News & Politics > Letter from Mexico

CHAOS IN CANCUN: The Flailing WTO
By Josh RObinson

Women in bikinis are no uncommon thing in this world-renowned beach resort, but visitors early last month might have been surprised to see some of them marching through Cancun’s Zona Hotelera wearing balaclavas as well. Steel barricades and more than 20,000 police, security guards, and military personnel posted every 50 yards of the entire 20 kilometer strip of hotels joined by Mexican Naval ships and small boats patrolling the beach greeted tourists as a result of the World Trade Organization’s 5th Ministerial Conference, held September 8 to 14.

Trade delegates from 148 countries, representatives from almost 1,000 non-governmental organizations, and more than 10,000 anti-wto protesters gathered in Cancun not for the beaches, beauties, or bars. They were drawn by multilateral trade negotiations, and, specifically, bitter disagreements about how global trade should be regulated. Trade rules regarding agriculture were one of the primary foci of this wto ministerial.

Despite the protests, the wto, which emerged from the WWII-era General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1995 as a result of the so-called Uruguay Round of trade talks, has plenty of supporters. GATT, along with the other two Bretton Woods organizations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, were created during a 1944 summit at Bretton Woods ski resort in New Hampshire.

All three are generally supported by business leaders, representatives of industrialized nations, and others who say removing all barriers to trade will spark economic growth around the world, bringing prosperity to the Third World and pulling First World economies out of the doldrums. Some say it already has.
According to the wto’s official Web site, “while about 1.15 billion people are still in poverty, research, such as by the World Bank, has shown that trade liberalization since World War II has contributed to lifting billions of people out of poverty. The research has also shown that it is untrue to say that liberalization has increased inequality.”

Opponents, including delegates from many developing nations, members of labor and environmentalist groups, and anti-capitalist street demonstrators say free trade encourages poverty, poor working conditions, and ecological disaster.

In Cancun they expressed their views in myriad ways, from angry rhetoric to whimsical direct action and everything in between. One protester committed ritual suicide in an attempt to bring the plight of the world’s small farmers home to a world audience.

Coming into the Ministerial, chances for success for supporters of free trade looked good. One contentious issue, wto rules against poor countries’ importation of cheap drugs made by companies other than the patent holders, was solved with an agreement allowing such importation of treatments for infectious diseases. As pressure from ngos and protesters mounted, however, the trade talks quickly stalled. By the last day of talks, the problems were too great, and the talks collapsed.

Underscoring the depth of the division between the two sides of the globalization argument was Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned Indian physicist and founder of the New Delhi-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. Shiva, who was recently named the fifth most powerful person (and the single most powerful woman) in Asia by Asiaweek, had strong words for the wto in an interview after her speech at the International Forum on Globalization.

“[The wto] is a criminal organization because it is killing people in my country. I daily watch innocent lives go,” she said. During her presentation, she claimed that 20,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves in recent years due to despair over high debt incurred as a result of wto policies that force countries to open their doors to imports, but allow richer developed nations like the US and many EU member states to heavily subsidize their farmers, making Indian crops uncompetitive in First World markets, and encourages overproduction by subsidized farmers. These crops are then dumped into Third World markets at prices below the cost of production. This, claim wto opponents, puts domestic producers out of business.

While this practice may help feed the people in those countries, it also makes them dependent on foreign producers for their food supplies. Subsidies also artificially lower domestic prices, making food exports by Third World farmers unprofitable.

The issue of genetically modified organisms also affects Third World farmers. Questions about the health or environmental effects of gmos aside, if farmers decide to use these crops, they rely on global agribusiness corporations for the seeds and chemicals to go along with them, and can be sued for patent infringement if they stop using the products but some gm plants resurface, scattered among the conventional crops. The us views the bans many other countries have placed on the production or importation of gmos as an unfair barrier to the trade of its biotech and agribusiness corporations. Such barriers are illegal under wto rules.

As the trade meetings got underway in earnest in the heart of the Hotel Zone, about four miles away in the city of Cancun several thousand farmers, anarchists, environmentalists, and others marched and rallied under the tropical sun to voice their opposition to the wto’s policies. Most specifically, this Farmers’ March was intended to focus attention on the trade rules regarding agriculture, for the reasons outlined above.

During the height of the pitched battle to clear the police barricade so the march could pass to the Convention Center, an event took place which would come to define the entire week, especially from the point of view of wto opponents, and which may well have changed the course of history, at least in the arena of trade. While others struggled to remove the steel fence, 56-year-old rice farmer and president of the Korean Advanced Farmers Federation Lee Kyung Hae climbed atop it and stabbed himself to protest wto policies and their effects on South Korean farmers. He fell to the ground and was rushed to hospital, where he died from the self-inflicted wound. His sacrifice was constantly referenced by his countrymen and the other protesters for the remainder of the week, and eventually cited as contributing to the failure of the organization he opposed.

Back in the Convention Center, events had taken a turn which seemed to advance the protesters’ demands. The World Development Movement reported that on the eve of the summit, a group lead by China, India, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa issued a statement insisting that there would be no trade agreements of any sort unless the rich nations eliminate their subsidies and tariffs and protect farmers in the developing world. This coalition, which became known as the G21 (group of 21 less-developed countries) and later the G+ when new members continued to join the bloc later in the week, wielded enormous power within the wto.

