Argentina's popular organisations are preparing
the first ever global resistance demonstration in the Buenos Aires area .

After the strong backing which they received at the World Social Forum
held in Porto Alegre, Argentina's popular organisations are preparing
the first ever global resistance demonstration in the Buenos Aires
area . Between the 5th and the 7th of April a key meeting is to take place
between the Ministers for the Economy and for Trade and their treasury
teams from all American countries with the exception of Cuba in order
to establish the central points of the so-called Free Trade Area of
the Americas (FTAA).

This event is crucial because it is there that the dotted line will
be drawn on which the presidents will sign 15 days later at the Summit
of the Americas to be held in Quebec, Canada. This means, basically,
the affirmation of North American economic, political, military and
cultural hegemony in a territory which the US has always considered
as its own. As Julio Gambina, Professor of the University of Rosario
and a member of the Academic Council of ATTAC Argentina points out:
"The FTAA is a project linked with other North American initiatives
involving all our countries such as the isolation of Cuba and the
situation being created by the Plan Columbia. The prevailing reality
at the base of the integration agreements bears the stamp of the
hegemony of neoliberal thought which impregnates the more recent
agreements, as in the case of MERCOSUR, which has served as a
record for the adaptation of the protocols of other similar
undertakings with previous effect, such as the Cental American Common
Market and the Andean community of Peoples. The content of all these
agreements is to some extent in conflict with the aspirations of US
strategy ; and in fact are very far from expressing comparable
interests. But they have been drawn up in keeping with the prevailing
policies and have been established as part of a procedure adapted in
each integration treaty to favour the incoming of the most
concentrated capital flows from member countries. So workers and
other subordinate social players find themselves very far from
experiencing benefits from the regional integration mechanisms."
For its part, the decisions of Fernando De la Rua's government are
now making it quite clear that it will agree to the North American
FTAA initiative ; furthermore, by joining the vote against Cuba in the
UN and by raising no objection to the Plan Columbia prepared by the
Pentagon, it shows to what point the neoliberal government of the
governing Alliance is prepared to go in notable continuity with and
consolidation of the neoliberal policies which have been in
application for more than a decade since the earlier government of
Carlos Menem.

Combined Action
The Argentinians have undertaken to constitute the base of this global
demonstation. The two central trade unions will be on the streets; the
Centre of Argentinian Workers (CTA) and the General Confederation of
Labour (CGT). Small and medium business people, members of the
Argentine Agrarian Federation (ApyME), are also supporting the
demonstration, together with university and secondary school student
sectors from the Argentine University Federation. Combined with these
organisations will be the groups who took the lead in actions in
Buenos Aires at the time of the Prague protests last September ,such
as ATTAC Argentina, the Watch Out Network against GMOs, Dialogue 2000
and a combination of casually united groups which called itself S-26.
The participation of the rest of Latin America will also be
considerable, principally from the Mercosur countries. Various
organisations political, trade unionist, religious, social in general, from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia have expressed
their intentions of taking part in these Buenos Aires demonstrations.
AS Victor Mendibil from the national secretariat of the CTA declares,
"We are not going to let them snatch away our rights as workers and in
the streets of Buenos Aires we will make them realise that another
world, different from that of transnational globalisation ,is
possible"

Translation: Prudence Dweyer, volunteer translator
coor...@attac.org