsidies from their own governments and generous tax exemptions from Colombia, benefits most small and medium-sized Colombian producers were denied. While in theory liberalization was supposed to spur industrial development, in actuality, it did just the opposite: it resulted in de-industrialization. In 1997 and 1998, massive imports of manufactured goods led to the closing of 5,000 small factories. According to Patricia Burtica, a representative of Colombia's largest union, Unified Workers Central (CUT), "The opening market economy has provoked the closing of 20,000 commercial enterprises in our country."4 In sum, the liberalization of the Colombian economy placed more and more power in the hands of foreign corporations and, as intended, resulted in a transfer of resources from lower class Colombians to the elites and multinational corporations. In the labor market, the Gaviria Administration paved the way for increased unemployment that benefited the Colombian economic elites and foreign investors. By rewriting labor legislation in the 1991 Constitution, it became easier for employers to lay off workers. Previously, companies had to pay a severance to workers laid off before their contract had expired. In order to eliminate the burden of "redundant labor", the severance requirement was dropped and work contracts that began after 1980 could be terminated without any economic inconvenience to the employer. As a result, even conservative government figures (which take the informal sector into account) concede that a fifth of the population is now unemployed. When the informal sector is not taken into account, some estimate unemployment to be as high as 60 percent. In terms of land tenure, the Sustainable Development Department of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations found that forced "liberalization" of the land market, despite subsidies provided for rural peasants, only resulted in a greater concentration of land ownership. In 1994, in an effort to make land use more efficient and productive, the Colombian government encouraged large landholders to sell parts of their land to investors. Responding to the demands of demobilized guerrillas with whom the government had recently signed a peace accord, the law included a subsidy scheme to help the rural poor purchase land. However, most landowners were still unwilling to sell to rural peasants because they could not obtain a sufficient profit margin. Although subsidies initially enabled some of the rural poor to purchase land, they were unable to hold onto their newly gained properties. Violence, intimidation, and the corruption of local officials left them unable to defend their resources and they were either violently displaced or forced to sell. Consequently, the top three percent of the landed elite now own over 70 percent of the arable land, while 57 percent of the poorest farmers subsist on less than three percent. Once again, the deregulation of the market only provided freedom to some, namely, to those with the power and the capital to hold on to violently contested resources. The powerless Colombian peasant lost yet again. The Effects of Centuries of Austerity By the end of the 1990s, external debt had grown to five times what it had been in 1980 reaching $34.5 billion. Growth figures of -4.9% were the lowest of the century, unemployment was sky high, and almost 55 percent of Colombians lived in poverty.5 Colombia was in a serious recession. In December 1999, desperation provoked the government to accept, once again, reforms favorable to foreign investors in exchange for a $2.7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. Colombian's economic problems, according to the IMF, were largely the result of unsustainable fiscal policies, principally, the large increases in public spending introduced in the early 1990s. The IMF-imposed remedy called for a severe reduction of public spending and the creation of new taxes. Consequently, salaries were to be reduced; the age of retirement raised; subsidies for public services cut; the official bank and the state-owned energy, mining and communications enterprises privatized; and massive dismissals in the public sector. In effect, the IMF was suggesting that Colombia was in the midst of an economic crisis because it had been too generous with its citizens. It is interesting to note what the increased government revenue (and the shirts taken from the peasants' backs) is going to pay for. According to the IMF, the goal is to "exert a strict control over all expenditure other than interest payments."6 In other words, the IMF wants the Colombian government to take money from its already brutalized population and deposit it directly into the purses of rich lender nations. According to Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Stanford University and the former chief economist at the World Bank: "Today, the mandate [of the IMF] often appears to be that of a bill collector for lending nations: its objective is to make sure that the debtor country has as large a war chest as possible to repay outstanding loans."7 This relationship is quite apparent in Colombia. In 1998, even before officially accepting the IMF loan conditions, Colombia paid close to $4.6 billion in debt services (interest and repayments). This was equivalent to three times the entire healthcare budget and more than the total sum spent on education. In 2000, after the implementation of IMF policies, debt servicing increased by 20 percent. In 2001, this figure grew again by almost 30 percent. In fact, 86 percent of tax income is now being used to pay debt services.8 Debt service payments have been financed through falling real wages, as well as by state cutbacks in healthcare, education, and public employment. It is not