Riot in Paradise?

Power and Culture at the World Trade Organization Protests, Cancun

 

Elizabeth Venable

 

The meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that were held from September 10th to the 14th, 2003, in Cancun, Mexico were marked by a set of medium-sized but extremely international and racially mixed protests. These meetings and protests offered a stage to watch the various dynamics of race, power, wealth, and privilege act themselves out in front of an incredibly surreal backdrop.

 

The WTO originated from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was created in 1947. It was renamed in 1995. In essence, the WTO is a forum in which leaders of the world negotiate major trade agreements and international trade rules (Schaeffer, 2003). The WTO has been the subject of previous protests, most notably in Seattle, in 1999. The summits then moved to more remote location such as Qatar and Cancun. In addition, there have been extremely large (up to 300,000 strong) protests for such summits as the G8 (Neale, 2002). Protests targeting such institutions as the International Monetary Fund/World Bank and the Free Trade Area of the Americas have also been strong. This comes in connection to worldwide protests in opposition to war in Iraq. In addition, there have been numerous other more large but more specific conflicts and clashes over local problems connected to globalization in notable locations such as Korea, Mexico, and Argentina (Yuen, 2001). Subjects of heightened concern at the Cancun protests were agricultural subsidies and the privatization of water. These very serious issues, meetings and protests intersected strangely with the private luxury tropical playground that is Cancun.

 

There is certainly an obvious irony to having hordes of anti-globalization activists descend upon Cancun, which Ramor Ryan refers to as being, “like a U.S. colony modeled after Disneyland or a Hollywood movie set” (Yuen, 2001).  It is easy to imagine that many first world nation protestors would feel uncomfortable shelling out up to five hundred dollars on a plane ticket, plus more for expenses. There were, of course, obvious both abstract and tangible distinctions between the outlooks and means of Mexican punks, campesinos, and white American/ Australian/ European protestors. However, most protestor groups stayed in the same communal areas as the others, such as the expansive but stifling football stadium offered by the city, ate the same food, and drank the same (donated) water. Some others stayed at very inexpensive hotels near the convergence space and the Indy Media Center. Keith McHenry, noted that the foreign protestors might not be independently wealthy, but simply devoted:

 

The Australians had sold everything they owned to come [to Cancun].

 

Many “wealthier” protestors tried to mitigate their purchases by only buying from smaller producers, such as the campesinos, or small farmers, who brought their crafts and products to Cancun, and from the many vendors that were in the area and the Palapas Park, which was the central point for many of the gatherings aside from the convergence center and another point in which the city was allowing the Mexican punks to sleep without recourse. However, Heather Ajani did not feel that the protestors were able to avoid partially propping up the Cancun economy:

 

It started to occur to me that we are activist tourists in a way and that we are pumping money into these local economies, whether we are spending a lot of money or not spending any money, because we are buying a quesadilla for a buck in the Palapas Park. We are paying five dollars a night for a hostel or ten dollars a night in a cheap hotel room. It is still money they wouldn’t have made in their off season. And they choose these resort destinations in their off seasons, because it is supposed to bring money to the local economy, and the protestors add to that, I think.

 

The atmosphere of the commercial strip left Tabitha Dodson, and probably all of the other protestors, feeling cold, and left her pondering the excesses of the American lifestyle:

 

I don’t think I will ever forget riding past all of those grand hotels and steakhouses and dance clubs and bars, and knowing that it is white Americans, and western Europeans and whatnot that go there to just have a good time, and to see all these people, you know, indigenous people, dressed in uniforms to cater to these ridiculous, frenzied, uugh, perverse actions… It made me so sad and embarrassed.

