US President George W. Bush wants to create the world's largest trade zone by 2005, but Ecuadorean Indian Doris Trujillo says the bloc, to extend from Alaska to Argentina, could devastate members of her already destitute Kichwas tribe.
Latin America will turn into a cheap source of labor and a huge consumer market for US goods if a Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, is established, Trujillo said at the World Social Forum.
"No one has consulted with those of us who will be most affected by the FTAA, which represents nothing more and nothing less than the interests of American capitalism," she said, dressed in traditional black felt fedora-style hat and a red-and-black poncho.
Activists ranging from Trujillo and poor Bolivian farmers to the poverty relief group Oxfam International said Saturday that the FTAA would translate into a US annexation of Latin American economies.
Bush wants to eliminate tariffs and form the 34-nation bloc by 2005. Cuba would be excluded, because membership is limited to countries with democratically elected governments.
But the pact "will bankrupt farmers and small businessmen who will not be able to compete with the US" Trujillo said.
The trade agreement would probably be phased in over five to 10 years, meaning that Latin American farmers who never learned other skills would be displaced without jobs, said Mark Weisbrot, an economist who co-directs the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
"The United States went from 1870 to 1970 from having 56 percent of our population in agriculture to 4.6 percent," he said. "Imagine compressing this into a five or 10-year period: It's a recipe for social explosion."
Activists at the six-day social forum, a counter-conference to the World Economic Forum being held in Davos, Switzerland, say the FTAA would mainly benefit large multinational corporations and hurt Latin American farmers who can't compete with agricultural giants based in the US.
The Brazil forum has drawn about 100,000 participants, offering 1,700 sessions and workshops on topics ranging from corporate misdeeds to Third World debt.
One participant is Zacarias Calatayud, a Bolivian farmer in his 40s who used to grow rice, sugarcane and potatoes on eight hectares in the country's tropical north.
He went out of business when cheap, imported farm products started flooding into Bolivia from Brazil and Argentina in the late 1990s, when Bolivia joined the South American Mercosur trading bloc as an associated member.
Now, Calatayud farms just one acre, to feed his family.
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