surprising that the number of dissidents in Colombian society has increased. Even during negotiations for the IMF bail out there were massive demonstrations in the cities. In the past year, unions, public employees, students, human rights groups and other non-governmental organizations have taken to the streets demanding decent wages; the right to health, employment and education; an end to privatization and austerity; and a moratorium on debt payments (see, Colombians protest IMF-Imposed Austerity Measures). When a hospital in San Juan de Dios was forced to shut down because it could not afford to pay its electricity bill, doctors and nurses throughout Colombia threatened to call a nationwide strike. In the cities, the government, the elites, multinational corporations, and their hired killers have responded with more death; targeting union leaders, journalists, human rights activists, and political challengers. Meanwhile, in vast expanses of the countryside there are still no roads, no schools, no hospitals and 85 percent of the rural population lives in poverty. Liberalization, privatization, and related violence have undermined subsistence and pushed many peasants off their lands. The displaced move deeper into the jungle where coca--because it grows in poor soil, provides bountiful yields, and can be easily transported--is the only economically viable crop. In order to survive, peasants must function outside the channels regulated by neoliberal policies. As a result, some of the profits from coca cultivation find their way back to the peasant producer (see, The Plight of the Peasant Coca Grower). In these areas--historically neglected or abused by the government--the guerrillas provision justice. By taxing the drug trade, the guerrillas build infrastructure and fund schools and medical clinics. They also enact violent land and wealth redistribution by murdering and kidnapping large landowners and business executives, while bombing oil pipelines owned by elite and foreign interests. Also, the level of rural violence escalates as wealthy landowners, cattle ranchers, industrialists, and right-wing political and business interests respond to the guerrilla threat by increasing funding for their private armies. Throughout Colombia, poverty and the demand for violence fuel the supply of killers. Enjoying lavish funding from elite elements of Colombian society, the paramilitaries are extremely successful in recruiting the poor and unemployed. They offer new recruits a cellular phone, a gun and $250 per month.9 And as poverty and unemployment increase, working as a professional criminal becomes more attractive, especially in a country whose citizens consider it too dangerous or futile to report criminals to the authorities. Plan Colombia: Ensuring Access to Resources On January 11, 2000, President Clinton announced a $1.3 billion aid package for Colombia to "assist in vital counter-drug efforts aimed at keeping illegal drugs off our shores" and to "help Colombia promote peace and prosperity and deepen its democracy" (see, Plan Colombia: A Closer Look) By now it is common knowledge that the illicit crop eradication tactics currently being employed as part of Plan Colombia--aerial fumigation of coca and poppy plants--have not and will not stop the flow of drugs into the United States (see, The Drug War: An Exercise in Futility). In 1994, a Rand study found that treatment was seven times more cost-effective than policing and 23 times more cost-effective than source country interdiction.10 The forced crop eradication sponsored by Plan Colombia will merely result in what's become known as "the balloon effect": when pressure is applied in one area, cultivation simply shifts to another. This was evidenced by the supposedly successful coca eradication campaigns in Peru and Bolivia, which were immediately followed by a coca boom in Colombia (see, The Failure of Coca Eradication in Peru and Bolivia). According to William M. LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University, and Kenneth Sharpe, a professor of political science at Swarthmore College, "You can't use military force to repeal the laws of economics."11 The chemicals being used to destroy coca crops are also effective in destroying licit crops, while causing environmental damage and health problems (see, Death Falls from the Sky). Since coca grows well in many climates, including the jungle, and is the most lucrative cash crop available in the Andean region, desperate peasants displaced from land contaminated by herbicides are more likely to clear another section of rainforest to produce coca than any other crop. Furthermore, the proposed areas of fumigation do not correspond to all the areas of heavy coca production. Fumigation has largely bypassed paramilitary-controlled coca plantations even though the connections between the paramilitaries and the international traffickers are far more extensive than the simple taxation relationship shown to exist between the guerrillas and the traffickers. Taking for granted that the authors of Plan Colombia are not blundering idiots, one must assume there is a hidden motivation underlying the drug war campaign. The United States is the world's largest consumer of petroleum and access to reliable and inexpensive supplies has always been a principle foreign policy concern. The loss of the Panama Canal and the anti-imperialist attitudes of Hugo Chavez--the nationalist leader of Venezuela, the single largest supplier of oil to the United States--as well as his sympathies for the Colombian guerillas and socialist Cuba spell trouble for U.S. oil interests (see, The Chavez Factor). Despite Colombia's status as the second most dangerous country in the world in which to conduct oil exploration, when its largest oil discovery