Title:

Internet, power and politics: Gender and ICTs in the movement against CAFTA.

During this past decade, the United States of America (US) has been developing a strategy of negotiating bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with several countries of the Latin American and Caribbean region. This strategy is a response to the massive resistance carried out by the social movements in the region when the US tried to develop the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

In 2002 the US started the process to implement a Free Trade Agreement with Central America and Dominican Republic (CAFTA). By May 2004 all the countries except Costa Rica had signed the agreement. Costa Rica participated in 10 rounds of negotiation, which were deemed as insufficient and not transparent by the social movement, since the negotiating body in the US was its Congress and in Costa Rica it was an ad-hoc commission appointed by the president^¹. During the negotiations the government claimed that since it was a matter of commercial interest the text under negotiation could not be made available to the public. This had very serious consequences since the issues under negotiation went further in depth than the commercial relationship between the countries and touched upon sensitive topics such as environment, social security, education, intellectual property and biodiversity, among others. The text of the agreement was only available after it had been drafted, hence when the Costa Rican congress received the agreement it was faced with the option of approving or rejecting the agreement in whole, but did not have the right to modify or negotiate its terms. This in itself already established a power imbalance between the parts. Also, once the agreement was in place for Costa Rica it would be above the country's constitution, since it is considered an international treaty, but for the US it would only be a regular law, since the US is not a signatory of the Vienna Convention^².

From the beginning CAFTA met the resistance of the different expressions of the social movement, including the 4 public universities, since it steered away from the historical conquests that conformed to what could be called a socially conscious state, that is, a state that provides its population with conditions that contribute fundamentally to the people´s well being, such as affordable access to water and energy, solidair health systems, public education, protection of nature and environment, etc.

The agreement was over 2500 pages long, full of legal loopholes and written in very complicated technical terms. Fortunately, as soon as the text was available the scholars and specialists of the different universities took it upon themselves to study the terms of the agreement and assess the risks and benefits it posed. Also the different social organizations and movements dedicated countless efforts and time to analyze the agreement as well as mediate these analyses with formats and languages that were understandable for the wider population.

In april 2007, given the heavy polarization of opinions around the agreement --the government and the larger enterprises in favor and the social movement against it –a referendum was called. The people of Costa Rica would vote to decide whether the agreement was ratified by the country or not. Although one could anticipate that the balance of power and economic resources would favor the government and enterprises, the social movement embraced this as a legitimate opportunity to defend the socially conscious state and the different sectors (women's movement, environmentalists, cultural movement, native populations, workers unions, academics) all came together to fight against CAFTA.

This paper will not analyze the benefits and dangers of CAFTA, as there is broad documentation^³ on the matter, as well as several studies currently analyzing and describing the struggle against CAFTA in Costa Rica. This article wants to focus on two issues: the way the women's movement strategically used information and communication technologies during the struggle and the role these technologies enabled women to have within the social movement as a whole. The article will focus on the participation of women because their contribution was fundamental to the process of social transformation, but also because the process had consequences in the gender dynamics of the social movement and the communities.

Before analyzing the role of women within the movement as well as the role of the feminist movement we'd like to clarify our understanding of what a social movement is and why we believe that the movement against CAFTA not only brought together the agendas of several movements but is an expression of a movement in itself.

Srilata Batliwala defines a social movement as “an organized set of constituents pursuing a common political agenda of change through collective action” (Batliwala, pg. 10, 2008). The author then numbers the following characteristics:

One of the issues that was most significant in the struggle against CAFTA is that it brought together individuals and organizations who all identified strongly and conformed an interest group. Moreover, they dedicated time, efforts and even voted to support their cause.

Although the movement against CAFTA was characterized for having a flexible structure, there were coordinating entities and one can even pinpoint the Patriotic Committees as the community organizational unit, because even though they were self-convened, they grouped people to coordinate actions, had spokespeople and contact information.

