Ten years ago, on November 4-5, the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina, was the site of the 4th Summit of the Americas, which marked the death of the strategic project elaborated by the United States to ensure its hegemonic control of the Continent, known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

The project of the FTAA was officially announced in the first Summit of the Americas that took place in Miami (December 1994) as the consequence of the "Americas Initiative” promoted by President George Bush (father) since 1991 to renew the "Pan-Americanism" of the Monroe Doctrine, formulated to preserve the hemispheric dominion of the United States.

Although it was presented as a virtuous scheme of trade integration, the proposal clearly looked to establish a juridical framework to protect liberalization policies, openness to trade and foreign investment and the consequent deregulation of the State, according to the neoliberal norms prescribed by the so-called "Washington consensus".

"Our objective with FTAA is to guarantee North American companies the control of a territory that goes from the Arctic Pole all the way to Antarctica, free access to the whole hemisphere without difficulties or obstacles for our products, services, technology, and capital and a single market of more than 800 million people, with a total income of over 11 billion dollars", as the former US Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, candidly stated at a hearing in the Congress of his country in 2001.

As Canadian researcher, Maude Barlow [1] noted "from the beginning the big companies and their associations and lobby groups have been an integral part of the process. In the United States, a variety of business committees advise the negotiators of that country, under a system of advisory trade committees and more than 500 business representatives have security clearance and access to the negotiating documents of the FTAA. In the ministerial meeting celebrated in Toronto in November 1999, the trade ministers agreed to implement 20 “measures of trade facilitation”, in a maximum period of one year, in order to speed up customs integration".

Although it is based on the North American Free Trade Agreement – NAFTA, involving Canada, the United States and Mexico – that began on January 1, 1994, the FTAA goes much further since it introduces all the regulations of the services agreement proposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as "new dispositions in policies of competition, public sector purchases, access to markets and resolution of controversies that, together with the inclusion of services and investment, could undermine the ability of all the governments of the Americas to create and uphold laws, norms and regulations destined to protect health, security and welfare of their citizens and of the environment they share. In addition, the FTAA negotiators seem to have decided to emulate the WTO rather than NAFTA in key areas of normalization and controversy resolution, where the rules of the WTO are more rigorous... (and) once again, as with previous agreements such as NAFTA or the WTO, this free trade agreement does not include in the main text any guarantee that protects workers, human rights, social security or sanitary and environmental norms” [2].

The course of the negotiations

For the negotiations of this agreement, with the participation of 34 of the 35 countries of the continent, due to the exclusion of Cuba, are nine roundtables or governmental commissions covering the following themes: agriculture, public sector purchases, investments, free access to markets, subsidies, services, intellectual property rights, competition policy and controversy tribunals. To this we can add the support of the tripartite committee made up of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Nevertheless, the initiative initially was not to take off until the realization of the 2nd Summit of the Americas, that took place in Santiago de Chile in April of 1998, where the Committee of Commercial Negotiations (CCN) was established, made up of the vice-Ministers of trade of each country. And to reinforce this, in April of 2001 there was the 3^rd Summit in the city of Quebec, Canada, that determined that the FTAA would be formally initiated on January 1, 2005. At that time, with the exception of Hugo Chávez, the other governments bowed to the dictates of Washington.

In fact, the perspectives of this 3rd Summit were little by little diluted. The intention to polish the draft document in the ministerial meeting that took place in Quito, Ecuador, in October of 2002, failed to materialize, and later, when it was hoped to sanction the document, the negotiations broke down in the ministerial round in Miami (November 2003) where the new correlation of regional forces was evident.

To avoid collapse, the US moderated their objectives and proposed what was known as "FTAA-lite”, or “a la carte”, that among other things allowed for the countries involved in the negotiations to be free to try to reach bilateral or multilateral agreements. But finally, the FTAA was shipwrecked at the 4th Summit of the Americas, in the Argentinian seaside resort of Mar del Plata, in the face of the firm stance of Venezuela and the countries of Mercosur and the leadership shared between Hugo Chávez, Ignacio Lula de Silva and Néstor Kirchner.

The Continental Campaign

In this process, there were two fundamental factors: widespread popular mobilization, and thanks to this, the reconfiguration of the political scenario with the arrival of governments that grounded their programmes in sovereignty.

As a counterpoint to the presidential summit that took place in Chile (1998), a parallel meeting took place, the 1^st Peoples’ Summit, with the participation of a wide range of social organizations, which gave substance to the formation of the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA. ASC in Spanish). This provided a convergent space for the coordination of actions and the formulation of proposals. In order to counter the official discourse, a key document was produced: "Alternatives for the Americas" (2002).

