Mennonite
Central
Committee

Seminar challenges participants to examine globalization

By: Tina Hartman
April 20 , 2001

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — From coffee fields to textile factories, from Mennonite church programs to government offices, economic globalization's impact is increasing across Latin America and the Caribbean. In the first of several such consultations planned for various regions in the world, some 40 MCC partner agency representatives and workers met Jan. 13-15 here to share information and ideas for how MCC — and North American Anabaptists — should respond.

Most participants agreed that globalization — defined loosely as the increased flow of goods and services across national boundaries, due to factors including lowered trade barriers — can hurt the poorest and most vulnerable members of society.

Ideas for solutions varied widely. Some speakers called for embracing the opportunities inherent in more open markets, while advocating for changes that would make globalization's promise of prosperity available to more people. Others believe the current "free trade" system is unsustainable on both social and ecological levels.

In either case, participants agreed, North Americans have a stake in this issue since goods and food consumed in North America are increasingly produced in other countries. Because of the issue's complexity, several speakers emphasized the importance of entering the discussion with humility and openness to learning.

Participants in the conference, held at a Mennonite church retreat center outside the city, came from across Mexico, Haiti, Central and South America as well as the United States and Canada. They ranged from grassroots activists to government advisers.

Nelson Garcia Lobo, of the Honduran Mennonite Church's Social Action Committee, said his country's situation reflects some of globalization's shortcomings. As Honduras has opened its markets and lifted price controls, small farmers face competition from imports. Cheap U.S. corn, subsidized by the U.S. government, has flooded the market, making it difficult for Honduran farmers to sell their crops for a profit.

More Hondurans are turning to the "maquilas" (factories, often clothing assembly shops run by foreign companies) for work as a result. While working conditions are acceptable in some of these factories, others treat workers as disposable, he noted. Family and community structures are often damaged when parents must work 12 or more hours a day.

Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor is increasing, with some 80 percent of Hondurans now living in poverty. Social services have been slashed in recent years — as mandated by the "structural readjustment programs" called for by the World Bank and other international lending institutions — while 35 percent of Honduras' budget goes to payments on its national debt.

Others at the conference spoke from the perspective of those on the margins of society: a Honduran coffee-grower, a woman who works with street children in Bolivia, a Nicaraguan maquila workers organizer and a man who works with indigenous people in Guatemala.

Many of the frustrations expressed seemed to stem from a perceived lack of self-determination, from a personal to a national level, noted Daryl Yoder-Bontrager, co-director of the MCC Latin America/Caribbean department.

"This undercurrent reinforced the idea that any response to economic globalization must start by asking whether it will add to or take from a person's or community’s ability to decide for itself how it will live," he said.

At the end of the consultation, a three-member committee summed up some of the options for action they heard discussed during the event. These options included support for:

• "Neo-liberalism with a human face," or an attempt to accept globalization while calling for U.S. and international policies that would give smaller, poorer countries more power to determine their future. These policies would include reducing government and corporate corruption, protecting national industries for a time to allow them to become competitive, promoting infrastructure and access to resources for the poor and relieving part of poor countries' debt.
• Working for a complete change from the system of globalization and free markets, by supporting unions, calling for policies to protect small businesses and farmers, decreasing dependence on exports and eliminating external debt.
• "radical Christian vision" that promotes the church as an alternative community in which members develop a "theology of enough." The church would lead the way in modeling systems of local production and consumption that honor both people and creation.

"The value of this consultation was in having all these voices together for the first time," said Marty Shupack, who works with economics issues at the MCC U.S. Washington Office.

Future regional consultations are planned for Asia, to be held in May in Nepal, and Africa, to be held in early 2004, likely in Kenya.

MCC will take perspectives shared at the consultations into account when shaping its programs and policies, and also plans to share findings with North American MCC supporters via various printed and online materials.