Stop CAFTA

To sign click here
para ver la carta en espanol, click here
To download letter in English and Spanish( para bajar la carta en espanol y ingles), click here
To view list of signers, click here

We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, publicly declare our strong opposition to DR-CAFTA, the proposed free trade agreement between Central America, the Dominican Republic and the United States for reasons including (but not limited to):

1. DR-CAFTA is based upon the faulty model of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), which has proven disastrous for workers and farmers in the US, Mexico and Canada. Over 56,000 jobs were lost in New York City alone, primarily in the manufacturing sector, due to NAFTA. The distribution of these job losses has led to downward pressure on living standards and a weakening of workers’ bargaining power in all three countries. As limits on corporate expansion decrease, job outsourcing increasingly affects other sectors as well.

2. DR-CAFTA would lower the quality of jobs created. Free Trade Zones are notorious for their abuse of workers’ rights. In the maquila sector of Central America and the Dominican Republic, workers (primarily women) are consistently the targets of sexual abuse, humiliation, and are denied access to basic health services. Wages don’t even meet mandatory minimums in each country, and workers are fired if they attempt to organize. In the eleven (11) years since NAFTA passed, minimum wage in Mexico has fallen 25%, and the supposedly stronger labor side agreements in NAFTA have never been enforced.

3. DR-CAFTA would increase the flow of undocumented laborers, further undercutting employment standards in the US and creating a permanent underclass. Since NAFTA was passed, migration from Mexico has increased more than 100% due to the destruction of large segments of the rural economy and small businesses. Unemployment is already a crisis in Central America and the Dominican Republic (as high as 65%), and DR-CAFTA would force even more workers to migrate in order to survive.

4. DR-CAFTA is an undemocratic treaty and actually weakens democratic structures in the US and abroad. The entire negotiation of DR-CAFTA has taken place in secret, characterized by shameful diplomatic threats, such as illustrated in the cases of corn syrup controversy in the Dominican Republic and the preferential treatment toward Costa Rica in the Caribbean Fund. The repression that has taken place in response to public outrage regarding DR-CAFTA, including assassinations, beatings, arrests and persecution, such as in Guatemala right now, should be clear cause for alarm.

5. DR-CAFTA would sacrifice the public good for private gain. Free Trade treaties put profit and foreign investor interests before labor, human and economic rights; and offer foreign capital control over our resources, social services, the environment and national sovereignty. Under the infamous Chapter 11 of NAFTA, corporations have challenged the enforcement of existing laws and/or the implementation of new public interest laws thirty (30) times in private courts with no public accountability. The investor protector clause in Chapter 10 of DR-CAFTA would further expand the definition of investment, ensuring even more cases.

6. DR-CAFTA would undermine small and medium businesses & industry and regional food production. In the first three (3) years after the passage of NAFTA, over 28,000 small businesses in Mexico closed, and Wal-Mart gained the position as the largest private employer. Meanwhile, over 1.5 million small and medium sized farms in the US and Mexico went out of business to huge subsidized agro-industrial production that uses genetically modified seeds to mass-produce low quality food at lower costs (In 2003, the US government guaranteed $190 billion for corporate agricultural subsidies between 2003 – 2008 while prohibiting other countries from doing the same.)

7. DR-CAFTA would commodify essential services, even forcing public schools to compete with private foreign corporations for public education funding. Education is widely accepted as the single most important factor in poverty reduction. The forced privatization of water, education & health services has greatly reduced availability of these essential services to the poor.

8. DR-CAFTA would prevent Central American and the Dominican Republic from forming industrial policies that would lead to real development. Under DR-CAFTA, governments could not require investors to use a certain level of locally produced raw materials in the goods produced in their countries or require investors to transfer technology or productions processes to local citizens.

9. DR-CAFTA would consolidate, in favor of certain interests, US economic, political and military dominance over regions that have historically struggled against US control. Throughout this century and as recently as the 1980s, military invasions and political & economic manipulation have characterized US international relations with each of the countries involved in DR-CAFTA. The growing cross-sector mobilization of opposition to DR-CAFTA emphasizes this fact.