In Canada, preparation was coordinated by the Common Front on the WTO (CFWTO), which brought together a cross-section of Canadian groups to share information, lobby our government in advance, produce materials, and show a common Canadian civil society front in Cancun. Special thanks are due to Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute, who, on behalf of the Council of Canadians, co-chaired the meetings with Barb Byers of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and who worked tirelessly to round up this very busy collection of organizations and form us into a cohesive Canadian movement.

Finally, the Council prepared a set of materials for Canadians and people around the world. We published a booklet titled Making the Links, which is still relevant and still available in four languages - English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. It can be found on our web site (www.canadians.org) and in hard copy. The feedback from this publication has been great. Many Latin Americans know a fair amount about the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) but little about the WTO, while many activists from other parts of the world do not yet know the details of the proposed FTAA or even the existing NAFTA, which form the prototype for the WTO.

We also produced fact sheets on many aspects of the WTO, especially the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) to show how our basic public services are being threatened by these negotiations. Again, many people worked very hard in the preparations for Cancun, but special thanks must go to Bill Moore-Kilgannon, our Director of Campaigns and Communications, for his tireless and cheerful leadership.

Outside the Power Centre
Right from the beginning, we dedicated most of our efforts to supporting the actions on the street. Most civil society activists were not registered as NGO delegates to the WTO and so could not even enter the 'protected' zone around the convention centre. Some, like me, who were registered, divided our time between "inside" and "outside" strategies and actions.

Cancun, the city, houses about 700,000 Mexican people who service Cancun, the "tourist factory" - a long thin island of incredible natural beauty covered by huge hotels, golf courses and restaurants. The WTO met in a compound along the high end of the "hotel zone" of the island. It was "protected" by huge barricades that were erected between the city and the tourist strip and by about 20,000 armed police and army personnel who manned the barricades and surrounded the entire area.

Thousands of Mexican and international activists converged on the city centre and were housed in tents and hostels throughout Cancun. The WTO delegates were housed as usual in opulent five-star hotels, some of which had a dozen restaurants and swimming pools, and they were driven to and from the WTO site in limousines with chauffeurs. We (the Council of Canadians and many others) stayed at the "low end" of the strip in a small modest hotel whose staff was genuinely kind and increasingly political as the week wore on.

“Civil society was a major player in Cancun and in the months leading up to it and played a key role in the collapse of the talks.”

For the three days before the formal talks began, we busied ourselves with orientation meetings, both for the Council team and for the Canadian groups as a whole. Workshops started immediately on a wide variety of issues, including the right to water, food and medicine, as well as intricate analyses of how the WTO actually works. On the 9th, the International Forum on Globalization put on a day-long "Teach-In" with dozens of expert speakers that culminated in a "Corporate Award" ceremony given to the worst transnational corporations in the world.

That day, dozens of activists, delegates and journalists were taken on a "Real Cancun Tour" to see how the people who serve the wealthy tourists really live. Needless to say, there were no Canadian WTO delegates who participated.

On September 10th, the day the 5th Ministerial formally got underway, close to 10,000 campesinos - small farmers and landless peasants from around the world - ended their two-day symposium with a march from the city centre to the police barricade set up about three kilometres from our hotel. Filled with music, drumming and dancing, the march wound through the streets until it arrived at the big square at the barricade. A solemn procession of about 200 South Korean farmers were particularly moving, with their banners that read "WTO KILLS FARMERS" and their traditional songs of struggle. People mounted the barricades and started pulling them down as a small band (later identified as local thugs) began pelting the police on the other side of the barricades with cement and stones. (It should be noted that many marchers tried to stop this stone throwing as the march was planned as non-violent from the beginning.)

Then came the defining moment of the week. Lee Kyung-Hae, a 56-year-old farmer and former president of the South Korean Farmers Federation, climbed the barricade, faced toward where the WTO delegates were meeting, and plunged a knife into his heart. Lee swayed back and forth for a few seconds and then fell to the ground below. He died in hospital a few hours later, surrounded by distraught colleagues.



