Judgement on the Salvador Summit: "More Empty Words"

 
George Bush's meeting with all the Central American presidents in San Salvador last Sunday (24th March) was characterized by promises, proposals, dialogue and expectations. In short, the usual vacuous language of what passes for political discourse. In its aftermath there remain far more questions than answers, and the overall feeling was that the event was more an enormous electoral show than any serious attempt to come to grips with the enormous problems which face the Central American countries, either individually or collectively. Even the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) supposedly high on the US agenda, didn't even make it to the promise stage, as Central Americans learned that President Bush has yet to convince the US Congress of its importance, and many Democrats see it as a ruse to pull in the increasingly powerful US-Latino vote.

In an intriguing commentary on the truly "free" nature of the whole process, tiny El Salvador saw no less than 11,000 police and military specially deployed to make sure that no untoward manifestation of popular discontent should sully the meeting with the grim reality which most Central Americans endure daily. Despite their presence, there were some dozen protests and marches held, particularly in honor of the late Archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, martyred for his calls for justice on the very date of the summit meeting, some twenty two years ago, by death squads trained by the US.

A number of US solidarity groups (including the Nicaragua Network), which are organizing to oppose the CAFTA, placed a paid ad in a major Salvadoran newspaper which expressed "Our profound worry about the trade agreement which seems to be a continuation of the same policies put forward in treaties such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), negotiating behind closed doors with the goal of enriching the same multinational corporations and elite groups that have always benefited from the new neoliberal order." The organizations said that they were committed "to work in a coordinated way with ... Central American movements to guarantee the defeat of any Free Trade Agreement which doesn't in practice strengthen workers rights; which doesn't support women and all those who work in deplorable conditions; which doesn't use the power of the state to protect its citizenry and respond to their needs; which doesn't work to save the environment; and which doesn't obligate multinational corporations to be responsible to the communities where they operate their businesses."

The ad was picked up by Nicaraguan groups and placed in a paper there. Among the organizations working against the CAFTA are the Farmworkers' Association (ATC), the Sandinista Workers' Confederation (CST), the Consumers Network, and Hij@s de Ma�z, which have come together to form the Nicaraguan Movement against Free Trade (MANFA). MANFA, along with the Peoples of the Americas Convergence (COMPAS), organized four buses that traveled from Nicaragua to San Salvador for the protest marches. Back home in Managua, those who could not travel to El Salvador held an ecumenical service in honor of Archbishop Romero and a vigil in front of the United States Embassy.

The demonstrators in San Salvador had little luck in getting the assembled presidents to consider the plight of their countries' citizens stranded as "illegal aliens" in the United States. However, during a brief question and answer session on trade, Bush was cornered by pointed questions over US government subsidies to its agricultural sector. On being challenged as to why the US maintains this preferential treatment even when it is supposedly engaged in "free" trade, he responded, "Well, yes, we do have certain policies whereby the Congress has decided to support certain sectors; but we are in a very open market, and if it's not just we will respond since free trade must also be just. However, if you study the statistics, you'll see that the US is one of the most open markets."

Central America has a negative trade balance overall with the US, with more than 50% of the region's production being destined for the US market. Despite Bush's attempts to explain that access to the world's largest market would open "untold possibilities" to any partner, the Central American presidents themselves appeared less than convinced. Certainly, the waffling response about the maintenance of US farm subsidies was not what they had wanted to hear. Margarita Posada, a leader in the Forum of Civil Society, which helped organize the protest marches, was quoted in a Reuters story as saying a free trade agreement between the United States and Central America would be like a fight "between a donkey which is tied up and a lion which runs free!"

From www.nicanet.org, April 1, 2002.