Canadian Perspectives Spring 2004

This is an edited summary of an address given by Guatemalan labour advocate and legal adviser Marta de la Vega to the 18th Annual General Meeting of The Council of Canadians in Vancouver, October 2003.

Latin America, and especially Central America, is very rich in human resources and culture. We are awakening to the power that we have and have had for centuries and to the power we saw in Cancun with the collapse of the World Trade Organization talks. It is a hopeful sign that people are coming together from different sectors, different social classes, and different perspectives to struggle for life.

When we think about globalization, we look back at five centuries of oppression and exploitation of Central America. How could it be possible for the countries of Central America, where the vast majority of people live in poverty, to have a free trade agreement with the most powerful economy in the world? Under a Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement, there would be no possibility of competing under equal conditions. The FTAA would bring with it further human rights violations for many people in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize, and for people throughout Latin America.

It is important to say that the government of Guatemala does not represent the interests of the majority of the people there. Trade agreements cannot be free because the people are not free. This is true throughout Central America.

How is it possible to have a free trade agreement with the United States when we have had decades of armed conflicts in Central America that have been promoted, implemented and financed by the United States? In societies like ours we are still dealing with the trauma of the millions who have been killed or disappeared.

When we hear the words North American Free Trade Agreement, Central American Free Trade Agreement, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement, we see the United States consolidating its social, political and economic power on the tears, sweat and blood of the people of the continent.

In Central America, we have experienced what militarization means. We know what daily threats by telephone and mail are like and what constant surveillance means. We also know how the exercise of our basic rights results in killings and disappearances. Despite this, we continue to struggle because we cannot give up.

Under a so-called Central American Free Trade Agreement, the rights of women, children and labour are going to be hurt because we already have many problems trying to form unions and organizations to defend our rights.These are rights that we were born with. If corporations can organize, why can workers not organize to defend their interests? We need to come together to defend our inherent human rights. This is a central issue for us.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights talks about the inherent dignity and the inalienable rights and equality of all members of the human family. We see this declaration as a useful instrument in the struggle against these free trade agreements, which for us is a struggle for life. We need to know what is in this declaration because the only rights we have are the rights that we know. Those rights belong to us and we need to defend them.

Mahatma Ghandi once said something about India that could apply also to Latin America and to the rest of the world. He thought India should imitate the best of Western countries, but leave aside their attractive-looking but destructive economic policies. He saw effective economic planning as involving the best utilization of the whole manpower of India and distributing the raw products of India in her numerous villages, instead of sending them outside and buying back finished articles at fabulous prices. Gandhi’s words apply to Canada too, particularly in relation to softwood lumber and natural resources.

In Cancun we participated in demonstrations against the WTO, but there have been other resistance efforts in Guatemala over the past 27 years. One of these is the struggle of the Coca-Cola workers’ union against one of the largest corporations in the world. Our union is alive, strong and ready to continue to struggle.

Eight Coca-Cola workers – Pedro Quevedo, Manuel Lopez Balam, Marlon Mendizabal, Arnulfo Gomez, Ricardo de Jesus Garcia, Edgar Rene Aldana, Ismael Vasquez and Florentino Gomez –were killed because they exercised their rights to form a union. In the last four years, at least seven Coca-Cola workers have been killed in Colombia. There is now a major campaign to boycott Coca-Cola and to force the corporation to respect the rights of workers.

What struggles and successes have we had? We’ve worked together to form our union. Many people did not know how to read or write, yet they learned that they have rights and they were ready to stand up and defend those rights. They have struggled not just for themselves, but also for their children.

We’ve turned crisis into opportunity. In 1984, Guatemala was experiencing terrible repression, at a time when more than 200,000 people had been killed. Despite threats made against us, we occupied the factories, and during that year of occupation the workers learned to read and write. It was an opportunity that we couldn’t afford to waste.

We also asked for help, and international solidarity was mobilized inside Coca-Cola factories in Europe and Latin America. This made it possible to pressure Coca-Cola’s head office in Atlanta to face its social responsibility. If we can do this in Guatemala under very difficult conditions, other countries with more political space can force more corporations to face the social responsibility that comes with profit.

Gandhi said: "The economics that disregard moral and sentimental considerations are like wax works that, being life-like, still lack the life of the living flesh. At every crucial moment these newfangled economic laws have broken down in practice. And nations or individuals who accept them as guiding maxims must perish." This is applicable to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

There is resistance to free trade because the people are not free. It cannot be called trade because it is the looting of our resources. It is not an agreement because we in Central America feel it is an offer that we cannot refuse.

We are not in a position to refuse, but we will. The American continent deserves much better than free trade. All of us dream that every person will have a place. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador said, "Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty."

Marta de la Vega now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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