In Search of Fair and Free Trade

by Fr. Walter Espinoza

The Social Justice Ministry of the Old Mission Parish of San Luis Obispo, California, along with Rev. Water Espinoza, have started a campaign of collecting signatures as well as letters directly addressed to the Senators & Congress Officials of the United States.  These petitions and letters are requesting that support be withheld from the Free Trade Treaty between the Unites States and Costa Rica (CAFTA).

Costa Rica is a country with a history of democratic rule much like the United States: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to vote. Unlike the United States, Costa Rica has universal health care, no weapons industry, no army, and strict environmental standards (25% of the country has been preserved as National Parks).       Costa Rica has a 96% literacy rate, and many more Universities than other countries in Latin America.

Costa Rica is a democracy and is friendly to the United States.  Its government has worked well up to now, and left to its own laws and procedures will continue to fair well.

Costa Rica has many resources and good companies that will be in jeopardy if this free trade agreement is approved.  For example, ICE, the Costa Rican telecommunication company, belongs to the people.  The ICE’s generated profits are directly reinvested back to the people of Costa Rica in the form of social projects, as well as used to decrease the National Debt.  Not only is this telecommunication company (ICE) in danger if the treaty is approved, but the small farmer, the Costa Rican insurance company, the ecological laws, as well as the social justice systems that Costa Rican Citizens have developed and maintained throughout history. Currently, the Costa Rican Infrastructure and the Legislature are not ready to sign a free trade agreement such as the one that it is waiting to be approved (i.e., CAFTA).

Our major concern associated with CAFTA focuses on the abuses that exist in other Central American countries, which if passed, will swallow up and exploit Costa Rica in very similar ways. We are very concerned about the job drain from American workers, the creation of jobs at lower wages, and the resulting poverty that will follow.

In Mexico, where NAFTA was highly sought and promoted, the resulting effects now includes fewer jobs at lower wages as well as the loss of those jobs to the Far East. One of the larger selling points to gain American support for NAFTA was that it would reduce the illegal immigrant problem. That promise has not been met.  The possible result of CAFTA in relation to Costa Rica might be an increase in the number of Costa Rican illegal immigrants, not only into the United States, but also into other neighboring counties.

We ask that you send a letter addressed to the United States Senators and Congress Officials, as well as to President George W. Bush, and Dr. Abel Pacheco, president of Costa Rica, or to Rev. Walter Espinoza, 751 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401.

In those letters, we would ask that the U.S. officials listen to those Politicians, intellectuals, Union Leaders, & Catholic Bishops, who are opposed to CAFTA, and have compiled arguments which outline the impending hardships that will be imposed upon the citizens of Costa Rica by CAFTA, before the final decision is made.

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