The difference between what Bush
officials say to Congress and the pap they feed foreign
audiences makes interesting reading for anyone trying
to figure out US government rhetoric on Latin America.
The account rendered by US Trade Representative Robert
Zoellick to Congress is very different from the one
offered in speeches by US Representative to the Organization
of American States John Maisto. Beyond these texts
and pretexts, the US acts to dominate events in Latin
America combining diplomacy and foreign aid with trade
and economic pressure, all ultimately backed up by
the threat of ruthless covert or overt military force.
How
it's done
Dumped
food and attendant "aid" measures soften
up recipient countries by distorting a country's domestic
agricultural economy. Military and economic aid props
up compliant regimes. Central America's history is
replete with examples of this use of "aid".
Witholding aid - or threatening to - tightens the
screws on governments the US deems recalcitrant. That
pressure is usually complemented by economic sanctions
and incentives applied both bilaterally and through
US proxies like the World Bank, the IMF and the Inter-American
Development Bank.
In
that context, trade negotiations like the Central
America Free Trade Agreement are put like a pistol
to the heads of governments. Trade negotiators find
their minds concentrated under the threat of their
government losing US aid or concessionary World Bank
or Inter American Development Bank loans and IMF balance
of payments support. To help things along where necessary,
an election can be swayed or rigged or a crisis engineered
with funding from the National Endowment for Democracy
or other State Department or CIA catspaws assisted
by timely interventions from the local US ambassador.
When all else fails vicious military action is readily
mounted, either covertly staged as in Nicaragua and
this year in Haiti or else overtly imposed as in Grenada
or Panama.
How
it's dressed up
The
whole gamut of coercion is generally reported by compliant
news media as if they were speech writers for George
Bush or John Maisto, It is often hard to tell the
difference. These quotes happen to be from Maisto,
but the language they use could come from editorals
in newspapers either side of the Atlantic. "The
President's policies in the Western Hemisphere are
grounded in basic American ideals and values. President
Bush's emphasis is on promoting democracy and human
rights and strengthening democratic institutions to
make them more credible and relevant for individual
citizens; on advancing trade and investment as engines
for economic growth and job creation......"1
Or, "We must continue to advocate policies that
have a proven record of success : free-market reform,
respect for the rule of law, the right to property,
and sound macroeconomic principles."2
Maisto's assertion of such hypocritical nonsense is
consistently given a free ride by mainstream journalists
in the US and elsewhere.
Never
mind FTAA-lite. Try Empire-heavy.....
Meanwhile,
to Congress, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick
tells it like it is, "Day-in and day-out, all
around the world, the U.S. government is working aggressively
to make sure barriers to U.S. goods and services are
removed......Our new and pending FTA partners represent
America's third largest export market -- these FTAs
are stripping away trade barriers across-the-board,
market-by-market, and expanding American opportunities.......
Enforcement of existing trade agreements is a vital
complement to producing new ones. Indeed, enforcement
is inherently connected to the process of negotiating
new agreements......Virtually everything USTR does
is connected with enforcement in some way. Negotiations
to open markets and enforcement are two sides of the
same coin." 3
Zoellick's
report to Congress lists what the the US Trade representative
views as unfair trade barriers and practices to American
exports of goods, services, and farm products around
the world. It covers 58 countries. No one reading
it can have any illusions that the primary purpose
of all the US phony "free trade" deals is
to break open markets for US and foreign (Zoellick's
links to the multinational Vivendi are relevant here)
multinational corporations - permanently, especially
as regards food and energy resources. It is impossible
to make sense of events in Venezuela and Colombia
or anywhere else in Latin America without realizing
that the ultimate goal of current US policy in Latin
America is to render national sovereignty completely
obsolete - except for the United States.
Food
sovereignty
Many
writers from around the world see the issue of food
sovereignty as equally if not more important than
sovereignty over energy resources. Some have put the
reality of US and European hypocrisy on food very
succinctly "Both America and the EU have a protection
built in, and it is called the Peace Clause. The Peace
Clause was put into what is called the Blair House
Accord at the time of the original WTO negotiations.
It actually exempted the European Union and America
from reducing their subsidies until December 31, 2003.
For instance, India cannot take America to the dispute
panel, saying that your cheaper food is destroying
our agriculture. At the same time, having built this
ring of protection around their own agriculture, they
have made sure that the developing countries have
phased out their tariff barriers and other protections.