since the 1980s was announced last June, several companies, including Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), seized the opportunity to increase their investment in Colombia. However, National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas responded by launching a new campaign of kidnappings and pipeline bombings to protest the overgenerous concessions made to foreign corporations. Last year, the Cano Limon pipeline was bombed 76 times and was forced to temporarily shut down. Consequently, oil companies need Washington's help. Because of the violence, only 20 percent of Colombia's potential oil producing territory has been explored; clearly there are profits to be made. Therefore, it is not surprising that Oxy's Vice-President of Public Affairs, Lawrence P. Meriage, joined other representatives of corporate America in lobbying for congressional support of the military and "counter-narcotics" components of Plan Colombia. In a speech to the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, Meriage also pushed for an extension of military operations to oil-rich regions in northern Colombia to "augment security for new oil development".12 The promotion of peace, prosperity and democracy also seems to be largely a pretext. While the 80 percent of the budget allocated to military hardware was distributed immediately, the $15 million promised to alternative crop development and social programs such as refugee assistance, human rights, improved law enforcement, and judicial reform has yet to arrive. Meanwhile, the Leahy Amendment, which makes U.S. aid contingent on human rights conditions, was simply waived by then-President Clinton in the name of U.S. "national security interests." It is evident by past drug war policy that promoting human rights is of little concern to Washington. In 1990, at the same time President George Bush began funneling aid to the Colombian Armed Forces (and by extension, the paramilitaries) to fight the "war on drugs", the Andean Commission of Jurists reported that the Colombian military was using anti-drug measures as a pretext to arrest and murder union leaders, grassroots organizers, and members of opposition political parties. Over the past decade, the Colombian military has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. In response to human rights groups and a handful of U.S. lawmakers, Washington has pushed Colombia to clean up its image, crack down on corruption, and do a better job disguising the exploitation and murder of its own citizens. In order to hide its continuing involvement in human rights abuses, the Colombian army now "outsources" the violence to the privately (as opposed to publicly) run paramilitary death squads. The continuing intimate relationship between the military and the paramilitaries has been well documented by reputable human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Even Colombia's mainstream media--owned almost entirely by the political and economic oligarchy, including the families of President Andres Pastrana and Finance Minister Juan Manuel Santos--must concede that the paramilitaries are now responsible for 80 percent of Colombia's violent deaths. Plan Colombia: A Convergence of Corporate Interests "The fundamental principles of American foreign policy, as they were articulated quite clearly in the 1940s, are designed to ensure what George Kennan once called the 'protection of our raw materials'….The problem is that the indigenous [and domestic] populations often have the tendency to try to use "our raw materials" for their own purposes." Noam Chomsky, Latin America: From Colonization To Globalization In September 2000, a former U.S. Special Forces intelligence agent claimed that the purpose of Plan Colombia was to defend the operations of Occidental, BP-Amoco and Texas Petroleum, while securing access to potentially rich, but still unexplored, Colombian oil fields. If this is true, then the Plan was well designed. Not only is the flow of U.S. aid oblivious to human rights abuses, but there also seems to be a correlation between the two. Corporations lobby to increase aid to the very entities that abuse human rights. It is quite telling that the paramilitaries' political stance is in outright support of IMF-imposed privatization programs and other economic reforms that generate profit for multinational corporations. Even if it is not an effective way of countering the drug trade, funding paramilitary forces is a very efficient means of solving conflicts over valuable resources. And while fumigation is also not an effective strategy for waging war against drugs, it is a highly efficient method of clearing populations from areas rich in resources and of eliminating opposition. Fumigation forces peasants to abandon land that then becomes available for multinational speculation. The departments of Putumayo and Bolivar, both primary targets of Plan Colombia's aerial fumigation campaign, have large, and still unexplored, mineral and oil deposits. Not surprisingly, Occidental and British Petroleum were fervent supporters of the U.S. aid package. Occidental spent $350,000 in the U.S. Congress ensuring that the U.S. contribution to Plan Colombia was passed. The oil industry was responsible for almost 20 percent of President George W. Bush's campaign funding, while also donating large sums of money to former Vice-President Gore's campaign (see, The Well-Oiled Presidential Campaigns). Other multinationals also rallied in support of the aid package. In fact, most of the $1.3 billion has been deposited into the bank accounts of U.S. defense contractors. Connecticut-based United Technologies Corporation is building 30 Blackhawk helicopters at $12.8 million a piece. It is no surprise that Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut was a strong supporter of the aid package. Another benefactor is Texas-based Textron, which is upgrading 33 Vietnam-era Huey helicopters at a cost of $1.8 million each. While Lockheed Martin received $68 million for the manufacture of early warning radar systems (see, U.S. Aid Package Amounts to Corporate Welfare). Meanwhile, Monsanto and Dupont, manufacturers of the fumigation chemicals being sprayed on Colombian peasants, deposited some $600,000 into political coffers during the time the aid bill was being debated in Congress.13 The U.S. aid package and Plan Colombia effectively support the interests of multinational corporations by funding arms contractors, manufacturers of deadly chemicals, and private death squads, each of which will be deployed on Colombian soil to silence or kill those who oppose the interests of U.S. corporations. The drug war and Neoliberalism go hand in hand: their goal is the protection of "our raw materials". Neoliberalism provides the rationale and a framework for opening up the Colombian economy to foreign exploitation, while the U.S. aid package provides the hardware to enforce the exploitation when the population refuses to passively accept it. Colombia
and the Free Trade Area "The people who try to impose the principles of neoliberalism in the Third World and in the slums of our cities don't want the same principles for themselves... They want a powerful nanny state to protect them, as always." Noam Chomsky, Latin America: From Colonization to Globalization Amidst popular protest, negotiations continue for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which will extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) throughout the hemisphere in 2005. In Mexico, since the passage of NAFTA, eight million more families have fallen into poverty, one million more Mexicans work for less than the minimum wage ($3.40 per day), and approximately 28,000 small businesses have shut down due to the influx of foreign corporations. The FTAA would spread and enhance this horror story by demanding that regulations placed on multinational operations throughout the hemisphere be eliminated to allow more profit to flow from the South to the North. Hemispheric competition for foreign investment will attain a whole new level of ferocity as governments lower labor, human rights, and environmental standards in order to offer attractive profit margins. In Colombia, competition for foreign investment has already made labor unions and their leaders prime targets for violence. According to Liam Craig-Best, a human rights activist who works closely with leaders of Colombia's largest union, Unified Workers Central, (CUT), Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world for union members. Last year 129 unionists were killed, while this year 44 members have already been murdered for standing up for labor rights.14 The FTAA will add more fuel to the fire that is already consuming, at a massive rate, those who try to put human life before corporate profit. Furthermore, the FTAA will increase unregulated foreign investment, which will result in more rural peasants being displaced by paramilitaries seeking to gain control of lands sought after by foreign corporations. On the environmental front, the FTAA will enhance the degradation that has already taken a huge toll on the stability of Colombian society. Hundreds of pipeline bombings have poured many times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez into the fragile Colombian ecosystem. Meanwhile, the fumigation and violence have pushed almost two million people off the most productive tracts of land in the country. Many of these displaced have moved deeper into the rainforest where their only viable means of survival is coca cultivation, which further devastates the environment and increases the flow of drugs to U.S. and European markets. In other areas, FTAA agreements, like IMF loan conditions, include commitments to liberalize trade and privatize state-owned entities such as education, health care, social security, and public utilities. Once again, freedom for corporations will mean reduced access to basic survival necessities for many Colombians who will be unable to afford the higher prices for food, water, electricity, healthcare and education. New regulations surrounding intellectual property
rights will allow pharmaceutical corporations to patent their marketing
rights across the entire hemisphere in order to keep drug prices
high and impede the domestic production of generic versions of life
saving drugs. Those who are unable to pay will suffer and die. What the FTAA amounts to is protectionism: legal protection for the "rights" of multinational corporations to exploit for profit. It is no coincidence that the FTAA agreement has been negotiated behind closed doors and that, although more than 500 corporations have been given the security clearances required to review the FTAA documents, no labor, human rights or environmental groups have been permitted to monitor or participate in the proceedings. The FTAA agreements will expand and protect corporate freedom by imposing an immense burden on the already overworked, underpaid, and under nourished peoples of Colombia. As the injustices grow, so will resentment and the violence (see, Colombians Protest Fumigation and Globalization). Although the corporations operating in Colombia will benefit in the short-term through the removal of social and environmental impediments to profit maximization; in the long-term, rising violence will result in an increasingly unstable investment climate. The freedom to displace, impoverish, and brutalize the Colombian population while exploiting the country's resources will force more and more peasants to take up arms or turn to