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Corporate Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road
Standing at the end of Avenida Madero (Madero Avenue) on the last day of January 2008, a stone throw from the Zócalo or City Center of Mexico City, I am swept along in a sea of thousands of farmers and laborers, carrying signs and banners. Streaming from the historic statue of the Angel of Independence, symbolically setting fire to a decrepit tractor, one hundred and fifty thousand small farmers, teachers, workers, and neighborhood activists are marching to repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and end the illegal "dumping" by Cargill, ADM, and Monsanto of billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidized U.S. agricultural crops--beans, rice, sugar, powdered milk, soybeans, and genetically engineered corn--onto the Mexican market.
NAFTA, pushed through in Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. in 1994 over the opposition of the majority of North Americans, is literally driving Mexico's thirty million small farmers and villagers off the land and into the slums of Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Tijuana, Juarez, and other cities; or else, following the path of twelve million others before them, across the increasingly dangerous border into the United States to find work. Rural villages in Mexico have become literal economic ghost towns of women, children, and the elderly. In some municipalities, 80-90% of the men and boys are gone, increasingly joined by the young women.
A dark-skinned peasant woman, wearing her kitchen apron, approaches me. I stand out in the crowd, an obvious gringo with my Code Pink anti-war T-shirt and my Organic Consumers Association baseball cap. The farm woman patiently explains to me how NAFTA has broken up her family. Her two sons and her daughter, like millions of other jovenes (young people), she explains, desperate for a living wage, did not want to leave their community or abandon their families, but they had no choice. And now, with the militarized border, so-called illegal aliens, like her children, can no longer take the risk of coming back home to visit. Her sons and daughter, like most other immigrants, send back remesas (money) to help support their families. This twenty-four billion dollar annual lifeline is the only thing standing between Mexico¹s rural population and utter poverty.
Moving up behind the farmers, flanked by banners protesting the imminent sell-off of Mexico's publicly owned electricity and oil industries, union workers and students fill the massive square in front of the National Palace. Mexican workers, whose minimum wage is 1/12 that of the U.S., are already suffering from high prices for electricity and gasoline. But once U.S. and European corporations take over the petroleum and electricity sectors, prices will inevitably skyrocket.
Passionate speakers from the podium call for a repeal of NAFTA and the restoration of food and energy sovereignty, but everyone knows that Big Business and Agribusiness call the shots in Mexico City, Ottawa, and Washington. Short of a miracle, rural and urban poverty will increase, as will the power and obscene wealth of the industrial agriculture, oil, and utilities multinationals. In July 2006 Mexicans launched an impressive though ultimately abortive ballot box revolution, turning out in droves for the anti-NAFTA presidential candidate, Manuel López Obrador, from the left-of-center PRD (Party of Democratic Revolution). Although Obrador won the popular vote, according to reliable exit polls and election experts, in a U.S.-style electronic vote theft, the elections were stolen, and Felipe Calderón, a pro-NAFTA corporatist was installed as President. As a Mexican activist friend reminds me today, we are at the end of the road for polite protest. Nothing short of a second Mexican (and American) revolution will save us.
Corporate globalization, savagely embodied by NAFTA, is not just a threat to Mexican farmers and rural villagers. The economic, health, and social damage created by industrial agriculture, corporate globalization, and the patenting and gene-splicing of transgenic plants and animals, are inexorably leading to universal "bioserfdom" for farmers, deteriorating health for consumers, a destabilized climate (energy intensive industrial agriculture and long-distance food transportation and processing account, directly or indirectly, for 40% of all climate-disrupting greenhouse gases), tropical deforestation, and a rapid depletion of oil supplies. Lest we forget, forty percent of the world's population are still small farmers and rural villagers. If we allow corporate agribusiness and so-called "free traders" to continue to drive these last two billion peasants from the land, replacing them with chemical and energy-intensive, climate disrupting industrial farms, cattle ranches, and agrofuels plantations, we are doomed.
Fortunately, practical solutions are at hand, although implementing these obvious alternatives will require nothing short of a global grassroots rising. The simple solution to all this is to scrap NAFTA, make organic and sustainable farming once more the dominant practice in agriculture (as it has been for most of the last 10,000 years), help the globe's two billion farmers stay on the land, make healthy organic foods and lifestyles the norm, and restructure global agriculture and commerce so that sustainable local and regional production for local and regional markets and Fair Trade become the norm, not just the alternative. And of course as we begin this great turning away from corporate control, we will also begin to be able to address and solve the global energy crisis (at the root of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) as well as the global climate crisis, through conservation, economic re-localization, and drastic greenhouse gas reduction in the agriculture, transportation, and utilities sectors. Unfortunately, none of the "major contenders" for the White House are offering any real alternatives, other than rhetoric, to address the current Crisis. Our job is daunting, but standing here at the end of the road, it appears we have no choice.
