It was a lineup of luminaries of the left: Walden Bello, Vandana Shiva, Medea Benjamin, Randy Hayes, Tony Clarke and about 15 other internationalists. But they weren’t presenting a new book or making academic speeches, they were fighting off a squad of rent-a-cops and scrambling to hang a large banner from a 30-foot-high pedestrian walkway outside the World Trade Organization’s Fifth Ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico. The direct action was part of a large and diverse assault on the WTO’s latest attempt to write a consti-tution for the world that will supercede national and local legislation, and empower transnational corporations to hold down wages, monopolize markets, wipe out small farmers, and wreak havoc on the environ-ment.

As it turned out, the WTO failed completely in this latest effort, and it was largely due to a growing spirit of collaboration between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and third world govern-ments. Several hundred NGOs had gained credentials and thus could penetrate the tight security of the convention center. There were also thousands of activists on the outside of the cordoned-off hotel zone waging a constant struggle to be heard by the world media despite being kept miles from the convention center by thousands of Mexican police and massive metal barricades.

When it became clear that the talks had collapsed, jubilant singing and dancing broke out inside and outside the conven-tion center. As veteran activist Tom Hayden put it, "Derailment of the Cancun WTO Ministerial caused gloom in the suites and dancing in the streets."

This latest battle in the struggle be-tween corporate globalization and people’s globalization established some new political benchmarks: a remarkable level of unity among the street-level forces fighting corporate globalization; a promising new level of collaboration between NGOs and third world governments, and a much greater willingness of third world govern-ments to stand up to the bullying tactics of the North American and European governments.

During the final day’s protest at the barricades separating Cancun city from the hotel district, the entire rainbow of protesters worked to-gether to produce an amazing display of tactical unity. Black bloc youth provided an outer ring of security for diverse women to approach the metal police fence and cut holes in it with bolt cutters. Then Korean farmers tied heavy-duty rope to the fence and hundreds of people worked together to pull the fence down. But when it was toppled, the protesters did not storm the police, they turned their backs on them, sat down, and conducted a mov-ing ceremony to honor the sacrifice of Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae, who had earlier stabbed himself to death in protest of WTO policies.

A diverse range of NGOs worked together in the recently formed network called Our World Is Not For Sale (OW-INS) that held daily meetings of 70-120 organizations to analyze the situation, plan actions inside the convention center, and build relations with the protesters in town and the third world governments who were open to collaboration. The OWINS network operated with amazing efficiency: the two sides caused the failure of the talks.

Another important factor that scuttled the talks was the insistence by rich coun-tries that the "New Issues" (sometimes referred to as the Singapore Issues) be brought into the negotiations. These four areas (trade facilitation, competition policy, government procurement, and investment) open up contentious new areas that third world governments have objected to, argu-ing that the WTO has not dealt effectively with the areas already under consideration (e.g., agriculture policy) and to bring such huge new areas into the debate will put the poor countries at a deeper disadvantage. The rich countries -- dominated as they are by large corporations -- want to open up new ways for transnational corporations to be able to enter local economies and extract wealth.

This brings up one of the major misun-derstandings about the WTO. If you check the press accounts regarding the WTO, you will see that the discussion is all about "nations" trading. But the overwhelming majority of trade is conducted by corporations, not nations. Yes, national govern-ments may be involved in negotiating the rules of trade, but they do not trade much; corporations do that. And the corpora-tions are also the dominant influence in the WTO. Because some of us were able to obtain security badges to get inside the WTO meetings, it was easy to see the close relationship between the government of-ficials and the hundreds of corporate lobbyists hovering about, pitching their narrow, profit-seeking agenda.

To illustrate the confusion about who actually does the trading, you can find press references to the astonishing fact that China sells more computer equipment and electronics to the United States than the U.S. sells to China. But it is not China selling that mountain of plastic and metal, it is Dell, Compaq, Intel, Hewlitt-Packard and other corporations. In recent years they have shut down facilities in the United States and moved them to China because they can pay workers a fraction of U.S. wages and they can save piles of money by polluting Chinaís environment in ways that would be illegal here.

What motivates a transnational cor-poration to invest in a country or engage in trade? Only when a company has reason to believe it can take away more wealth than it puts in will it invest money in a given plotting strategy and tactics, carrying out daring nonviolent direct actions, and lob-bying government officials.

The OWINS network itself described how the popular forcess triumphed over the WTO. "It was an amazing coming together of the OWINS membership among the social movements and NGOs, including marches of farmers, indigenous and student movements; alternative forums, daily cre-ative actions in the convention center and the city of Cancun, lobbying; cutting-edge policy analysis, creative media work ... people really pulled together."

More than any other single factor, it was the united resistance of so many third world governments to the insulting behavior of the U.S. and Europe that ultimately crashed the talks. The so-called Group of 21 nations focusing on agricultural issues includes such heavy hitters as China, India, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Venezuela .... They were adamant in demanding that the rich countries reduce the massive agricultural export subsidies that are depressing farm prices and literally destroying farmers throughout the global south. Van-dana Shiva’s research organization reported that some 20,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in recent years due to their inability to compete with the low-priced grains from Europe and the U.S. that are flooding the Indian market.

The draft text (representing positions favored by the rich countries) was presented on Saturday. It was so unresponsive to the demands of developing countries that many third world governments took it as an insult and walked out of the talks. So, while a superficial analysis may portray the third world governments as the negative voice in this debate, the reality was more complex. The arrogance of the U.S. and European governments was met by an increas-ingly sophisticated and adamant third world bloc (fortified by the NGOs), and the unbridgeable gap between place. This is why the areas of the world with the greatest natural resources also suf-fer the worst inequality and environmental destruction.

Doubt it? Look at Nigeria with all that oil. The worst suffering and pollution is right in the Niger River delta where most of the oil is. Look at what half the world’s gold in South Africa produced: apartheid. Or you can visit the old mining towns of the Rockies or the California Sierras and see how they became ghost towns once the corporations had sucked out all the mineral wealth. Or go to one of the poorest sections of America -- Appalachia -- and consider how many billions of dollars of coal were extracted from that region by companies that got fat off the misery they left behind.

Thus, it is good that the so-called trade talks in Cancun collapsed because the WTO is not just creating trade rules: It is expanding corporate power into areas such as water, health care, electricity, trans-portation, and education. It is steadily creating a global constitution that will subordinate local and national democracy to the profit needs of transna-tional capital. The WTO seeks to subordinate life (human rights and the environment) to commerce. Most people know that life is sacred and commerce is just an activity; it is a necessary activity, for sure, but it is just an activity and is not sacred like life is.

The WTO must be subordinated to the multilateral environmental and human rights accords that give higher priority to meeting social needs and protecting Mother Nature than to maximizing corporate profits. In creating a global constitution, we can either subordinate life values to money values or we can subordinate the money cycle to the life cycle. This choice now confronting humanity will determine whether future generations praise us or curse us. Let’s not blow it.