Op-Ed

The Colombian Countryside and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA): Like Mexico, a Disaster in the Making (?)

Leo B. Gorman, March 2003

Witness for Peace International Team, Mexico

If Mexico is any indicator of how free trade agreements will impact other impoverished Latin American countrysides, then Colombia – a land ripped apart by 40 years of brutal civil war – is destined for disaster if the proposed Free trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is implemented.

Nine and a half years after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994 between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, the socially unstable Mexican agricultural sector finds itself in deep crisis.  As tariffs are slashed, small farmers, who make up between 20-25% of Mexico's population, have seen cheap U.S. and Canadian corn, beans, rice, sugar, dairy and other basic products inundate the domestic market, rendering them uncompetitive.

Meanwhile, small farmers on both sides of the border have received minimal government support as large multinational agribusinesses have benefited from generous subsidies.  Consequently, Mexico's rural poverty has increased, unemployment is up, immigration is skyrocketing and communal land rights are constantly in jeopardy

Let's now move to Colombia and its profoundly fragile rural economy and social fabric.

I recently returned from a delegation to Colombia where I noticed strikingly similar rural economic disparities to those of Mexico – record low prices for products such as coffee, corn and beans while the government provides little, if any price and credit supports.

Colombia's weakened rural economy, intensified by the current global coffee crisis (a major Colombian export), has greatly contributed to the intensity of the armed conflict by pushing small farmers to join one of the illegal armed actors (left-wing guerilla groups or right wing paramilitaries) or to grow illicit crops such as coca or opium poppy.

In the midst of such civil unrest, what would the Colombian countryside look like nine and a half years after the implementation of an even more aggressive free trade agreement than NAFTA – the FTAA?

Since 1994, government trade representatives and business leaders from all over the Americas (except Cuba) have been meeting behind closed doors to negotiate the extension to the entire hemisphere of NAFTA.  For 9 years negotiators have met with the private sector but have excluded virtually all of the hemisphere's social organizations.

If signed into law, the FTAA would eventually eliminate all trade barriers, and in theory, create equal market access for all signing countries.  Proponents claim that open markets will help developing countries attract needed foreign investment, provide jobs and earn hard cash through increased exports.

However, NAFTA has clearly demonstrated in Mexico that the benefits of free trade extend to a relatively small number of persons and corporations and can have the unintended consequences of hurting the environment and widening the gap between wealthy and poor citizens.

In the case with NAFTA, the winners and losers in the agricultural sector are clear.

In Colombia's case, it is safe to say that the proposed FTAA would severely compromise  small farmers' ability to make a living that is not involved in the drug trade or as a foot-soldier in one of the illegal armed groups. The resulting consequences would add even more fuel to an out of control fire in a country where long-term peace seems increasingly distant.

As citizens around the country mobilize this week against current U.S. policy towards Colombia, Mexican social organizations are wrapping up a five month informal referendum, called the “People's Consultation,’ in response to the lack of broad civil society participation in FTAA negotiations.  The “People's Consultation’ is also being carried out in the U.S. and Colombia.

We are reminded this week, then, that only through inclusive and just regional economic integration can there be peaceful and viable countrysides in our hemisphere.