How would you describe Oxfam's partnership with CIDECA?

Oxfam has allowed us to do a lot of research. And Oxfam has been instrumental in helping us come to the US to say, "We really don't want CAFTA," face-to-face.

Why should people in the US care about DR-CAFTA and its affects on your country?

We believe that public opinion has been manipulated. The business sector, which is pushing CAFTA, has said that people in Central America want CAFTA. The reality is totally different

For example, in El Salvador, this agreement was approved late at night and behind closed doors. In Honduras, when they approved it, the legislature had to leave through the back door because there were protestors out front. In Guatemala, the people are asking for a national referendum even though the president says they can't afford it.

We believe that this is an important decision for the future of our countries. There has to be a national referendum so people can say what they think.

I believe that the negotiations and ratification process is totally undemocratic—because the negotiations have been carried out, and still are being carried out, by a very small group of people. We have asked the Congressional representatives in Guatemala if they understand the agreement. And they say they don't even have a copy to look at. But they have been pressured to vote in favor of CAFTA. That's not democratic and says a lot about the process.

If CAFTA really is a good thing, why do they have to hide negotiations and do it behind the people's back?

Today, we got news that the Guatemalan congress was trying to approve DR-CAFTA. What have you heard?

I got news of the police repressing local people who were protesting against CAFTA. I don't think CAFTA has been approved yet, but it can happen at any moment.  (Guatamala's congress ratified CAFTA on March 10, 2005. The agreement is awaiting ratification by the US congress).

What is your organization doing to defeat DR-CAFTA?

We lobby the Guatemalan congress. At the national level, we are part of Mesa Global, which has been leading the protests this week. We also present proposals and research on issues related to the negotiation process and the potential impact of the trade agreement. We have been working with people involved in the negotiations and ratification of CAFTA, as well as with local organizations.

How do you feel about your visit here?

I'm very sad because I feel that the future, whatever it is, will be decided here in the US. They don't have the right to make decisions about our lives.

The discussions on the future of the International Coffee Agreement present an historic opportunity to address the ongoing crisis facing smallholder coffee farmers and farmworkers by contributing to sustainable coffee supply chains. At the 2nd World Coffee Conference in September 2005 several organizations presented the International Coffee Organisation and its delegates with the Carta de Salvador—the Salvador Declaration, which stressed the ongoing effects of the coffee crisis facing small-scale family farmers and farmworkers. This paper calls on International Coffee Organization members to support small-scale farmers and farmworker organizations by ensuring space for their direct participation in international debate, creating mechanisms that enhance the availability of market information to small-scale farmers, and maximizing opportunities to develop cohesive international strategies to provide technical support, access to credit, and direct access to markets.

But I'm luckier than most. Just as the shortest, coldest days of winter hit Boston, the coffee cherries in Central America and Ethiopia begin reaching their peak red color. That's when I get to do my favorite work—visiting with Oxfam's coffee partners in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Ethiopia. Each coffee harvest, I reconnect with the farmers who Oxfam America campaigns for back home.

Whenever I visit with coffee farmers and explain that I've come to learn more about their lives I'm always greeted warmly. These visits get me motivated, although, if truth be told, the visits aren't always uplifting.

This harvest I visited a farmers' cooperative in southern Ethiopia. Though I was welcomed by a group of 15 farmers and their families, the conversation was grim. The coop had fallen on hard times. Though the world price of coffee was up, the families I met were struggling to make it on $300 a year. In two hours there wasn't a single smile on anyone's face and I drove away struggling to imagine how these people were going to make it.

Just a few weeks ago I returned from Guatemala. The volcanic mountains surrounding Lake Atitlan create some of the best coffee-growing conditions in the world. Yet last October the farmers I met with saw Hurricane Stan wash enough mud and boulders down from these mountains to cover houses and wipe out coffee farms. I met people who lost it all and found myself struck by the fact that these farmers—people who were already struggling to get by—were struggling even harder this year because they were on the wrong side of geographic circumstance.