Lee Kyung-Hae had been fighting the WTO for years. He had lost his farm due to the dumping of heavily subsidized American and European exports that dramatically undercut his income and then went on to work with other farmers also losing their farms. He wrote of the feeling of helplessness as "we realized that our destinies are now out of our hands" and of comforting a howling wife who found her farmer husband's body after he ingested a toxic chemical because he had lost his farm. "If you were me, how would you feel?" he wrote at the time.

Earlier this year, he camped out for several months in front of the WTO headquarters in Geneva to bring the plight of small farmers to the attention of officials there. He passionately asked them, "Who shall keep our rural vitality, community traditions, amenities and environment? My warning goes to all the citizens that human beings are in an endangered situation and that uncontrolled multinational corporations and a small number of big WTO members are leading an undesirable globalization that is inhumane, environment-distorting, farmer killing and undemocratic."

Except in Canada, Mr. Lee's political act of suicide got headlines all over the world. He carefully chose the opening day of the talks, it was widely reported, so that everyone would know that WTO negotiators were not dealing with technical machinations with no bearing to the general public, but with issues of life and death for millions of people around the world.

For days, his death site became a shrine, draped with powerful banners, covered in flowers and personal tributes. Lee's wife and daughter (who was to be married the next weekend) came to claim his body and wept uncontrollably at the shrine.

Outside activities continued all week, culminating in another march of about 5,000 on September 13th, this one marching past Mr. Lee's shrine to a new and heavily fortified barricade further down the road. It had been agreed upon ahead of time that the marchers would be allowed to take down the barricade with pliers and rope and that, once breached, the police line would not be stormed. Women, especially local Mayan and other Indigenous women, formed the front line of resistance, putting themselves in great danger. For the first time, the Black Bloc acted as security to the peaceful demonstrators and when the barricade finally came down, by ropes pulled by the Koreans, thousands of protesters, peacefully and as agreed, sat down in the grass and listened to music, speeches and a tribute to Lee Kyung-Hae. Thousands of white flowers were passed through the crowd up to the fence where, in front of rows and rows of heavily armed riot police, they were laid on the ground where the fence had come down. Then, on a signal from the Mexican campesino leaders, the marchers peacefully walked back to their camps.

(Unfortunately, about a hundred hard-line protesters moved in after we left and threw buckets of urine and faeces at the police who showed great restraint. The Mexican WTO planning committee recognized that these protesters were not a part of our movement. However, their actions were widely reported in the media where they were identified with us.)

Inside the Power Centre
While these outside activities were taking place, OWINFS worked to ensure a steady stream of protests and actions inside the convention centre every day. There were four types of delegates allowed inside the convention centre: A blue ribbon around your neck denoted delegate status (notwithstanding that delegates had vastly varying degrees of power); green meant press; white meant staff; and an orange ribbon meant that you were an "NGO delegate" allowed to use an "NGO Centre" and to come into the main centre but only in a confined area, off limits entirely to the delegates. NGO delegates were supposed to be satisfied with daily WTO NGO briefings, where we were told absolutely nothing of value, so we used the time to make as much trouble as we could.

At the opening, NGO delegates stood as WTO Director-General Supachai rose to give his opening remarks, and then covered our mouths with tape and held up signs reading "WTO - OBSOLETE."

Every day, we had an action: a skit with people playing the key officials from the QUAD countries (Canada, U.S., Europe, and Japan); a "die-in" to put the spotlight on farmer suicides in India; a banner drop down the side of a makeshift overpass; and illegal street protests outside the talks. We also had a twice-daily briefing from those with access to information from the delegates, usually by the Third World Network or Focus on the Global South, and Canadian NGOs attended briefing sessions from our own government officials. We also held regular press briefings to give a civil society response to the negotiations inside. It was then our job to ensure that our colleagues not able to attend these briefings were kept up-to-date, which we did at our hotel every morning over a breakfast meeting. And, of course, we were there to give our opinions to the press when the talks collapsed mid-afternoon of the final day of negotiations as well as to celebrate with one another.

