Christian Guerrero

[strong interest in presentations in WTO, labeling]

that was something that drew me there, how much could street activism and presence in the streets of civil society, and, by that, meaning even internationals and the demographics of national societies, their effectiveness, but also their message, the roots of their message. Where are they based on? Where do they come from?

[went to the Sustainable Trade and the Fair Trade Symposium and Fair. Parallel conferences put on by NGOs, this one by the World Bank, Canadian and Swiss development agencies, Oxfam, other fair trade organizations. Forum of NGOs to small producers to reps of international loan banks, ministers of agriculture, etc. talks about fair trade, ‘the background of what the people in the street are yelling about,’ during the main days of WTO reunion]

Even in their own ranks they said that they had a big hand in influencing the WTO, in the preparations of small countries, or even during the reunion, that they had a big hand in direct and indirect influence in how the reunions turned out. These were basically most of the NGOs on the inside that either did their own mild mannered direct actions on the inside, and press conferences that just denounced the WTO, but from the inside. They denounced the WTO from the inside, which was a little big difference from the people that didn’t have access inside the reunions.

[been in Chiapas since June 2003, Prescott College student, sustainable community development, and in Chiapas studies under UNAM, National Autonomous University of Mexico’s satellite program, studies agriforestry and alternative markets and economies. Researching organic certification and fair trade labeling, talks about how that plays out in the WTO setting]

I am Ecuadorian born. I am an Ecuadorian national. I received my citizenship in the United States when I was ten years old. The United States doesn’t recognize double citizenship, but in Ecuador it is recognized. These are just bureaucratic things that each country holds on to. My parents and my grandparents and their grandparents are from Ecuadorian descent, but, essentially, following the bloodline I would be Spanish. Spanish and a little bit of Italian. My Spanish proficiency comes from that. It was my first language. My mother and I migrated to the United States when I was two years old, so I have been living in the United States most of my life, and going back to Ecuador often, and always having Spanish spoken in the house, and it definitely improved on the many trips down to Ecuador. And then, as of late, getting back into school, a definite strong tool of communication across borders, and getting into cross border activism, or just, in general, informing the public, maybe of different nationalities and different cultures, and having that is a strong asset.

I have some family in the world, and they have friends, and they basically opened some doors for me. I have gotten very fortunate in that sense, because a lot of people didn’t come really prepared, and the preparation up to Cancun was pretty null in some respects. Cancun is such a new town that the social organizing base is very minimal and it wasn’t strong enough to bring together big spaces where people could get together. I opened up my doors for a few friends, and that was nice, because some people had been down there early enough to rent out places of their own.

[got into Cancun couple days before, talks about timing]

[talks about Yucatan landscape, traveling, routes of migration into Yucatan peninsula, cities, Caribbean influence, Mayan roots, heart of Mayan civilization]

For me, it was absolutely easy [to travel through the checkpoints from Chiapas to Cancun]. Southeastern Mexico, and especially Chiapas, and more so maybe Oaxaca, it is a definite bottleneck for drug trafficking, and I would think that most of the checkpoints that we ran into, which I think were only like a couple, were more for that, but they were actually more for migration, definitely probably looking for anything else suspicious, but, more than anything, looking for Central American immigrants trying to move north up to the United States, probably. On my end, I don’t think I was even spoken to coming in. I had thought that there was going to be a real hassle coming in, and I had actually called around while in San Christoba, seeing if it was easy access into Quintana Roo, or into Cancun, but, like I said, they profile for Central Americans, and I don’t really think they were looking for any anarchists, or any internationals, or any drugs, or anything else, really. I might guess that [the Zapatistas] would be hassled, but in the end, I know that they were there, they were present, whether they all had shown up was another thing, but, like I said, they are profiling for that type of people. If they are not central American migrants trying to move north, they are Zapatista supporters.

[talks more about Zapatistas]

I would say they were probably hassled. They had been receiving constant harassment that leads up even to violence, so their presence at the WTO reunion was going to be a difficult one for them. It was even a known plan that the students and the Zapatista support base, the front of the Zapatista movement for national liberation, the FZLN, the political front, was from Mexico, which was political activists, and mostly UNAM students and other individuals and organizations. They were the bulk of the group that was supposed to be coming down from Mexico City. They also probably had gotten a lot of harassment, but that was to be expected. Not as many turned out as they were outing, but they did finally end up coming.

