Peter Maybarduk

April 9, 2008

It's 8:00pm in Bogotá. I'm enveloped; one in a thousand people. A solid line of black attire, animated by the occasional glitter of lip piercings, wraps around the block in waiting to see Dutch goth rockers "Within Temptation" at the 7th avenue theater.

Not me, though. I'm sporting a plain, magoo grey suit, waiting for my special order vegetarian fajitas in the grab-and-go next door.

They look at me. I look at them.

Pete, didn't you get the memo?

A second crowd approaches, also young people, perhaps three to five hundred, with a police escort. Many hold candles and chant. It's a march, calling for justice after the assassination of a liberal political leader.

I love the international language of symbols and preferences; the salient dignity enabling any foreigner to spot and understand a sincere protest. The common international dress of musical subcultures.

There's this idea that activists are against globalization. That's mostly because ten years ago, journalists, lacking the time to learn much about a few specific trade agreements, allowed powerful interests to own the word. It's an ugly word, in any case. A noun (globe) made an adjective (global) made a verb (globalize) made, at last, a longer and less clear noun (globalization); poor shorthand for a vague phenomenon, propagated by observers too lazy to speak in precise terms about trade, markets or immigration.

I support internationalism and integration. I favor exchange in goods and ideas. I also support local cultural expression and autonomy. There's no contradiction there.

What I oppose are specific trade terms developed by concentrated commercial interests, for concentrated commercial interests; provisions that help the most powerful companies and countries become more so, economic models locking smaller economies into interminable harvests of cheap raw materials that industrial economies will sell back as finished goods at four or five times the price.

By definition, patents - government-granted exclusive rights to use and sell new technologies - block free market competition. They provide some incentive for technological innovation, the efficiency of which we can debate. But patents frequently yield commercial monopolies, and we all pay higher prices for medicines as a result. Patents cannot be squared with pure theories of free market economics. But they make a lot of money for multinational corporations, and so today's ostensibly pro-market, free trade rules and agreements require all member countries to protect them. Pressing for patent protection under the guise of free market reform is beyond a stretch; it's a flat contradiction. But this is our free trade; this is globalization as we term it today.

How can we, as citizens with limited time to study any particular issue, understand and demand smarter public policy once we accept such corrupted terms of debate?

It's my third visit to Colombia's capital, a city laid out much like the majority of South American cities with which I'm familiar. Bogotá is carved from a once forested valley, surrounded by forms you could call either hills or mountains. I climbed one of them today, and on Monday, another, reaching cloud forest a couple hundred meters above the city. Tangled and lush, yet cool, even cold. Wonderful.

Our project goes well. Today, our quartet - bright and experienced Colombian advocates plus me - plotted next steps in an access to medicines campaign. Tomorrow we'll detail strategy and the laws binding us to at least fifteen NGOs at the offices of a prominent AIDS coalition. We expect a political fight in the near future, but civil society is well-organized here, our case is exceptionally strong, and we will have plenty of back from dedicated patients' groups in Colombia and smart advocacy groups like MSF abroad.

It's good work and I'm glad to be doing it.

Let's drop globalization and talk about global justice. Global justice is a term we can own, and a term less offensive to the limited poetry of the English language.

We will build a movement across borders. We will trade in goods and ideas by day, and symbols and subculture by night.

But forgive me. I think I'll still forego "Wicked Temptation." Con permiso, let me pass, and pass me my fajitas. There's an episode of The West Wing waiting for me at the hotel.