 

Some of the American people of color protestors found the reactions they received from other, third world, protestors in the streets of Cancun often collided with their own Chicana and Latino ethnic identities and self-conceptions. Luis Fernandez, a Nicaraguan who grew up in Southern California, had previously dealt with first his own identity as a non-Mexican Latino in Los Angeles, and then as an American during visits to Nicaragua. However, he suggested that others might not have been exposed to the feeling before and thus might have been having a very defining experience:

 

In reality, you are a little bit more like an American, or Latinos in America than you are like to the people in Latin America, because it is just a whole different situation… I am Luis, I am in the middle. I can speak to them, like, when I was in Mexico, whenever I spoke Spanish, everybody said to me, ‘Where did you learn to speak so well?’ ‘Well, I was born in Nicaragua,’ ‘Oh, ok,’ because they thought I was completely American. But then, when I got on the plane, I don’t know if I told you this, I am sitting on the plane, getting ready to just start reading or something, and this American guy next to me starts talking to me in Spanish. And I am thinking, ‘Ok, so this makes no sense; in Mexico, they think I am American, and as soon as I get on the plane, you think I am Mexican!’ Again it was that thing where you don’t fit here or there. I am in between these locations, and depending on my location, my racial background is going to come up differently. So I have come to realize that this racial background has got nothing to do with me, it has got to do with the people imposing this racial background on me.

 

Most people expected to face an interesting national dynamic in Cancun and made specific efforts to try to combat any interpersonal dominance issues they might normally face. Extra attention was often given to Mexican nationals, out of respect. However, Heather Ajani, an American multiracial Chicana woman found that this was often taken to such extremes that it became grating and even personally offensive. She found that, in their efforts to be accommodating, American protestors often ventured into tokenism:

 

We had this talk after we had to go through our credentials as to who could stay in the medic house, you know, street medics only, or could we have these people from Chiapas, or could we have other people? Granted, the house was really huge, it was two stories, it had a huge courtyard, and a lot of space. It could probably comfortably sleep about thirty people. Fifty people would be pushing it, but it was possible. And we maybe had fifteen people staying there, because we decided street medics. But of course, the people from Chiapas could come stay. And I was like really offended, when I brought that up, I got attacked by everybody else, who happened to be white. And I was like, ‘You know, just because people are from Chiapas, doesn’t make [them charity cases].

 

An obvious factor mediating interactions between protestors in Cancun was language. With participants coming from Mexico, America, Canada, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, Asia, and South America, language barriers were theoretically formidable. However, most participants agreed that although language might have been a personal obstacle, nearly all of the delegations had one or several members that could speak either passable English, Spanish, or both. Meetings were held in various languages and translations were the rule. Christian Guerrero felt that the outside protestors actually surpassed the problems with language more effectively than the NGO participants:

 

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.

 

Heather Ajani, who speaks functional Spanish, felt that there was a level at which certain protestors were manipulated by the use of language. Lapses in comprehension of lesser details could have a tremendous impact on outcomes of complicated negotiations with the police or other protesting groups:

 

One example of mistranslation is when we got to the traffic circle on September 11th, and the Koreans were still doing their ceremony, and the translators were like, ‘They said they want to do their ceremony, and that we should respect their ceremony,’ So people were like, ‘Okay, well that means we should turn around.’ The other part of the sentence that didn’t get conveyed was that they were almost done with their ceremony, and we should stay, they wanted us to go to the fence, and we were going. But somebody stopped and turned around, because of translators pushing their agenda.

 

A climate of fear had developed in many of the American protestors before they joined the events. The Mexican government had let out leaks that any internationals arrested would be banned from Mexico for twenty years, and the situation was so serious that Amnesty International made a formal complaint. Protestors feared very strongly that they would be physically abused or even killed. Many participants found that this fear might have been perpetuated not only by true stories of abuse, corruption, and murders committed by the Mexican police, and by the abuses committed worldwide, such as the murder of unarmed Carlo Giuliani in Genoa (Neale, 2002), but also by the actions routinely committed by American police, such as those led by Timony in Philadelphia (and, later that fall, Miami), whose force took to raiding of puppet warehouses and shooting various types of ammunition directly at unarmed and peaceful protestors (Yuen, 2001). However, the police in Cancun were deliberately restrained by almost certainly some point very high in the Mexican government. There were, for example, no arrests reported to the public, and few serious injuries were reported. Some protestors were allowed to commit certain illegal acts such as graffiti and trespassing, as well as the destruction of the fences, with impunity. Heather Ajani, who does a great deal of police monitoring, commented on the differences between protestor reaction to police in various countries, and attributed the daring actions in part to atmospheres in different locales:

 

People in developing countries, they see that all the time, that is their lives, they think about that, but we don’t think about that. We are busy running from tear gas, and running from the police. And we think that other people have it bad. We have it really bad. We live in a police state; that is why we are so complacent. And that is why we are so afraid to do simple things in our areas.

