Trade Agreements Harmful

A letter to the editor printed in the Orgeonian on Saturday, 27 January.

Alejandro Chafuen's argument that Latin Americans want North American Free
Trade Agreement-style policies with the United States ("Latin America
won't just sit still and be ignored," Jan. 21) is one of the most
bizarrely inaccurate defenses of corporate globalization that I have ever
seen.

New governments in Latin America are not "anti-American" -- they are
simply opposed to U.S. intervention in their countries.

The United States has bloodily overthrown and attacked numerous democratic
governments in Latin America, including Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973) and
Nicaragua (1981-1990). The U.S. government has also offered crucial
support to brutal dictatorships throughout the hemisphere, such as in
Argentina, El Salvador and Uruguay, to name but a few cases.

Today's U.S. elites prefer trade deals to military governments as a means
of keeping Latin Americans in line.

It is ridiculous to argue that free trade agreements with Peru and
Colombia will pacify the turn to the left in Latin America. Poor and
working people's movements are fueled by anger over how U.S.-designed
"free trade" policies and military interventions have propped up vicious
domestic oligarchies, impoverished Latin America's people and ransacked
their natural resources.

DANIEL DENVIR Organizer Portland Central America Solidarity Committee
North Portland

Original Article