By Atilio Boron on November 6, 2021 from Buenos Aires
Protest against the FTAA at the 2005 IV Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata
On a day like today, but in 2005, the IV Summit of the Americas held in Mar del Plata rejected the U.S. project to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas, the infamous FTAA. With good reason, rivers of ink have been written to extol this enormous achievement of the peoples of our America. Had that initiative prospered, the region would have remained firmly subjected to U.S. domination, institutionalizing and legalizing the dependence that the countries of the area were in fact suffering from. The FTAA was by far the most important geopolitical and economic project that Washington had conceived for the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in the context of the euphoria unleashed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fantasies of the “new American century”. Despite the fact that the previously agreed agenda did not contemplate discussing the FTAA proposal, nevertheless the United States -with the help of its lieutenant, Canada- tried to impose the issue and achieve a positive vote at the Summit, which would have opened wide the doors to the imperialist project. Nevertheless, in his opening speech Néstor Kirchner (despite his difficult position as host of the Summit) spoke out against the U.S. attempt to incorporate the FTAA into the deliberations. Canada’s unworthy stance was seconded by a number of conservative Latin American governments: Mexico (then presided over by Vicente Fox); Panama (presided over by Martin Torrijos); and by Chile’s President Ricardo Lagos. But the subsequent interventions of Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, Tabaré Vázquez and, above all, of Hugo Chávez, definitively liquidated that project and in the Final Declaration it was clear that there was no agreement on the issue and that, therefore, it was postponed indefinitely. It was, in diplomatic terms, the death certificate of the FTAA.
As George W. Bush Jr.’s Secretary of State, Colin Powell, put it, the objective of the treaty was nothing less than “to guarantee U.S. companies control of a territory stretching from the Arctic to Antarctica and unimpeded access to our products, services, technologies and capital throughout the hemisphere without any kind of obstacle. A blatant economic annexation that, as José Martí stressed on numerous occasions, would inexorably end in political subjugation. In his own words, “he who says economic union, says political union. The people who buy, command. The people who sell, serve. The people who want to die sell to one people, and the people who want to save themselves to more than one. … The people who want to be free, be free in business.”
The approval of the FTAA would have legalized the colonial plunder vehiculated in the 1990s by the policies of the Washington Consensus. That is why the drafts of the project had been discussed among “experts” and outside any kind of public scrutiny and/or control. The reason is obvious: the real objectives of the FTAA were unmentionable, as is clear from Powell’s words. That is why the spokesmen of the right, who yesterday as today stunned us with their squawks in favor of liberal democracy, accountability, transparency in the management of public affairs and the “empowerment” of civil society, shelved all those principles when they tried to impose the FTAA or, before that, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the midst of the utmost secrecy. Today they act in the same way by accepting that a monstrous debt such as the one contracted by the government of Mauricio Macri, outside any public or parliamentary discussion, should be paid without a whimper, disregarding its insurmountable illegitimacy and illegality of origin. Disqualifying vices that affect both the IMF -which for political reasons granted an uncollectible loan to facilitate Macri’s re-election- and the government that irresponsibly indebted the country.
It is appropriate to recall the Mar del Plata heroic deed and to draw lessons from it in order to successfully face the challenges that Argentina is facing today. The firm opposition to the U.S. project inside the deliberation room was nourished by the extraordinary popular mobilization that took place in that city, as a result of the effectiveness of the long continental campaign “No to the FTAA”. In sum: it was possible to say a resounding no to the empire because the firmness of the convictions of the handful of popular leaders gathered there (plus Fidel, who from afar was the great strategist of that battle while Chávez served as his field marshal) amalgamated with the political energy that sprang from the protagonism of the multitudes that, from the streets, accompanied the whole process. This symbiosis between leaders and masses was decisive yesterday and is even more so today. And without it, any pretension of changing the world becomes a wretched illusion.
Source: Atilio Boron’s blog, translation Resumen Latinoamericano