By Tom Hayden, AlterNet
Tom Hayden reports from the WTO ministerial conference in Cancun each day. Read yesterday's report.
"We need an unbiased source to report on Cancun, boss!"
"Get me Tom Hayden!" |
CANCUN, Sept. 10 – Thousands of campesinos will march on the convention center today when the WTO officially starts its proceedings with a speech by Mexican president Vicente Fox. Anti-WTO protestors may also attempt a creative disruption of the formal ministerial event, which they say is refusing to acknowledge the increasingly harmful impact of WTO regulations on wages and the environment over the decade since the organization was launched.
| Nobody's said a word yet, so they're hollering. And they've bussed in some particularly brown-skinned fellows with Indio features so they can be Authentic™... |
At least 5,000 campesinos are camped on the grounds of Casa de la Cultura in downtown Cancun. Displaced by cheap corn imported from subsidized U.S. agribusiness, they have traveled with their families on buses from across southeast Mexico.
| "Myra! This corn is entirely too cheap! Throw it away!" |
They string their hammocks between trees, cook their meals together, and hold rallies under banners in Spanish that proclaim, "Indigenous People Are the Hope of Humanity."
| Hell, yeah! Without indigenous people, where would be be? Answer me that, hah? |
The makeshift rural village includes outdoor stalls hawking Che Guevara t-shirts and a Greenpeace truck mounted with solar electric panels.
The march will cross "Avenida Nader" accompanied by several large puppets ("without strings," they joke), but is expected to be blocked by Mexican federal and local police, in coordination with the FBI, before entering the luxurious First World where WTO delegates meet, stroll, and sunbathe in well-armed protection.
| But without any puppets... |
Today's march is a prelude to larger ones that will be launched Thursday through Saturday, the day when WTO delegates will be under maximum pressure to accept agreements further privatizing Third World economies. Thus, the protest strategy depends on demonstrating broad opposition in the streets to draft trade agreements that many Third World delegates are already reluctant to sign.
| Yep. Broad opposition in the streets — does it every time. Especially when there are lotsa puppets and Che Guevara tee-shirts on the Avenida Nader... |
On Tuesday, the protest campaign began modestly and amidst some confusion, with hundreds of people marching up to the police barricade, where they performed a Mayan ritual before returning to the campsite.
| Oh, did they cut somebody's heart out and offer it to a sun god? |
The protest was intentionally low-key to avoid mass arrests and detentions. As always, the protestors gather, study maps, construct puppets and placards, undergo civil disobedience training, and strategize at a "convergence center." The format symbolizes the coming together of the many diverse strands of the struggle, in notable opposition to a centralized hierarchy.
| "Individually, each reed is fragile, but bound together into the fasces, they cannot be broken!" |
The demands put forward by the protesters combine detailed denunciations of privatization with colorful representations of Mayan deities. A puppet of Caac, the rain god, thunders against the privatization of water. Yum Kaax, the corn goddess, opposes the dumping of cheap corn laced with GMOs. Kukulkan, the god of intellect, rebukes the theft of indigenous culture by corporate patents. Ixchel, the medicine goddess, curses the pharmaceutical manufacturers.
| Isabella, this medicine has penicillin in it. Throw me away and get me a guy with feathers in his hat to dance my ailments away!" |
The police, over-reacting to the protests, constructed numerous traffic barriers and checkpoints that tied up traffic all the way to Cancun's international airport.
| Any reaction is over-reaction, of course... |
Although the police seem to have been instructed to avoid repressive tactics, the overwhelming police presence in itself could slow or disrupt the passage of delegates to the conference.
| The Mexicops aren't beating people's heads in for no reason at all, so we'll have to pick on their very existence... |
One immediate side effect yesterday was to undercut attendance at an international panel for global justice activists sponsored by the San Francisco-based International Forum on Globalization (IFG). Rumors immediately circulated that police were preventing attendees from attending, until it was discovered that the police reaction to the morning's march several kilometers away had temporarily closed the roads. The lack of movement coordination had caused the glitch.
| So... ummm... never mind... |
The Forum featured critical analysis from several leading thinkers of the global justice movement. Walden Bello, head of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South, spoke of growing internal divisions within the WTO due to the unilateralist policies of the Bush administration.
| "Damn them unilateralists!" |
Bello said, the U.S., suffering an economic crisis brought on by over-extension, and is seeking "protectionism for the U.S. and free trade for the rest of the world." He cited the U.S. effort to use the trade process to secure protection for pharmaceutical corporations in the face of popular demand for generic medicines. In addition, Bello noted, the U.S. trade representative is telling countries that they must support American "strategic interests" if they want trade consideration.
| Sounds reasonable to me, but then, I'm an American. Lemme think real hard here... Who should we be friends with — those who oppose us at every turn? Or those whose interests are similar to ours? |
Martin Khor of Malaysia, director of the Third World Network, described the unraveling of the so-called Doha development agenda of 18 months ago, and the subsequent disillusionment of Third World countries, which now realize that the U.S. and the EU "don't want to give anything up." Twenty developing countries, including Brazil and China, recently organized to demand that U.S. agribusiness subsidies be phased out, coupled with greater support for small farmers in developing countries.
| Ummm... You mean phase out support to U.S. agribusiness and phase in support to inefficient small farmers in places like Liberia? I guess that makes sense. Not a lot of sense, but sense... |
Lori Wallach, leader of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, released findings that reveal the "devastating" results of nine years of the WTO. Her analysis concluded that: - the increased volume of trade has not resulted in higher wages for most Americans.
- import growth has eliminated almost twice as many jobs created by export growth.
| Wages from exported jobs have had a beneficial effect on the countries receiving them, on the other hand... |
- global poverty has increased (if one discounts the progress made by China with its strong state sector which WTO rules eventually will prohibit) and less-developed nations with the strongest links to global trade have higher rates of poverty;
| Like to see the figures on that one, please. Oh, and break them down by country. There might be other reasons Pakistan is getting poorer... |
- the gap between the poorest 20 percent of the world's population and the richest 20 percent is widening, with the poorest representing one percent of the world's income and the richest claiming 86 percent.
| There is, of course, only so much wealth to spread around — it's all zero-sum, so if Peoria's better off then Mogadishu is equivalently worse off... |
The Wallach and others advocate a strategy to "shrink" the WTO to a traditional trade agenda while derailing its ambition to become a world governing body for multinational corporations.
The insistence of the U.S. and the WTO on imposing a market fundamentalism on developing countries, she notes, is a purely conservative corporate agenda, not a trade strategy. A strategy of "shrinking" the WTO would increase the movement's alliances with developing countries while also lessening the WTO's usefulness to corporations.
| Oh, nice use of the "fundamentalism" tag, Tom! Yasss... It's far better to impose upon the lesser developed nations of the world a more efficient, centralized economic system, such as that epitomized by Kenneth Kaunda. Or Robert Mugabe. |
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