"Land and Life" is ACA's quarterly newsletter which analyzes current conditions in Colombia's agrarian struggles. Translated by FOR staff

Edition #2: May, 2006
THE CAMPESINOS AND OTHER VICTIMS OF THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

The lies the Colombian Government uses to sell us the FTA

In order to speak publicly about the theme of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the Uribe administration used its best strategy to say one thing and to do another. All the time they assured the public that they would not sign the agreements if they did not obtain a negotiation favourable to all sectors of our economy, but in the end, they have signed the FTA almost under the same terms that were proposed by the North American negotiators, which has now paved the way for loss, not only for companies but for entire sectors of the national economy.

In general terms the government has tried to sell the idea that we will conquer the market of the United States, gaining a major position into the world economy, which will open new avenues of employment and that the Colombian economy, and we will finally make a leap in development. However, according to those who are well informed, in order to reach a significant level of development we must first strengthen our internal market, diversify our international economic relations, preserve the sovereignty of our food production, reach certain levels of industrialization and improve the wellbeing of the population.

It is precisely because the first step has not occurred (that of strengthening the internal market, guaranteeing food security, industrializing, etc) that with the FTA our imports will increase to double that of our exports, denying the conditions in which the rudimentary Colombian industry can strengthen itself and would be competitive in the world market. This is why Colombia lacks the ability to offer exportable goods and even though nearly all the import tariffs will be eliminated this does not guarantee our entrance into this market. This also has occurred with earlier treaties and with the same economic opening that began in the early 1990s.

Colombia signed the last agreement on tariff preferences, the Andean Trade Preferences Agreement (ATPA), in the context of shared responsibility in the struggle against drugs, and with the expectation that the philanthropy of the North American government would be demonstrated. With this agreement, benefits for 10 years were examined for various Colombian products, some of which would benefit from the reduction of tariffs and others from the total elimination of tariffs. At the expiration of the law the scheme was redefined in 2002 with the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA) law that amplified the operation of the preferential tariffs agreement for Colombia until 2006.

But in the 14 years of ATPDEA´s operation the economic success of the exportations have not translated into better labour conditions for workers linked to the export sector.
In this sector, to the contrary, each year the percentage of workers who only earn the minimum wage increased. Moreover, the supposed liberation of tariffs that the FTA considers non-traditional exports will not increase because almost all of the products that could be exported already are free of tariff. And to make things worse, some recent studies have demonstrated that during the operation of this agreement the tariff preferences did not contribute to the diversification of exports. The Colombian exporters will be relieved from paying scarcely 24 million dollars annually in tariffs, an insignificant figure compared to the approximately $900 million that, according to some official estimates, Colombia will cease to receive with the FTA.

A simple adding exercise to uncover the truth
The idea has been promoted that with the FTA Colombia will conquer the largest market in the world. With this pretext Aurelio Suarez Montoya developed an analysis in September of 2005, based on calculations of external US commerce, and he shows us with a simple mathematical exercise the fallacy of these arguments from the Colombian government.

According to the World Bank, the revenue of the United States in 2004, reached 11.7 billion dollars, no more and no less than one third of the world revenue. But from this colossal quantity the majority spent in 2005 was in products from the US. The US sent out less than 8% of its earnings, 1.48 billion, with an insignificant amount contributing to Colombian exportation. $207 billion were spent on energy products, of which Colombia provided barely 1.8%. In importations of automobiles and auto parts the US spent 230,000 million dollars, of which Colombia earned not one dollar. $350 billon was designated to purchases capital goods, computers and accessories, industrial machinery, telecommunication equipment, medical and aeronautical equipment, among others. These are all articles that Colombia must import.

Remaining is $600 billion available to apply to national products. Of these, $200 billion is designated to the purchase of raw materials and foreign products for industry, 0.86% of those that Colombia is able to sell, for a total of 730 million dollars.

The greatest part of the $400 billion remaining – exactly $370 billion– is used by the United States for the purchase of consumer goods. But with the exception of clothing and textiles, leather items and some metal manufacturing, Colombia produces nothing that the United States imports in final goods. Therefore, with these items, just $650 million are figured in sales to the US.

Finally, the sector where the greatest portion of North American imports have been from Colombia is in food and drink, of which the United States dedicated in 2005 nearly $60 billion. Of this Colombia only sold $650,000, represented almost entirely in coffee, banana, sugar, cookies, fish and cigarettes. “Apart from certain varieties of flowers,” concluded Aurelio Suarez, “Colombia produces nothing of importance of that which the US market demands. Those who do produce goods important to the US have not been required to sign the FTA; this is the case for 26 of 30 principal providers.”

Meanwhile, the idea is sold to us that with the FTA Colombians will have access to North American products of better quality and at a lower price. That North American products will flood the market weakening national production is a fact, but the quality of the products that will arrive also is clear. The North Americans will gain with the FTA, by sending out a very high percentage of products of poor quality like cereal remains- including rice, leftovers like the hindquarters of chicken and intestines of cow and pig, toxic remains that certainly are dangerous, and products remanufactured with re-fabricated parts.

Who loses in the agriculture with the FTA?
The disadvantages that the FTA brings for the agricultural sector are so evident that the agricultural unions have had to open their eyes and pressure the government to negotiate defensively. Despite this, the negotiations, with all the pressure from the unions, from negotiating teams and of the government, will end in a forced agreement against the wishes of the public. The first analyses reveal that while Colombia allows the United States immediate access to 1.2 million tons of wheat, 2 million tons of yellow corn, 200 million tons of barley, 900 million tons of soy beans, among other products, initially Colombia will only gain access to the North American market for 4 million tons of tobacco and 50 million tons of sugar.

