Marcela Valente

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina, Nov 4 2005 (IPS) — Tens of thousands of demonstrators from throughout the Americas marched through the streets of this eastern Argentine resort Friday to protest the presence of U.S. President George W. Bush and reject the push for a hemisphere-wide free trade area, a point of contention in the fourth Summit of the Americas.

“We came because we want solutions for the hunger and unemployment in our countries, and to help raise society’s awareness on the need to block the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas),” trade unionist José Antonio Rodríguez of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores, Brazil’s main trade union federation, told IPS.

The march was called by the organisers of the third Peoples’ Summit, held in Mar del Plata Tuesday through Friday by civil society organisations from Latin America, North America and the Caribbean to discuss alternatives to the FTAA.

While the streets of Mar del Plata were packed with demonstrators, the summit of heads of state and government of the Americas opened Friday under the theme “Creating jobs to reduce poverty and strengthen democratic governance”.

Although the leaders had hoped to reach an agreement on reviving the FTAA talks, there is resistance from Venezuela and members of the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, which insist that any progress in the talks for a 34-country free trade zone must include a commitment by Washington to cut farm subsidies.

The hardest-line positions were taken Friday by the presidents of Mexico, in favour of the FTAA, and Venezuela, which has declared it dead.

While Mexican President Vicente Fox said the 29 countries in favour of the FTAA should go ahead without the dissenters, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said Mar del Plata should be “the FTAA’s tomb.”

Heading up the Friday morning march, under a steady rain, were Argentine Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and the president of the local human rights group Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini, as well as indigenous Bolivian presidential candidate Evo Morales of the Movement to Socialism and other social and political leaders.

Also taking part in the protest was Francisco Dos Reis, president of the Association of Small and Medium Companies of Argentina, who commented to IPS that the FTAA would have a “brutal” effect on that sector of the economy. “All you have to do is take a look at what happened in Mexico as a result of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement),” which links Canada, Mexico and the United States, he argued.

“With the FTAA, the United States wants to do the same thing it did with the Alliance for Progress in the late 1950s, when the number of poor in Latin America climbed from 100 to 200 million,” he added.

The demonstrators protested the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. “Bush, fascist, you are the terrorist,” they chanted, holding signs like “Bush=Murderer” and “Stop Bush”.

Indigenous leaders from a number of countries also took part in the march.

Aucán Huilcamán, with the Mapuche All Lanas Council, told IPS that the foreign ministers met with them Thursday, something that had never before occurred at a Summit of the Americas.

“We were able to describe to them the negative effects that the FTAA has on our collective rights,” said Huilcamán, who is fighting to be allowed to take part as a candidate in Chile’s December presidential elections.

Nevertheless, the indigenous activists do not hold out much hope for results from the dialogue.

“For us to be received is a step forward. But the proposed American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has been held up for 15 years in the Organisation of American States,” said Huilcamán.

The protest, which according to the organisers drew at least 50,000 demonstrators, also included members of social and political movements that support the centre-left Argentine government of President Néstor Kirchner, like the Party for the Democratic Revolution and organisations of unemployed workers known as “piqueteros” for their strategy of mounting roadblocks.

Many of the participants were women trying to shield their children from the rain with plastic bags. One of them, just two years old, walked alongside his mother, who was carrying his baby brother. The toddler had lost a shoe, but no one had noticed.

His mother told IPS that she had come to the city with a group of unemployed workers who belong to the piquetero movement Barrios de Pie in a bus in which they were offered lunch. “It’s part of the agreement we have with them,” said the woman, alluding to a government stipend she receives through the organisation, as an unemployed head of household.

Daniel Cuenca of the Central de Trabajadores de Argentina trade union federation admitted to IPS that many of the protesters did not just spontaneously show up on their own, and know nothing about the FTAA. “That is why we are demonstrating – so that there won’t be so many people living in utter poverty without knowing what’s going on,” he said.

Followers of Kirchner and other activists also arrived in a train that was chartered by a group led by parliamentary Deputy Miguel Bonasso, who is a writer and journalist, and which also brought in football legend Diego Maradona, Evo Morales and other personalities from Argentina and abroad.

Maradona did not take part in the march but went directly to the stadium where the closing ceremony for the Peoples’ Summit was held.

Among those performing in the stadium were singer-songwriters Silvio Rodríguez from Cuba, Daniel Viglietti from Uruguay and Víctor Heredia from Argentina.

Chávez, the only president to take part in the “counter-summit”, addressed the crowd in the stadium.