Home > Programs > 2002 Ministerial on the FTAA > Quito Report: October 30, 2002

"Our Commerce Who Art in Heaven"

Posted: October 30, 2002
VIew more photos of the events in Quito in the photogallery.

As Peasants and Indigenous People Prepare to Protest FTAA, Quito Fills up with Security Forces

Quito, October 30. Security forces took over key points throughout the Ecuadorian capital of Quito today, as trade ministers from 34 countries began to arrive for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations. Meanwhile, civil society organizations opposed to the FTAA, from the across the Americas, held their third day of meetings analyzing the impacts of free trade on poor people and the environment, and organizations of indigenous people and peasants from across Ecuador began converging on the capital for tomorrow's planned marches and protests.

"Commerce has been made the new God," said Ricardo Navarro, a Salvadoran activist who is the president of Friends of the Earth International, at the civil society meetings. "Our Commerce who art in heaven..," he intoned, before explaining how the free trade mania that has gripped our governments prevents any debate over its basic doctrines.

"If commerce is the new God," said Peter Rosset, co-director of Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy, a US-based based non-governmental organization (NGO), "then like some other gods he is an angry and brutal one, demanding daily sacrifices at his altar, sometimes called the FTAA, the WTO or NAFTA, sacrifices drawn from the poorest and most excluded segments of society."

Research conducted by Food First, which Rosset presented at a Quito meeting of the Via Campesina, the international movement of family farmer and peasant organizations, reveals that free trade treaties have depressed the living standards of the poor and middle classes in countries both North and South, and have been particularly devastating for family farmers. Via Campesina and Food First are among the many organizations and movements gathered here to protest the FTAA.

Today the police and other security forces began setting up metal perimeter fences several hundred meters from the hotel where the trade ministers will meet, and around the hotel where a parallel summit of business leaders will be held. "The fact that the ministers will leave their meeting to make a pilgrimage to be received by the business leaders says it all," said Peter Rosset. "It is quite clear who is calling the shots, just as it is clear that corporations are the only true beneficiaries of these agreements." The police also blocked off streets leading to the American Embassy, fearing that protesters might vent their rage at such a target, given the widespread feeling that the American government is forcing the FTAA down the throats of Latin American governments. Most likely thinking that other American symbols might be targeted, they were also setting up a perimeter today around Burger King.

As indigenous people and peasants from across Ecuador began filtering into Quito and setting up camp at the downtown Arbolito Park, riot police took up positions behind them. Meanwhile, leaders of the CONAE, a federation of indigenous peoples, stressed that they planned only peaceful protests against FTAA, which they characterized as "a threat against our very survival."