Even given this inequality, the unions became silent after receiving subsidiaries from the government that compensate their losses at least for the time being. It is not possible that these subsidies will sustain and strengthen the agricultural production in the face of the strong competition of the North American products. Therefore, this crack in the agricultural sector is evident and the compensatory subsidiaries will only postpone it. Therefore, one can consider that the guilds really will not end up damaged. They will utilize the free mobility of capital in order to transfer their investments to other sectors of the economy that are less threatened by the FTA, including sending their capital abroad. The compensatory subsidiaries really don’t work to save the national agricultural production, nor do they give the unions a framework to recuperate their capital.

With such changes the agriculture sector will weaken, as the capital that has sustained it will emigrate to other sectors. The farm labourers who will lose their jobs will emigrate to the city in search of employment in an industrial sector that has been systematically broken from the beginning of the economic opening and that does not have the capacity to absorb the surplus manual labour.

The most immediate effect will be, on one hand, the food crisis that will occur in the countryside and on the other the pressure from the fall of urban salaries. In the longer term what will come is an environment of social disintegration of a magnitude yet unimaginable.

What will happen with the projects of alternative production in the countryside?
In Colombia, the FTA received enough opposition from the organizations and social movements in Colombia that a democratic government, which is really engaged with the national interests, would be obligated to reconsider its endorsement of the Agreement. But this is not the case with the Colombian government, which to the contrary has closed its ears to all criticism and responded to protests and mobilizations against the FTA only with repression by the police. Nonetheless, the campesino, afro-Colombian, and indigenous organizations have not limited themselves to protesting the FTA and to mobilizing against it. For many years, before the proposal of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and before the economic opening, before the importation of neoliberalism, these organizations have been advancing their projects of alternative production, toward construction of a just society, diametrically opposed to the market society and its value system.

Some campesino organizations that are present in different regions, like the Catatumbo, are advancing their own projects of alternative production, demonstrating a process of reconstruction of the social fabric in the middle of a war that has no mercy for their communities. They have advanced in a reorganization program with communal action, cooperatives and other collective expressions. This process converges into a proposal the Catatumbo have called “Plan of Life,” that among other things attempts to:

• Recuperate the values and customs of the region

• Respect and defend human rights
• Construct a comprehensive development plan for their communities with territory as the base

In a similar proposal, the communities of Western Antioquia are working on processes of alternative production that allow for food security and the generation of a development model appropriate for the region, in contrast to the institutional proposal of development based on the commercial position that pushes monocrops like cocoa that rob the campesinos of their land and with it all possibility to support themselves.

This is all to mention some of the proposals that the campesino organizations have been working with for a long time, in a manner that confronts the model of development that is imposed on them by outsiders. Proposals also exist that unite all the intentions of different organizations located in different regions, and that have then been converted to a platform for struggle. One of those most solid examples is that of the Mandato Agrario, which has united the different sectors of campesino, indigenous and afro-Colombian organizations, those that remain principally in the countryside, with union organizations, among others. Here what stands out is the necessity to unite forces from all social sectors in a way that comprehensively demonstrates the problems of our society and in the same way integrates those forces and proposals in order to construct solutions from the diverse social sectors.

Today, however, the social and political context poses new challenges for these organizations that are creating new ideas that allow them to confront immediately the threats that the FTA brings for the environment, biodiversity, cultural diversity, land rights, food security, among other traditional values of indigenous, afro-Colombian, and campesino communities.

Here arises a challenge for the future of campesino, afro-Colombian and indigenous organizations and that also jeopardizes all in the future of the nation. Possibly the most direct manner to face the food crisis that will come about with the FTA is through the projects of alternative production. However, these are the projects that will be truly threatened with the FTA when the market expands and starts to absorb more sectors of production indispensable for our production.

In one sense, what characterizes the projects of alternative production, especially in agriculture, is their utility in counteracting the influence of the market as it creates problems of subsistence. But at the level at which these projects still depend on a market, they need to obtain ingredients of production, seeds or tools, or to sell the products in order to be able to obtain the other necessities that their alternative projects still don’t have covered with their direct production. With this situation, what will develop, and then dominate, is a logic that focuses on what is marketable, and competitive, which will end up weakening the projects. This is what is most worrisome above all for the communities that are developing through these projects a process of resistance for the defence of their land and the construction of a development model that is based in the communities’ control of their land.

Now the signing of the FTA requires us to open avenues of debate and discussion in which collectively we can start to construct strategies in order to strengthen these projects of alternative production facing imminent threat that comes with the FTA. And this strengthening must essentially support the advancement of wider and wider market autonomy for alternative development projects in the country.

Afro-Colombian, indigenous and campesino organizations have advanced a lot in the analysis of the FTA and its negative effects, as well as in advancing the construction of alternative proposals, but it seems they have yet to create strategies of protection [against proposals like the FTA]. This is an urgent task, not only to construct a just society, but also to resolve in the immediate future the problem of food security not only for the communities that live in the countryside but for the whole country. In this sense, it is not a task that is for just the rural communities, but one that requires participation from all the organizations and social movements that struggle for the construction of a society that guarantees essential rights for all, and especially today for the right to subsistence that is seriously threatened by the FTA.