Applause filled the plenary room today at the Hilton Hotel Caribe in San Juan, Puerto Rico, during the final session of the 30th General Assembly of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). More than 400 delegates of governments, civil society and UN agencies, clapped repeatedly as they listened to the unanimous adoption of two of the three agenda items of the ECLAC meeting, including a resolution to  reaffirm the commitments made by governments at the UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt 10 years ago.  They also reaffirmed commitments by governments of the region at the Fourth World Conference on Women, which took place in Beijing, China in 1995. 

Both resolutions at the ECLAC were intensely debated as the result of a bilateral attack from the United States and the Vatican that, couched in diplomacy and constraint, they had designed to raise concerns about the proposed resolutions during the process of the ECLAC, but eventually their offensive went down in defeat. 

But another theme on the agenda was most noteworthy for its lack of debate at the ECLAC, which focused on the adoption of measures to stimulate economic growth in the region. 

The hegemony of the neoliberal perspective was clear among the member States of the United Nations (UN). The Secretary General of the ECLAC, José Machinea, declared at a press conference on that last day, “Our countries need a development strategy to establish public policies and to enlarge the participation of the private sector.” Read between the lines: To increase economic production within the neoliberal globalization framework. 

Is this possible? Clearly so for businesses and governments that become parasites of the multinational corporations. And this is exactly what is stated in one of the major conclusions of the final documents of the ECLAC: Under the title, “Productive Development for Open Economies”, countries are called “to shift to the formal market the informal businesses; to develop small and medium businesses and, then to CONNECT (my emphasis) both sectors with the large businesses that PLAY A MAJOR ROLE (emphasis is mine again) in the model of globalization ”

The document also says that  “compensatory measures” should be created to protect the most disadvantaged sectors in this economic model.  Read between the lines again--among many other sectors, the women. 

To support this theme, Machinea used a metaphor of rain and an umbrella, saying that when it rains, whoever  does not have an umbrella gets wet, and may even develop pneumonia. “One cannot deny that it is raining, which is the process of globalization, but one must devise ways to open the umbrella.”

Aside from asking who will sell the umbrellas and how much they will cost, another key question is whether the rain that comes from the free trade agreements (which is the form that the neoliberal model of globalization currently takes) is a "natural" rain, for which an umbrella will provide protection.  Or if, on the other hand, as has been shown with free trade agreements with Mexico, Canada and the US (NAFTA--North American Free Trade Agreement), what falls is actually acid rain, for which neither umbrella nor a hat will provide protection.

Patricia Muñoz wrote in an article in La Jornada of Mexico for June 28, 2004 entitled, "Alarming Levels of Unemployment in 10 years of NAFTA Say Experts,"  that “a report on the employment situation since NAFTA took effect, coordinated by Alberto Arroyo Picar, with researchers Sarah Anderson, Manuel Angel Gómez and John Foster, reveals that unemployment in the three countries has risen to alarming levels and that the cuts have affected even more workers, including those who work in the informal economy or in temporary or part-time jobs.”

In the ECLAC, Machinea directly supported the acid rain that will come with these regional agreements, when he said that the countries of the region should first take advantage of globalization in the region or sub-regions.

In the meantime, in that same hotel, another meeting was taking place, which was more selective and less celebratory. There it rained with tears of pleading and imploring. This was a meeting of government ministers and representatives of the Central American region, with the delegation of the Puerto Rican government, to talk about their extreme concerns about the stalled negotiations with the United States of the ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).   The Central Americans asked the Puerto Ricans to intercede on their behalf with Washington, to push for approval of CAFTA. 

The Costa Rican Minister of Exterior Commerce and leader of the negotiating team for the agreements, Alberto Trejos, said he did not understand why Puerto Rican and Latin American and the United States are opposed to CAFTA.

If Minister Trejos would have walked through the hotel or the streets of the island of Puerto Rico, he would not need to ask this question.  The day before, a group of young Puerto Ricans had pushed their way into the ECLAC meeting, and delivered to Machinea a declaration in which they explained why the workers and communities in Latin America and the United States are opposed to the free trade agreements. 

Among the 10 good reasons for opposing the FTA listed in the declaration, one emphasized “the decline of labor rights and job losses," giving examples from the 10 years of NAFTA (agreements of North America, including the US, Canada and Mexico) where 90% of businesses in the USA have either closed or threatened to close.

The declaration also denounces the privatization of services and environmental destruction which will lead to an increase in poverty and inequality in our countries. 

Acid rain does not require an umbrella, but requires organized resistance to stop the expansion of the neoliberal economic model that “will only bring death,” according to graffiti painted along a street in San Juan. 

And among the women's organizations who were present at ECLAC and those that were not there, all will have to continue their struggle to integrate their agendas and their movements and to forge alliances with each other and with other social movements because very few of their own rights will be respected by States in these agreements. At most, rights will become the "compensatory measures" that Machinea talked about.

And compensation in this economic model will happen, only if there is anything left after the distribution of the wealth among those that already have more than they need, but are never satisfied.

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* What is acid rain? When high doses of sulfur oxide and nitrogen are released into the atmosphere, complex chemical reactions partially convert them into sulfuric and nitric acid . Some of those acidic particles disappear with gravity or when they fall onto the ground, or buildings, plants, etc., and is called dry participation. The rest remains in the atmosphere, combines with moisture in the clouds and then falls to earth with rain, snow or dew, which is the acid rain. 

Coal, and other combustible fossil fuels, emit sulfur oxide into the atmosphere. They burn at extremely high high temperatures and combine chemically with nitrogen and oxygen in the air to form nitrous oxide. Power plants, and large and small industries that burn coal are the major producers of this contamination, together with consumers of petroleum and gas. 

The pH is a measure of the acid or alkaline level of a solution (which equals the negative decimal logarithm ?????? of the concentration of hydrogen ions). A neutral solution has a pH from 5.6 to 7 (the scale goes from 0 to 14.0), under 5.6 is considered moderately acidic, and above 7.0, moderately alkaline. Acid rain has a pH lower than 5.6 and at times measure 2.5 or in extreme cases 1.5. A solution with a pH of 6 is 10 times more acidic than a pH of 7, while a pH of 5 is 100 times more acidic.  The proportion involves multiplying by ten with each lower level of the pH values. 

The effect of acid rain and precipitation in lakes and rivers is that it kills fish, crustaceans (shellfish, etc.), insects and mussels, and also destroys the plankton, all of which is food for fauna. Thus the contamination affects survival of animals, birds and other creatures in the area as well when they encounter only clear dead lakes.  

On the land, the acid penetrates into the ground and affects the roots of trees, and eventually harms the leaves which are also directly hit by the acid rain as it falls.  The process of poisoning the flora ends with the death of the plants and trees in the area. Buildings and concrete structures are also seriously affected, and have to be continuously repaired.  Likewise, animals hit by acid rain tend to lose their hair, and lose their teeth prematurely. 

For human beings, one major consequence of acid rain is a large increase of respiratory ailments (asthma, chronic bronchitis, Krupps Syndrome, etc) and an increase in the incidence of cancer. The contamination weakens all life, whether it be human, vegetable or animal, which hurts the immune system and creates a greater likelihood of contracting illnesses. Those most affected are children, elderly, pregnant women, and persons with chronic problems of the heart, circulation and asthma. 

Source: Friends of the Land Network, Uruguay