 October 2002
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
A Request from Ecuador Anna Hendricks is a global justice activist curently working on anti-globalization in Ecuador. She has worked with groups across the US in the campaign to stop Plan Colombia and to close the School of the Americas. Justin Rubin is an organizer on environmental justice, global justice/corporate globalization, and labor issues who has worked in Ecuador for the last three months. All day Thursday, July 26, the streets of Ecuador's largest city, Guayaquil, played host to a symphony of sirens. As pedestrians dodged to get out of the way, motorcade after motorcade screeched from the airport to the heavily guarded Hotel Hilton Colón. By nightfall, the 12 presidents of South America had arrived for their second-ever continental gathering to discuss, among other topics, the US-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the extension of NAFTA to the rest of the hemisphere (minus Cuba). For most of South America's residents, 20 years of globalization and neoliberal policies pushed by global financial elites--including the elimination of protective tariffs and subsides, cuts in government spending on social services, privatization, and deregulation--have brought destitution and insecurity, and an increasingly difficult struggle for day-to-day survival. In response, strong social movements have sprouted up in every corner of the continent. Nowhere is this antiglobalization movement more obvious than in Ecuador, where indigenous people, youth and women's groups, campesinos, environmentalists, and trade unions have already deposed two presidents over their attempts at neoliberal reform. These groups claim that the FTAA will bring their peoples more social exclusion, more unemployment, more poverty, more debt, and the end of the minimal social gains workers have realized through struggle. Furthermore, they say FTAA will bring a greater level of militarization. They see it as the economic arm of a strategy of domination which also includes Plan Colombia, the Andean Regional Initiative, and Plan Puebla Panama. For these reasons, when faced with the prospect of the FTAA, Ecuador's powerful social movements are responding with a resounding "No!" Not surprisingly, when they learned that the 12 South American heads of state would be meeting in their back yard, they were determined to ensure that their voices be heard. CONAIE (the formidable national indigenous federation), CONFEUNASSC-CNC(speaking for over a million campesinos), CEOSL (The Ecuadorian Federation of Free Trade Unions), Acción Ecológica, la Asosiación de Migrantes Rumióahui (a migrants' rights organization) and other organizations wrote an open letter to the Presidents. In keeping with the urgency of their demands, it was a big letter, measuring almost 25 by 75 feet.
120 delegates ranging in age from 5 to 84 planned to march through the streets and peacefully deliver the letter to an official representative. But the formidable security apparatus that is now de rigueur at international summits had other ideas, and, as usual, human rights and the rule of law did not figure prominently in their plan. Before the protesters could march even one step, 20 or 30 officers rushed towards them without warning, tore the letter from the grasp of elderly women and adolescents, and crumpled it into a ball. Within perhaps a minute, the letter had been destroyed, 22 people were in the police buses, and everyone else had scattered. But groups here vow that they will not let their experience in Guayaquil stand in their way. In the upcoming months they will have the opportunity to demonstrate, yet again, that the people of Ecuador have unequivocally rejected the FTAA. On October 31, 34 foreign ministers and secretaries of state from across the Americas will converge on the capital city of Quito for the 7th ministerial meeting of the FTAA in Ecuador. Their fervent hope is to finalize the process through which the FTAA will be negotiated over the next two years. In response, Ecuador's social movements are planning to mobilize tens of thousands of campesinos, ind'genas, trade unionists, students, and many other social sectors to surround the summit with a "ring of diversity" and non-violently manifest their rejection of the FTAA. At the same time, the networks that make up the World Social Forum are planning a counter-summit to discuss alternatives to the death march that is neoliberal globalization. Organizations here have declared October 27 through November 1 to be Continental Days of Resistance Against the FTAA and view the summit in October as an opportunity to create new mechanisms of solidarity. People in the North American global justice movement have been talking for several years about the need to learn from and support the leadership of frontline communities in both the North and South. October could be an unprecedented opportunity to do just that. Ecuador's social movements are calling on their counterparts throughout the continent to take local actions in solidarity with the mobilization in Ecuador, provide resources, ensure that the media and public throughout the hemisphere are aware of the mobilization, and apply international pressure if there is serious repression in Ecuador (a likely possibility if the Guayaquil summit is any indication).
Anyone interested in helping to support the mobilization in October
or participate in solidarity efforts should contact the CONFEUNASSC
at grito@andinanet.net and alcanunca@riseup.net. If the architects
of the FTAA are able to realize their dreams, it will represent
a giant step backwards for democracy, sustainability, and the
struggle for justice in the Americas. At the same time, however,
the presence of a document that threatens so many diverse groups
across the hemisphere, in the poor countries of Latin America
and in the US and Canada, offers an unprecedented opportunity.
If the people south and north act wisely, we can use this threat
to help launch the ultimate counter-FTAA--our own project
of integration, a hemisphere-wide web of communities struggling
together to realize a totally different vision of America, one
based on principles of solidarity, reciprocity, justice, and respect
for natural and human diversity.
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