But both in Ethiopia and Guatemala I was amazed to find—as I always do—something inspiring. This harvest, my favorite experience was a walk with Don Antonio Cavajay Ixtamer, president of the cooperative La Voz que Clama en el Desierto (the voice that cries out in the desert). Antonio took my colleagues and me on a walk through his coffee farm where Antonio estimates 80 percent of his land was damaged. We saw coffee trees buried in infertile silt and stumps marking the places where healthy coffee trees once stood.

At the far end of Antonio's farm we emerged from the trees left standing into an area that looked like a dry river bed covered with boulders, some larger than Antonio. He explained that this area had been covered with coffee trees but was inundated with rocks and mud that slid down the mountain during Stan.

It was hard to fathom the force that was required to do such damage to the farm and I asked Antonio if he would ever be able to recover the land. Without missing a beat, Antonio replied "Si se puede. Si se puede." (Yes we can. Yes we can.), and proceeded to explain how he and his sons would remove the rocks, fill trenches, and build stone barriers to divert water before the rainy season begins in May.

Antonio hopes to have the recoverable portions of his land replanted within three years. I don't know whether he'll be successful, but if he falls short, it won't be for lack of motivation and hard work.

Some won't be successful—I know that. But so many of the coffee farmers I meet share the same spirit as Antonio that I've returned to Boston inspired and ready to do what I can to support them. As a result of my trip, Oxfam will provide farmers with $100,000 they can use to help rebuild after Stan.

Despite all the challenges I see, there are farmers who don't give up. As long as they're willing to fight, then I'm willing to fight, too. Some wins are big, some incremental, and sometimes we don't win at all. But as long as Antonio and other coffee farmers are saying "Si se puede" then "Si se puede" it is for me, as well. Yes we can. We have to.

Only after many months of intense lobbying efforts by the White House involving backroom deal-making and partisan pressure was the agreement passed in the House of Representatives by two votes. "In forcing passage of an unpopular trade agreement, the administration chose to ignore widespread concerns raised by many members of Congress and their constituents, as well as by farmers, trade unions, and church and community groups in the US, Central America and the Dominican Republic," stated Stephanie Weinberg, trade policy advisor with Oxfam America. "Whatever the spin, DR-CAFTA will institutionalize an uneven playing field instead of establishing fair and equitable rules for trade."

Although the White House portrayed a vote for DR-CAFTA as a show of support for democracy and development in the region and as promoting US national security, this doesn’t face up to the facts. Widespread citizen opposition to DR-CAFTA in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic continues to delay congressional consideration of the agreement in those countries, while strong protests accompanied the process of ratification in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, where military forces were called in to quell the mounting opposition.

"Development and democratic processes are being undermined through DR-CAFTA," continued Weinberg. "The Bush administration bullied Central American governments into signing on to a bad agreement that will have serious repercussions for those who are already disadvantaged in these highly unequal societies where most of the poor live in rural areas, rely on income from agriculture, and must pay for medicines out-of-pocket."

DR-CAFTA rigs the rules in favor of the interests of transnational companies. While the agreement provides virtually no new US market access to developing countries (with the limited exception of textiles), it extends monopoly rights for international pharmaceutical companies, thereby limiting marketing of generic medicines, and prohibits governments from using policy tools designed to ensure that investment provides maximum benefit to local communities. Furthermore, DR-CAFTA requires these developing countries to open their markets to the dumping of US rice and other commodities and to forbid use of adequate safeguards to ensure food and livelihood security and rural development. DR-CAFTA also blatantly ignores the fact that US agribusiness receives extensive subsidies and domestic supports, estimated to be around $24 billion this year alone, making it impossible for Central American and Dominican farmers to compete.

"Rather than setting out provisions that will foster broad-based economic growth and sustainable development, DR-CAFTA will put millions of poor people at risk of losing their livelihood in Central America and the Dominican Republic, and creates further pressure on people to migrate to cities or to the United States," said Weinberg. "The rules set forth in DR-CAFTA on agriculture, intellectual property, and investment add up to a bad deal for farmers, workers, and consumers in these developing countries."

Implementation is likely to continue to be contested in the region, since many aspects of DR-CAFTA will force legislative changes that will erode the policy space required for national development. "Although trade could be an important engine for development and poverty reduction, the trade rules under DR-CAFTA will become one more obstacle to achieving this goal in Central America and the Dominican Republic," Weinberg added.