 

Brice Smith did feel that readers should not underappreciate the level of violence used by the Mexican police, especially on the second day. Readers should not be led to believe that the police were entirely passive, but simply that they were less passive than in previous years, where the Cancun police had beaten a small group of virtually unarmed protestors of the World Economic Forum in February, 2001 (Yuen, 2001):

 

It probably approached 10, 000 people at its height, which is a large group on a fairly small area. And the level of tension continued to rise for a while and people began to throw rocks and sticks at the cops. I was actually very surprised at the lack of response from the police. At US protests, the first time that a rock would have flown, the nightsticks would have come out, teargas would have been fired, and they had big water cannons backing up the riot cops. It would have been a really serious response, and it probably would have been the same anywhere, but, for one reason or another, and there has been a lot of speculation, but, the police at the Cancun protests were under very strict orders not to respond unless pressed really far. And really far went beyond getting hit with rocks that couldn’t hurt them at all, because they were in full riot gear. But the cops did take to throwing stones back, which wouldn’t have happened at a lot of other places. The paving stones were coming back at completely unprotected individuals, and I saw a lot of people get hit in the head, get hit in the shoulders. A lot of people had big gashes and were bleeding from the head because of getting hit by the stones. I saw cops rip two by fours out of people’s hands and hit hem over the head with a two by four. So it certainly wasn’t no reaction from the police, but the police behaved much more, when they reacted it was much more like you would sort of expect just a thug to react, you know the rock bounces off of their little shield and he picks it up and chucks it at someone’s head. It was that kind of reaction rather than firing tear gas and driving the crowd with mace, and, you know, clubbing people after you have handcuffed them, the way that you would see at a lot of other protests if this kind of thing had happened.

 

Some protestors, such as Sonya Diehn, felt sorrowful that the Mexican authorities had pitted sympathetic (protestors) against sympathetic (the poor and dark):

 

I also felt bad, because of the composition of the Mexican police or the Federales, or whoever they were, that they were… the poorest of the poor, basically. They are all Indians.

 

The Hotel Zone, the strip of beachfront where the WTO meetings were actually being held, was heavily guarded, and all busses entering the area were searched. Sue Hilderbrand remembers an incident that happened after she and the rest of the pagan group had focused or visualized a sort of protection and sense of invisibility:

 

I said, ‘It is pretty interesting that they are not asking us, that they are only asking these darker skinned workers. Why else would these people be going into the hotel zone?’ And he said, ‘Oh, that’s because we are invisible.’ And I kept saying, ‘Yeah, I know, isn’t that funny, how you create this attitude, and then you behave in that way, and then people treat you that way,’ and he kept saying, ‘No, no, no, we really are invisible.’ And I really just kind of wanted to talk about, we set this intention of, ‘We are invisible, we have created the story, and now we are behaving in a way that that story is true, and people are reacting to us as though it were true.’ But he was so funny, because he so perfectly played out what I was thinking, because he kept saying, ‘Oh, no we are invisible. We really are invisible.’

 

However, other protestors found that their plans were being more obviously interfered with. Some were escorted off of the strip in the large WTO busses after small protests, some were detained for hours with little water, and some were followed, like Heather Ajani:

 

[We had a conscripted soldier] following us around, thinking that we are going to be laying in the street like everyone else, and having to dodge him throughout different parts of the island. It was pretty freaky. But, telling him, while you ladies were in the [restaurant], actually going up confronting him, kind of doing a quasi-Copwatch situation, where you are watching him watching the others. I think that it freaked him out a bit, because I went up to him and I said, ‘Look, we are spending money here, we are tourists, we are students, we are here together, you need to stop harassing us.’ And using that American line of, ‘We are here to spend money, we are consumers,’ in a time when we are there to protest consumerism and globalization and cheap goods and services, and unfair trade.