So we have no tariff barriers left, and we've become
a dumping ground."4
Now
the Peace Clause is replaced by technical talk about
the "Singapore issues", "green"
and "blue" boxes of trade areas the EU and
the US want exempt from World Trade Organization anti-protectionist
rules. In Latin America, opponents of the Free Trade
Area of the Americas are not fooled. They are just
as clear as Devinder Sharma.
Here
is Colombian Senator Jorge Robledo Castillo: "A
nation whose food supply was located somewhere else
in the world stands to lose if for some reason it
cannot be made available for domestic consumption.
Ultimately this is the key reason -- to which all
others are subordinate no matter how important they
may seem-- that explains why the 29 richest countries
in the world spend 370 billion dollars annually in
agricultural subsidies. This figure has been continually
increasing for decades and, in the nineties, grew
by 50 billion dollars. ......That's why the pleading
of some people who, in the midst of the process of
globalization, are asking the US and other powers
to eliminate subsidies and other protective measures
toward their farmers and stockbreeders and suggesting
that Third World countries become the food suppliers
are totally naive."5
People
at all levels across Latin America see this very clearly.
A spokesperson for the Movement of Landless Workers
in Brazil, states, "The principal base for forging
a free, sovereign people is that it has the conditions
to produce its own food. If a country becomes dependent
on another in order to feed its people it becomes
a dependent nation politically, economically and ideologically."6
Worrying
about the GM Frankenstein Monster
Within
the broader concern in Latin America about food sovereignty,
anxiety about genetically manipulated foods is acute.
Writers like Elizabeth Bravo of Ecuador's Acción
Ecológica have analysed what the FTAA would
mean in terms of the ability of US multinationals
like Monsanto and Dupont to penalise local agriculture
by enforcing Intellectual Property Rights on plants
and seeds through patents and related ownership rights.
She argues this will introduce monopoly rights into
the food production system, limit the free movement
of seeds, increase erosion of genetic resources and
force farmers to pay royalties on the seed they use,
thus generally increasing food prices.
She
goes on to point out that, even without broaching
the ethical monstrosity of patenting life forms, these
attempts to prioritise the agenda of the agribusiness
multinationals will lead to monocultivation and eliminate
small farmers. Latin American agriculture will become
more insecure the more it comes to rely on foreign,
especially United States, technology.7
Looking further afield, one has only to consider a
country like Honduras to see where the "free
trade" model leads: abject dependency, widespread
poverty. massive unemployment.
The
Case of Argentina
Argentina
offers a vision of the possible nightmare future for
agriculture and food production in Latin America.
Gutted financially after embracing the great neo-liberal
economic confidence trick through the 1990s, now Argentina
faces the consequences of selling out its food sovereignty
to foreign multinationals. These excerpts from an
article by Alberto Lapolla are worth quoting at length.
"Our
people suffers the greatest punishment in its history.
55 children, 35 adults and 15 older people die daily
through hunger related causes. That is 450,000 people
between 1990 and 2003, a true economic genocide. 2O
million people out of a population of 38 million live
below the poverty line. Six million are indigent,
suffering extreme hunger, and nearly four and a half
million are unemployed.
Nonetheless
Argentina has the highest per capita food production
in the world with more than 70 million tons of grain
and 56 million head of cattle, a similar number of
sheep and likewise of pigs - a food production of
three tons per person each year. However, that mass
of food products bears witness to the greatest hunger
and social genocide in our history.
This
brutal process of social vindictiveness serves as
an example for the rest of the world's peoples, who
can see in situ the role played by transgenic crops,
publicised by Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont and the rest
of the multinational owners of biotechnology, as a
panacea to alleviate human hunger.
The
hunger of the Argentine people, its thousands of children
dead of hunger, its old people dead from hunger, the
millions of impoverished people sorting through rubbish
seeking something to eat are the clearest and most
categorical demonstration of the true effects of transgenic
crops on people's economies.
This
year, Argentina will produce 34.5 millon tons of transgenic
soya (50% ot the grain total) on 14 million hectares
(54% of cultivated land). 99% of this soya is transgenic,
destined to feed cattle in the European Union and
China. They then export that beef to markets that
no longer import Argentine beef because our open range
cattle production has been affected by the uncontrolled
expansion of transgenic soya production. So the government
produces export commodities instead of food and industrial
products so as to get foreign exchange in order to
pay illegitimate foreign debt."8
The
Venezuelan case - a strong whiff of US imperial inconsistency?