Ronnie Cummins is the Organic Consumers Association's National Director.
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37 Comments so far
Show AllThe solution may seem "simple." Realisticly given peak oil and climate chaos a total paradigm shift is required to arrive at the author's "simple" goals, and as he notes, "we are at the end of the road for polite protest."
The vision for the present and future is under construction and it defies the vision of the elites. It will grow out of necessity and those who adopt it's lifeways will learn to flourish in ways that enhance a more elegant human existance.
I've been saying that NAFTA was a disaster BEFORE they pulled it on us, and I've seen nothing but problems because of it ever since. GATT and CAFTA are just two more examples of the ultra rich screwing the rest of us in their unregulated run to extreme wealth.
If it takes a full blown revolution to get rid of the excesses of the ultra rich, then I say bring it on. There are very few of them, and billions of us. Thomas Jefferson said that it should happen every couple of generations, and we are LONG overdue. This demand for far more than you can EVER use or spend is a sickness, and we have let these sick people get what they want at the expense of the rest of us for FAR too long.
And for those who still think that being a republican is a good thing to do, then let's have a bit of a reality check here. When Reagan came into office, business paid about 35% of all taxes in this country, now they pay about 8%. Who do you think makes up that shortfall? It isn't the ultra rich, who pay 18% on their income while you and I pay 35%. If you lost a job then, there was at least a good chance that you could find another one. We actually HAD a retail manufacturing sector then, and made the best products in the world, which is why everyone else followed and stole our ideas. We had a 24% tarriff on average of products coming into this country, now it's about 2%, while everyone else has at least a 24% tarriff on what goods we still do export. Add that to the $10 TRILLION debt they have saddled us with, and I DARE you to tell me that things are better now than they were 27 years ago.
For those of you who grew up under this Alzheimer's economics system, this really is a case where the old days WERE better than the modern times. And it's ALL due to the republican class war started by Reagan and his ultra rich buddies. Vote republican and you are voting against YOUR own self interests and for more of this nonsense.
These are thought crimes. Congress has authorized the Commission to observe our trend toward radicalization, and make recommendations. Anti-globalists are officially listed as potential terrorists by the vast majority of our elected representatives.
Arbeit Macht Frei
Thank GOD or whatever you chose to call it... for the courage of activists in Mexico.
Let them be OUR role models.
Thank you for this article.
The dire world predicted in the original version of "Rollerball" (a corporate state with feudal class divisions) has been aided immensely by NAFTA & GATT. In this future nightmare, any deviation from the company line is punishable according to the whims of the Board of Directors.
"we are at the end of the road for polite protest"
we have been there a long time already...the end of the road is a dead end...
the coperate cancerists are going, but they are taking the planet down with them
I don't understand the heavy Latin support for Clinton - an aider and abetter of NAFTA.
Mr. Cummins is right, we have no choice but to face down the corporations. This is a great article, the last paragraph in particular illustrates the connections between land, food, water security/independence and the more general well-being of the biosphere and civilizations, and the fact that none of the corporate puppets in Washington including "Dearest O'Bama" are going to help.
And one of the great ironies in NAFTA is that the quality of the food traditionally grown by Mexican farmers far surpasses the quality of the junk food being dumped by US multinationals. They are destroying not only the livelihoods of Mexicans but also their health. And they've been destroying the health of Americans for a generation. What do they deserve in return?
"I don't understand the heavy Latin support for Clinton - an aider and abetter of NAFTA."
The aiders and abetters of Clinton are here, the recipients of the negative effects of NAFTA are there.
See the difference?
It's instructive to remember that Governor Bill Richardson rammed NAFTA through the House as majority co-whip in 1993. Neither David Bonior nor Richard Gephardt would touch it. Big Bill went on to reap his rewards from Clinton - Ambassador to the UN and head of DOE, where he rammed Enron down the gullet of many third world countries, and he's seen as a liberal democrat. Wonder what Obama really thinks about NAFTA as he's likely to be the one doing the deciding on its future. Let's hope we can turn this corporate destroyer around before it kills us all..
