This past Saturday I watched the sun set on the ocean in another country. The curious part was that I was only a few feet from the United States, which I could see if I looked through the grill of the fence that read La Frontera, the border. The sun was setting on the same ocean on either side of this fence, but where I was standing was a totally different place. A few INS officials and an empty park were on one side of the fence, and on the other side was Tijuana, a huge sprawling city that ends abruptly at the fence. I was standing next to this fence as I watched the sun go down.

I was standing in this awkward spot because earlier I had marched with a thousand protesters across the Mexican/US border in protest of the Free Trade Agreement of the America’s (FTAA). After marching from a park in the United States, many of us then entered Mexico to greet our companion protesters over there.

Most interestingly, there were several riot police on the way who chose to block the entrances to a shopping mall where one could see Nike, Gap, and Old Navy stores. As if we wanted to go there!

Many Californians visit Tijuana every day. On the toll freeway that runs along the border, it is often difficult to see a car that does not have a California license plate, partly because only Americans can afford to drive on that toll road. Yet many people go to Tijuana without ever thinking about the precarious situation that Mexicans are in. As one of the poorer of the developed countries in the world, Mexico exists side-by-side with the largest economy in the world.

Through the trade-friendly policies of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which have loosened trade restrictions considerably between the US and its neighbors to the north and south, more jobs have certainly been flowing into Mexico. The question on my mind is: who does this benefit?

Free Trade is a very catchy phrase. Many have mistakenly equated Free Trade with freedom, if only because they both contain "free." The reality is, while trade is an accepted way for countries to capitalize on their comparative advantages, the free trade agreements of recent years have focused on trade in such an obdurate manner as to ignore the other important aspects of a healthy society.

Indeed, the latest Free Trade deal, the FTAA, is the worst case of trade obsession yet to date. The entire goal of the FTAA is to create a free trade zone throughout the Americas that will be the largest in history, encompassing 34 countries and $11 trillion dollars in capital. Our leaders make the broad-sweeping claim that as we loosen trade restrictions everyone will benefit. Poverty will be lessened and the "power of the free market" will encourage democratic freedom everywhere–even in Cuba!

The curious part is that the FTAA negotiators are afraid of criticism. The FTAA, a treaty intended to relax restrictions on trade, is itself a restricted document. The only parties free to view the agreement up until now have been the 34 countries participating in negotiations and a group of 500 multinational corporations.

This secrecy has caused 50 members of the US House of Reps. to protest, mainly because they have some "wild" notion that the FTAA should be open to the opinions of all of the 800 million citizens it will affect. Free Trade, they argue, has gone beyond the traditional notions of "setting tariffs and quotas, which were primarily of interest to industry." According to a letter signed by these 50 US representatives, "today’s international commercial agreements impact much broader areas of public policy, including the environment, consumer and worker safety, and a vast array of domestic regulatory standards."

I don’t think it could be said any better. Thomas Jefferson warned that America should encourage, "peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations–entangling alliances with none." I suspect he might have included multinational corporations along with nations had he foreseen the economic power that corporations wield today?

Many corporations now own more capital than several countries put together. This has serious implications if you consider that corporations, by definition, are not democracies. Democratic states should be able to control corporate practices, but what happens when a treaty like the FTAA gives these corporations the ability to do what they want under the mantra of "trade over all?"

And that is exactly what the FTAA will do. Let’s not kid ourselves. Under the FTAA, the United States would join the other countries of the Americas in an agreement that would permit an unelected, unaccountable "trade resolution" committee to override the laws and regulations of member countries if they are deemed hindrances to free trade. While the FTAA pact is a secretive piece of paper, no one denies that it will permit multinational corporations to bypass regulations that impede their ability to trade to their heart’s content. Afraid to be left out of a new market, many countries in the America’s are afraid to complain too much about the implications of the FTAA, lest they become like the black sheep economy of Cuba, which has been excluded from negotiations so far.

To a certain extent, the FTAA will be what NAFTA accomplished for North America. Since 1994, 23 complaints of systematic violations of workers’ rights have been filed under NAFTA’s official judicial structures. Human Rights Watch reports that, "not one of the 23 complaints (has) so far resulted in sanctions against an alleged labor rights violator."

California has been affected by NAFTA. Methanex, the Canadian corporation that manufactures MTBE, a gasoline additive, is suing the State of California for "anticipated lost profits" due to the banning of MTBE in California. Because this case is being held in a special NAFTA tribunal, which only considers trade laws, Methanex stands a good chance of winning its estimated $970 million in damages. Trade lawyers, who are the judges, make their decisions in secret in order to preserve business confidentiality.

Nobody has to consider the damage that MTBE has done to drinking water supplies and human health in California, because that takes a backseat to Free Trade under NAFTA.

NAFTA has created new business, but the most obvious example of this, the maquilladora factories of Mexico, are dubiously beneficial to the average worker. Manufacturing dolls for Mattel or soda cans for Coca-Cola is a way to make money. However, this only encourages poorer countries like Mexico to remain the low-skilled, cheap labor markets that they are. Mexicans earn a few extra pesos, but they can never hope to develop stable domestic jobs if they are caught producing for a foreign corporation that will leave as soon as it finds a cheaper place to produce its Barbies.

Because of NAFTA, unions in the US and Canada also lose collective bargaining power as corporations threaten to move shop to Mexico. If you like the idea of having the weekend off when you start working, you will appreciate that unions should be able to negotiate labor standards directly with the companies they interact with!

The FTAA will cause the same effects as NAFTA for the rest of this hemisphere.

Not only will labor rights be more threatened; environmental regulations, information laws, and national sovereignties will be damaged as well. For instance, Brazil’s much heralded AIDS program, which creates generic drugs and distributes them to all in need, could be threatened by the FTAA. If a drug company has more bargaining power in the new Free Trade zone, it could force Brazil to obey patent laws and buy the more expensive drugs, which will not be available to all in need.

The media, as well as the US government under several administrations, has been reluctant to discuss the possible consequences of a trade agreement that is blind to other important international concerns. Rather, protesters of the FTAA have been portrayed as outright against trade altogether, a false representation. With protests in Seattle, DC, Prague, Davos, and now Quebec City drawing tens of thousands of participants, the answer is clear: the current concepts of Free Trade focus only on relaxing restrictions to trade. What has been ignored are the concerns of human rights, the environment, labor, national sovereignty, and information rights. A convergence of these interests has created an antiglobalization movement that is more diverse than any social movement yet seen. This is obviously because Free Trade is not just an innocent way to open up the markets of other countries. Free Trade, as construed by NAFTA and the FTAA, is a blatant disregard for all of the societal interests that must be balanced against economic interests. Our political leaders think that as long as our economy is booming, people will be happy. But there is more to being a great society than a growing economy. What were those things that Jefferson mentioned? Peace? And honest friendship between nations?

So, as I stood in Mexico Saturday evening, watching the sun slip away, I worried about our future. If Free Trade becomes the "first commandment" of the new millenium, what will happen to the other things we value? From Tijuana it did not seem like much was being traded between two countries. How can two vastly different cultures expect the free exchange of capital to benefit both sides in the same way? If Mexico, and possibly other countries under the FTAA, is going to export cheap goods to our country, I’d like to see us export a little of Jefferson’s "honest friendship" in return. Perhaps we can scratch this FTAA document and start talking about an Equal Opportunity Agreement for the Americas.