[Peace-discuss] Fwd: FTAA Summit Quito, Equador - indymedia Portland report

[Alfred Kagan]

>From: Tom_Childs at douglas.bc.ca
>Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 20:32:23 -0800
>Subject: FTAA Summit Quito, Equador - indymedia Portland report
>To: mai-list at moon.bcpl.gov.bc.ca
>Sender: owner-mai-list at moon.bcpl.gov.bc.ca
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>Subscribers, 
>
>	Here is an up-beat, if not dramatic, report on the opposition to
>the FTAA Summit ocurring in Quito Equador.  This is a good read.
>
>	"Peter Rossett of Food First stood up, his arm in a rainbow
>	colored sling thanks to a protest injury. He yelled to Bob
>	Zoellick, the U.S. Trade Representative, that he should be
>	ashamed for pushing an agreement that would impoverish Latin
>	Americans, not to mention many U.S. citizens.  Zoellick stared
>	fixedly at his shoe.  It is a scene that is, I think, pretty
>	much unprecedented in the history of trade negotiations."
>				--indymedia reporter
>
>regards, Tom
>==========================
>
>article#31089  Portland Indymedia
>
>http://portland.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=31089&group=webcast
>
>1:37pm Sat Nov 2 '02 (Modified on 3:28pm Sat Nov 2'02)
>
>following is a report from the ecuador actions at the ftaa summit.
>
>
>Friends
>
>Please accept this [unedited] bulletin from the edge of consciousness.
>
>I don't know whether I feel like crying because I am so moved by what I
>saw today, because my mucous membranes are all shot to hell from too much
>tear gas, or out of sheer exhaustion. But I want to get this out while it
>is still fresh in my mind, and tomorrow will be another insane day.
>
>Tonight I watched some of the most oppressed people in this world confront
>some of the most influential. Tonight I watched a group of poor farmers,
>indigenous people, and workers speak, shout, sing truth to power. Tonight,
>I think, I think, although we will not know for a few days, I watched the
>terrain of hemispheric politics shift before my eyes. I feel so inspired,
>and so humbled.
>
>When the day started, I was 20km south of Quito with maybe 300 indigenas,
>one of two protest caravans that had crossed the country spreading the
>word about the protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit
>in Quito. As we crowded into buses to head north, I called the other
>caravan, who reported that they had 80 people. And this is how it ends, I
>thought. 4 months of work, promising reporters, funders, countless
>activists in North America that thousands of people would come to disrupt
>the FTAA ministerial meeting. And we were going to end up with 500 people
>rallying in a park. But soon after we got down off the buses and began a
>15km trek to Quito, the number of people seemed to mysteriously increase,
>as buses from the South caught up with us and disgorged fresh groups of
>protesters.
>
>The procession was a riot of color, filled with red and blue ponchos and
>hundreds of rainbow flags (the symbol of the Andean indigenous and
>campesino movements). People lined the street to watch as it passed by.
>One shopkeeper explained to me that the indigenous people were like
>burros, dragging along the rest of the country, who were also opposed to
>the FTAA because it would devastate the Ecuadorian economy, but who let
>the indigenous movement carry the torch for their opposition. Old women
>chanted ceaselessly for four hours, No queremos, y no nos da la gana, ser
>una colonia, norteamericana, (We dont want, and it doesn't do us any good,
>to be a North American colony). One group of Bolivians, led by Evo
>Morales, the coca-grower who almost became president there, marched with
>coca leaves taped to their foreheads.
>
>When we finally reached our destination in Quito, we rounded the corner
>and found not 80 but somewhere between 2 and 6,000 people waiting. As the
>two groups approached each other, people on each side were visibly
>stirred, and some began to run. At this point, I realized that after 4
>months of frantic organizing, the mobilization was a reality, that
>whatever happened we had already won, that thousands of campesinos and
>indigenas had come to Quito to unequivocally reject U.S.-style free trade.
>And I simply began to bawl.
>
>Our group didnt even pause, but continued straight toward the Marriott
>Hotel, where the 34 trade ministers from North and South America were
>arriving to negotiate a treaty that promises to wipe out small farmers, to
>hand corporations a sweeping new set of tools to evade environmental,
>consumer and labor laws, to force the privatization of water, health care,
>education, culture, and biodiversity. In other words, a really crappy
>treaty.