“The powerful wanted a trade agreement to favour the interests of the big corporations. The social movements want an agreement of integration to promote the development of all our peoples. In this sense, this notebook intends to be a contribution to the divulgation of ideas, arguments and proposals to reinforce the task of those who are militant in the Continental Campaign against the FTAA”, as the ASC pointed out in the presentation of their document.

Given the dimension of the challenge, the Continental Campaign against the FTAA was built on the basis of a broad convergence of networks, social coordinating bodies and other citizen groups, including business sectors. It was soon to become the most significant initiative promoted by social movements of the region, both for its achievements and for the unprecedented character of its development and methods of coordination as a "campaign of campaigns".

This campaign was launched on February 4, 2002, in the framework of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, when the signing of the FTAA seemed inevitable. It was conceived as a process to interconnect forces and actions contrary to that project, and to propose the construction of new forms of hemispheric integration based on democracy, equality, solidarity, respect for the environment and human rights.

Among the first priorities was the establishment of national committees or platforms, the implementation of national consultations; monitoring, following and observing the negotiations; organization of campaigns on specific points contemplated in the FTAA, coordination with other campaigns (debt, militarization, etc.), strengthening communication mechanisms and dissemination. Starting from these common orientations, each country was to give form to the campaign in consonance with its local characteristics and dynamics, respecting the initiatives of the organizations and entities involved.

In this process of construction, since 2001 a space of interchange was opened in Havana with the Hemispheric Encounters of struggle against the FTAA, to advance in common reflections, with the document "Alternatives for the Americas" as the main reference point, and in the definition of commitments and agendas. From these contributions, Hugo Chávez launched the proposal of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) [3], formalized in December of 2004 through an agreement signed with Fidel Castro.

The building of the affirmatives

With the enormous and painstaking work undertaken throughout those years, through meetings, workshops, encounters, production of materials, etc., the Campaign developed a great capacity for social mobilization, which was decisive in preventing the signing of the FTAA in January 2005, as had been previously established by Washington. But it also made it possible to draw up a common guideline of proposals.

Indeed, in an assessment of the 3^rd Peoples’ Summit, the Argentine chapter underlined that this was "a space to advance in the construction of the affirmatives, beyond the NO to the FTAA, Debt, Militarization and Poverty” [4]. And they went on to say:

"Yes to the integration of the peoples and for the peoples, to an alternative to the Free Trade Agreements, to an integration built from diversity, with respect for the differences that strengthen identities and reflect the wisdom of native peoples.

“Yes to the cancellation and repudiation of the Foreign Debt that is illegitimate, unjust and unpayable. We consider ourselves the true creditors of a historic social and ecological debt. The ill-named foreign debt is still being paid off on the backs of the poorest.

“Yes to sovereignty and peace, in the face of militarization, war and repression, in rejection of impunity and US military occupation and the presence of foreign troops in the sister republic of Haiti.

“Yes to an equitable distribution of wealth. No more poor households in America, decent work and social justice as the only way to go forward in the eradication of poverty and exclusion.

In this month of celebrations of that historic moment, Havana is again the scene of a new Hemispheric Encounter (20-22 November), called by the Cuban Chapter of the Articulation of Social Movements towards ALBA, in order "to evaluate the period of these ten years and the principal areas of counter-offensive by imperialism, capital and the right-wing in the region", and at the same time, "to rethink strategies of coordination that enable us to strengthen peoples’ integration, mobilization, struggles, resistance and advocacy in regional integration processes and bodies", among other objectives.

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

Notas:

[1] Maude Barlow, El ALCA y la amenaza para los programas sociales http://www.alainet.org/es/active/1637

[2] Idem

[3]This platform of integration that today is recognized as ALBA-TCP (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America and the Peoples’ Trade Agreement) has as its axes: solidarity, complementarity, justice and cooperation. At the present time it is made up of 11 member countries.

4] “Lo que fue y lo que no fue la Cumbre de los Pueblos”, Construyendo Alternativas, IIIª Cumbre de los Pueblos de América, Autoconvocatoria NO al ALCA, Buenos Aires, 2005.

 * Article published in Spanish in ALAI’s magazine América Latina en Movimiento No. 509 (noviembre 2015), titled "A 10 años de la derrota del ALCA" (10 years since the defeat of the FTAA) - http://www.alainet.org/es/revistas/509