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June 19, 2006 • VOL. 44, NO. 12 • Oakland, CA
Guatemalan bishop:
Free trade widens rich-poor gap
TORONTO (CNS)
-- Free trade under the current economic rules can only widen the gap
between rich and poor in the Americas, said the head of the Guatemalan
bishops’ conference.
“I am not against free trade in its true sense,” said Bishop
Alvaro Ramazzini Imeri of San Marcos, Guatemala. “But free trade
has to be based on equal rules for all players.”
Bishop Ramazzini, who also heads a commission formed last year to negotiate
mining reform, spoke June 8 in Toronto.
The bishop said he is afraid that under terms of the Central American
Free Trade Agreement, U.S. food products will flood global markets, stifling
domestic production for Guatemala.
“The Guatemalan peasant farmer has no social security, no job security;
neither does he have access to subsidies, (unlike) the U.S. farmer, who
has farming equipment, irrigation systems, and who will inevitably produce
more,” he said.
On the one hand, the bishop said, industrialized countries are promoting
the freer movement of goods throughout the Americas, widening the gap
between rich and poor and inciting people to go North for new opportunities.
But at the same time, he said, the U.S. government is restricting the
free movement of people.
“There is a contradiction in this situation,” the bishop said.
Bishop Ramazzini also spoke about the context in which CAFTA was signed
last August -- hurriedly and without consultation with civil society.
Since its signing, the Guatemalan Parliament has not passed legislation
to implement the accord, and a group of lawyers petitioned the Constitutional
Court, arguing that CAFTA’s provisions are contrary to the Guatemalan
Constitution.