3. Some continuity over time (i.e., a spontaneous uprising or campaign may not be a movement in itself, though it may lead to one);

The movement against CAFTA had the strength and scope it had due to the fact that it stood on the shoulders of giants. The Costa Rican social movement had come together before to fight against specific threats to what we've called the “Socially Conscious State^⁴, including struggles against oil drilling, privatization of health systems, water supply or electricity and telecommunications. However, even if one didn't accept these previous fights as predecessors, after the referendum vote in 2007 the movement continued, several of the Patriotic Committees have kept functioning and the networks among regions that started in the movement against CAFTA have remained operating, with the objective of advocating to defend the rights and social conditions that CAFTA threatens.

4. Engage in collective actions and activities in pursuit of the movement’s political goals and

The years 2004-2007 saw an unprecedented display of creativity, coordination and use of ICTs and alternative media as the movement against CAFTA fought to spread its message and progressively gained more and more affiliates. The actions and activities ranged from community level initiatives, to lobby at Congress and finally even a national referendum.

The most clear issue through the whole movement building process was that all the people involved wanted to stop the agreement from being signed. People and organizations had very diverse motivations for joining the cause, but the collective common point was rejecting CAFTA as a whole.

In the public eye, the feminist movement has been traditionally associated with reproductive rights and stopping violence against women. Hence, when feminist groups started raising the flags against CAFTA some people wondered why the feminists were pounding war drums.

It must be said that this view of the feminist movement is very shallow, and a simple historical review would clearly demonstrate how feminism has been linked to diverse social issues, ranging from women's right to vote, to struggles against racism and participation in peace building initiatives. It's important to clarify that although the feminist movement was born raising the issue of gender inequity, through the years it has grown and evolved to become a much richer ideology and analytical framework, as Batliwala explains:

“Feminism stands not only for gender^⁵ equality, but for the transformation of all social relations of power that oppress, exploit, or marginalize any set of people, women and men, on the basis of their gender, age, sexual orientation, ability, race, religion, nationality, location, class, caste, or ethnicity. (...) Feminism stands for economic policies based upon food security, clean renewable energy, and ecological soundness, in order to ensure a sustainable future for the planet, all its species and its natural resources. (...) for economic transformation that creates greater social equity and human development (...) for political transformation that guarantees full citizenship rights, the full body of human rights, and for secular, plural, democratic regimes that are transparent, accountable and responsive to all their citizens, women and men”. (Batliwala, p. 12, 2008)

Therefore, the struggle against CAFTA was essential to the feminist movement, because it threatened basically everything feminism stands for to push the neo-liberal capitalist regime even further and destroy the conditions that have provided wellness to Costaricans over the years. Of course CAFTA would have an even stronger effect on women as they are the poorest among the poor and the elimination of health care and basic services falls back on the caretakers of the families, who are mostly women. However, the analysis of the feminist movement went a lot further than the differentiated impact analysis, it was clear that they rejected the development model as a whole. There were several statements on behalf of the feminist movement that reflected this vision. The group called Consejo de Mujeres de los 12 Puntos (Women's Council of the 12 issues) published an article that analyzed the process and content of CAFTA and compared it to what they would have expected, raising issues such as sovereignty, equity among the negotiating parts, labor rights, environment, protection of local producers and intellectual property regimes:

“We denounce that when the effects of CAFTA can be seen, in terms of more poverty, exclusion, social gaps and human costs there will be no congressmen or congresswomen, no governors, mayors or negotiators to face and assume the consequences of their actions^⁶”.

The feminist movement did not just oppose CAFTA, they also had a vision of how they would like the country to be and the referendum also proved to be a space for them to share this vision with all the men and women they met in the different activities and spaces they developed. In a very symbolic manner the group called Mujeres Contra el TLC started a quilt, they called it the quilt of dreams and it was made up of squares hand painted, embroidered or sown by women, children and men from different communities and in each square images and phrases represented the reasons people opposed CAFTA, but also the type of country they wanted. The group issued a statement titled “The Quilt of Dreams: another Costa Rica, another world is possible”:

“We demand a true human development, where people can enjoy their full potential. We demand the development of love, solidarity and the respect for all forms of life. A development of sensibility and senses, where harmony and diversity prevail. We want a society where there's no lack of food as well as no excess, a world where the whole human rainbow can have a place to be, with dignified conditions, without slave production and excessive consumption of unnecessary things whose fabrication costs valuable resources for the present and future of humanity^⁷ (...)”.

