CAFTA

Well, FBT continues and It Is Good. We´ve been doing a lot more tech here than before and I approve of this - they are always more interesting than my other classes. We´re also having to do a huge pile of homework, out-of-class projects though.... We had to teach 26 teachers from a local elementary school about environmental education (the first presentation in spanish for some people) and I met with a teacher afterwards to plan an individual 45-minute session at the same school on Friday. We´re going to talk about garbage and what should be done with it besides toss it in the streets. Then next week I have another project I have to do by Friday about the politics of Honduras. Thankfully we don´t have Saturday classes this weekend.

During the two hours before our presentation to the teachers yesterday, we talked about the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and what it will mean for Honduras. From what I have learned now, which is mostly from the perspective of the learned members of the community here, is this:

CAFTA is definitely good for U.S. corporations and the very corrupt upper crust of wealth and power here.

It might be good for your average joe in the USA - depends if his job gets shipped overseas. If not, he may enjoy lower prices for stuff! But probably not.

It will absolutely not be good for the people of Honduras.

Why? There are a variety of reasons. One of the most important is that most of the people of Honduras are highly dependent on the little money they make farming. There are a few maquiladoras (textile/sweat shops) but far more people are small-time farmers. Opening the borders to U.S. companies would allow our mass-produced, subsidized foodstuffs to compete with the small farmers, who would not stand a chance. Really, businesses of all types would get dominated by incoming American business, but the largest negative impact to the economy would be to the Agriculture sector. So the farmers would get driven into the cities once their crop prices were no longer sustainable to work in the new industrial jobs (mostly textiles) and the companies would have to compete with China, which has even lower wages than Honduras right now, so wages would almost certainly go down.

This brings up two other important points. First, CAFTA has practically no labor standards. It will basically encourage a drop in wages, safety, and workers´ rights. Secondly, it will increase urbanization and all the social problems that go with it - drugs, crime, gangs, poverty, health problems, etc etc.

Speaking of health, they treaty makes provisions to allow private companies to start competing with the government for basic public utilities - water, electricity, etc. This would probably result in worse service or lack of service to poor and isolated communities, and increased prices for most people. Also, CAFTA provides no decent environmental regulations, which of course would lead to pollution and resource exploitation as a corollary to development of foreign-owned industries.

There is also an aspect of the treaty that I´m not as clear on that would undermine countries´ rights to legally protect themselves from lawsuits served by corporations when the government interferes with their ability to make a profit. Maybe I´m hesitant about it because it almost sounded too ridiculous to be true. But there was an incident cited where Costa Rica denied some oil company the right to develop an operation offshore, and they tried to sue the government for some billions of dollars that was more than the entire country´s GDP. That was luckily thwarted in local courts because Costa Rica never signed some global petition or treaty that would give corporations the right to do whatever it was that the oil company wanted to do. At any rate, my opinion on this matter is simply that taking away power from these sovereign nations´ governments and handing it to foreign companies is simply not good for those countries.

But it will allow Honduran producers to reach wider markets, right? Sure, but it´s not like they can really compete with the US for any of those markets. What is really going to happen is that Honduras will become more urbanized, dependent on foreign imports, and most likely health, safety, and fairness standards will go down. In other words, please oppose CAFTA. There has been a ton of popular opposition all over central america, and a few of the countries - most notably Costa Rica - have governments with enough backbone to stand up to it. Honduras´s government, however, is relatively weak and corrupt. We need to defeat this in our own congress.

In other news, things are going well at home - I have had some good conversations with Edwin and Jacqueline about various things and the little kids and I are getting along swell. Their mom went to church last night and I stuck around to take care of ´em, so we played some games of hide and seek and hot/cold object searches. When we were playing hide and seek, one of the kids tried to hide in the same spot as me so I waited til the other one was coming and then tossed him out and yelled ¨here he is!¨ This of course was the funniest thing they had ever seen. Been eating a lot of beans and tortillas, my health is good, and I´ve been running in the mornings too. Really nice area to do it in. I´ve actually been watching a lot of TV too, because that´s what this family does a lot in their spare time. It´s not like we the trainees get together every single night to do stuff, so I end up watching TV too just to pass the time. I saw The Deer Hunter the other night, and that was a pretty excellent movie.

Can´t think of too much more to say. I forgot my list of Hondureñisms, so I guess I´ll have to do that next time, but here´s a good quote from my friend Josh:

¨You know, I´ve almost gotten used to the sight of schoolgirls with machetes.¨

and Tim:

¨I can map the human genome, but I can´t tell someone I want a banana!¨

TTFN. :)