CENTRAL AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT (CAFTA)
Testimony
of Archbishop Alvaro Ramazzini Imaro of San Marcos, Guatemala, before
the Congressional Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere:
The
archbishop expressed deep concerns about the present plan. He reiterated
the plea of Pope John Paul II to consider the effect of trade policies
on those who live in poverty, not just on the benefits to business and
economic growth.
In Guatemala 56% of the population is poor (16%
extremely poor and living in rural areas). Almost a quarter of
Guatemala's Gross Domestic Product comes from agriculture that employs
the rural poor. "But they cannot compete against the U.S. Treasure and
the $170 billion subsidies . . . in your farm bill of 2002."
The
inability of rural farm families to compete against subsidized commodity
imports or overcome limited access to [patented] seed and fertilizers
drives the ablebodied to move to the U.S. for work or to jobs in local
maquilas that lack labor rights and safe working conditions.
Archbishop
Ramazzini recalled Pope John Paul's words ["Ecclesia in America"] "If
globalization is ruled merely by the laws of the market applied to suit
the powerful, the consequences cannot be but negative."
Some of
those consequences: unemployment, reduced public services, depletion of
natural resources and environmental destruction, increasing rich-poor
gap, and growing inferiority of poor nations to rich nations.
Said
the archbishop: "The path of trade integration laid down by the free
trade agreement . . . has been presented as a wide avenue along all can
travel to a greater prosperity. In reality it is a narrow path across a
deep gorge that only the strongest can travel. It offers hope only to a
few, and, I fear, no hope to those whom the Pope calls 'the weakest, the
most powerless and the poorest.' "
[The full text may be found in Origins, Vol. 34, No. 46, 5/5/05]