Andrew Kang Bartlett
Saturday, September 13th, Cancun report.

This Saturday evening, I write to you with some trepidation since my mind is fuzzy, my body sticky with sweat and dust, and fatigue like I have not felt in years sets in, and I want to skillfully convey the community that was built on the streets of Cancun this day.

The Fair Trade Fair and Sustainable Trade Symposium had finished, so many of our new friends from the Fair had taken the hour-long trip (usually 15 minutes if the police had not closed down the main road up the peninsula) from the Hotel Zone to the city center to march for non-exploitative trade agreements and fair trade.

The two thousand or so marchers amassed in front of the giant barricades. Hundreds of students, farmers, workers and heaved on the thick sisal rope, braided together with many shorter and thinner strands. Indeed, this was a rope to bargain with.

Yet, the ten-foot tall barricades were ten foot tall, lashed together with giant U-bolts and chains. And they were three fences deep!

One middle-aged Korean man, primarily, was commandeering the positioning and tying off the two ropes at the top of strategic sections. And after 20 minutes or an hour of preparation, people would strain on the ropes, the metal would creak and lift and usually drop down almost where it started.

But they were persistent and kept at it for hours in the middle day heat.

Twenty yards down the barricade, which spanned a divided two-lane highway and a wide grassy area, were half a dozen women with wire and bolt cutters, who - chain link by chain link - like tiny beavers, were creating holes. When almost through, the lines of gray riot police with sheilds, masks and helmets closed in and set up more barricades inside.

Behind the workers, milled people from dozens of countries - while there were numerous gray-haired folk, the average age was probably 30 - there to express their opposition to an economic governing body elected by no one, whose disputes are judged by selected technocrats - the World Trade Organization.

As I wandered and took photos, I met a staff person from Church World Service, Maryknoll folk, Central American missionaries, leaders of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, young Japanese from environmental groups, an former colleague from Brazil, Mexicans, Canadians, Koreans, students from the new U.S. United Students for Fair Trade, and so many other new and old friends.

All this time, the Korean farmers and workers kept at it, supported by a myriad hands on the homemade ropes. Periodically, everyone would raise their cheers as they pulled on the fence and - piece by piece - the iron and steel gave with groans and high-pitched squeels.

After a good three hours, the fence - with many fits and starts - gave way, almost dislodging the many media cameramen and photographers from their perches on the barricade on all sides.

Now, the barricade was gone. Still, hundreds of riot police, a tank-like vehicle with tear gas and water cannons, more squadrons of federal police and riot police, and six and a half miles of road peppered with four more manned barricades lay between us and the WTO Convention Center. What to do.

The anarchists, some with a telephone poll, others with metal poles, all with helmets, pads and bandanas, certainly had their agenda. But the Korean leaders were successful in having a thousand or so of thsoe up close sit as they and others spoke of their opposition to the WTO´s agenda to make the world safe for corporate rule.

To make a long, long day´s story short, the entire crowd and police were silent during a memorial for the farm leader, Lee, who had given his life for the struggle - punctuated by the occasional cell phone. Then a symbol of the WTO was burned, the anarchists, yes, added a U.S. flag to the flames, and the ceremonies were finished.

We were not going in. And then the celebration began. Drummers from many countries, a drum corp mostly from the U.S., with jazzy trumpets and dancers played as they wound through the crowds, and Korean cymbal players joined in the party. People danced and laughed, a huge snake dance boggied to the rhythm and tunneled through people with hands grasped above them. Everyone was clapping, smiling, stomping and playing.

The sisal had vanquished the steel. The steel from which weapons are made to take or protect, the steel that locks so many out of the riches of the planet to which all should equally have access, the steel fences within which the WTO officials struggled to enforce their vision of a top-down global economy - that steel was torn down. And all of us could see in. The message seemed to be, we are vigilant and will not prevent you from selling away our democracy, our faith in people, and our hope for a just world.

We were a community, there on the streets of Cancun, one I can´t imagine any of us forgetting. A lump comes to my throat, as I think of the many faces of people today who love and care for the world so much that they would give so much of themselves. I am sad, but also somehow feel powerful and proud, as I think of Mr. Lee, who made the ultimate statement and sacrifice. So clearly, from the crowded wakes held and the respect it garned, his expression was like a salve over all of us, helping us to remember the value of life and what is truly important. Life with dignity, life with hope, life with love. And this remembrance was like thousands of threads of sisal, tying us to one another, tying us together with all of our relations and all of those we care about - a gorgeous web. A glimpse of the unity to be found in God´s kin-dom.