Rights and Sovereignty vs. Free Trade, Debt and Corporate Power
Peoples´Summit Building Sovereignty
Forum Rights and Sovereignty vs. Free Trade, Debt and Corporate Power
Summary of situation and popular alternatives and strategies
The crisis we are experiencing is not a
conjunctural moment. In Latin America we have experienced a permanent crisis,
based on the capitalist dispossession of Peoples. The bases of the crisis have
been the non-payment to workers, the non-payment and non-recognition of the
work of women, the looting of the commons and of all that belongs to colonized
peoples. Consequently, our responses must go in the direction of changing the
system, because the crisis is the capitalist system and the society that has
been built up on its basis.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a
change in the world system characterized by three factors: a) the role that
China and India are beginning to play, countries which by 2030 will supply 40%
of world GDP; b) the hegemonic transition; c) the deepening of the processes of
plunder, colonization and waste.
In response to the moment of crisis
experienced by the process of capitalist accumulation and concentration, there
have been different strategies from the ruling class and from peoples in
resistance. The strategies of the ruling class include, among others: the
intensification of the processes of commodification, the recolonization of both
terrestrial and marine territories, large-scale war to destroy capital and low
intensity conflict such as the categorization of Failed States, the increase in
the criminalization of popular struggles, the authoritarian drift,
militarization, the creation of new blocks within the same logic of capitalism
like the G20, the attempts at financial regulation that remain mere attempts,
green capitalism as the commodification of nature. These responses turn
increasingly evident that the contradiction capital-labor is now joined by the
contradictions capital-life and capital-democracy.
In this context, public debt has become a
privileged tool of the capitalist expansion of concentration, inequality and
oppression. It acts to subordinate the model of production and consumption to
the search for resources to pay interest and continually refinance the ever-increasing
balances. We must consider the Debt not only from a macroeconomic perspective,
but also from how it affects our rights and ways of life, and how it undermines
the Sovereignty and Self-determination of Peoples. The expansion of the
mercantilist green economy and the violations of human rights are linked to the
Debt. States give priority to paying the Debt, sacrificing the political,
social, economic, environmental and cultural rights of Peoples, pressured by
big capital and the multilateral institutions at its service, such as the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development
Bank, etc.
These institutions, together with the World
Trade Organization, promote an economic liberalization that increases corporate
power and intensifies the deep asymmetries that cut across our Peoples and
Countries. A critical examination of these past decades shows what the impacts
of the neoliberal trade and investment regime have been. More than 20 years of
NAFTA show how dramatic these treaties can be for our Sovereignty and Rights.
The Investment Protection Agreements generate disproportionate benefits for
corporations. For example, they externalize risks through demands against
governments before international private courts, and by shielding regulation in
their favor. The mere threat of demands for billions of dollars exerts a
formidable pressure on States, in relation to the exercising of their
sovereignty and their role as guarantors of human rights, environmental protection
of the environment, respect for labor rights.
Corporate power has become increasingly
concentrated and strengthened under the transformations driven by the
capitalist system and its dictatorial instruments, such as the system of
perpetual indebtedness and the trade and investment regime. These have
subordinated sovereign national norms to illegitimate corporate law. This
facilitates the actions of the transnational corporations, which systematically
violate human rights, subjecting Peoples and Nature to ever greater harassment.
Such is the case of the transnational Bennetton, among many examples, that
despoils the Mapuche people and their territories with the active complicity of
the Argentine State and government.
The transnationals act under the protection of
an Architecture of Impunity, which includes the debt system, free trade and
investment protection agreements, and multilateral organizations such as the
World Trade Organization (WTO). These give rise to a globalization based on
their lust for profit. Other pillars of this architecture are: the capture and
privatization of democracy that crystallizes into true
CEO-cracies; the fiscal and financial feast that is behind the dynamic of the
concentration of capital. Likewise, in the intellectual property regime where
knowledge has become a registered trademark, and in the extractivist dynamic,
the taking of control and plunder of territories, knowledge, bodies, and the
natural commons takes place.
Peoples Building Sovereignty and Rights
Capitalism is always in action and does not
give up. However, popular strategies of resistance are also evident. There is
an apparent demobilization, fragmentation and pessimism in Latin America.
However, this makes no sense as we have an accumulation of experiences of
resistance that serve as hope to continue building sovereignty.
As an instrument of domination, the
repercussions of the Debt made evident in the multiple resistances must be
unveiled and socialized, denouncing its illegitimate character and
demonstrating who really owes whom. The construction of a horizon of
transformation and hope implies taking on our rightful role as the true
Creditors, of debts that are not only economic, but also social, historical,
ecological, democratic and of gender, among others. The praxis of the various
resistances must allow us to understand their demands and claims and relate
them to the system of perpetual indebtedness, in order to defeat the power of
capital and strengthen spaces of articulation among the diverse struggles for a
dignified and just world. We need to continue building on the basis of popular
struggles to advance in this process, including actions such as comprehensive
and citizen audits of the Debt, ethical tribunals and popular consultations,
among other strategies. We must demystify the role assigned to Debt as the
engine of growth. We must be able to use the wealth generated by our Peoples
for the satisfaction of our needs and rights rather than to feed the dynamics
of speculation and debt. No more debts! We don´t owe, we won't pay!! We the
Peoples are Sovereign!
Faced with the trade and investment regime, we
must organize ourselves to stop its expansion, move towards audits of the
treaties that enable us to delegitimize and overturn them. We need a space of
global articulation of struggles against the trade and investment regime. We
reject the European Union's proposal for a Multilateral Investment Court (MIC)
and we call on governments to denounce existing investment protection treaties
and to not sign any more free trade agreements, including the EU-Mercosur
Agreement which they are threatening to sign shortly as the result of a secret
negotiation behind the backs of our Peoples. Furthermore, we reaffirm that the
WTO continues to kill peasants and that it is one of the causes of global
injustice. The WTO must be abolished. In the short term, the current expansion
of its mandate and disciplines, pushed by the Global North and its
transnational corporations, must be stopped. WTO Out! Enough of
"free" trade! We the Peoples are Free!
We will continue to confront
corporate power, which is carrying out the dispossession by the transnationals
in the territories, the evictions, the criminalization and loss of' access of
Peoples to their natural resources in the sea and on land. Through our
resistances we continue to take care of our territories, our seeds, our bodies,
our languages and cultures, our Memory. We must globalize our struggles, and
continue to strengthen our ties and networking as well as our capacity for
joint action in order to dismantle corporate power. We must continue to fight
in order to achieve an international treaty that obliges transnational
corporations to respect human rights. We must dispute the legislative and
judicial space, denouncing how laws are violated, distorted, misinterpreted and
adapted in the interest of the transnationals. They criminalize the people,
organizations and communities that defend our rights and those of nature, while
ensuring the impunity of capital. We must maintain the autonomy of social movements
in relation to governments, offering our solidarity with Peoples, communities
and organizations that suffer persecution and repression. Corporate power
generates physical, structural and symbolic violence against Peoples. Enough
already! End impunity and dismantle the power of the
transnationals now!
Peoples everywhere must assume themselves as
protagonists and builders of their destiny, exercising their sovereignty. When
we talk about human rights, we refer to the Rights of Peoples and the Rights of
Nature; rights that today are totally overcome. Out of commitment to all those
people who are no longer with us, we continue in the hope of further deepening
our struggles and advancing in the construction of sovereignty and alternatives
of dignified life for all. We shall Overcome!
- Buenos Aires, December 11, 2017
