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CALL TO ACTION
Continental Days of Resistance Against the FTAA
October 27 to November 1, 2002
Quito, Ecuador, May 28, 2002
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The following call to action was put out by the National Campaign
Against the FTAA (Ecuador), a coalition of most of Ecuador's social
movement organizations and many NGO's, including the CONAIE (the
national indigenous federation), the CONFEUNASSC-CNC (the most powerful
national campesino organization), the CEOSL (the largest labor
federation), the Campamento Internacional Permanente Por la Justicia
Social y la Dignidad de los Pueblos, Accisn Ecolsgica, ALAI, and other
groups.
The networks, continental campaigns, and social organizations of our
respective countries, committed to the campaign against the FTAA, call
for continental participation and support for the Days of Resistance and
Struggle against the FTAA that are planned for the city of Quito, from
the 27th of October to the 1st of November of this year.
In the moment that the ministers of commerce of the 34 countries of
America (with the exception of Cuba) meet in Quito, behind closed doors,
to continue negotiating the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA), the social movements and Peoples of our continent will meet in
Ecuador in order to show our complete rejection of this model of
integration that our governments, committed as they are to
neoliberalism, would like to impose on every one of our countries.
Under the false pretext that the FTAA will bring progress and well-being
to our peoples, our governments have committed themselves to
negotiating a type of integration that will consolidate the hegemony of
the U.S. via political, economic, and military domination. They hope to
put this plan of integration, which stretches from Alaska to Tierra del
Fuego, into effect by 2005.
As was demonstrated in the second Peoples Summit in Quibec and in the
massive mobilizations in Porto Alegre, the fight against the FTAA must
continue on all fronts because:
The FTAA will bring our peoples more social exclusion, more
unemployment, more poverty, more debt, including the end of the minimal
social gains workers have realized through struggle.
The FTAA will also bring a greater level of militarization and control
of the natural resources of the continent, through the imposition of
Plan Colombia, the Andean Regional Initiative, and Plan Puebla Panama.
The FTAA will strengthen the domination of larger economies over smaller
ones. The U.S. and Canada alone represent almost 80% of the combined
GDP of the continent, the other 33 countries sharing between them the
remaining 20 percent. In this context, we know that a model like the
FTAA, whose principal goal is to permit massive investment by
transnational corporations, will only weaken further our economies,
eroding the sovereignty of the nations of the Americas and impeding any
development based in diversity, multiculturality, equity and social
justice.
For these reasons, for our right to sovereignty, for the right of our
peoples to just, democratic, environmentally-sound development, for
justice, for life, against neoliberalism, against debt, for an end to
militarism and the domination of the United States over our continent,
we will all be united and present in Quito to STOP the FTAA. We will be
in Quito so that the Ministers of Commerce and their partners hear our
total rejection of this model of imperial domination with which the U.S.
is hoping to consolidate its domination over all the continent.
These days in Quito will be days of struggle and resistance, as well as
days of popular education, reflection, analysis, of cultural and
artistic expression that represents the multicultural and multi-sectoral
richness of our struggles. We will be thousands, coming from all 35
countries, making our voices heard, in order to say, loud and strong:
No to the FTAA!
Yes to Life!
Another America is Possible!
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