the drug trade for survival. An Alternative Vision of Freedom and Globalization Exploitative relations of exchange have thus far dominated the globalization process. Enforcing freedom for some has clamped shackles on others. And while for some the possibilities for growth have become limitless, for the majority, growth is increasingly restricted. The neoliberal policy makers have actively enforced this inequality by playing on a prevalent misunderstanding of the relationship between rights and duties. The freedom of demand is not benign, but malignant, and shantytowns, violence, and misery are the tumors of the unrestricted drives for profit made possible by the current global system. However, this track of development is not inevitable. More than 50 years ago, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, developed and developing nations joined together to form the United Nations. The UN's charter was, and still is, based on an alternative conceptualization of the interplay between rights and duties, between freedom and responsibility. This understanding suggests that global well-being is not best attained through the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest. In order to prevent, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, the national conditions that lead to military governments and eventually world wars, certain affairs need to be regulated by international human rights norms. It was understood that there needed to be a bottom line that would protect, not the fundamental rights of states or markets, both intangible entities, but the fundamental rights of human beings. In the name of state rights, or market rights, the powerful justify taking more than they give. However, as globalization increases commonalities, those denied their freedom, those with many duties and few rights, become more numerous and increasingly aware of the ways in which their struggles are united. This process is already under way as many organizations in developed and developing nations have united in a globalized grassroots movement to combat corporate-sponsored neoliberal globalization. Environmental degradation has raised the issues of globalization and social responsibility to a new level of consciousness. The linkages connecting the well-being of citizens across the globe have moved beyond the theoretical realm into tangible existence. Consequently, post World War II globalization provides the world with a renewed opportunity for awareness. There must be a bottom line. Entities that produce systematic misery and death cannot be justified or protected in the name of abstract concepts. Morality must not be forfeited for either the state or the market. In both Bogota and Washington, direct human rights abuses have been justified in the name of "national security", while policies supporting the "inevitable" economic process of neoliberal globalization have institutionalized gross levels of poverty and inequality. IMF-imposed reforms, the drug war, Plan Colombia, and the FTAA forfeit basic and necessary standards of morality by failing to make economic and political rights contingent upon the duty to ensure fundamental human rights. Our well-being is united by global systems and our rights are contingent upon our duties. The consequences of failing to fulfill those duties are clearly evident in the words of Holocaust survivor Pastor Martin Neimoller:
Report prepared by Anne Montgomery, September 2001. This special report originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA). Notes 1. A. Shepherd, "The Rich Poor Gap Grows," ABC News, August 1, 1999, ABC News Internet Ventures, Online 2. Jorge Ramirez Ocampo, "The Colombian Apertura: An assessment," Colombia: The Politics of Reforming the State, Ed. Eduardo Posada-Carbo (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), p. 193 4. Garry M. Leech, "Colombians Protest IMF- Imposed Austerity Measures," Colombia Report, August 6, 2000, The Information Network of the Americas, Online 5. Cited in Alberto Yepes P., "Colombia. Who Benefits from Adjustment, War, and the Free Market?" Social Watch, 2001, Third World Institute, Online 6. Cited in Alberto Yepes P., "Colombia. Who Benefits from Adjustment, War, and the Free Market?" Social Watch, 2001, Third World Institute, Online 7. Joseph Stiglitz, "The Failure of the Fund: Rethinking the IMF Response," Harvard International Review, Summer 2001, p. 16 8. Cited in Alberto Yepes P., "Colombia. Who Benefits from Adjustment, War, and the Free Market?" Social Watch, 2001, Third World Institute, Online 9. Scott Wilson, "Colombia Right's 'Cleaning' Campaign," Washington Post Foreign Service, April 17, 2001, The Washington Post Company, Online 10. C. Peter Rydell and Susan S. Everingham, "Controlling Cocaine: Supply Versus Demand Programs," RAND, 1994, The RAND Corporation, Online 11. William M. LeoGrande and Kenneth Sharpe, "A Plan, But No Clear Objective. General Powell to Secretary Powell: We Need to Talk Colombia", Washington Post, April 1, 2001, The Washington Post Company, Online 12. Colombian Project, "Testimony of Lawrence P. Meriage before the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources," Center for International Policy, February 15, 2000, Online 13. Liam Craig-Best and Rowan Shingler, "Fumigation: An Attack on the Ecology and People of Colombia," Spectrazine, June 7, 2001, Online 14. Liam Craig-Best, interview with the author, August 23, 2001 15. Jewish Virtual Library, "Martin Neimoeller: The Failure to Speak Up Against the Nazis," 2001, The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, Online Report prepared by Anne Montgomery, September 2001. This special report originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).
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