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A Call to Action: Central America is not for Sale!

(And neither is Louisiana!)

This Summer New Orleans will host negotiations for the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. Your government is negotiating this treaty in your name, but neither you nor your elected representatives are invited. Despite the treaty’s backers saying it will advance democracy and transparency, CAFTA is a secret treaty. The negotiating text isn’t even available to the public or to the Congress, despite the goal of passing and implementing it by the beginning of next year.

CAFTA is an expansion of NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, southward, and an expansion of the power of trade agreements to interfere in our lives. Under NAFTA, governments have been forced to overturn environmental and other regulations by NAFTA courts that have the power to overrule the Supreme Court or Congress. CAFTA contains similar provisions. It also threatens to force the privatization of vital public services, such as water, electricity, health care and education, over the objections of the public.

CAFTA will harm agriculture and fisheries in Louisiana and Central America. Under NAFTA, Mexico was forced to remove protections for small corn farmers, which drove millions of peasants further into poverty. This has driven down wages across Mexico and pushed more Mexicans into the United States in search of work. The United States Trade Representative has said that no agricultural products, even sensitive ones like corn and beans, will be exempted from CAFTA. This will lead to huge job losses in Central American agriculture, and a shift toward growing crops for export, things like beef, shrimp, and sugar cane. These cheap imports will undermine Louisiana agriculture and fisheries, and under CAFTA, it will be harder to control these imports, because anti-dumping and food safety regulations will be rolled back as well.

For these reasons, civil society groups in Central America and the United States oppose the CAFTA in its current form and call for trade that respects democracy, food security, and public services. A coalition of fair trade advocates in New Orleans will host a series of events before and during the CAFTA negotiations to provide a forum for public discussion of the agreement, to describe alternatives to CAFTA for Louisiana’s and Central America’s economic development, and to expose the secrecy and lack of democracy in the negotiating process.

The NO CAFTA Coalition calls for the public to gather on Saturday, July 26th, at 2pm in Congo Square to put forth the following demands:

• That the negotiating text of CAFTA be released to the public;
• That labor rights (specifically collective bargaining rights) and environmental protections be at the heart of any negotiations;
• That any provision to allow corporations to sue national governments to overturn regulations be removed;
• That vital public services such as water, electricity, telecommunications and health care be excluded;
• That subsistence crops such as corn and beans be excluded from the agreement, and that local and national anti-dumping and food safety laws not be weakened or sidetracked;
• That the right of governments to define intellectual property rights be respected, in particular to retain the right to produce generic medicines, to retain public control of biological diversity and medicinal plants, and to retain the right to restrict the use or importation of genetically modified organisms.
• That the inherent racism of NAFTA, undermining agriculture and the economic viability that supports indigenous peoples and "the race to the bottom" in labor protections and wages that disproportionately impacts women and communities of color, not be continued in CAFTA.
• That the negotiation process be opened up to the public by means of including elected representatives and civil society in negotiations and postponing final approval of any agreement until after the 2004 U.S. Presidential election to give more time for consultation and changes.