 

There were many different types of actions occurring outside of and within the Hotel Zone, where the WTO meetings were being held. These actions were organized by street protestors and NGOs, and varied in size from less than ten to over ten thousand participants. Some of the more creative actions included one where a number of activists spelled out phrases denouncing the WTO on their naked bodies in the Cancun sand, one where gigantic paper maché puppet-headed persons fought at a make believe table, and actions that targeted specific topics such as African issues. During the largest demonstrations, on Tuesday, September 10th and Saturday, September 14th, there were a multitude of events, featuring gigantic Mayan-style puppets, large banners, an anarchist marching band, an all-womens’ army that cut the second fence, and a variety of creative fence battering implements such as stop signs. In several instances there were conflicts over the decision-making process exercised by different groups. The main differenced of opinion centered around, not coincidentally, the largest actions. In the Tuesday action, the campesinos were supposed to be the focal part, and it had been decided in advance that they might be able to go through the fence and move up to the strip, where they would present a declaration to the delegates. Whether this proposal was realistic or not, it was a goal. However, it did not happen, most likely because the police would never have agreed in the first place, but also because of misunderstandings, control, and arguments, and direct action. Luis Fernandez, who was then accompanying the pagan cluster, said:

 

That thing, I don’t think that the, [neither] the campesinos, nor the Koreans wanted that very serious fight that took place with the rock throwing, I mean, that was pretty…So that day was like, yeah, that group out-maneuvered the rest of the group, who did not want to do that.

 

Keith McHenry, a co-founder of the global Food Not Bombs movement, who had accompanied the punks from Mexico City, believed that the protests were often too controlled by the campesinos’ union. He remembered that every time the Mexican punks and others would try to take down the fence, they would get negative feedback. He also believed that there were undue restraints put onto actions that were deemed acceptable by the campesinos. For example, the campesinos’ union blocked an action where protestors would block the roads coming out of the airport. Keith believed that such an action would be easy to exercise as well as successful in actual terms of halting the talks. He mentioned that he thought that there was more than one campesiono union with more than one vision. He thought that perhaps the unions had a directive not to have real disruption lest they have a problem with their government and business supporters.

 

Sue Hilderbrand indicated that the control of the black bloc might have been in part initiated from within, and then decomposed from within. Eventually, there was a large struggle after the suicide of Mr. Hyung Lee, and the first fence (in a long series of several up the road, barricading citizens from the conference center) was destroyed:

 

What this [Arizonan black bloc] guy was telling me [was] the black bloc agreed that they would not start anything, that they would hang back and they would take the cues from everybody else, which I thought was an amazing display of respect and cooperation, which I really thought was amazing. Then, all of a sudden the Koreans let loose, and charged the fence, and so the black bloc, he is so funny, he said, ‘So, a couple of people on the front line, these black bloc guys, on the front line, kind of looked at one another, and they charged the fence, taking their cues from the Koreans.’ But it was a pretty powerful day.

 

The suicide of Korean small farmer and union leader Lee Hyung had a dramatic, if delayed, impact on the rest of Tuesday, once the other protestors found what had happened. Throughout the week, memorials for Lee Hyung were conducted almost continuously. It seems that some of the feelings concerning the campesino march were either marginalized or subsumed into the larger symbol of Lee. Perceptions of the suicide were mixed, with some feeling an intense mourning and some feeling frustrated with the weight they were given, and the way in which they shaped the tenor of the protests. The impact was not shaped by Lee, or by any one group, alone. Floating through the backdrop were graffiti memorials (Lee Hyung Vive) and chants (Lee, Lee, Lee). Memorials were crafted using personal objects, candles, and flowers. Many seemed to feel that Lee’s suicide changed the mood and direction of the protests, and led participants into reflection and symbolism. Heather Ajani came to a conclusion that may have been unusual, but which seems instructive:

 

He made a statement that was one of the harshest statements you can make against an institution that kills so many people.’ And, I am like, ‘The sacrifice that that man made for his fellow small farmers was probably one of the greatest sacrifices you can make, you know, it is ultimate.’ And I couldn’t help but be happy for him. I spent some time being sad, and then, when I came to the realization of what the WTO actually means to people, all around the world, it made me smile.

 

This led Heather to be frustrated with the ways in which she felt that Mr. Lee’s death was used to divert attention and energy into symbolic action:

 

I want to get to what that symbolism means, and I want to win.

