Peasant leaders plan Cancún protest

By John Authers in Cancun and Sara Silver in Mexico City
Financial Times

http://search.ft.com/s03/search/article.html?id=030909000984

Sept 09, 2003

Mexican peasant leaders are planning a mass
demonstration against free trade tomorrow to mark the
opening of the World Trade Organisation’s ministerial
meeting in the Caribbean resort of Cancún.
Their attempt to reach the convention hall will be the
first test of elaborate security measures designed to
avert the violence seen at other meetings of global
policymakers.

"The objective is to arrive at the convention centre and
express our disgust with what they are doing there,"
said Jaime Castillo, of the Popular Civic Front of
Puebla, one of several peasant organisations co-
ordinating the demonstration.

He appreciated that the government had extended a "mark
of respect" by providing facilities for an alternative
International Peasants’ Forum in Cancún. But he added
that it was an "emergency" and they had to demonstrate
to the Mexican government and other ministers that their
policies were "damaging small producers".

The demonstration will be co-ordinated with an attempt
to blockade the bridge between El Paso, Texas, and
Ciudad Juarez on the northern border, in asymbolic
protest against the North American Free Trade Agreement
(Nafta).

Several thousand protesters, mostly from Mexico, are in
Cancún, living in tents put up by the municipal
authorities in the parks.
Organisers hope for about 10,000 demonstrators tomorrow
and the authorities have planned for as many as 50,000
on Saturday’s planned "day of action against
globalisation". Meetings over the weekend appeared
peaceful and good-humoured. The areas open to
demonstrators are in central Cancún, well away from the
spit of land more than 20 km long, which houses the
official delegates in the city’s hotel zone.

Police and troops have already erected barricades across
the one access road to the hotel zone.
Hector de la Cueva of the Mexican Action Network Against
Free Trade complained of Mexico’s "two-faced policy".
"They are giving us these facilities, although really
these facilities haven’t been so easy to use," he said.

"But they’ve also strengthened security to make sure
there are no demonstrators at the so-called kilometre
zero [the convention centre]."

Global Exchange, one group attempting to co-ordinate the
demonstrations, said the protests would be "larger, more
widespread, and better organised than originally
anticipated".