>
>As we headed north we were joined by large groups of campesinos, students,
>trade unionists, and international activists who had already been fighting
>running battles with the police, who were attempting to turn everyone back
>several kilometers from the Summit.
>
>The march was led by a line of campesino and indigenous leaders
>(dirigentes), walking arm-in-arm, preceded by a Shaman conducting rites to
>improve the success of our efforts. Soon we were stopped by several
>hundred riot police. The dirigentes asked to send a elegation of civil
>society groups in to the summit to present a giant letter made up of the
>proposals and demands of thousands of people who had joined the caravans
>along their route. They were soundly refused. So the dirigentes
>deliberated and decided to head west toward the Volcan Pichincha. As we
>rounded the corner we saw a thousand or more people ahead of us. More
>groups drifted in from the sides, and soon la Avenida Colon, one of Quitos
>widest streets, was packed for perhaps 8 or 10 blocks, with more people
>out of sight. There must have been between 8 and 15,000 people. There were
>giant puppets, a smattering of black-clad anarchists, a surprising number
>of international activists and lots and lots of campesinos: 75 year-old
>women, small children, 20 year olds who wanted nothing to do with
>traditional dress, mothers and teenage sons marching together. And they
>were all psyched.
>
>As the most important social movement dirigentes approached the Avenida
>Amazonas, the police opened fire with a LOT of tear gas. They shot it at
>the crowd and over the crowd, so that as people ran away, they ran into
>more gas. I walked until I couldnt see or breathe, then began to run, then
>someone grabbed my hand and led me away (Why do I never carry goggles to
>these things?) The president of the National Judicial Workers Union was
>hit with three tear gas cannisters and taken to the hospital. Several
>young kids passed out and almost asphyxiated. One woman fell on her baby,
>who was injured and taken to the hospital. A reminder that free trade can
>only proceed via brutal repression, which is now so commonplace at trade
>summits that it hardly elicits comment.
>
>And so people retreated to the south to regroup, and I retreated to the
>communications center to try to get the word out about the success of the
>mobilization, and its repression.
>
>At 6 PM, folks decided to try once more to deliver their giant letter,
>this time at the Suissotel, where the trade ministers were meeting with
>assorted CEOs and trade lobbyists at the 7th Americas Business Forum. As a
>strategy to boost legitimacy and head off disruptive protests, the
>government had already made offered to allow a couple civil society
>representatives to address the ministers. On these terms, the indigenous
>and campesino groups had refused. But tonight, 2000 people marched up to
>police barricades, where they demanded that a much larger delegation be
>allowed in to deliver the letter. Clearly hoping to avoid the kind of
>confrontations that have occurred in past uprisings here, the government
>allowed 40 people from across the hemisphere to come in and meet with the
>ministers.
>
>Hearing this was going on, I ran to the hotel, easily passing through
>several police lines because I have press credentials for the summit. In
>the lobby I simply asked Where are they? and several people pointed down.
>Once in the basement, I followed the shouting until I reached an
>auditorium where 25 or so trade ministers sat uncomfortably on stage while
>40 campesinos chanted that they had no desire to be a U.S. colony. Peter
>Rossett of Food First stood up, his arm in a rainbow colored sling thanks
>to a protest injury. He yelled to Bob Zoellick, the U.S. Trade
>Representative, that he should be ashamed for pushing an agreement that
>would impoverish Latin Americans, not to mention many U.S. citizens.
>Zoellick stared fixedly at his shoe. It was a scene that is, I think,
>pretty much unprecedented in the history of trade negotiations.
>
>Soon the civil society presentations began. A line of people fanned out in
>front of the ministers (and TV cameras) holding signs that said Si a la
>vida, No al ALCA (Yes to life, No to the FTAA). Behind the podium stood an
>indigenous representative holding a beautifully painted inca sun with
>North America and South America, and the words Si Una Integracion
>Solidaria Con Respeco a la Soberania de los Naciones (Yes to an
>integration based on solidarity, with respect for the sovereignty of
>nations).
>
>The first speakers were representatives of an international meeting of
>parliament and congress members from across the hemisphere. They condemned
>the FTAA process, and called for an alternative integration, one that
>respects the needs and particular situations of the people of each
>country.
