AFTER four days of intense debate, the 5th Hemispheric Conference against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) concluded in Havana April 15. Participants included 400 representatives from 36 nations, with the goal of continuing the consolidation of alternatives for confronting this new strategy of colonial domination that the empire has decided to impose on us.

This comes after having achieved the deadlock of its original version after more than 10 years of struggle – it should be remembered that the initiative was launched in Miami during the 1st Summit of the Americas in 1994 – even while the U.S. government is masking its defeat by giving the green light to bilateral agreements like those already signed with Central American countries, Peru and Colombia, but settling for what analysts and observers call the "FTAA-lite" or the FTAA of several speeds.

After more than a decade of struggle, the continent’s social movements are aware that now, when the White House is mutating its initial objectives with new agreements, treaties and alliances concealing identical purposes, it is imperative to win the war for popular awareness, as the conference’s Final Declaration states.

During the final session, conference participants, who are members of continental networks and campaigns opposed to free trade agreements, approved a plan of action and a Final Declaration in which, after socializing their respective national experiences, they exchanged ideas on the various ways of opposing the new variants which the empire is using to try to dominate us, such as bilateral agreements, bi-regional ones, or those that the European Union is equally presenting as neocolonial "carrots" in its relations with the region, or NAFTA-Plus, to cite just a few. At the same time, they expressed their rejection of the financial institutions and the militaristic offensive in the hemisphere

Enriching discussions took place among regional groups like the Andean one, which addressed the analysis and perspectives of a new political scenario in the area, taking into account the nationalist and popular governments, committed and opposed to their core to the neoliberal model, free trade and imperialist hegemony, that have taken power in Latin America.

Discussion of the anti-immigrant legislation in the regional group of the North was instructive regarding the joint efforts of all the social organizations and movements in the United States, Canada and Mexico today who are opposing that racist legislation, and are holding a general work strike on May 1 throughout the United States to repudiate the fascist objectives of those laws.

Those at the event included organizations like CLOC, COMPA, CADA, Jubileo Sur, MMM- REMTE, OCLAE and the In Defense of Humanity Network of Networks. Likewise, the Havana conference saw the emergence of the International Jurists Network, with the precise objective of providing legal guidance to the social fight against the FTAA as a project to re-colonize the continent.

Another issue addressed was the euphemistically dubbed Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), another attempt to expand to all of the Americas the Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico, and with a dangerous component of supranational security under the responsibility of the United States. This project is even more dangerous than the FTAA because it is advancing without making public its goals and essence, and which would imply concretizing an end to the legislative, judicial and even the executive institutions of every nation in the hemisphere, in favor of one single government – that of Washington.

During the event, master lectures were presented by Belgian sociologist Francois Houtard and Bolivian Pablo Solón regarding the struggle of the social movements for a better world, as well as the opening talk by Cuban deputy and academic Osvaldo Martínez, who noted that the "model that the United States stubbornly continues to wish for Latin America and the Caribbean is the pure neoliberalism of free trade and privatization."

"Now," he said, "the original FTAA project, the 34-nation one, with Cuba excluded, is frozen, which is good news and an expression of a victory for the continental campaign against the FTAA. It is a victory in one stage of the battle – to use military terms – but the war has not yet been won, nor has the time come to lay down our arms.

"Like a malignant virus, the FTAA has mutated after coming up against resistance, and it is maintaining today the essence of the project of domination to take over the region’s oil, gas, water, biodiversity, markets and labor force, but the face it is wearing is that of the Free Trade Agreements wrapped in the propaganda of trade liberalization," he explained.

However, this U.S. offensive on free trade is taking place in conditions different from those of a few years ago, because neoliberalism is entering an obvious crisis, he noted.

"Neoliberalism, which seemed all-powerful when the Social Continental Alliance was created in 1997, and arrogantly claimed for itself the category of unique thought, petulantly proclaiming the end of history, is now crumbling.

"And in that collapse, the struggle of the social movements is a piece of enormous importance in terms of criticism, resistance, popular mobilization and opposition to the neoliberal model," he emphasized.

During the closing session, Cuban President Fidel Castro sent a message of support to social fighters against the FTAA, which was read out by Osvaldo Martínez, who is also the director of the Center for World Economy Studies, and who noted that although it was not possible for the president, "a habitual and active participant in these events, to attend this time, he did not want to fail to express his identification with and commitment to a struggle that is one of all the peoples in Our America."

And, because another America is possible, the delegates, imbued with the strength of their fight and the brick-by-brick construction of a containing wall against neoliberalism, agreed to hold -- May 3-5, 2007 in Havana – the 6th Hemispheric Conference of movements and networks who are fighting against the FTAA and free trade. •

Hugo Chávez, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Néstor Kirchner, presidents of Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, respectively, sign the agreement for the creation of PETROSUR, an initiative of ALBA, the integration agreement set in motion by the Bolivarian Revolution, which is based on solidarity and mutual aid among the Latin American peoples. The ALBA is an alternative to the FTAA that the U.S. government is trying to impose as part of its strategy of colonial domination on the continent.

The imposition of the FTAA on the part of the United States has provoked a unanimous rejection by the Latin American peoples, who are opposed to the annexation of their countries and the loss of sovereignty to the imperial master.

The Free Trade Treaties constitute a new weapon for the annexation of Latin America on the part of the United States and thus have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of the people, who have managed to stop them being accepted in more than a few countries.

The Wall of Death, as it is called by immigrants, not only on account of the massacres that the police authorities are committing against Mexican workers trying to cross it but because the U.S. government is using billions of dollars taken from social security budgets.

Huge demonstration in Los Angeles, California against the racist anti-immigrant legislation that the Bush administration is trying to impose.