The natural reaction when tear gas stings your eyes is to rub them. "Don't do that," said a young man with painted face and pierced nose on a Quebec street on Saturday. "The gas gets on your hands and makes it worse." He gave me a water bottle to squirt saline liquid on my face instead.
Most of the protesters who came in their thousands to the French-Canadian city to demonstrate against the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) this weekend were well equipped for such eventualities.
The protest gathering had been planned for months. Calls for action in Quebec had swamped the Internet. Students and activist groups had held seminars on tactics, like fighting police and combating tear and pepper gas.
The anti-globalisation demonstrators have become much more organised since the 1999 battle for Seattle, the symbol of resistance to corporate globalisation. They co-operate under names like CLAC, the anti-capitalist convergence, and CASA, the "welcoming committee". Those who want to remain passive march under green colours; advocates of civil disobedience wear yellow; activists prepared to use violence dress in red or black.
The protesters see themselves as an "anti-globalisation civil society" embracing students, anarchists, trade unionists, human rights advocates, religious groups, environmentalists, friends of the earth and anyone else with an anti-establishment cause. Just as young people once rallied against the Vietnam War and nuclear arms, this generation of dissenters has been galvanised by opposition to the spread of corporate power.
Far from diverting wealth to non-industrialised countries, FTAA would benefit big corporations and widen the gap between the rich and poor, say their leaders, who like to quote Ralph Nadar, "You can have democracy or you can have corporate control. You can't have both."
Canadian author Maude Barlow, director of the International Forum on Globalisation, one of their main spokespersons, argued on Canadian television that corporations want "an agreement that gives corporate rights before human rights and democratic rights."
Ms Barlow and co-author Tony Clarke, director of Canada's Polaris Institute, point out in their book Global Showdown that the top 200 global corporations are now so big that their combined sales exceed the combined economies of 182 countries. Wall-Mart is bigger than 163 countries, Mitsubishi is larger than Indonesia, and Time Warner-American Online has a market value greater than the economy of Australia. This undermines democracy, they say.
Their arguments found echoes inside the 34-nation summit. President Vicente Fox of Mexico, which has already joined the US and Canada in the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA), acknowledged that the benefits of lower tariffs help economies but can bypass the poor - the very case being made on the streets.
St Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony said globalisation threatened small nations with marginalisation and exclusion. "Until all the peoples of the Americas are free from hunger and fear of unemployment, we cannot celebrate the benefits of trade liberalisation," he said.
Brazil and other protectionist Mercosur (Latin America trade bloc) countries hope nevertheless to gain from FTAA. They see how Mexico has quadrupled its exports, mainly to the US, since it joined NAFTA. They cannot afford to pass up the opportunity to gain similar access to the world's largest market.
As the biggest Latin American country, Brazil wants FTAA to eliminate US tariffs, like that imposed on Brazilian orange-juice concentrate due to pressure from the Florida fruit lobby, and to remove anti-dumping measures that allow the US to block their products.
The big problem in forming an Americas economic union similar to the EU is the disproportion of power between the United States, with a GDP of almost $10,000 billion, and the rest of the American hemisphere which, combined, has a GDP less than a third of that.
While the Latin American dictatorships have been replaced by democracies, apart from Cuba, a decade of liberal economic reform promoted by the US, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund has produced disappointing results. Many states also fret that unfettered trade would allow big US corporations to put local, inefficient companies out of business.
Other issues worried hemisphere leaders in Quebec. The crisis in Wall Street has reverberated through Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and the Caribbean. The drug problem threatens the fabric of some societies. Colombia's anti-drug war, fuelled by $1.3 billion in US aid, threatens to undermine democracy.
Colombian President Andres Pastrana warned that the threat to democratic systems from narcotics was not a problem for Colombia alone. "Its epicentre lies in each and every one of our countries which in one way or another form part of the chain of death and grief," he said.
The FTAA has a good chance of emerging in 2005, allowing US corporations to compete in what President Bush called the "neighbourhood". Whether unhindered or not is at the heart of the debate. In response to the worries inside and outside the summit, Mr Bush at least signalled his willingness to accept environmental and labour standards in trade pacts.
Ironically, the biggest impediment to making FTAA the planet's largest free trade zone is not the protest movement but the US Congress. Mr Bush wanted to enter the summit with trade negotiating authority, which would give him a mandate to cut deals without fear of a Congress rejection. But he didn't get it yet, nor did President Bill Clinton in seven years of trying. Without such authority, any free-trade agreement in the Americas is effectively on hold.