“Information and communication technologies have always existed - print, telephones, radio, tv are some of them. However, in the current context when one speaks about ICTs it's usually referring to digital technology, a combination of hardware, data processing software and the connectivity to link them.”^⁸

The social movement against CAFTA was one that employed ICTs very strategically to accomplish its needs and overcome the obstacles that the power imbalance posed. The government had in its hands all the formal power to communicate with the population and the support of the large enterprises also meant more economic resources to support promoting and organizing in favor of CAFTA. However, the NO movement had creativity, conviction, heart...and it also had ICTs. Since the mainstream media was openly in favor of the agreement the social movement used a combination of online and offline communication strategies^⁹. They embraced the concept of Internet as a network of human networks^¹⁰ and started creating alliances and organizing in a very organic manner. The internet became a virtual meeting point where content was uploaded by academics and downloaded, printed and distributed in communities for all to read; where podcasts of rural women stating their ideas would be uploaded by local organizations and be broadcast through radio channels. The fight against CAFTA proved that you don't need to be connected to harvest benefits from the Internet, as long as there are collective uses in place.

This situation played in favor of women and of the Feminist movement, because if there had been enough resources to communicate through the mainstream media and the formal structures it would have been unlikely for women to have the key role that they had. But since this was a battle of creativity on an uneven playing field, women felt right at home, and opened up their own spaces and made their voices and opinions heard, without asking anyone's permission.

The feminist movement was not very technologically savvy, but it knew enough to use the technologies it needed and to participate in the more sophisticated spaces developed by the communication specialists within the broader movement. Also, the struggle raised a flag within the feminist movement regarding the need to learn more about the uses of technology for advocacy. In this struggle, the social movement gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “information is power”.

Using ICTs to struggle against CAFTA: the women's movement and the women within the movement.

As Sulá Batsú points out, the struggle against CAFTA “took place as a phenomenon of citizen participation, that for the first time was supported by Information and Communication Technologies – ICTs (...) The use of technology in this context answered to the needs of various social sectors and helped to crystallize strategies in different ways” (Sulá Batsú, 2009, p.1).

Once the referendum was convened, the decision of approving or rejecting the agreement was moved from Congress to the people by direct vote, which inevitably led to a nation-wide campaign. Although the regulations established that it was forbidden to use public resources, the government spent an enormous amount of money in publicity favoring the agreement. The mainstream media also published a one-sided story. Hence, the social movement had to rely on alternative media, and work directly with the communities to explain its concerns and reasons for rejecting the agreement.

Within the campaign conducted by the social movement, women had a key role, both through the feminist movement as well as individual women integrated in other sectors. For the purpose of this article we'd like to focus on four of the many initiatives that used ICTs strategically, as examples of how women disrupted the matrix by overcoming the unbalanced power field of the referendum as well as by achieving important changes in the role and position of women within social struggles.

Since there was a pressing need to have presence in the whole country a key figure was created: the Patriotic Committees^¹¹. The PCs were a community entity where people from different political tendencies, different ages, professions and beliefs came together to fight against CAFTA. Over 150 Patriotic Committees (PC) were formed, they were all independent, open and self-convened by community leaders.

A very important issue is that since the Patriotic Committees (PC) were a community level entity that met in any neighbour's house and had to raise resources creatively, women had an important leadership in them. Several of the PCs were convened and led by women, who raised important concerns on the consequences the agreement could have on their livelihoods, their access to health services and the well being of families and children. The women's knowledge of the community dynamics made them the perfect promoters of the cause at the community level: they knew their neighbors and were respected figures not that closely linked with the political parties. The significative presence of women in the CPs also had consequences on the types of strategies used to get the message across, which became very closely tied with everyday community life. They organized town faires, bingos, went door to door and visited farmer markets, among others.