>
>Next came several representatives of a civil society forum organized by a
>number of pro-neoliberal NGOs with close ties to the government. Their
>proposals were generally tepid, but they were for the most part drowned
>out by the crowd. (When one speaker asked that the FTAA process be opened
>up to include civil society observers, the whole crowd responded by
>chanting, Plebiscito, Plebiscito).
>
>Finally, the social movement representatives spoke. Leonidas Iza, the
>President of the CONAIE (the Ecuadorian indigenous federation), stated the
>social movements clear rejection of the FTAA and of neoliberalism in
>general. We are in desperate shape, he told the ministers. You couldnt
>possibly understand, you who were born in golden cradles and have never
>suffered (at this the ministers looked even more uncomfortable). But we
>dont have food to feed our children. Our markets are flooded with cheap
>imports. Imported milk is dumped in Ecuador for half of what it costs to
>produce it, but transnationals [mostly Nestle] sell it back to us at $1.80
>per litre. We have no way to live, and the FTAA will only make it worse.
>When we complain, the U.S. government calls us terrorists. We are not
>threatening anything, but we are hungry and tired and things have to
>change. In the wake of widening protest throughout Latin America, the
>message was not lost on anyone.
>
>Then a woman worker from Nicaragua spoke powerfully of the details of the
>FTAA, of the privatizations and poverty and social exclusion it would
>bring, particularly for women. Don't think you can simply take your
>picture with us and push forward, she told the ministers. We will stop the
>FTAA.
>
>The meeting ended and, unable to contain myself, I stood up and shouted in
>English and then in Spanish that never again could Bob Zoellick claim that
>the people of Latin America were clamoring for free trade, because today
>they had unequivocally rejected it. Then Peter Rossett chimed in that
>polls consistently showed that the majority of U.S citizens oppose free
>trade, and that the Bush administration had no right and no mandate to
>push forward with the FTAA. There were loud cheers, and the moderator
>hurriedly announced that the ministers were leaving and could we please
>sit down so they could leave. NO! screamed the civil society folks in
>unison, and they pushed out the door, leaving the ministers sitting on
>stage.
>
>And, at that moment, I felt something shift. I realized that (unless the
>media bury this entirely despite our best efforts to get the word out,
>which is always possible) the FTAA has in 24 hours gone from something
>whose praises its proponents sing, to something they have to defend. Like
>the WTO before it, the FTAA has become the treaty that has to be sold to
>an America that doesnt want it. Or so I hope. I hope I hope I hope. This
>is how it feels here. But it may be different elsewhere.
>
>If I am right, the hemispheric resistance to free trade and the FTAA has
>taken a huge step forward, even if this is but one day in a long struggle
>in which many more battles will be fought. Tonights show of force may also
>strengthen the resolve of poor countries in the negotiations that follow
>here, which will piss off the U.S. and make it harder to reach agreement.
>In any case, it was a beautiful day for some of the nations most powerful
>social movements. Not to mention a shitty day for Bob Zoellick and his
>buddies in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
>
>We marched out of the Suissotel, reached the police barricades and were
>greeted by hundreds of cheering protesters, who had been dancing to
>traditional Kichwa music while we were inside. Then the partying began,
>and it is still going 5 hours later (these folks are not lightweights when
>it comes to cane liquor). I just said goodbye to a companera from one of
>the rural provinces of the Sierra, a woman I met when I was giving
>workshops on the FTAA several months ago. I asked her what she thought of
>the days events, and she said, I am happy. Very happy. This was the first
>time I have ever done this, and I think today we achieved something
>important, something that will improve our lives. And now I can go back to
>my children.
>
>I am so proud, so proud and amazed by the incredible work people have done
>here over the last few months, so moved by their commitment to this
>struggle, so humbled by the generosity, patience, tolerance, and trust
>they have shown me. I am so honored to be part of this fast-coalescing
>hemispheric movement for a new economic and political order, one based on
>reciprocity and social justice, on true democracy and respect for human
>and natural diversity And Im so happy to be going to sleep.
>
>In solidarity,
>
>
>
>
>--
>Tom Childs - Audio/Visual Resources
>Douglas College Library
>New Westminster, B.C. Canada
>T: 604 527-5713 - library
>T: 604 524-9316 - home
>E: childst at douglas.bc.ca
>U: BCGEU Local 703
>W: http://www.globaljustice.ca
>      "There's no way to delay, that trouble comin' everyday."
>				--Frank Zappa


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu