[Mb-civic] CAFTA---understand and act...

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

CAFTA (the Central America Free Trade Agreement) is going to be voted on 
very soon in the House.  As an American citizen concerned with the health 
and welfare of all people, YOU need to understand this issue and take action.  
The action requested is a two-minute phone call to your congressperson, 
either by calling the tollfree # below or calling their office directly (phone 
numbers at www.congress.org.  You can follow the instructions below, or 
simply tell the person who answers the phone "Tell Representative ________ 
that I want him/her to OPPOSE CAFTA when it comes up for a House vote, 
and that I will be following his/her action closely."  

Do this ASAP (any time in the next week or 2 would be great, even though 
April 13 was the official callin day).  And read the article below the aciton 
alert (will take another 5 minutes or so) so you can understand what our "Free 
Trade" promoting government seeks to do in your name....

----

CISPES and the Southern California
Coalition to Stop CAFTA encourages you to call your
representative in the House.  It will cost you
nothing!  Toll free number below! Help us STOP CAFTA!

April 13th is National CAFTA Call-in Day.  Be part of
this Day of Action against unfair trade agreements by
calling your member of Congress today.  The AFL-CIO
has sponsored a toll-free number straight to the
Capitol Switchboard:  All you have to do is take two
minutes to call 1-888-355-3588, and they will patch
you right through.


President Bush is pushing for an early vote on CAFTA,
and the future of trade agreements rest in the
balance.  Unless we turn this flawed and
failed approach around, agreements like CAFTA will
outsource more jobs, offshore more of our businesses,
jeopardize family farmers and harm our environment.

Call in and ask to speak to the trade legislative
assistant or legislative director. Tell them that you
encourage your Representative to vote against CAFTA,
and be sure to leave your address for a written
reply.  Download the April 13 call-in day script at
www.stopcafta.org

To find out who represents you in Congress, visit to
<www.house.gov/writerep/>


Background:  The Central American Free Trade Agreement
(CAFTA) is the biggest free trade agreement Congress
has considered in over a decade.
The Bush Administration is ready to test whether they
have enough votes in Congress to pass CAFTA. This will
be done through formal hearings in the House Ways and
Means Committee on April 20th and the Senate Finance
Committee on April 13th.  Your call at this critical
time will make a difference.

Just dial 1-888-355-3588 and they will hook you up.


CISPES
Committee In Solidarity With The People of El Salvador
8124 West 3rd Street  L.A. Ca. 90048
323-852-0721
Founded: 1980 - 25 Years of Solidarity

***

 Central America Up in Arms over CAFTA
    By David Bacon
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Tuesday 12 April 2005

 Puerto Cortez, Honduras - When the Honduran Congress took up ratification
of the Central American Free Trade Agreement last year, over a thousand
demonstrators filled the streets of Tegucigalpa, angrily denouncing the
effort. Congress ratified CAFTA anyway, but the crowd was so angry that
terrified deputies quickly fled.

    "We chased them out, and then we went into the chambers ourselves,"
    says
Erasmo Flores, president of the Sindicato Nacional de Motoristas de Epuipo
Pesado de Honduras (SINAMEQUIPH), the union for Honduras's port 
truckers.
"Then we constituted ourselves as the congress of the true representatives
of the Honduran people, and voted to scrap Congress's ratification."

    Similar demonstrations have multiplied across Central America, and
    just
weeks ago police shot into a crowd of protestors in Guatemala, killing
one. Meanwhile, however, growing controversy has not helped the treaty's
main supporter, US President George Bush, to find the votes he needs to
pass it in Washington.

    While admittedly an act of political theater by the leftwing Bloque
Popular, the Honduran protest showed dramatically how unpopular the
agreement is in Central America, at least among workers and farmers. This
is quite a change from Mexico, where the promises of then-President Carlos
Salinas de Gortari deceived large sections of Mexican society, especially
its labor unions, into supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement
in 1991 and 92. While US workers might suffer job loss, Salinas cajoled,
Mexican workers would get those jobs. The country would be come a "first
world" economy, he promised, with first world living standards.

    The truth was bitter. After NAFTA went into effect, currency
    devaluation
cost the jobs of a million Mexicans in the first year alone. While US
President Bill Clinton bailed out investors threatened by the crash, it
came at the cost of Mexico's oil, which then had to guarantee the loans,
instead promoting economic development. Tying hundreds of thousands of
low-wage maquiladora jobs to the US economy also made them vulnerable to
it. When consumers north of the border stopped buying goods during the
2000-2001 recession, 400,000 border workers were laid off. And
export-industry wages, far from rising, remained flat, while prices of
milk, tortillas, gasoline, bus fare and most working-class necessities
skyrocketed.

    But the most devastating effect on workers came from privatization,
enforced by NAFTA's mandate to make Mexico more investor-friendly. As
ports, railroads, airlines, mines, telephones and many other large
national enterprises were sold off, sometimes for just a fraction of their
worth, new private owners cut labor costs by slashing jobs and gutting
union contracts. In NAFTA's first decade, Mexico's privatization created
more billionaires than any other country's in the world.

    CAFTA is built on the same political premise. It seeks to reinforce
    the
transformation of Central American economies, maintaining a low standard
of living as a means to attract investment in factories producing, not for
an internal market, but for export to the US. Understandably, this vision
is hardly popular among workers and unions. But hundreds of thousands of
Central American jobs are already tied to export production, and the Bush
administration can and does use them as bargaining leverage, threatening
economic disaster by raising the specter of import barriers against
countries that won't adopt CAFTA.

    CAFTA promises to extend the harmful impacts of NAFTA to Mexico's
    weaker
southern neighbors. Most Central American nations currently belong to the
Caribbean Basin Initiative, which requires participating countries to
uphold internationally recognized labor norms. Using the example of
NAFTA's notoriously ineffective labor side agreement, CAFTA requires only
that governments enforce their own laws, which are often far weaker.

    Central American public sector workers have been especially keen
observers of the Mexican experience. Honduras's longshore workers' union
has twice beaten back government efforts to privatize the docks of Puerto
Cortez, successfully mobilizing the whole town in the process. "We put our
union's assets, like our soccer field and clinic, at the service of the
town," explains Roberto Contreras, a union officer and Honduran
representative for the International Transport Federation. "When the
government tried to privatize our jobs, we told people that if we didn't
cooperate to defeat it, the whole town would lose, not just the port
workers."

    In El Salvador, huge protests accompanied government efforts to
privatize the healthcare system. And in Costa Rica, a massive strike by
public telephone and electrical workers forced the government to withdraw
from CAFTA negotiations in 2003.

    This March, a popular protest against CAFTA turned violent in
Colotenango, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. After the Guatemalan Congress
ratified CAFTA, popular organizations began mounting highway blockades
throughout the country, effectively halting commerce and travel. At a
blockade in Colotenango, at the Puente Naranjales crossroads, police and
the army fired on the crowd. Juan Lopez Velásquez was killed, and nine
others were wounded by bullets.

    Ironically, the Bush administration has had more success strong-arming
Central American countries than their more powerful South American
neighbors, or the US Congress. In 2003, the World Trade Organization talks
in Cancun collapsed amid huge protests, and later in Miami, the big South
American economies of Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela told the
administration they had little interest in its carefully-orchestrated
march towards a Free Trade Area of the Americas.

    Even in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the
administration could only muster a one-vote, 216-to-215 majority in the US
Congress to give it fast track trade negotiating authority. Almost all
observers agree that if Bush had the votes to ratify CAFTA, he would have
introduced it into Congress long ago. The fact that the agreement has been
negotiated, has been ratified in most Central American countries (although
amid bullets, clubs and chanting protestors), and has yet to be introduced
for ratification in Washington, is the best indication that CAFTA's
political support is shrinking, not growing.

    While Bush and the agreement's corporate backers still want it, it's
getting harder for them to point to anyone else who does.

-------


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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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