Constructing Coherent Hemispheric Responses at Quito

  
The Hemispheric Social Alliance and other civil society organizations are working to develop a coherent strategy for alternatives to corporate-led globalization at the "Another America is Possible" conference before the Quito Trade Ministerial. The conference is part of the strategy of protest and engagement that has characterized this organization since it was formed at the Santiago People's Summit in 1998.

The event will feature a series of workshops run by components of the HSA or its subcommittees on October 28-31. It will include 57 panels, workshops and forums, many held at Quito's Catholic University, using a format that was developed at the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre. Groups large and small, among them CLASCO, Jubilee, ORIT and many well-known environmental organizations, will host these mini-events. All will converge in a Continental Assembly on November 1. Several of the conferences and forums will highlight the work being done to perfect the framework document "Alternatives for the Americas," which the HSA has used as a basic guideline to unite the efforts of diverse civil society institutions throughout the Americas. The organizational framework and some of the characteristics of the conference are no surprise, since the Ecuadorian organizer is the local chapter of the World Social Forum. It has opened the conference to some more radicalized groups, such as the far-left Brazilian party PSTU, which got less than 1% of the vote in that country's recent presidential balloting. But the general thrust of the event demonstrates that the basic umbrella of the HSA remains intact. For more information on this conference and other Quito activities, see: http://movimientos.org/noalca/ or the HSA page, which includes a link to the Alternatives Document, http://www.asc-hsa.org/. A short summary in English can be found at: http://www.w4peace.org/mexico/Alternatives_sum.html. More information in English is available at the Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART) web page, http://www.art-us.org/. ART is the US network affiliated with the Hemispheric Social Alliance.

One of the most interesting aspects of the pre-Quito jockeying between civil society and the FTAA negotiation hierarchy is the demand for greater transparency in releasing the text of the treaty. It is assumed that shortly after the Quito Trade Ministerial the FTAA secretariat will release a new draft of the negotiated text. The original draft released after the Quebec City Summit of the Americas (July 2001) was a confusing mass of bracketed texts without any indication which government was objecting or proposing language. The HSA believes it is important for the campaign against the FTAA to demand not only the prompt publication of the draft text but also, in contrast to the existing draft text, for it to identify which government or governments support the various bracketed proposals. The Alliance for Responsible Trade has developed a letter to the chair of the Trade Negotiations Committee (Roberto Betacourt Ruales, Vice Minister of Foreign Relations of Ecuador), with copies to the trade ministers of every country in the Americas, demanding the publication and country identification. It believes that the letter should be signed by all organizations that participate in the Hemispheric Campaign Against the FTAA. The letter is currently circulating throughout the region, with a deadline for signatures of October 16. The HSA Secretariat is coordinating the signatures through its electronic address at [email protected]. This is the HQ of Brazil's Central Unica Dos Trabalhadores (CUT), an important supporter of the recent anti-FTAA plebiscite in Brazil.

Specifically, the letter request: "We urge you to publish the current draft of the FTAA text, with notes identifying the countries making or supporting each of the proposals in brackets, at the ministerial meeting in Quito at the end of this month. We also request that the TNC instruct the governments participating in the negotiations to publish their own negotiating proposals. These two steps would greatly increase the transparency of the negotiations and facilitate an informed public debate on economic integration in the Americas."

These two pre-Quito civil society developments lend hope to the idea that the need for engagement has not been lost to the majority of civil society organizations in the hemisphere. But both the proponents of the Quito conference and the sign-on letter to the ministers cite more transparency and a greater acceptance of public debate as prerequisites for their involvement. Once the smoke of tear gas clears in Quito, we will have to see if there is any new opening for these elements.