Ronnie Cummins is right about "standing at the end of the road."
But the inevitable solution may be hundreds of years in the future - after the corporate cancer crashes.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth" .. after the predatory cretins have trashed it in their attempt to be the only survivors in their concrete & plastic life boat.
That's what the Global Corporatists are attempting - a global gaited community. But inevitably they lack the resources and it will self-destruct.
Then the few who have survived by living at the fringes of so-called "civilization" can begin a sane local & regional organic agricultural existence - the life we humans are healthiest living.
Some of us have begun already.
I am unsure how many of you actually read the article prior to starting your wholly predictable and repetitious anti-NAFTA rant, but the big thing plaguing the peons is the fact that the food flowing over their border is artificially cheap. Subsidized through our incredibly stupid agriculture programs. We are transferring wealth from the middle-class to multi-millionaire farmers and agribusinesses so that Mexicans farmers can starve.
Being anti-trade is just dumb. It is like being anti-breathing. Trade is a normal state of human affairs unless you want to go back to the stone-age. But this administration threw the baby out with the bath-water. They have consistenty refused to manage trade and bring to heel renegade, tax-evading coporations. We are simply seeing the worst excesses of a corporate-owned executive. This lousy SOB will go down in history as the worst president ever!!
The Empires Choke
Nero played the fiddle while old Rome burned
Hitler skulked in his bunker as the third Reich ground down
The monarchy faded, when Ghandi marched to the sea.
Scrub choked on a pretzel when he heard about the debt
But he went on spending like a Reagan on a bender
He trashed the treaties bent the rules
And went to war based on a lie.
The trillion barrel oil patch quickly drained the pie
And the greenback came a crashing
In the second term Scrub stole.
Scrub cleared the brush in Crawford
And learned to ride a red horse
As the greenback came a crashing,
Nero played the fiddle while old Rome burned down
Hitler skulked in his bunker as the third Reich was trashed
Ghandi marched to the sea, and the monarchy lost it's ruler role.
A red horse raised the dust in Crawford as the greenback came a crashing.
The depression looked like a cradle river walk, when the greenback came a crashing.
And Dubaya rode his red horse dubbed Josiah in the Texas dust,
as false profit based on greenbacks made even Enron plunder seem like chumpy change.
(chimpy)
Nero played the fiddle while old Rome burned down
to the sea, Ghandi marched as the island empire washed up.
Hitler skulked in his bunker as the third Reich was trashed
A red horse raised the dust in Crawford
As the mighty greenback crashed
kendpotter,
Don't break your nose throwing it in the air.
Many of us are aware of what NAFTA has done and it has nothing to do with being anti-trade. This is a red herring that has been introduced ever since Bill finished what George I started.
For your edification:
"This report details how this campaign played out in the labor markets of all three nations. It is, of course, not the full and complete measure of the impact of NAFTA. But it is arguably the most important one, because the agreement was sold to the people of each nation on the promise that it would bring large net benefits in better jobs and faster growth. Indeed, supporters claimed the gains would be so large as to more than compensate for the erosion of the average workers' bargaining power and the weakening of citizens' rights to use government to protect themselves against the insecurities of unregulated markets.
"Twelve years later, it is clear that the costs to workers outweighed the benefits in all three nations. The process differed from country to country, and given the greater size and wealth of the United States, the impact there has not been as great as it was in Mexico and Canada. But the overall pattern was similar. In each nation, workers' share of the gains from rising productivity fell and the proportion of income and wealth going to those at the very top of the economic pyramid grew.
"Americans were promised that NAFTA would generate large numbers of net new good jobs. Instead, over a million jobs that would otherwise have been created were lost, and wages were pressured downward for a large number of workers with less than a college education."
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp173
"NAFTA was a radical experiment - never before had a merger of three nations with such radically different levels of development been attempted. Plus, until NAFTA, "trade" agreements only dealt with cutting tariffs and lifting quotas to set the terms of trade in goods between countries. But NAFTA contained 900 pages of one-size-fits-all rules to which each nation was required to conform all of its domestic laws - regardless of whether voters and their democratically-elected representatives had previously rejected the very same policies in Congress, state legislatures or city councils.