Since the Patriotic Committees were spread throughout the country, many of the women that led them had to learn how to use e-mail and other internet tools to communicate. It's important to highlight the role young people had in advocating for the use of these tools in the struggle. The fact that many women within the PCs were having such a key role as well as the presence of the women's movement meant that in every general assembly or decision-making body of the Patriotic Committees there was an explicit request for equal participation of men and women. Although this is a very preliminary step towards gender equity it's important to point out that since many of these committees were from the rural areas it was very important for these female community activists to be recognized and supported by those they now considered their peers.

B. Radio Program Women of NO, a space for analyzing CAFTA from the voices of women.

“Mujeres del No^¹²” (Women of NO) was a space that broadcast the voices of dozens of women that opposed CAFTA. The program ran continuously every weekday from June to December 2007. Over 120 broadcasts were carried out, produced by a group of 20 activists with over 100 guests. It was the only space where the expertise and knowledge of women was given such a central space. The radio program was broadcast through AM radio and also uploaded to the website of Feminist Radio International^¹³, which provided valuable human and technical support in this process.

This program was an important reference in the struggle because it made visible the fact that there were many women in the country who had important ideas to share about CAFTA and its consequences. Women from all over the country participated, from a great variety of backgrounds: native women, rural women, congresswomen, academics, engineers, social scientists, community leaders, artists, writers, farmers, union workers and activists among others. The audience also called in to participate, raise questions and congratulate them for this initiative. After the referendum when the show was cancelled the radio station kept getting phone calls from people asking about the show. Also, since the programs were uploaded online people who could not listen to the show or were outside the country could hear it.

This was an important element also within the movement because often enough when there are public debates it's mostly the male representatives of the social movement that attend and frequently it's been said that it's because there are no female experts or leaders available. This show demonstrated that it's possible to interview a different woman every day during 120 days and one would still not run out of expertise and knowledge. Hence, this program contributed to a change in the perception of people about the role of women within social struggles. The other important issue was that many of the women brought concerns regarding CAFTA that had a lot to do with the reality of women that is often overlooked by male activists. Issues such as access to health care in the communities, increases in the costs of water and electricity, the quality of the environment in marginalized communities, the protection of indigenous knowledge and access to generic pharmaceutical products were all very pressing issues for women, given their role as family caretakers as well as their lower income.

There were many strategic uses of ICTs carried out by groups and organizations, but there was one initiative in particular that. although it brought together over 100 women, was started thanks to the initiative of an individual blogger. Julia Ardón^¹⁴ is one of the most prominent bloggers of Costa Rica, she's a middle aged woman who lives in the outskirts of the metropolitan area and runs a restaurant with her family. This bit of information is not irrelevant, because Julia steers away from the usual demographics of an intensive blogger: young urban male professional or university student.

During the struggle against CAFTA Julia started a blog called Las Hijas del Pueblo^¹⁵ (the Daughters of the Nation) which is a reference to a patriotic song that calls upon the sons of the country to defend it. She opened the blog as a space for women to express their thoughts, concerns and proposals and although she's a heavy content producer she chose for the blog to be collective, hence the content was produced by different women. This space was very valuable, because since there were several initiatives of the women's movement as well as women participating in the social movement this was a meeting point for the different female activists and it was also a space to document and for others to see what women were doing and thinking.

This experience also strengthened Julia Ardón as a virtual activist. As the process advanced she became more keen in the use of technological tools and went from using a free blogspot account to having a hosted website where she writes about several national topics. Her role in the struggle positioned her as a key reference and she continues today to be one of the most read writers and opinion builders on political issues, in a format that has been traditionally male-dominated, at least in Costa Rica.

D. III Observatory of Feminist Transgression and the Women's Peace Prize Initiative.^¹⁶

Mujeres contra el TLC carried out a joint initiative with Colectivo Petateras, the Observatory of Feminist Transgression, Just Associates and Feminist International Radio Endeavour. They established a virtual observatory with presence of delegates from US, Mexico and Central America, with the objective of supporting the struggle of the women's movement, sharing information about the impacts CAFTA and other FTA's have had in their countries of origin and diffuse information at an international level of the actions and strategies the Costa Rican feminist movement was implementing to reject CAFTA.