It is so porous, how people can come in and out of groups, and make up a dynamic of a group, be a strong entity or personality within a group, and then also float out and do other stuff, but there was a clear way to identify certain pockets or factions.

[talks about interactions of Indymedia group, organizing committees with puppetry and actions (that he was a part of)]

It was a flexible, mobile, moving body, but at the same time, when you got into the meetings and you understood the dynamics of, like, let’s go by nationalities, because we are in Mexico, a priority was put on the Mexican nationals as a bloc, as their own group, not so much as sub-factions. We talked of the students a lot, and we talked of the campesinos, but, in general, we were talking to the same people. We really recognized them as just Mexican nationals that had more of a voice in any decision-making. The internationals on that end were interesting, because there was definitely a North American presence, but it was obvious that you were surrounded by more than just North America. That made people, I think, at least the North Americans, I think that made them be more respectful and conscious of their influence, and as the organizing went on, I saw a lot of respect, a lot of reaching out as far as trying to build bridges right away, an understanding of how to work, what group dynamics and what working dynamics were more recognized, and when you go down to things like translation, you know, the patience to go through translation, and if something gets skipped, I saw people really making a point to say, ‘That didn’t get translated or wasn’t clear enough.’ So people really were really really conscious that everyone was on the same page and that everybody was actually contributing or being heard from.

Speaking of the Mexican groups who came, it was really interesting because a large faction were organized street punks that come from around the country, that don’t just come from Mexico City. They came from a lot of groups around the country that are more into anti-globalization, anti-corporate/capitalist affairs. Of course some are students, but a lot more are more of a drop out type. I think they really made their presence because, like the Korean delegation, that was also almost like an autonomous entity that came to do whatever it wanted to do, so were the Mexican punks, because they didn’t really go to any meetings, and they really didn’t have too much to do with the makeup of the IMCs, or the internationals that were making little committees to meet with each other. They already had their plan. They already knew what to do. So did the Koreans. The Koreans really didn’t take part in that, either. The Koreans were a little bit more savvy in the sense that they understood the media and they used it better. They had their ceremonies after Lee Hyung had passed away and, not to exploit the media, but they knew that their message was being transmitted widely.

[Talks about NGOs, World Social Forum, Via Campesina and the WSF, confusing the agenda?, G21-G23]

If the G21 had been successful with their proposition that they put on the table in front of the US and [European Union] trade representatives, to lower their protection barriers and lower their tariffs on agricultural goods coming into these markets, what you would have had is the correct playing of the game, it would be the elimination of the doublespeak that the United States and the European Union play on the rest of the world when they say ‘free trade,’ You would have had them bound into what they essentially call free market rules, still on an unfair level because of the United States’ and the European Union’s economic dominance over these countries anyways. On the other hand, you have the NGOs and Via Campesina, saying, ‘That’s not the way we want it to go. We don’t want to negotiate agriculture, we want agriculture out of the WTO, and you are actually placing it on the table with asking them to play correctly, not going the other way. This is where I think it gets confusing when it filters down to the streets or when it filters down to normal people who read it in the paper.

[talks about education, Venezuela and the FTAA, WTO, making your country ‘walk the talk,’ countries being critical without teeth, glorification of populism behind leaders and initiative, Ecuadorian social movements, lack of change in Latin America]

[talks about WSF in Ecuador, included oppressed and excluded elements from Ecuador, money coming from international resources with FTAA, radio jingles, commercials, made own media, impact in Brazil, growth of WSF, ‘declared themselves the world leaders against FTAA, war in general, and the WTO’, superstructure that follows the WTO, etc.]

