In the spotlight

This volume covers the most important sociopolitical movement to appear in Brazil-the Landless Workers' Movement (MST)-and the most significant socioeconomic reform-large-scale agrarian reform-since the end of the military dictatorship in the mid-1980s.

Will the global social movement really make another world possible? Where is its political muscle? What is its relationship with the old Left? Indian activist Anuradha Mittal and British former Cooperation Minister Clare Short focus on these issues in exclusive interviews with TerraViva.

WSF’s charter of principles states that it is not an organization or a united front platform. It is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and inter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo- liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a society centered on the human person.

While 1m new jobs may have been created since the North American Free Trade Agreement, real wages in Mexico are lower, poverty deeper, inequality worse, and the agricultural sector decimated by imports of subsidised US corn.

Sir, Naotaka Matsukata's loyalty to his former employers at the office of the US trade representative seems blind ("America must learn to love free trade pacts", January 27). Contrary to his claims, the Central American Free Trade Agreement makes no step towards abolishing US agricultural subsidies - these were explicitly ruled out of the negotiations by the USTR.