Groups like the National Family Farm Coalition, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, and Rural Coalition, carried out direct advocacy of their own, telling their elected officials that trade agreements should protect food sovereignty, not threaten it. Just as the Central Americans wanted to avoid the US flooding their surplus commodities into their market, small-scale American farmers wanted their government to pursue policies that supported them, not the huge agriculture corporations that would benefit from DR-CAFTA.

"This agreement is absolutely horrible for us livestock producers," said Rhonda Perry, a farmer and head of Oxfam partner, Missouri Rural Crisis Center. "It's also not beneficial for farmers in the DR-CAFTA countries. All these promises about export markets, clearly, that's not what happens. There are a few multinational corporations that have no allegiance that make out like bandits. The rest of us are stuck picking up the pieces."

Oxfam America created opportunities for Central and North American farmers to meet, learn from each other, and work together to oppose unfair trade. The National Family Farm Coalition worked with members of Iniciativa CID in Washington, DC to help them bring their concerns directly to members of Congress and share perspectives, farmer to farmer.

"This was really a united front even though people were coming at it from different angles. It was a chance to develop shared understanding about CAFTA's negative impacts on farmer livelihoods in both the US and Central America," said Jaeda Harmon, a US Regional Office Program Officer at Oxfam America

How would you describe Oxfam's partnership with FUNDE?

Oxfam shares common interests with FUNDE, especially when it comes to civil society. For example, the Make Trade Fair campaign had a very strong reception in El Salvador. And FUNDE did a lot of research on the drop in coffee prices on the international market, which helps support Oxfam's work.

A lot of the work we do around CAFTA is with Oxfam's help. Oxfam has provided support, training and capacity building—everything related to organizational development.

How would DR-CAFTA affect your country?

The difference between El Salvador and the US—we don't have subsidies like US farmers have. On the one hand, there's a highly subsidized agriculture and on the other, there's a poor economy, which doesn't have subsidies.

CAFTA would basically open our economy up to the largest economies in the world, which is the US.

Whatever affects agriculture is going to translate into socioeconomic problems. My country's economy depends on agriculture. And our ability to produce our own food depends on agriculture.

You talked about your worries that the US will dump its exports on El Salvador if DR-CAFTA is approved. What other aspects of DR-CAFTA worry you?

CAFTA is about more than trade. Foreign investment for example. The agreement favors protecting foreign capital. This is an agreement that really takes away the flexibility of local governments to enact policies that meet their own objectives.

In addition, it creates a very damaging relationship between investors and the state. This relationship allows the investor to sue the state if things don't go the way they want.

What are you doing in El Salvador to try to defeat DR-CAFTA?

FUNDE works at two levels. One is the regional level in Central America, in which the CID initiative plays an important role. It allows us to coordinate actions like this one that brought us to Washington to influence Congress.

There's also the national level. There, we have a direct relationship with several organizations, unions, churches, local governments, environmental organizations, micro enterprises. We provide information to these different groups. At the same time, we try to craft proposals that reflect the interests of those sectors. For example, these organizations decided to reject CAFTA after we completed an analysis of each chapter of the agreement.

Also we have a relationship with US agencies where we present the negative effects of CAFTA. We basically demand actions to prevent, but also mitigate, what CAFTA would produce.

Every chapter of CAFTA, such as agriculture, environment, and intellectual property—basically every country has its own way of approaching these things. But, in general, we try to integrate the regional view. This allows us to work at two levels, international and national.

How do you feel your visits with the US Congresspeople and their staff went?

The problems that we face in our countries—there is just a superficial understanding. But there are differences between the Congress people. There is a lot of opposition, but many say they have not decided how they will vote.

Whatever happens, we have given them information. In the future, they cannot say that they didn't know. Because we told them.

Several governments and broad sectors of civil society are opposed to this unequal negotiating framework, which would limit the capacity of governments to make trade work for sustainable development and poverty eradication.

Oxfam International asserts that the FTAA will not contribute to sustainable development. It is based on the failed model of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has neither produced growth nor addressed the crisis of poverty in Mexico.

This paper summarizes the reasons why Oxfam International opposes the FTAA. It puts forward our recommendations for developing different rules and provides an alternative framework for integration.