Through the Observatory of Feminist Transgression there was participation from the Women's Nobel Peace Prize Initiative (www.nobelwomensinitiative.org). As international virtual observers, they issued a public statement supporting the struggle and affirming their opposition to CAFTA. This declaration received coverage by several mainstream TV channels, radio stations and newspapers in the country. By establishing this possibilities of virtual participation, the feminist movement opened a two way channel between the local and international arena, so that the world could know that there was a struggle in Costa Rica against CAFTA and also the country could know that the international community was watching.

“We the Mexican women have come to this process because we want to share with the Costarican population the terrible experience of the FTA between Mexico and North America. (...) We've come to be a part of this historical landmark, this is the first time that citizens in this continent will decide whether or not they want an FTA”

The social movement lost the referendum against CAFTA (51% vs. 48%), hence the agreement was signed and the complementary legislation was approved. This is an important problem for Costa Rica which we don't want to undermine, a problem that will have bad consequences in the quality of life of Costaricans, in the development model, unless the social movement is able to revert some of its regulations and dispositions. However so much was won in the process that it's difficult to consider it a loss.

For the first time in its history, there was community organization that went beyond political party interests. People of different ages, professional backgrounds and political tendencies came together in the Patriotic Committees. The communities valued and recognized the leadership of women, not for an issue concerning only women (such as violence, health tests, etc) but for an issue of national importance that affected both men and women. Also, some of the issues that affect women more directly or that were seen as important by women were given a place as part of the problems the community faces as a whole.

The leadership of the social movement was enriched, making visible the presence of female leaders, raising their voices and establishing them as figures of knowledge. In recent visits to rural communities we've heard activists that fight for land talk with respect regarding the local women's organizations, because in the fight against CAFTA they saw their capacities and strength and understood it's important for women to have their space.

The feminist movement also came out stronger from this fight and developed alliances with other sectors, who had the opportunity to listen to them and see that the feminist vision of the world very much coincides with the vision of many social movements and it's a very comprehensive and holistic approach.

Finally, perhaps one of the largest benefits established in the struggle is the existence of strong alternative communication channels. People in Costa Rica have learned that the mainstream media can be very one-sided and that they shouldn´t rely on it completely, so they've started to value and use other means of information. After the process, other daily online newspapers have been created, the radio stations that started programming from the social movement have kept going and this has been specially important in new social struggles that are arising after CAFTA, such as the cases of water supply threats is Sardinal and open pit mining in Crucitas. This is also important to women and to the feminist movement since it opens up new spaces for making their issues visible and disseminating their ideas.

Batliwala, Shrilatha. (2008) Changing Their World: Concepts and Practices of Women’s Movements. Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). www.awid.org

Consejo de Mujeres de los 12 Puntos (2007) ¿Es el Tratado de Libre Comercio entre Estados Unidos y Costa Rica, una oportunidad para las mujeres?

Mujeres del NO. (2008). Memoria de la lucha de Mujeres Contra el TLC. San José, Costa Rica. Unpublished Document. 90 pages.

Sulá Batsú (2009). The role of Web 2.0 in the opposition to CAFTA-DR in Costa Rica. Unpublished document. 20 pages.

2http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties regulates general terms and conditions for application of treaties between States.

4http://www.kas.de/upload/auslandshomepages/kolumbien/ESM_08-09-22.pdf

The Socially Conscious State (Estado Social de derecho):

“seeks to guarantee social rights by recognizing them in its legislation (work, home, health, education, environment, etc) and through active policies of social protection towards children and elders in cases of sickness and unemployment, compensating inequalities and avoiding exlucion and marginalization of vulnerable populations, redistributing rent through taxes and public investment (...) This model of State tends to intervene the market and plan the economy, which overturns the principles of clasic liberalism”.

5http://www.who.int/topics/gender/en/

Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviour, activities and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women.

9See Sulá Batsú (2009) The role of Web 2.0 in the opposition to CAFTA-DR in Costa Rica, for a more in depth treatment of this issue.