Because any wto agreement requires agreement of all member nations, the G+, which represents half the world’s people and two thirds of its farmers, had to agree to any agreement coming out of Cancun. This group had the power to ensure that no agreement emerged at all, and by Sunday it became clear that it was prepared to use that power.
Thursday started with a similarly encouraging development from wto opponents’ position. Representatives of the governments of Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali have underscored the importance of their previously issued proposal to abolish all cotton subsidies and compensate cotton farmers in those four countries, entitled “Poverty Reduction: Sectoral Initiative in Favour of Cotton” in a press conference that morning.
Under wto’s rules, this small coalition of poor countries had just as much power as the G+, though ultimately the talks failed even before this could become an issue.

The largest media coup of the 5th Ministerial Conference was scored later that afternoon when a collection of groups, described by Anuradha Mittal of the International Forum on Globalization as representing “civil society,” staged a guerrilla press conference about the suicide of Lee Kyung Hae the day before. More than a hundred people crowded into the main briefing room once the lobby it began in became so mobbed by journalists that many could neither see nor hear the speakers.

Changgeun Lee, the international director of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, described Lee Kyung Hae as a member of the Korean Peace Delegation and said that “through his suicide he would like to express his strong opposition to the wto.” This action was symbolic, he continued, because “many Korean farmers must commit suicide due to the heavy burden of debt” they face as a result of wto agricultural policies. Finally on Thursday, after a protest by a delegate from environmental advocacy ngo Greenpeace during a press conference held by Deputy us Trade Representative Peter Allgeier, all ngo delegates were barred from attending press briefings for the remainder of the ministerial.

Friday began with rich and poor countries still deadlocked on agricultural and other issues. Most significant of these were the so-called ‘Singapore issues,’ including investment and government procurement regulations, which rich countries wanted covered by wto rules and poor countries did not. Interestingly, it was these obscure topics, and not agriculture, which had been overwhelmingly viewed as the deal maker-or-breaker coming into the talks, that led to the ultimate failure of the negotiations. The day ended in deadlock as well, indicating the small amount of progress made inside the Convention Center.

The protesters, on the other hand, made great progress, coming within yards of the wto venue itself. Early in the day, a trio of activists infiltrated the so-called “red zone,” scaled a massive crane atop a new condominium project across the street from the trade meetings, and disrobed and hung an anti- wto banner. That evening, more than 200 anti-wto activists shut down most traffic through the Hotel Zone here for more than three hours.
With talks inside the wto meeting still deadlocked on Saturday, as many as 10,000 activists took part in a march through town to a newly-erected and much more imposing barricade. Once there, they took time to organize a strategy. A brief but torrential downpour dampened the protesters’ clothes, but seemed only to embolden their spirits. Shortly after the rain stopped, a massive attack on the barrier began.

Armed with bolt cutters, crowbars and hammers, several demonstrators began climbing on and into the steel fences and cutting and smashing them apart. Once sufficient damage had been done, the Korean contingent moved in with huge bundles of rope. The holes in the fence allowed them to attach the ropes to it, and after several tries over the better part of an hour, about 30 feet of the imposing barricade had been reduced to twisted, broken metal and dragged away by dozens, if not hundreds of people working in concert. Strangely, the protesters had no intention of going through the breach. The Koreans, who had been holding a vigil at the site of the original fence since Wednesday night, staged a somber memorial for their fallen comrade before leading the crowd back to town.

With this, the action in the streets more or less ended, and the focus of attention shifted to what was going on inside the suites in the Hotel Zone. On Sunday, at the end of a press conference by a deputy us Trade Representative and the head of the us agricultural negotiating team, a reporter announced that a delegation had walked out of the talks, and asked the speakers for a comment, which was not forthcoming. The report turned out to be true, as the Kenyan delegate George Odour Ongwen, who was chairing the talks, announced they had come to an end without a new agreement.

As ngos celebrated the collapse of the trade negotiations, Walden Bello of the International Forum on Globalization cited Lee Kyung Hae’s ultimate act of protest during the Farmers’ March as having dramatically impacted the talks.
He said two things led to the failure. The first factor Bello cited was the Korean delegation’s refusal to discuss the so-called Singapore issues separately, insisting that they be negotiated together or not at all. “Korea and Mr. Lee did something really big,” Bello said. Also, he cited the refusal by the acp [African, Caribbean and Pacific] nations to include the new issues in talks at all.

It also became clear that the G+ had, contrary to many expectations, held firm throughout the week.They came together, not because of a shared agenda, but because of a shared fear of not finding a voice at a Ministerial dominated by bigger, richer, more powerful countries. “Not only were we able to keep our unity,” said the Brazilian representative of the G+ at the first official press conference after the talks ended, “we actually increased our numbers. We were able to show that with unity a group of developing countries could advance a platform of agricultural reform, as they consider the First World’s final offer before negotiations ended to be the starting point of future negotiations.”

While those opposed to the wto surely see the week as a rousing success for the poor around the world, statements by a deputy us Trade Representative on Sunday morning reiterated the huge gulf between the viewpoints of those who want free trade and those who do not. While trying to sound optimistic about the eventual outcome of the stalled negotiations that eventually collapsed, she said that poor countries are the very ones who will lose out if no new trade deal was reached.