We, young people from Mexico, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru, coming from different experiences, are committed to build a united, free and sovereign Latin America and to build peace, based on equity, respect, justice and acknowledgement of our diversity. As a result of our meeting held in Quito, Ecuador, on June 15-19, 2005 in the international encounter “Peace is Young”, under the slogan Building Peace is Possible, and after analyzing the context and reality of Latin America,

We consider that:

Since 1994, the government of the United States of America is promoting a trade initiative in order to avoid the collapse of the capitalist system and to provide relief for its economic and political crisis. This strategy is based on the implementation of the “Americas Free Trade Area” (ALCA, in Spanish), which seeks to liberalize economic policy for the exchange of goods and services in the whole continent.

This strategy, however, has failed, and now the United States’ government is seeking to sign free trade agreements with each country or region. These bilateral and regional agreements have divided Latin America, creating rivalry and competition among our countries, which allows the United States to dominate the whole continent.

We consider that the Free Trade Agreements (TLCs in Spanish) are not only a trade proposal, but an economic, political and cultural domination strategy. It is not true that only goods are being negotiated, actually many aspects that affect our present and future are being negotiated, such as: public services, education, health, environment, intellectual property rights, trademarks, ancestral knowledge and laws, in order to benefit large transnational companies. The sovereignty of our countries is being affected, changing our cultures, our Constitutions and violating our peoples’ human rights.

We understand that the TLCs are directly related to the military plans designed by the United Status for Latin America, such as the Colombia Plan and the strategy to fight against youth gangs. These plans have allowed transnational companies to take ownership of natural resources and to ensure their access to basic resources such as water, oxygen, natural gas and biodiversity.

This intervention strategy cannot be carried out without the military domination of the region. To ensure this, the United States government has set up military bases, such as the one in Manta in Ecuador, Comalapa in El Salvador, Guantánamo in Cuba, and others. The implementation of these bases has caused problems such as an increase in sexual exploitation of young girls, forced appropriation of land, damage of natural resources and negative impacts on the physical and mental health of the population.

The United States’ domination is sustained not only on its military and economic power, but also on its “soft power”, which implies selling and imposing identities and culture, seeking the ideological colonization of the region.

In face of this structural process of subjugation, we as young people from Latin America commit ourselves to struggle united to achieve the following:

• To strengthen exchange spaces to inform, educate and create a genuine social awareness of the consequences of the Free Trade Agreements and the military strategies in the region, working as a youth network.

• To resist consumption of goods produced by transnational companies and promote consumption of locally produced goods by small enterprises, in order to strengthen our countries’ industry and promote a responsible and solidary consumer’s culture.

• To demand the withdrawal of all military bases from our Latin American territory. We will be particularly vigilant to avoid the ratification of the Manta Base Agreement in 2009.

• To object and disobey, for conscious reasons, any law or regulation that goes against our principles. We value and promote all alternative practices opposed to mandatory military service.

• Maintain and respect biodiversity, natural resources and the environment.

Against the neoliberal project which is inhuman, we propose humaneness. We demand, as young people, to be recognized as an essential part of society, promoting active social and political participation spaces which can bring changes towards creating a culture of peace.

We demand our right to live in the present and the future, not as cheap and undervalued labor, but to have free access to education and health, where natural resources are preserved, respecting each peoples’ culture and identity.

We reject the military plans and the Free Trade Agreements which deny this desired future and condemn us not to exist as people with dignity; we resist and struggle for peace with justice, for peace with dignity.

Quito, Ecuador, 17 June 2005