No to "Free Trade" / Free Market Plans

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The U.S. government and powerful international financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and InterAmerican Development Bank are restructuring societies around the world to serve transnational capital and powerful corporations.

The majority of global trade flows between the Asia-Pacific and U.S. region transforming Latin America into a highly sought after geoeconomic zone for the expansion of corporate-led globalization.

The multitude of free trade projects proposed for the region, such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), are not spreading “freedom” as its champions would have it. Rather, these projects are leading to direct attacks on workers, indigenous peoples, women and the environment.

We condemn and call for an end to these violent “free trade” policies standing in solidarity with our sisters and brothers throughout the Americas who are creating alternatives to the misery of free trade placing human and ecological values above corporate profit and greed.

Deeply indebted to the north, Latin American governments are forced to sell essential human services, such as health, education, and water, in a system many refer to as "Pay or Die".

This free trade model is pushed by multilateral institutions, which the U.S. dominates, like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB), and strengthened through global (World Trade Organization) and regional (FTAA, CAFTA) free trade agreements and massive industrial regional infrastructure projects (PPP).

Together these forces are pushing to create a singular Latin American free trade zone that responds to global capital and corporate needs while failing to respond to the majority of peoples’ needs. As a result people are leaving their communities and immigrating to cities and to the United States in search of economic survival, only to face repression and economic hardship there.

We must stop this cycle.

Corporate Globalization:
Many Acronyms, One Project

If the FTAA, CAFTA and the PPP have their way they will:

• Deny countries the right to protect vital local industry, selling essential services and natural resources such as health care and education, and water an electricity to Transnational Corporations.
• Displace thousands of rural and indigenous peoples with massive industrial development projects including hydroelectric dams, mining, oil drilling, commercial agriculture and forestry.
• Deny countries the right to regulate speculative investments-leaving national economies open to the wishes of a few transnational financial corporations.
• Give corporations the right to patent indigenous seeds, medicines and gene sequences, forcing communities to buy back the seeds that they own.
• Deny governments the right to reject genetically modified crops.
• Create and privatize a regional energy market controlled by transnational corporations.