Brazil social forum ends with protest for peace

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil -- A weeklong gathering of social activists ended with a boisterous street protest against possible military action in Iraq and a proposal to create a hemispheric free trade zone that would stretch from Canada to Argentina.

Led by bands on trucks like those used in Brazil's Carnival parades, some 30,000 participants in the World Social Forum ended a week of discussion and protest intended as a counterpoint to the gathering of business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Many waved red communist flags and chanted slogans against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, an effort to unite the economies of 34 nations in the Western hemisphere similar to European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Backers of the Free Trade Area of the Americas claim the agreement would boost the economies of all the members but opponents at the World Social Forum fear it will allow large corporations to bypass labor and environmental laws and will hurt farmers and the poor.

"The Free Trade Area of the Americas will strangle Latin America, which is why we cannot let it be born," said Patricio Robles, a civil engineer from Uruguay who attended the forum held in the southern city of Porto Alegre.

Throughout the six-day forum, activists condemned what they call neoliberalism -- or the perceived control by the United States and other wealthy nations over the world through free-market economics, liberal trade and the breakdown of national borders.

"The few rich dominate the poor, and it's a concept that has been killing Indians for 500 years," said Sergio Muxi Tenbe an Indian from Brazil who wore a headdress made of parrot feathers.

Japanese activist Koshin Fukushima said his country's workers and farmers have been severely hurt by Asian trade agreements -- and he predicted the Free Trade Area of the Americas would be a benefit only for the United States at the expense of Latin American nations.

"It's just another way for the United States to impose itself on Latin America," Fukushima said.

Also attending the forum was Tom Hayden, longtime left-wing activist and former member of the California Legislature, who said the proposed free trade zone could also weaken U.S. environmental and labor laws.

"Once they establish an international order where labor protections and environmental protections are weaker, then they can argue that American laws are too strong," Hayden said. "At that point, it could be too late for the American people to do anything about it."