The 5th Ministerial was doomed from the start. The QUAD countries had promised a "Development Round," which should have meant a true reckoning of years of lost promises to the developing world. Agricultural subsidies to the big industrial farms and agri-business corporations from the U.S. and the EU alone amount to over US$1 billion a day, resulting in massive dumping of food products below cost into poorer countries, who have dutifully taken down most of what was left of their own protections. As a result, millions of small farmers around the world have been displaced from their land, swelling urban slums without the infrastructure to serve them. But not only were the powerful countries of the North not willing to address these issues in any substantive way, they insisted on introducing a whole set of new issues - the so-called "Singapore Issues" - of investment, government procurement, competition and trade facilitation. Along with ambitious new negotiations on services, the new issues are intended to give the corporations of the First World access to government contracts and natural resources of the Third World.

However, a new power-block of developing countries, called the G-21-plus (so called because it started as 21 countries, but grew as more came onside), emerged in Cancun. Led by China, Brazil and India, this block has changed the balance of power in the WTO, perhaps forever. Representing more than half the world's population and two-thirds of its farmers, this block withstood immense pressure from the QUAD countries in Cancun and refused to buckle as it had in Doha. (It is worth noting that China was not part of the WTO at the time of the 4th Ministerial.) It is important to remember that every one of the G-21-plus countries receives aid from the U.S. and the EU. As well, the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) now coordinate their operations closely with the WTO in order to "encourage" developing countries to play ball with the WTO. The consequences for countries that refuse can be severe; loans and project funding can be withheld or cancelled. President Bush, Tony Blair and other QUAD leaders were on the phone to the heads of state of the recalcitrant countries.

For three days, the battle over agriculture raged on. Then, as if they thought it all a grand bluff, the QUAD negotiators turned hard-line on the new issues and insisted on resolving them before resuming the stalled talks on agriculture. Here Canada played a key role, as Pierre Pettigrew, Canada's International Trade minister, was named the "Friend of the Chair" on the new issues and was sent out to negotiate a deal on them.

These new issues were also contentious in Doha and only made it into the final text on condition that there be "explicit consensus" of all member countries to launch negotiations in these areas in Cancun.

At the beginning of the meeting, more than 70 developing countries (represented by 16 countries in Cancun) announced their refusal to proceed with a new round of WTO negotiations on the Singapore issues. Speaking on behalf of the group, Rafidah Aziz, Malaysia's trade minister, declared: "We will not agree to launch negotiations at this meeting" in any of the four areas. Clearly, there was no "explicit consensus" to launch negotiations on the Singapore issues. But Pettigrew refused to accept this; instead of taking seriously the strong opposition expressed by many developing countries, he began to manufacture his own consensus. When the revised Ministerial Text was released at noon on September 13th, it contained a plan for beginning a stage-by-stage set of negotiations on all four of the Singapore issues and had dropped entirely the concept of consensus.

The text infuriated the developing countries and the civil society groups watching every play. Sunday the 14th was officially the last day of the Ministerial, but rumours of an extension were swirling everywhere.

That day, in intense "green room" meetings, Pettigrew and other QUAD heavyweights tried one last time to impose their agenda of the new issues on the South. But their bluff was called when the delegates from Kenya, and then others, stood up and walked out. The 5th Ministerial of the WTO was over and no agreement had been reached.

We were jubilant and sang our version of the Beatles' song "Can't buy me love" which was "Can't buy the world" (written by the irrepressible Carol Bergin from Stuttgart) to banks of television cameras. Then the press conferences began. U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick, called the G-21-plus "a grouping of the paralyzed" - "won't do" countries that ruined things for the "can-do" countries like the U.S. Europe's Pascal Lamy called the WTO "medieval." Pierre Pettigrew mused that the trouble with the WTO was that it was acting too much like a Parliament, a very telling remark indeed. The G-21-plus countries, on the other hand, told a different story. This is not the end of anything, they stated at their press briefing, but rather a whole new beginning. African and Latin American delegates were high-fiving and hugging one another. There was a very clear understanding on that convention floor, surrounded by stunned media, that a seismic shift in global power had taken place in Cancun and that the world would never be the same.

