Thousands marched today in the streets of historic Puebla in
Mexico to say no to the FTAA. After the march, with united
trade unionists, campesinos and students in the Mexican city,
a commission of social movement, after dialoging with the
police and crossing the police barrier that surrounded the
convention center, presented to the delegates from the Trade
Negotiating Committee a document introducing the declaration
of the III Hemispheric Ecounter Against FTAA expressing their
firm opposition to the agreement.

Representatives of the Henispheric Social Alliance -- Gonzalo
Berrón (CUT - Brazil), Rusa Jeremic (Common Frontiers *
Canada), Elizabeth Drake (ART * US), and Deborah James (Global
Exchange * US) -- were part of the commission, which also
included the Mexican Action Network against Free Trade
(RMALC), the Emiliano Zapata Campesino Union, the Electricity
Workers Union of Mexico, and the Union of Street Vendors of
Puebla.

Read the declaration

Puebla, February 5, 2004

To representatives of the 34 governments negotiating the FTAA:

Organizations from various countries in the Americas that are
members of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, and Mexican civil
society organizations which participated in the FTAA
Information and Analysis Forum here in Puebla and in this
protest, declare:

- The negotiations that you are currently advancing are
illegitimate, because, in each of the countries of the
Americas, the societies that you say you represent have not
been informed, consulted, and much less taken into account in
these negotiations that put the future of our countries at
risk.

- The peoples of the continent have expressed in a thousand
different ways their opposition to any further imposition of
"free trade," and to the FTAA in particular. This is the true
sentiment of the peoples of the Americas, not the position
presented as the result of forums that pretend to consult
civil society.

- We attach and present for your information the
Declaration that more than a thousand delegates form every
country in the hemisphere adopted in Havana a week ago:

(Declaration of the III Hemispheric Ecounter Against FTAA)