U.S. Influence Denounced at Brazil Forum

www.bayarea.com Posted on Mon, Jan. 27, 2003 ALAN CLENDENNING Associated Press

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - Leonilda Zurita railed against the United States on Monday for backing Bolivia's efforts to curb illegal cultivation of the coca plant - the source of cocaine but also chewed by poor Bolivians to ease hunger.

Zurita, a Quecha Indian wearing an elaborately embroidered white skirt, handed out coca leaves to anyone who approached her. She was among thousands of anti-globalization activists at the third World Social Forum, a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Though they came from around the world, the activists were united in their anger at what they call "neoliberalism," or the perceived American control over the world through free-market economics, liberal trade and the breakdown of national borders.

"We're living with an undeclared war to defend the coca leaf, which for Bolivian peasants is a medicine that helps us put up with hunger," Zurita said. "At the root of this, I say, our struggle is with the United States."

About 30,000 acres of coca are cultivated legally in Bolivia, but there are many illegal fields the government is destroying with the financial help of the United States. Growers want more legal harvesting.

The activists blamed neoliberalism for problems ranging from sweatshops to environmental devastation and for government policies that favor foreign investors.

About 100,000 people attended the six-day forum, which closes Tuesday. The last major protest - a march against a possible U.S.-led war in Iraq and a proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA - was to take place Monday evening.

For many here, the United States is a bully that uses economic force to compel weaker countries to comply with its foreign policy and economic goals.

Activists from Turkey, for example, believe the United States has promised billions of dollars in debt relief to help the country's troubled economy in return for assurances that American forces can use Turkish soil to launch an invasion of Iraq.

"We directly oppose any kind of economic values being bargained that would justify the Turkish participation" in the war, said Erinc Yeldan, an economics professor with Bilkent University in Ankara.

Before hundreds of cheering activists, actor Danny Glover called for the elimination of the International Money Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, blaming them for many Third World ills.

"We have to fight and abolish those financial institutions which place us at the place where we are now, in this very fragile situation," Glover said.

Anarchist and linguist Noam Chomsky said the United States exerts its influence over other countries with more subtlety than it did decades ago.

Neoliberalism "is a new way of controlling the public that in the past was done with U.S.-backed military coups and dictatorships," he said.