What Does this Mean?
It is first important to take the time to savour this victory and to acknowledge the role that groups like ours have played here in Canada and around the world. This stunning upset now opens the door for alternative trade policies based on fundamentally different principles. There is a huge vacuum that needs to be filled and we must be strategic in our next moves. Right away, we must, as Martin Khor is calling for, argue that the new issues did not get the required consensus in Cancun, and were therefore, not launched. They cannot, then, be considered part of the Doha Round any more. We must stress the need for the QUAD to eat some humble pie and return to the negotiating table to listen to the Third World on its most pressing issues for the first time. As well, we need to keep the pressure up for the ongoing FTAA negotiations. The issues are essentially the same, as is the power imbalance between North and South. Derailing this process is our next challenge in this hemisphere.

There are also some immediate pitfalls to address. Some of the dissenting developing countries are calling for all Northern subsidies to be taken down and for a genuine "free trade" in agriculture. For most civil society groups working on the WTO worldwide, the goal is sustainable agriculture based on policies of food security, sovereignty and environmental stewardship, not a free-for-all which would give big agri-business unlimited opportunities. As well, the U.S. administration, in its anger, is likely to retreat from the multilateral field and take on the recalcitrant countries one at a time in bilateral trade and investment agreements where they are more vulnerable. Finally, nothing - unfortunately - has derailed the GATS negotiations; in fact, it is likely that the U.S. and Europe will attempt to gain momentum on the rejected new issues, particularly investment, through these talks on services.

A specific concern for Canadians is the poor coverage of this meeting in the Canadian media. There were only four reporters from Canada - The Globe and Mail, Can West, Western Producer, and Radio-Canada. CTV did have a stringer, who covered the protests, but no one from that network was accredited inside the convention, and there was little coverage from CBC television, French and English, and English CBC radio.

Most of the print reporting remained in the business pages and there was almost no coverage of the most dramatic events, especially the death of Lee Kyung-Hae. And there has been very little in-depth analysis of the meaning of the talks' collapse, nor of the role of civil society in the process.

As for the future of the WTO itself, Walden Bello has identified four fundamental lessons from what happened in Cancun. The first is that the collapse of the talks represented a victory for the people of the world, not a "missed opportunity" for a deal. He points out that developing countries never came looking for an historic deal, but rather to prevent the further entrenchment of an unjust system. Therefore, the developing countries were not responsible for the collapse of the talks; that honour belongs squarely to the QUAD.

Second, says Bello, the WTO as an institution has been severely weakened and this is a good thing. Some will argue that any multilateral institution is better than none, because at least this is a venue for developing countries to stand together. But Walden argues that the WTO is so flawed in its structure that we must continue to work for its demise and for it to be replaced with something fundamentally different.

Third, civil society was a major player in Cancun and in the months leading up to it and played a key role in the collapse of the talks. Collaboration between developing country delegates and our groups were obvious and powerful; many of us were told by delegates that our presence and support made a huge difference, particularly the statement we published on the morning of the 14th, signed by over 60 groups from around the world, condemning the second draft text.

Finally, the G-21-plus is a formidable new player in the world and will change the nature of global politics in a fundamental way. Member countries view what happened in Cancun as positive and have vowed to stay together in a more permanent arrangement. Walden says that there is great scope for an alliance between our movement and this new power block to dismantle the structures of inequality in the world and begin the long march to a different world.

My final memory of Cancun is a very sad one. On Monday morning, September 15, I shared a cab to the airport with a wonderful New Zealand activist and academic, Jane Kelsey. Our cab ride took us by Mr. Lee's shrine and we asked our driver to slow down for one last look. To our dismay, a work crew was in the final stages of dismantling it, putting all the tributes, flowers, poems, candles and photos of Mr. Lee in big garbage bins. Jane and I jumped out of the cab and with the help of the very kind driver and the tolerance of the workers, gathered the banners for safe keeping so they can be returned either to the family or to Mexico. The banner in my safekeeping says in Spanish: "Mr Lee - Your Death Was Not in Vain." May this be so. v

Maude Barlow is Volunteer Chairperson for the Council of Canadians, a non-profit, non-partisan organization of over 100,000 Canadians. She is also a Director with “The International Forum on Globalization” and co-founder of the Blue Planet Project. Barlow is author or co-author of thirteen books, the latest of which is Blue Gold: The Battle to Stop Corporate Theft of the World's Water.