Posted on 20-9-2002

Fair Trade Before Free Trade

BRASILIA, Sep 18, 2002 -- Some 98 percent of the 10 million Brazilians who
took part in a symbolic referendum rejected Brazil's participation in a
hemisphere-wide free trade area.

The Brazilian Catholic Bishops' Conference, one of the main sponsors of the
informal vote to measure support for the Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA), said Tuesday that 10,149,542 Brazilians voiced their opinion by
dropping "votes" in ballot boxes placed in squares across the country. Only
169,498 people, a paltry 1.67 percent of the total, expressed support for
the U.S. initiative to create a free-trade zone stretching from Tierra del
Fuego to Alaska by 2005. Only communist Cuba would be excluded. The
bishops' conference said similar plebiscites would be held in 11 other
Latin American countries.

At a news conference Tuesday in Brasilia, the vote's sponsors said they
organized the mock referendum out of concerns the free trade initiative
would deepen poverty in Latin America. "The FTAA threatens the sovereignty
of Latin American countries and was conceived by U.S. industrial
corporations," said Joao Pedro Stedile, an economist and the leader of
Brazil's Landless Movement. Organizers of the Brazilian survey have been
invited by foreign civic groups to help organize similar litmus tests in
Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela, he added. "President Hugo
Chavez has already pledged to hold a plebiscite at the beginning of 2003,"
said Stedile, who added that he was scheduled to discuss the issue with
officials at the Venezuelan Embassy in Brasilia on Wednesday.

Although the total number of respondents represents only 6 percent of
Brazil's 170 million people, organizers deemed the event a complete
success. "If 2,000 people are considered sufficient to indicate which
candidate is most likely to win an election, why wouldn't 10 million be
enough to represent the country in our plebiscite?" Bishop Franco
Masserdotti of Balsas asked.