Letter to the Costa Rican Ambassador
October 23, 2006
Ambassador Francisco Tomás Dueña Leiva
Embassy of the Republic of Costa Rica in the United States
Ambassador Dueña:
Please receive cordial greetings from Quest for Peace. Our organization works supporting development projects in Nicaragua, and to promote fair trade in the region. Through relationships of international solidarity, which we have established, we are aware of the many ways in which organizations in Costa Rica have expressed opposition over the last three years, to the Free Trade Agreement that your country and the rest of Central America have negotiated with the United States.
In January of 2003, negotiations for the Free Trade Agreement were initiated under a neoliberal , "free trade" framework without consultation or prior studies regarding the country's economy. Since the initiation of these negotiations, social organizations in Costa Rica have been aware of the dangers of following this model. We are aware of the negative impacts of NAFTA in Mexico, which, rather than resolving the problems of unemployment, poverty and inequality, the model has deepened them.
When the negotiations were finalized and the text was made public, a diversity of organizations, institutions, investigators, academics and politicians published studies demonstrating the serious impacts that this treaty will have on our country. At this juncture, organizations asked the government of Cost Rica not to send the Treaty to the Legislative Assembly. However, once again the voice of the people was ignored and the proposed legislation is advancing in the legislative process.
The social organizations in Costa Rica have not remained silent. They have requested more audiences with the Assembly in order to express their reasons for opposing the treaty. The legislative commission has closed its hearings; 85% of the organizations and institutions testified in favor of CAFTA, and the majority of the organizations critical of CAFTA were excluded from testifying, despite having requested an audience.
On the 23 and 24th of October, the National Coordinator against CAFTA has convened the Costa Rican social movements to take to the streets throughout the country in order to once again express opposition to CAFTA. The mobilization is set for this date because the Treaty and the implementation agenda are scheduled to be approved, including destructive projects such as the opening of the telecommunications and insurance sectors to foreign investment, and ill advised provisions that permit patenting of living organisms among other things.
First and foremost, we would like to express our solidarity with the people of Costa Rica and the valiant actions of resistance that they are carrying out. They are defending a peaceful country and insisting on the need to build and advance a country that guarantees stable, quality employment, where biodiversity is respected, where small farmers have land and can cultivate healthy crops. It is a country where it is viewed as achievements of national pride that: generations have had access to quality public education, social security and excellent public telephone systems. We express our solidarity because we share the Costa Rican organizations negative assessment that CAFTA will convert all of these achievements, guarantees and dreams into a Costa Rica at the service of transnational corporations.
In addition we would like to ask you, as a representative of the government of Costa Rica in our country, to send a message to president Oscar Arias Sanchez exhorting him to hear the demands of the Costa Rican organizations and to withdrawal form these projects. So called "free trade" is not the only way to establish commercial relations between peoples. Costa Rican social organizations want international trade based on laws of justice and respect for the rights of peoples.
Lastly, we hope that the mobilizations of the citizenry which will be carried out in these days in Costa Rica are seen by the government and its representatives as one more of many actions through which the social movement has tried to express its opinion. We ask that the government not react with violence, repression nor criminalization of social protest as has happened recently during other protests.
Respectfully,
Thomas Loudon
Quixote Center/Quest for Peace