Colombia: “free” trade, drugs and thugs

By John W. Foster

The debate over the proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) has had many highly charged and some truly strange moments.  Among the most outlandish is the refrain from both Conservative proponents and their Liberal allies that an FTA would help fight the Colombian drug trade.
The recent visit to Canada of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, reminded us we need not look farther than this NAFTA partner of 15 years to expose the absurdity of the argument.  In May President Calderon, told a Monterrey audience that NAFTA had given the “narcos” more power in Mexico.
Remember NAFTA promised to bring Mexican workers and farmers up to the living standards of their counterparts in Canada and the U.S. While a handful of Mexicans have been enriched by the FTA, for the vast majority the dreams faded fast.  Millions of Mexican farmers have been displaced, workers’ wages are far distant from those of their northern counterparts, and the current Calderon government is implicated in nasty attacks on independent trade unions.
In response to the U.S. “war on drugs” in Colombia, the Colombian cartels have cultivated both trade routes and franchise operations in Mexico. And operations in Mexico are growing exponentially. Mexican drug mafias are engaged in murderous competition with each other, spawning a U.S-backed militarization of the Mexican narcotic control operation.  The resulting carnage of murder and mayhem shows no sign of alleviation. The violence even hit U.S. consular employees in March.
The violence and centrality of the drug economy is making Mexico look a lot like Colombia. An estimated 17,000 Mexicans have died in drug-related violence in the last three years. In the border city of Juarez, once touted as the “poster-child” of free trade, more than 4,000 have been killed in two years.
Just how Canada’s bilateral agreement with Colombia might dislocate or reduce the centrality of the drug trade in that economy is unclear and unproven, particularly given the strong inter-linkages between the drug economy and the formal economy. There has been no evidence to back the claims that the trade deal might offer significant alternative economic prospects and employment—though this point might well be investigated as part of a prior independent human rights impact assessment of the trade deal. Such a step was originally agreed by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on International Trade, but is now opposed by Conservatives and Liberals alike.
More likely, further integration with Colombia is likely to reinforce the trends that have undermined peace in Mexico.  The Canada-Colombia FTA has raised concerns about likely increased dislocation among peasant groups, and of sharpened tensions between Canadian investors and communities struggling to retain access to the lands and resources from which they have been displaced, often violently by armed actors.
In recent weeks Afro-Colombian communities in the Cauca region of Colombia have received notice that they are to be forcibly "relocated" off lands they have occupied since the 1600s in a region where the government has given dozens of mining concessions to various multinationals including Canadian mining firms.
Let’s be very clear, the trade in drugs is not going away.  Its economic input to both the Colombian and Mexican economies dwarfs the figure of Canada-Colombian trade with or without an FTA.  Drugs are the second largest source of foreign currency for Mexico, estimated modestly at $30 to $50 billion a year, but as an experienced observer of the Mexican drug scene, U.S. author Charles Bowden notes “no one really knows.” He advises “if President Calderon succeeded in his claimed goal of eradicating the drug industry in Mexico, Mexico would collapse in a minute”. 
If Canadian MPs who have repeatedly expressed their concern about reducing the Colombian drug trade are really serious, they would put their energies not into a bilateral FTA, but into gaining Canada’s support for the February, 2009 call of three former Latin American Presidents (Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, César Gaviria of Colombia and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil) for an alternative to the failed “war on drugs”. 
Their approach seeks to reduce market demand in consumer countries like our own, through harm reduction and a public health approach to drug use, decriminalization of possession of cannabis for personal use and a variety of other steps, aimed to cut the economic legs right out from under Colombian and Mexican drug lords and their murderous minions.
As for the Standing Committee, on June 1 the Liberal and Conservative members shut down debate, voting to forward the bilateral trade and investment agreement to the House for approval and implementation. The Conservatives, aided and abetted by ex-Tory Scott Brison were simply not interested in any more evidence from Colombia or Canada. This, the day after Amnesty International Canada reported another round of death threats to trade union, afro-indigenous and NGO personel opposing a gold mine in the Cauca region.  Opponents of the agreement, supporting the NDP’s Peter Julian and allies from the Bloc vow to continue the fight – now more than 14 months long – in the House and the public.
Dr. John W. Foster teaches human rights and globalization at Carleton University and the University of Regina.