 

The Saturday march did not start with an immediately obvious directive. There were new groups of different unions, and the numbers once again peaked. After a march, the focus quickly shifted to the women, who began to disassemble the fence with a variety of tools. The Koreans led the campaign to pull down the fence. Similar control was exercised by different factions on the Saturday march. The point of conflict was whether or not participants should walk through the fence they had just destroyed, and on to the next. By use of a process in which all of the soggy, excited protestors were sat down and told speeches for nearly an hour in Korean, English, and Spanish, it was virtually set that the protestors would go no further and that the site would be commemorated. Some protestors were very upset by this decision, and also by the emotionally draining and physically uncomfortable manner in which is had been made. Many protestors did not have problems with the actual outcome, but some, like Sonya Diehn, were frustrated with the seemingly undemocratic route that was taken:

 

The thing that I walked away from that action feeling troubled about was, again, a lack of group decision making. It would have been ideal at the time where the people were using the megaphones if there had been a coming together, and a group decision, like, ‘What are we going to do.’ Are we going to try to push through, or are we going to not, and then, if we are not, what are we going to do. The effigy burning was good, but, by the time they got around to it, everybody totally had lost their momentum. The lack of group decision making process came up as a problem again and again.  

 

Luis Fernandez spoke of the groups that were in charge of a part of the process in Saturday, including portions of the pagans:

 

By the time we all showed up, they had been there for a couple of weeks, so they had established really strong connections with the leaders from other groups. They were working very intricately connected to other groups, and a lot of that was happening behind the scenes, very informally, so that we wouldn’t know.

 

I think what happened was, it that the rest of the people that didn’t want to [have a repeat of Tuesday], figured out ways to stop that, just kind of went, ‘Ok, we are going to have some meetings, and talk about some of this, and we are going to do some things that are maybe different.’ So, to me, I just don’t see it as a problem. It is kind of like, ‘You want to do something else? You are going to have to coordinate it, you know.

 

I saw quite a few of [the meetings]. I’m not sure that I am critical of the decision-making process. I think it is an organic way of doing things. I think the only problem with it, the biggest problem with it is that there are some problems in accountability. In the long run, there are some problems with accountability. But, I think that, given the situation, people who have established connections are getting together and having discussions; I’m just not sure that’s a bad thing, I mean, just from my perspective.

 

Most demonstrators found that the solution of not going through the fence was a logical one, but many had issues with the process.  Because of the relatively short period of time after this action before participants had to leave the area, there was probably not enough thorough discussion of this incident to process it. As an example of solid organization or disruptive tactics, Cancun was perhaps not the best. However, as an example of creating a virtually instant, relatively cohesive multicultural and multilingual community, Cancun was perhaps a shining example. Protestors were faced with several obstacles to creating such a community, and yet were able to surpass many difficulties, albeit with mild conflicts. However, the anti-globalization movement has seen far worse.

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Ajani, Heather. Personal Interview [minidisk], Phoenix, December 7, 2003.

 

Bruhns, Tanachy. Personal Interview [audio tape], Phoenix, December 22, 2003.

 

Diehn, Sonya. Personal Interview [minidisk], Phoenix, December 11, 2003.

 

Dodson, Tabitha. Personal Interview [minidisk], Phoenix, January 8, 2004.

 

Fernandez, Luis. Personal Interview [minidisk], Phoenix, December 11, 2003.

 

Field recordings [analog tape], Cancun, September 10-14, 2003.

 

Guerrero, Christian. Personal Interview [audio tape], Phoenix, December 22, 2003.

 

Hilderbrand, Sue. Personal Interview [minidisk], Phoenix, November 30, 2003.

 

McHenry, Keith. Personal Interview [notes], Phoenix, Febraury 9, 2004.

 

Neale, Jonathan. You Are G8, We Are 6 Billion: The Truth Behind the Genoa Protests. London, Vision Paperbacks, 2002.

 

Schaffer, Robert K. Understanding Globalization: The Social Consequences of Political, Economic, and Environmental Change. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Oxford, 2003.

 

Schalt, Joel, ed. The Anti-Capitalism Reader: Imagining a Geography of Opposition. Akashic books, New York, 2002.

 

Smith, Brice. Personal Interview [minidisk], St. Louis, December 29, 2003.

 

Yuen, Eddie, Katsiaficas, George, and Daniel Burton Rose, ed. The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to Capitalist Globalization. Soft Skull Press, New York, 2001.