This is not the first time that we are forced to take note that the Heads of State have broken their promises. The FTAA project is a charter of investors rights and freedoms, sanctions the primacy of capital over labour, transforms life and the world into merchandise, negates human rights, sabotages democracy and undermines state sovereignty. Indeed, we live in an Americas marked by intolerable inequalities and unjustifiable political and economic asymmetries. Half of the population of 800 million, of whom almost 500 million are Latin American, live in poverty. Capital, technologies and patents are concentrated in the North.
Many new jobs are in the informal sector, where labour rights are constantly flouted.
Free trade agreements aggravate inequalities between the rich and the poor, between men and women, between countries of the north and countries of the south, and destroy the ecological links between human beings and the environment. These free trade agreements prioritize exports at the expense of the needs of local communities. We are witnessing the consolidation of economic and legal corporate power at the expense of popular sovereignty. The neo-liberal logic reduces the citizen to a mere consumer and ultimately to a product. It favours short term gains without considering the social and environmental cost of goods and services.