In Quito, I saw more of an on the ground operation where these groups that I just mentioned [homeless unions, oppressed groups, portions of the WSF, etc.] that made up the Ecuadorian chapter had a direct role in running all of the events almost that were going to happen in Quito at the time to resist the FTAA. In Cancun, that wasn’t the situation because from the very beginning, the World Social Forum aligned itself with other, bigger groups, created the welcoming committee of who knows who they welcomed, I really don’t know, and set up a list of guidelines of how everybody was going to, if you were going to work within this committee, you were to assign to these guidelines or principals or whatever, and the international crowd that came and the local activists and various groups couldn’t subscribe to these principals. In general, they are probably really good principals, but, structurally, they probably had some serious problems., They were probably hierarchical and constructed in a way that marginalized and excluded probably more radical direct actions, more radical rhetoric that articulated anti-capitalism, that articulated maybe even anarchism, or lines of autonomy, something that is the backbone of the Zapatismo in southeastern Mexico. Since, in the end, it is the battle of the story and how the agenda or how the communiqués are going to reach the public masses, there was a definite split between he bigger, well financed NGOs and their resistance to the WTO, and the groups that came independently and autonomously, with their own backings, and didn’t want to subscribe to a superstructure.

[media, medic house, IMC, other facilitating institutions]

I think it was a lot more orchestrated than people really realize, in the sense that [the risk] was over-exaggerated. I remember an instance, we went to do a Food Not Bombs, a totally pacifist [activity] outside of a McDonald’s right next to a supermarket, and they had this whole barrage of police that showed up to stand outside of the McDonald’s and make this big show, an over-exaggeration of power. To freak people out. And then, on the other hand, totally lax, in the sense that it was so possible for even Mexican nationals who would be more wary to feel the hand of a repressive police state, even Mexican nationals getting away with some stuff that they normally would not get away with. Almost a facilitated police presence in that sense. And obviously goes along with how they wanted to portray it in the media... They are more in marriage than civil society is with the media, in some instances. They would have the last laughs if hey wanted to, and that’s what happened. You saw some articles that came out about thirty people damaging a Pizza Hut and a camera shot, and, in the end, it was really like three people.

[talks about lax police, no arrests, scaring locals mayor facilitating protestors and taking credit for it, speaks to control that they had over our stay there, giving us permission, naked action]

I saw an action that was done where the people were going to go to the beach and write WTO naked in the beach, or they were going to moon the camera and write something bad about the WTO on their butts, and this made international news!

[goes on about action, no police response, getting us coverage but in a silly way]

[Latin American protests, international overtone, festive, resistance as carnival, quick organization for smaller marches, wakes, ceremonies, expression, getting rid of fear of protestors, fun drawing people in, last day confrontation at fence, pagan action, groups taking their space, pagans getting marginalized, pagans as feminists, autonomists, spiritual connection, women taking their spot, non- north Americans taking their spot as well, statement to the rest of the world, enjoyed symbolism of destroying the fence, but then stopping, not mindless heartless mob of people, not going to invoke violence, difference of EF! sabotage versus violence]

What we did at the fence was just that, very very violent, if you watched it. It was pretty aggressive, what we were doing. And then it just stopped and it turned into something really beautiful, the ceremony with the flowers, and just the rejoicing and the celebration that you saw in the marches, and what we want to articulate and show to the media anyways, that we are happy as much as we are mad.

[using the media, public relations, expression, ‘It’s all we’ve got,’ stop thinking about media and start thinking about people that are around us, outreach, getting info out]

[limiting factors, language, overcome overall in bottom, paid interpreters in top, depending on smaller human resource instead of DIY, less able to mobilize that than the bottom half]

I saw in many instances when I was either in the hotel zone amongst delegates, or NGOs that worked on the inside, media representatives, or people that attended the Sustainable Trade Symposium, many of them only spoke one language and fewer of them traveled with interpreters or anything like that, but they also didn’t make up a collective movement, they all came there with their own agenda.

[talks about NGOS agendas, limits to interactions between NGOs, goal to produce press releases]

The lower half, meaning the more autonomous organizations and individuals, the collectives that came together, I think that they had a main advantage in working in a collective sense, and that obstacle, the language barrier, I think, was overcome a lot better.

[NGO accessibility but separation from each other, unwilling to mesh, downfall, don’t want to align themselves with people in the streets, explicit to the media, media perception of this, manipulation of the story, NGO public relations, big money NGOs not in the street, see where their position is, harmful to idea that trade pacts have to go away]