"NAFTA requires limits on the safety and inspection of meat sold in our grocery stores; new patent rules that raised medicine prices; constraints on your local government's ability to zone against sprawl or toxic industries; and elimination of preferences for spending your tax dollars on U.S.-made products or locally-grown food. In fact, calling NAFTA a "trade" agreement is misleading, NAFTA is really an investment agreement. Its core provisions grant foreign investors a remarkable set of new rights and privileges that promote relocation abroad of factories and jobs and the privatization and deregulation of essential services, such as water, energy and health care."
http://www.citizen.org/trade/nafta/
In short, NAFTA was created to fatten the wallets of the people on top, not for the benefit of the little farmers and working class peoples in any of the three countries that were sold down the river.
And the Clintons made it happen!!!!
And the Hispanics bloc supports Billary over Obama 70-30???
iammyself
"kendpotter,
Don't break your nose throwing it in the air.
Many of us are aware of what NAFTA has done and it has nothing to do with being anti-trade. This is a red herring that has been introduced ever since Bill finished what George I started."
I am perfectly well aware of the ramifications of NAFTA.
I again state for the more obtuse amongst us, that the important point of the article was not NAFTA, but the export of subsidized corn from our bloated agribusinesses. As is typical of the anti-NAFTA crowd, they missed the point entirely, in their rush to bleat and repeat (ad infinitum, ad nauseum) their same, old, tired, arguments.
Couldn't you even bother to read the part where I state, "They have consistenty refused to manage trade...". What? Did you think I meant to manage trade so we and the average Mexican would be worse off?
Think before you bleat.
The fat cats want to get fat. They figure their wealth is good for the nation. They give people jobs. If NAFTA makes the wealthy wealthier what"s wrong with that? Just tax them. See? NAFTA isn't the problem, the attitude to taxing is. Canada is part of NAFTA and doesn't have a great disparity of incomes like Mexico and the US. Don't you see why? Different attitude by the population and, along with them, the elites, who are also part of the population. Sure its bad in Canada, but it isn't obscene like in the US and Mexico.
In Quebec, more than 50% of people filing pay no taxes. How can you get then people to vote for lowering taxes, or run on a platform to do so? You can't, so taxes never go down. In the US the people are offered money every election in the form of reduced taxes. The result is a nation nearing bankruptcy, even while it spends each year on the military an amount of money that would transform the earth if applied to solve its problems. Instead, it is used for war and the US is hated. We could have helped the world, but decided to abuse it instead.
"Our job is daunting, but standing here at the end of the road, it appears we have no choice."
Very true. Strangely enough, Corporate control, thru Corporate Media, with Corporate growth simply isn't a possible future. Not in view of the protest Nature is offering in the form of climate-extreming.
When all the major contradictions in our human path are reconciled, de-corporatization will have to happen. Elite control by a ruling class is increasingly unsustainable, no matter how clever. The input into global society by every individual is too precious for any of people's faculties of discernment to be blunted into exploitability as now.
Knowledge and understanding of the Big Global Picture - with a consensus-model of operation - will have to be shared by as many as possible for global society to function, all the way down to the local and individual level. Those who coordinate will have to be the meekest of all, in order to succeed sufficiently well in transforming the info and signals they receive from all the coordinated people. As different from most current «leaders». Those who don't participate in that budding consensus-model probably won't be able to survive.
The elite will delete itself.
An elite ruling class isn't sustainable in a global society flexible enough to live with the unpredictability in the changing climate we've made. Simple as that: no choice but cooperation on equal terms. No more acceptance of artificial delusions being spread. Those delusions are killing the «host» ever more quickly now. No choice but reasonable fairness among all.
At least not for US, on the grand issues. Nature will still be making her living choices, and they will remain ultimately inscrutable to us, no matter how clever insights we externalize between us, except for the insight that we result from those choices made by the living Biosphere – Gaia, if you will.
We will have to be living in the understanding that no matter what we come from or how we name and describe that, we do not come from ourselves nor from our descriptionsof the world. That's a peacefully humbling and relaxing thought.
Love,
Share &
Dance
Yes please repeal NAFTA and also the FTA remember it? Kill them both. We traded just fine before and will be able to do so again. We do not need any set of Uberrules that exempt the oligarchs and restrict the rest of us.
"I again state for the more obtuse amongst us, that the important point of the article was not NAFTA, but the export of subsidized corn from our bloated agribusinesses."
Important for you, but for the writer of the article and apparently the rest of us, corporate globalization greased by such self-serving constructs as NAFTA, is the important part of the article.
But, hold on to your corn subsidies theory. I'm sure it will come in handy when it's pertinent.
I wish to respond to kendpotter (--since I don't agree with him, I am "bleating." Why can't people have a conversation without all this sneering and personal attacks?)
