Declaration of the third Continental Assembly of the Platform
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América Latina Mejor sin TLC | 20 May 2025
Declaration of the third Continental Assembly of the Platform
After two days of debate, the organisations and networks of the Latin America and the Caribbean Better Without FTAs Platform issued a declaration reaffirming their commitment to the sovereignty and protagonism of the peoples, social and environmental justice, and the collective construction of economic and socio-environmental alternatives that put life and the common good at the centre of our societies.
Declaration of the Platform “Latin America and Caribbean Better Without FTAs” Building Urgent Alternatives to Trump and Free Trade and Investment Treaties
In the current tumultuous global context, marked by the return of protectionist policies, the Platform “Latin America and the Caribbean Better Without FTAs” reaffirms its commitment to building just, sovereign, and solidarity-based economic, social, and environmental alternatives for our peoples.
We reject the false dilemma between protectionism and free trade imposed on us by centers of power. The tariff policies of the Donald Trump administration do not constitute a rupture with the neoliberal order, but rather a reconfiguration of capitalist accumulation mechanisms that keep corporate privileges intact. The slogan « America First » conceals a strategy to protect U.S. corporations while maintaining financial deregulation and tax benefits for big capital.
The reign of free trade is not dismantled by a mere round of selective tariffs. Neoliberal globalization involved a profound reorganization of production relations on a planetary scale, radically transforming the material bases on which our societies reproduce themselves. National economies were organically integrated into global value chains, transnational financial circuits, and technological networks that drastically reduce the margin for autonomous economic policies, and their consequences in the territories are devastating. This qualitative transformation went far beyond mere tariff reduction : it meant the construction of a complex legal architecture of impunity for transnational corporations, composed of thousands of norms, treaties, contracts, and arbitration mechanisms that shield capital’s interests above the rights of peoples and nature to decide on their own ways of life and development.
In these thirty years of neoliberal treaties, we have understood that free trade is much more than simply tariffs. FTAs are in fact the legal and political expression of the power of transnational corporations to guarantee their profits in any corner of the planet. These corporations have imposed a kind of « global constitution » that goes far beyond tariff reductions, including the protection of foreign investments, intellectual property rights, the liberalization of services, and public procurement. This has functioned as a corset that stifles the regulatory capacity of states and disciplines working populations through the constant threat of relocation, precarization, and dispossession. Faced with this reality, the tariff increases implemented by powers like the United States do not challenge this corporate power structure, but simply reconfigure its beneficiaries, favoring certain national capitals while keeping intact the logic of global accumulation that perpetuates inequalities and territorial dispossession in our continent. This occurs amidst a triple planetary crisis : of climate, biodiversity, and increasing pollution.
Free trade creates sectors that face exclusion and precariousness as an essential part of the global accumulation model. Extractivism impacts communities, makes workers’ conditions unstable, and dispossesses peoples of their territories and water. All these are necessary for corporate profits.
Hence, it is evident that the economic rationale supporting trade and investment treaties over the past thirty years remains pertinent, even amidst seemingly protectionist rhetoric. The system dominated by corporations has shown a remarkable ability to adapt, integrating critiques of free trade while maintaining the core of its authority. The latest trade agreements, now termed as « economic partnerships, » « regulatory cooperation agreements, » or « next-generation treaties, » continue to enhance the rights of international capital while intensifying the commodification across various aspects of life.
The organizations that make up the Platform “Latin America and the Caribbean Better Without FTAs” make an urgent call to organizations across the continent—whether trade unions, environmental groups, feminist organizations, peasant movements, human rights groups, indigenous communities, student groups, migrant organizations, informal workers’ associations, political movements and parties, among others—to build new political solidarities that reflect this new historical moment. We need articulations that transcend sectoral and national borders, recognizing that the multiple oppressions we face (extractivism, labor precarization, neocolonialism, environmental devastation, criminalization, violence against women, forced displacement, structural racism) are interconnected manifestations of the same exploitative system.
There is a need to unite all participants affected by the global economic order and to coordinate collective efforts for change. These efforts are often met with repression and criminalization by the state, with our region experiencing high numbers of environmental defenders being murdered or disappearing. Efforts include advocating for water rights, indigenous peoples protecting their territories against extractive industries, peasant communities opposing large-scale agriculture, preserving seeds and promoting agroecology, formal and informal workers striving for better working and living conditions, women addressing patriarchal violence, and migrants contesting militarized borders. All these movements highlight the inherent conflicts within the current system that cannot be resolved by mere superficial changes.
Today, it is insufficient to merely oppose agreements ; it is imperative to develop alternative paradigms of economic and social relations that fundamentally challenge the principles of capitalist, neocolonial, and exploitative development. This necessitates reviving and modernizing practices of South-South cooperation, promoting social and solidarity economies, ensuring food sovereignty, supporting local and regional markets, enforcing public control or community management of common goods, fostering exchanges rooted in complementarity and reciprocity, and showing solidarity with the struggles of Latin American, Caribbean, and global South communities. It is crucial to progress towards a new internationalism among peoples that combines the defense of local sovereignties with the establishment of global mechanisms for solidarity and justice. These mechanisms should be capable of addressing shared challenges such as the climate crisis and countering ineffective solutions imposed by powerful entities ; protecting territorial defenders ; combating the extreme concentration of wealth ; and mitigating corporate dominance over technologies, including those related to communication and artificial intelligence.
This new stage of resistance and alternative building also requires the development of analytical tools that overcome the dichotomies between the local and the global, the national and the international, recognizing that emancipation and the struggle must be built simultaneously on multiple interconnected scales. Only then can we move towards a horizon where trade and investment are subordinated to the reproduction of life, social justice, and the ecological sustainability of our continent.
“Latin America and the Caribbean Better Without FTAs” maintains its dedication to the sovereignty and leadership of the people. It advocates for social and environmental justice, and promotes the collective development of economic and socio-environmental alternatives that prioritize life and the common good in our societies.
For the sovereignty and protagonism of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean !
Third Continental Assembly of the Latin America and the Caribbean Better Without FTAs Platform
Santiago, Chile, May 2025.
