Although nations like Haiti and Peru are shaky democracies at best, they are marked improvements from what they used to be. Opponents of the free trade pact, however, believe that it will undermine democracy, impoverish blue collar workers, destroy the environment and strip jobs from North America, that giant sucking sound that Ross Perot famously warned about and never occurred. While their desire for the negotiations to take place in the open is entirely sound, their basic assumptions about free trade itself are entirely wrong. This is a definition that shouldn't surprise anyone given that most societies, even tyrannies like Cuba, witness some form of competition. Capitalism is different because its competition flows from freedom of action.
Capitalism is the freest form of exchange between individuals.
No one is forced to enter this relationship if they do not agree with the terms. In a nation like Cuba, notably excluded from the Summit of the Americas, a human being is ruled by force and they cannot act on their conclusions. In a capitalist state, a person can think and act on those thoughts. Every other social system in the world, no matter how benignly marketed clashes with a person's freedom to act on their rational thoughts. The richest country in history was the United States at the time when it was also the freest.