So, from now on, besides mobilizing against the deadly FTAA, the Alliance will integrate to its strategy and action plan, the fight against all the free trade agreements, bilateral, sub regional, among blocks or over national.

As the Bolivian Pablo Solon affirmed, “this is about fighting against the same monster with many heads, which damaging effect is the same to our countries”.

This is a historic moment to the Continental Social Alliance. It was created in 1997 with the goal of denouncing and resisting an agreement that was being negotiated secretly and had US as its main promoter. Today, it proposes its own re foundation, renewing its commitments towards “a true integration of the people”.

As it was informed to RealWorldRadio, when the Continental Social Alliance was created, few people in the continent knew about the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and even less about its contents. The only thing known was its approval date, January 2005.

Seven years after, facing the failure of that negotiations agenda –on its contents and terms- the Continental Social Alliance considers this as a victory and feels stronger enough as to keep fighting against agreements and institutions that promote the so called “trade liberalization”.

Along with this important decision, the Alliance decided to regionalize its work in order to make more effective denounces and mobilizations against the FTAA, but now also against the trade liberalization that is being negotiated between US and the Central American countries (CAFTA), the Andean FTA and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

This isn’t a small challenge. It has as direct precedent the different chapters the Continental Social Alliance has been carrying out during these years: mobilizations against privatizations of public companies and care about the continent’s natural resources.