In late June, I sat in on a meeting of campesinos (peasant farmers) in Ecuador's coastal province of Manabí. The topic at hand was the upcoming 7th Summit of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, a plan to create a kind of super-NAFTA for the whole hemisphere (minus Cuba).

Thirty or so indigenous, mestizo and afro-Ecuadorian men and women, their fingernails cracked and their faces deeply lined from years of field work, sat hunched over child-sized desks in a small school, surrounded by fields of banana, cacao, and maize. They were discussing the possibility of organizing a massive, non-violent protest to greet the 34 trade ministers and hundreds of CEO's who would arrive for the summit on October 31st. They carefully considered the scarce resources such an undertaking would consume. One man spoke of the recent mobilizations in Seattle, Genoa, and Prague, of the persistence of activists in those cities who were undeterred by injuries and repression, and suggested that a similar level of commitment would be necessary. There was a long silence, as people thought about what this would mean, and the risks involved. Then a woman said,simply, "If this is happening in Ecuador, we have to be there."

Without further discussion, the group voted unanimously to call for a national mobilization, and to get themselves to Quito to protest the summit.

As I write, the preparations for the massive protests that grew out of this meeting--and hundreds of others like it-- have reached a fever pitch. Delegations of protesters with their rainbow scarves (the symbol of the Andean indigenous and campesino movements) are drifting through the streets, while the copy shops are full of business lobbyists frantically copying proposals they hope will become part of the FTAA.

By the time you read this, the protests, as well as the FTAA summit itself, will be history. Whether or not the summit and the accompanying 7th Americas BusinessForum are disrupted, whether or not the protesters face serious government repression, it is already clear that the Quito mobilization has marked a major step forward in the effort to build a coordinated hemispheric resistance to U.S. style "free" trade and neoliberalism. In Quito, more than ever before, the global justice movement in the North has converged with what is perhaps the original "antiglobalization" movement--the massive and growing Latin American resistance to neoliberalism (the combination of privatization, structural adjustment, austerity and free trade that has failed decisively to solve this region's economic woes).

The global justice movement in North America didn't die after September 11, asmany commentators predicted it would. Instead, as hasbeen apparent in Quito, U.S. and Canadian activists have spent the last year forging linkages with theircounterparts around the world (as well as with immigrant groups and marginalized communities at home).

The degree of North-South cooperation in the months leading up to the summit has been striking. Northern groups recognized months ago that a strong mobilization in Quito would undermine oft-heard claims that people in developing countries are clamoring for free trade, while only misguided students, angry anarchists, and selfish trade unionists stand in the way. As a result, many of the campesinos and indigenous people converging on Quito next week will arrive courtesy of the Seattle crowd and their counterparts in Europe, who raised tens of thousands of dollars to help pay for the mobilization, in addition to staging simultaneous actions in their own communities. Ecuadorian union members, meanwhile, are coming with the help of the AFL-CIO.

As part of an unprecedented international coordinated media effort, teams of activists in North America and Europe have spent weeks talking to reporters in their own countries about the Quito mobilization, and putting them in direct touch with the social movement organizations in Ecuador. And in August, Indymedia Ecuador, part of the global independent media network that was born in Seattle, went online, and began preparing to receive scores of independent journalists during the mobilization (most of them veterans of multiple anti-globalization protests).

Many of the most important Ecuadorian organizers traveled to the protests in Seattle, Washington, D.C., Prague or Genoa, experiences that have proven valuable as they draw up plans for the Quito actions. And over the last month, while some Ecuadorian organizers criss-crossed the country, giving workshops on the FTAA and building momentum for the protests, others traveled through Europe and North America, helping groups there debunk the myth that free trade helps poor people in poor countries.