What Barack Obama should know about the Peru free trade agreement

Peru needs the United States to be an ally for our progress, but also for the honest defense of human rights and the protection of the environment. Most importantly, the US can help Peruvians building a better society and a more inclusive and strong democracy.

El Comercio, a very conservative newspaper in Peru and the oldest running in that Andean country, is praising Barack Obama statements on “free trade” during last night’s presidential debate.

Obama was responding to an attack from Senator McCain about the Colombia free trade agreement (FTA) when he used the Peru FTA as a reference.

“Barack Obama used Peru FTA as an example” reads the big title included in the center of the paper’s printed first page. This was also posted on the EC online edition, placing it as one of the most read news today.



What El Comercio is not saying to its readers is that Senator Barack Obama believes that free trade agreements must comply with labor and human rights, and with protection of the environment.

That is why he mentioned the Peru FTA, because he believes the Peruvian deal is strong enough to guarantee those rights.

In reality, the final Peru FTA -which was passed by US Congress last year- includes some provisions that are supposed to make it fair for both American and Peruvian workers, and for our planet.

But those labor regulations are hard to apply in a country like Peru, where 75% of workers can’t join unions or ask for labor benefits, since they belong to the informal market or are employed by third-party job agencies that refuse to include them as full time workers.

Also in Peru, big mining, oil and gas corporations –mostly from the US, Canada, Europe and China- are destroying the environment, poisoning Peruvian Indigenous farmers, miners and laborers. With the support of powerful local elites and the government, these companies are avoiding paying taxes to the Peruvian government, therefore little progress is seeing by Peruvians.

For example, the Achuar Indigenous peoples of Peru live now in a poisoned landscape and suffer of lead and cadmium poisoning after Occidental Petroleum (US) extracted oil in their Amazon region land, with the protection of the Peruvian government.

Amazon Watch informs that last week a protest was held in Los Angeles:

Leaders of the indigenous Achuar people of Peru accompanied by 40 demonstrators wearing hazmat suits today brought Occidental Petroleum's Amazon disaster to the company's doorstep as they marched inside the hotel hosting the Oxy annual shareholder meeting. The demonstrators took company security by surprise and entered the building
chanting: "Oxy, Oxy, clean up now!"

Also last week, The Huffington Post -a more independent media source- published an article by Dan Kovalik, where he describes the terrible effects the Peru FTA is already causing among Peruvian citizens: death, lost of their lands and livelihoods, diseases, social protests, and the government’s brutal repression and corruption. But Peruvians are responding with more successful protests:

While the effects of free trade in Peru are horrendous, the good news is that people there are fighting back. For example, this past September, mass protests by the indigenous peoples themselves forced the Peruvian Congress to overturn decrees of President Alan Garcia -- decrees made to bring Peruvian law into line with the FTA -- which would have opened the Amazon rainforest even further to mineral exploitation by multi-nationals.

And to prove that capitalism without social responsibility is a great danger for any country, a recent political crisis in the Garcia administration, has showed how deep is corruption among its government leaders and the oil corporations in Peru - fighting to control the Amazon region resources, and how this is damaging the already weak Peruvian democracy.

Reuters posted:

Garcia had faced calls from opposition leaders to reshuffle his cabinet after audio tapes emerged that linked members of his APRA party to a plan to steer lucrative petroleum contracts to favored bidders in exchange for bribes.

Garcia, a staunch supporter of free markets and foreign investment, has seen his approval rating fall to a record low of 19 percent despite surging economic growth of 9 percent a year.

Of course, nothing about these negative impacts of the Peru FTA on Peruvians have been published by El Comercio. The newspaper is owned by a rich family who belong to that insensitive Lima elite that benefits from business-minded deals like the Peru FTA. Even when they mean more injustice and abuse for the majority of Peruvians.

Senator Obama needs a better advice in this issue. I believe he is a good man and I hope that as the next President of the US, he will push for the revoke and renegotiation of the US-Peru free trade agreement.

Peru needs the United States to be an ally for our progress, but also for the honest defense of human rights and the protection of the environment. Most importantly, the US can help Peruvians building a better society and a more inclusive and strong democracy.




.