To Storm the Citadel: Geographies of Protest at the Summit of the Americas in Québec City, April 2001

Abstract

This article draws on research conducted before, at, and after the protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Summit of the Americas meeting held in Québec City in April 2001. Following their successful activities at the World Trade Organization meetings at Seattle in 1999, antiglobalization groups mounted large-scale protests at subsequent major world governance meetings including the Québec City summit. At the time many viewed the protest groups as forming a cohesive movement with considerable momentum. With hindsight we conclude that the protests at Québec City brought together diverse groups—some global, many local—to form an uneasy alliance united by a common opposition to the intrusive meeting on economic globalization. This intrusion was symbolically represented by the location of the FTAA talks in the fortified Québec Citadel, which is an enduring national symbol for most French Canadians. The spectrum of politics represented by the antiglobalization groups found expression in radically different tactics and geographies of protest; indeed, this geographical compromise was the key to allowing the various groups to work together toward challenging the free-trade goals of the FTAA. The success of the protests held at Québec City was therefore not a foregone conclusion but the result of a series of special circumstances that were grounded in the geography of the protest itself.