He says trade is good--we're just all getting screwed because it isn't properly managed. And he implies that everything was fine until the Cheney administration--but anyone over 25 or so knows the damage started sooner, with the start of NAFTA. We who protested the WTO in Seattle were against CORPORATE globalization, not necessarily against all trade.
Nonetheless, I want to point out that we really need to sharply reduce international trade, for environmental reasons. It's rediculous to be using some of the last fossil fuels, at the cost of changing the climate, to ship potatoes from Country A to Country B while simultaneously shipping them from Country B to Country A. Yes, we need to reduce population and research sequestration and step up efforts toward conservation and efficiency, but the main thing is, we simply have to cut down on burning fossil fuels. Drastically. We need to find better ways to work than commuting tens of miles on a daily basis. And we need to relocalize the economy, return to regional collective sufficiency. Trade should be for a few items that can't be produced in Country A.
Some good points, mwildfire.
Here in Maine, we cut trees, then ship them off to Canada to be sawn, then they're shipped back to Maine to have products made from the wood from our trees. This practice has decimated our mills. Where is the sense in that when we could get more productivity right here, then export our goods?
Of course, environmental reasons are just as important, and keeping things within the local economy as much as possible also serve the environmental issue.
Trade is a necessity. Trade is good. But globalized/corporate "free" trade has been an unmitigated disaster for this planet.
It seems to me that the NAFTA problem is very similar to the health insurance problem: The best and simplest answer to NAFTA is to scrap it, and the best and simplest answer to health insurance is to scrap it, but since there's too much money at stake, neither will be scrapped.
Sure, making regulations that control the prices of the corn that's flooding Mexico and putting small farmers there out of business will be better than nothing, but it won't be as good as getting rid of NAFTA entirely.
And, sure, making health insurance more affordable is better than nothing, but it's not as good as Single-Payer Medicare for all.
As proof of this, Dennis Kucinich wanted to both get rid of NAFTA and to create Single-Payer Medicare for all, and look what happened to him. If there's one thing that's for sure, if a candidate is made invisible by the Big Corporations, we know damn well his or her ideas are the best for us, for We, the People.
Trade is good, yes, but Fair Trade is an oxymoron.
Globilization and comsumerism are the future! hurry up extinction
I'm not expert on globalization, but when the guy who used to work for Electrolux Freezers can't afford a garage door opener because his job went to China, and the guy who worked for Genie Openers can't afford a freezer because Genie went to China, and multiply that thousands of times. Then add in the guys building this stuff in China can't afford or don't have much use for either... Its eventually a disaster for the stockholders of all these companies who played follow the leader to China when this nonsense comes to a screeching halt.
My company is fortunate to still ship truckloads of fasteners to American or EU owned factories in Mexico (they used to go to places like Indiana Nebraska, New York and Wisconsin), but the sucking sound is coming from China now.
Its interesting to learn how the Mexicans are also taking a beating from this corporate copy cat race to the bottom. Most of it is just waste to derive a few bucks out of cheap labor or subsidies.
Want to see a real trade shutdown? Check this out. Trade embargos on the US. Bet you never thought this would be considered.
http://www.worldreports.org/news/120_updated_embargo_
sanctions_took_effect_noon_est?sent=1
Like Cheney said...
"money does'nt matter" (refering to the deficit)
They really don't care if it all falls apart, as long as they legally own most of the pie on paper.
They can let all the "little people" (Leona Helmsly) freeze, starve and kill each other as they wait it out in bunkers, then they can create an economy of their own devise.... barter, a new form of money, electronic money only etc.
really, they don't need us or money, they only need some Hispanic slaves for the plantation and a few young boys or girls to rape at will.
Ronnie Cummins, Nice Article, Thank You.
I've wondered if I would live to see a revolution in Mexico, I hope so.
The abject poverty on one end, massive wealth concentrating on the other, and the population, growing, growing... growing......growing...tick, tick, tick...a bomb reaching critical mass.
I want to emphasize Lizard's point:
The USA 'is a nation nearing bankruptcy, even while it spends each year on the military an amount of money that would transform the earth if applied to solve its problems. Instead, it is used for war and the US is hated. We could have helped the world, but decided to abuse it instead.'
