CAFTA Opposition

Abstract

Overlapping transnational networks attempted to reconcile divergent perspectives— some favoring rejection, others reform—and leverage change in the U.S. government’s framing of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The experience of the Stop CAFTA Coalition shows that protest movements cannot be fully understood from the perspective of a single period in time. Core coalition members began organizing decades prior to CAFTA’s proposal, generally on a topic other than free trade, and their solidarity-based decision-making model was fundamental to their decision to reject rather than attempt to reform CAFTA—since this was the position of their Central American partner organizations. A split between reforming CAFTA and more radically transforming free trade with the United States emerged as a fault line in CAFTA opposition, but solidarity groups maintained their anti-free-trade position even as they cooperated within networks representing distinct interests.