Argentina's
case is salutary and ominous for the rest of Latin
America and casts a different perspective on the case
of Venezuela. Looking back again at the US Trade Representative's
report to Congress this year, Robert Zoellick's indictment
of Venezuela's trade felonies goes on for six pages.
Among the charges:
Venezuela's
use of tariffs under the Andean Community's price-band
system to protect prices of feed grains, oilseeds,
oilseed products, sugar, rice, wheat, milk, pork,
poultry and yellow corn;
- its
non-legislated system of guaranteed minimum prices
and the discretionary use of import licenses and
permits to protect domestic white corn, sorghum,
soybean meal, yellow grease, pork, poultry, oilseeds,
and some dairy products;
- the
requirement that importers obtain sanitary and phytosanitary
permits for agricultural and pharmaceutical (including
veterinary) imports;
- state
controlled purchases of basic food products like
sugar, rice, wheat flour, black beans, milk powder,
edible oil, margarine, poultry, and eggs from a
variety of countries;
- support
through tax credits for exporters of coffee, cocoa,
some fruits and certain seafood products
It's
not just Venezuela's energy resources the US has its
eyes on. It wants Venezuela's example to the rest
of Latin America on food sovereignty destroyed as
well. Negotiations with Colombia on a trade-in-your-sovereignty
deal are scheduled to start on May 18th. Peru, Ecuador
and Bolivia won`t be far behind. Plenty of people
in those countries can see very clearly how "free
trade" fraud will bring them misery and penury.
Whether
their governments care very much is moot. Robert Zoellick
and his team are likely to coerce a deal out of them
regardless. Nor is it mere coincidence that the US
is simultaneously consolidating and extending its
network of military bases throughout the region. Unless
the US finds a way to make Venezuela comply with the
FTAA, other countries may ask why they have to sign
up to free trade deals that damage the interests of
the poor majority.
Under
Bush or under Kerry, it will make no difference. Time
and credit are running out for the United States.
It has to consolidate its control of the Americas
so as to defend its economic position against Asia
and Europe. The US will do everything, including promoting
covert internal terrorism and, externally, fomenting
war between Colombia and Venezuela, to destroy Venezuela's
sovereignty by insisting on a "peace-keeping"
intervention. The reason is simple. Along with Cuba,
Venezuela is steadily working out an indigenous, viable
alternative that the US cannot permit the rest of
Latin America to copy.
1.
Remarks by Ambassador John F. Maisto upon being
sworn in as U.S. Permanent Representative to the
Organization of American States September 16, 2003
Benjamin Franklin Room, U.S. Department of State
2. Address by Ambassador John F. Maisto, U.S. Permanent
Representative to the OAS and National Coordinator
for the Summit of the Americas Process ANDEAN DEVELOPMENT
CORPORATION VII ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON TRADE AND INVESTMENT
IN THE AMERICAS Washington, DC September 11, 2003
3. April 1, 2004 USTR Releases 2004 Inventory of
Foreign Trade Barriers Market by Market, U.S. Free
Trade Pacts Complement Global Efforts to Reduce
U.S. Export Barriers
4. "Food as Political Weapon" by Devinder
Sharma, Acres U.S.A, March 03, 2004
5. GLOBALIZATION AND NATIONAL FOOD SECURITY, Jorge
Enrique Robledo Castillo, Seminar on Rural Development
and Food Security, Universidad Nacional de Colombia,
Bogotá, November 6-7, 2001
6. "Un pueblo sin soberanía alimentaria
es un pueblo esclavo, dependiente" João
Pedro Stédile, of Movimiento de los Trabajadores
Sin Tierra (MST) interviewed by Luis Hernández
Navarro 27 de agosto de 2003 (Página Abierta,
nº 141, October 2003)
7. "Ecuador: el ALCA y la soberanía
alimentaria" Elizabeth Bravo, Acción
Ecológica, 25/11/2003
8. "Argentina: del granero del mundo al hambre
generalizado, de la mano del monocultivo de soja
transgénica" Alberto Jorge Lapolla,
Rebelión, 31 de marzo del 2004
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