Alliance for Responsible Trade

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives
Congressman Charles Rangel, Chair, Ways and Means Committee
Congressman Sander Levin, Chair, Trade Subcommittee, Ways and Means

Dear Honorable Members of Congress:

We address this open letter to you as leaders of the Democratic majority in Congress. We urge you to vote against the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) which is being considered along with further military aid to Colombia. There are good trade agreements between countries, but this agreement is not good for the people of either the United States or Colombia. There are many reasons to oppose it.

The FTA would increase drug availability on U.S. streets, and it would damage Colombia's agriculture, destroying the country's food self-sufficiency. Increased importation of U.S. crops to Colombia would force peasants into the cultivation of illicit crops. Growing coca and poppies would be the only economically viable option for many decent peasants and rural workers.

The FTA would add to global warming by causing severe ecological damage to the tropical forests and virgin lands of Colombia, in addition to the negative environmental effects which are already caused by the chemicals used to spray coca crops. The FTA limits itself to demanding that Colombia's government comply with its own very lax environmental laws, which have been aggressively weakened in recent years.

The FTA would result, like other treaties with Mexico and Central America, in increased unauthorized migration to the United States. NAFTA has been a disaster for Mexican farmers. It has driven many of them off the land, into the cities and northward to the United States in search of employment and income. If the Colombia FTA passes, we can expect more undocumented migrants.

The FTA would result in more unemployment among U.S. workers and pressure to lower wages in this country. Our workers would be exposed to competition with a labor market that is notorious for its extensive labor and human rights violations. U.S. workers are struggling for a living wage, and this would be a setback in that struggle.

The FTA is being negotiated with a government implicated in severe violations of human rights via its cooperation with paramilitary death squads. Nearly one hundred political leaders close to President Uribe are in jail, fugitives from the law, or implicated in the operations of paramilitary organizations. There are already nine members of the Colombian Congress, all close allies of the Uribe administration, who have been indicted by the Colombian Supreme Court for their involvement with the paramilitaries.

The United States already supports this government with military and financial aid via the costly 2001 Plan Colombia and the Andean Regional Initiative, which have failed completely in their publicly stated goal of reducing coca and opium poppy production by 50%. But it has resulted in enormous ecological damage caused by fumigation and disproportional displacement of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. The Colombian military has used U.S. aid to strengthen its campaign against guerrilla groups. In the name of fighting the guerillas, severe violations of human rights and attacks against the civilian population have taken place. Some of these operations, which in numerous cases appear closely connected with paramilitary depredations, have forced peasants off their land.

Colombia has more than 3.7 million displaced people, second only to Sudan in the world. Small plots abandoned by peasants, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous people have been taken over by elements linked to narcotraffickers and turned into large landholdings. The FTA would exacerbate and make permanent the victimization of the peasant population and would have a very negative impact on agriculture in general.

Property acquired by force and/or drug money is being declared legal by the Colombian government, and the land cultivation is being changed to either coca cultivation or, as per the FTA model, from food staples to large-scale export crops, such as tropical fruits, or large-scale plantations of African palm for biofuel production. These changes undermine local food self-sufficiency, while benefiting a few corporate giants. Public opinion worldwide is highly critical of the current U.S. administration's cooperation and support of these oppressive conditions in Colombia.

The FTA is so fundamentally flawed that no number of "side letters" of intent, or special attachments and amendments, can fix it. If you vote for this agreement, you would be voting for increased availability of drugs on U.S. streets, increased environmental destruction, increased unauthorized immigration, increased suffering for the middle class, support for a government that is involved in severe human rights violations, support for a humanitarian crisis of gigantic proportions in Colombia, and increased damage to our international moral standing.

Please vote against the FTA and further military aid to Colombia.

Committee of Union Activists, AFSCME, NY City District Council-37 Gabriel Camacho, Massachusetts Chapter President, Labor Council for Latin American Development
United States Hispanic Leadership Institute (USHLI)
Gilbert Gonzalez, Chair, Labor Studies Group, University of California, Irvine
Committee of Union Activists, SEIU, Local 32BJ, New York
Sisters of the Holy Cross, Congregation Justice Committee, Notre Dame, IN
Kirsten Moller, Executive Director, Global Exchange, San Francisco
Interfaith Peace Ministry of Orange County (CA)
Los Angeles Greens, Los Angeles, California
Paul Kuttner, Chicago, IL
Colombia Human Rights Committee, Washington, D.C.
Student Trade Justice Campaign
Domnica Fotino,M.D., New Orleans
Gail S. Phares, Director, The Carolina Interfaith Task Force on Central America and Witness for Peace SE
Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA) USA, New York and New Jersey Patricia Keefe, Minneapolis, MN
Raul Fernandez, Spokesperson, ASOCOL-Association for the Sovereignty of Colombia
Mike Antoniades, Toronto
Movement against the FTAs with Colombia, Peru and Korea (N. Y))
Professor Louis Lefeber, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Graduate Programme for Social and Political Thought, York Univ., Toronto
Ruth Goring and Daniel Delapava, Co-directors, Chicagoans for a Peaceful Colombia, Chicago, Illinois
Andres A. Ibanez, University of Guelph, Ontario
Victor Rodriguez, Chair, Chicano Latino Studies Department, California State University, Long Beach, CA
Colombia Vive, Boston, Mass.
Kara Martinez, Denver Justice and Peace Committee, Denver, CO Orange County (CA) Interfaith Coalition for Social Justice
Arthur W. Clark, M.D.;Korean Americans for Fair Trade (KAFT)
Jerry Pendergast
John Lindsay-Poland and Susana Pimiento Chamorro, Co-Directors, Fellowship of Reconciliation Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean (FOR)
Nathan Higgins, Halifax
NETWORK: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
Luis Guillermo Arcos
The Quixote Center/Quest for Peace
Frank Rizzo
Patrick Bonner, Coordinator, Colombia Peace Project, Los Angeles,
Elizabeth MacQueen, Sculptor
St. Mark Presbyterian Church, Peace and Justice Commission, Newport Beach, CA
Rev. Sally Schreiner Youngquist, Senior Pastor, Living Water Community Church (a Mennonite Church USA congregation), Chicago, IL
Meg E. Cox, Freelance Journalist
Anne Barstow, Presbyterian Peace Fellowship
Elizabeth Stich, Duluth, MN
Lori Reed, International Affairs Program Director, St. Louis American Friends Service Committee
Patricia Dahl, New York City
St. Louis Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America IFCLA (Missouri).