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At stake in upcoming WTO negotiations is the question of who will control and benefit from the world's forests.

TIJUANA -- For two weeks, Tijuana has teetered on the brink of official lawlessness, as city and state police continue to defy Baja California's legal system. Raul Ramirez, member of the Baja California Academy of Human Rights, warned last week that ''the state is in danger of violating the Constitution and the Federal Labor Law... as it succumbs to the temptation to use force.''

TECATE, Mexico -- Tecate's coat of arms dubs this Mexican town ''Baja California's Industrial Paradise.'' About 30 miles from Tijuana, the city is home to the Tecate brewery and also houses an industrial park filled with assembly plants, or maquiladoras. This ''industrial paradise'' is one of several Mexican border boomtowns that is part of a global production system.

On April 20, the leaders from 34 countries of the Western Hemisphere will meet in Quebec City to negotiate the most far-reaching trade agreement in history -- the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Here is a chronology of FTAA Negotiations.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) includes an array of new corporate investment rights and protections that are unprecedented in scope and power. NAFTA allows corporations to sue the national government of a NAFTA country in secret arbitration tribunals if they feel that a regulation or government decision affects their investment in conflict with these new NAFTA rights.

When United States negotiators fly into Thailand to thrash out a bilateral free trade deal next week, they will be greeted with jeers rather than this country's famed smile of welcome.

To outward appearances, Africa's big moment at the Denver Summit of the Eight in June was President Clinton's trade and investment initiative, offering expanded trade concessions to African countries to support further market oriented economic reforms.

The new century is starting in Porto Alegre. All kinds of people, each in their own ways, have been contesting and critiquing neo-liberal globalisation, and many of them will be gathering in this southern Brazilian city on 25-30 January for the first World Social Forum. This time they won't just be protesting -- as they were in Seattle, Washington, Prague and elsewhere -- against the world-wide injustices, inequalities and disasters created by the excesses of capitalism (see the article by Bernard Cassen).

QUEBEC CITY -- ''Excuse me, but is this Canada?'' Scrawled on the ''Wall of Shame,'' a 10-foot high, 2 and a half mile long fence erected to keep protesters away from George Bush and 33 other leaders gathered at the Summit of the Americas, the slogan just about says it all.

It has been ten years since the creation of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). What started out as a lofty dream of encouraging unity and interdependence among Asia Pacific countries is now at the crossroads. It appears to be headed nowhere with no clear vision of what it intends to achieve.

In Mexico, The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which took effect on January 1, 1994, has resulted in worsening economic and social conditions and increasing violations of human rights for working people, peasants, aboriginal communities and others.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act has now been signed into American law as Title 1 of the US Trade and Development Act which received presidential assent in May 2000. The Act purports to grant certain benefits to Sub-Saharan African economies if African governments enact certain domestic laws, and pursue certain measures.

At the same moment the new U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick, was urging Congress to grant President Bush new international trade powers, a lawsuit was filed against him down the street in U.S. District Court.

As you already know, the governments of the western hemisphere and their corporate bosses are signing our names to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas as we speak. This secret treaty's being made to destroy activist victories, privatize public services, and gut public safeguards; to roll back everything that 500 years of resistance has won.