Trade is inevitable. If you don't believe so, then just examine how successful the Federal effort had been to stamp out the trade in illicit drugs. The only problem is the people in control are managing our trade to the benefit of the few rather than the many. Trade with Mexico is not a bad thing per se. It is natural to trade with your neighbor. Where the hell else would we get Tequila from? It becomes a crime when we destroy their agricultural economy because we sell them artificially cheap foodstuffs (subsidized by your and my tax dollars). We are always accusing other nations, particularly China, of "dumping". That is exactly what we are doing to the Mexicans and we are devestating their rural communities in the process.
That is what this story is all about.
Market Theory from that fella named Adam Smith (From D. Korten's "The Post-Corporate World", pages 38-39):
1. Buyers and Sellers must be too small to influence the market price.
2. Complete information must be available to all participants and there can be no trade secrets.
3. Sellers must bear the FULL cost of the products they sell and pass them on in the sale price.
4. Investment capital must remain within national borders and trade between countries must be BALANCED.
5. Savings must be invested in the creation of productive capital.
We ain't even close now (by a longshot), but this might be worth striving for assuming the end of the road is not a dead end.
Peace,
Ken
curmudgeon99 - informed Latinos do not support Billary, and are more and more opening the eyeballs.
Kendputter: "I am unsure how many of you actually read the article prior to starting your wholly predictable and repetitious anti-NAFTA rant, but the big thing plaguing the peons is the fact that the food flowing over their border is artificially cheap. Subsidized through our incredibly stupid agriculture programs. We are transferring wealth from the middle-class to multi-millionaire farmers and agribusinesses so that Mexicans farmers can starve."
But you only state half the equation. The other half is that the far-right PAN party to which Calderon, the President of Mexico belongs, barely subsidizes Mexican farmers, if at all. The ones racking in the pesos are the importers (Mexican supermarkets and big business) of our subsidized farm products. In other words, we don't honor NAFTA which forbids such subsidies because the politicians are controlled by ADM, Monsanto, etc. In effect, we have created the spike in undocumented immigration. People need to survive. Get the picture?
Jesus Ochoa,
I am not in favor of NAFTA . I am in favor of trade and tired of the same-old, same-old from the anti-NAFTA crowd lumping all trade into the bin marked "bad". PS, you could get my name right - I would consider that friendly.
At least you get the point. We are captives of thieving agribusinesses aided and abbetted by the worst anti-Robin Hood (steals from the poor/middle class to give to the wealthy) of all time - George Bush.
I don't know a whole lot about Mexican politics, but I have to wonder how screwed up a government has to be to so thoroughly squander a nations resources? From what I have seen and the people I have met, Mexicans are hard-working, family-oriented, and eager to succeed. How can an oil exporting country, with an eager work-force, an abundance of natural resouces, so consistently fail to achieve a decent standard of living for their people?
Hopefully we will get another Teddy Roosevelt to bust the monopolies
John McCain plans to impose, if elected, this Corporate Globalization over the planet through the creation in place of the United Nations of a so-called "League of 'Democracies'" with the outrageous and sinister rethoric of confronting issues of 'conflict resolution', 'disease treatment and prevention', 'environmental crises', and specially 'access to 'free' markets' with regimes that support American style 'free' trade.
No to be deterred with the total legal defeat of these polices of 'free' trade in the international arena in recent years Washington follows in the line of craking the unity of Latin America through the classical corruption of local elites. McCain: "Let's start by ratifying the trade agreements with Panama, Peru, and Colombia that are already completed, and pushing forward the Free Trade Area of the Americas."
Not only this corporate divisionary tactic is wreaking havoc between countries but it is desmembering them inside too. Local minority elites will do anything to receive benefits of the FTAA against any other kind of regional agreements. In the case of Bolivia for example these elites supported both openly and under cover by Washington are decided to fragment that country for their interests (plan long ago conceived by the neocons and available online): in recent days six separatists righ wing governors sent a letter to Washington in which open the possibility of negociating 'free' trade agreements individually with corporate USA and in total defiance of democratic authority sustained by the overwhelmingly majority of the people that decided for (not corporate USA) regional agreements. The meanness of these interests is reflected in the fact that these same governors cynically oppose the decree on use of the recently obtained benefits on natural resources for paying for the minimal subsistence of the eldery.
The corporate elites of the Empire and their sycophants are grabbing all over around desperately before the expected SuperBig Crash. They expect that in that way they may escape, only may, their undone.
A dangerous time indeed.
NAFTA, WTO, IMF, WB, FTA, FTAA...call it whatever you wish. It is all the same: First World nations plundering Third World nations for the sole benefit of First World thieves.