After spending a week in Cancun, Mexico as an observer for the 5th ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the Bureaucrash Foundation, I walked away shaking my head. I witnessed some of the most amazing, ironic, and just plain moronic things I've ever seen.

     First, there's the whole concept of the WTO itself. This was not a gathering of titans of trade — Hank Reardens and Howard Roarks — discussing free enterprise. This was a gathering of bureaucrats, discussing how governments can "help" free trade.

     Forgive me if I'm skeptical.

     I understand that the WTO has reduced some tariffs, but I'm not sure the full extent of the prices paid for those deals is known.

     National sovereignty has certainly not been strengthened by them. It's not that I'm a big fan of most of today's sovereign nations, but I shudder to think of a gaggle of them running things where I live . . . by committee.

     One thing that really convinced me I'd fallen through the looking glass was that a block of 3rd-world countries were demanding nothing less than that the US and EU scrap all agricultural subsidies.

     What can I say? It was breathtaking.

     But, before you get all excited and think that the rulers of African and Latin American countries have come to their senses and are embracing the free market, I should tell you that they were not proposing to eliminate all of their own tariffs and subsidies. They are just the little guys, after all, and suffer disadvantages. Their idea of a level playing field seems to be that the wealthy countries should stop doing anything that props up prices — and that the poor countries should be given exemptions, special waivers, etc. so that they can keep doing those same things.

     Ironically, it was not over agriculture, the "big issue" of the meeting, that talks broke down. It was over other things, like government "transparency". According to reports I heard on site, the third-world countries didn't want to have anything to do with such bourgeois notions, and the Mexican chair of the conference declared an impasse and shut the whole thing down.

     But this is nothing compared to the strangeness that prevailed on the streets of Cancun. In spite of the last-minute white-wash crews covering just about every thing made of cement with new coats of paint, the city leaders had obviously been preparing for the expected swarms of protestors for a long time. By some estimates we heard, they were expecting as many as 100,000 anti-capitalists, or "globalophobicos," as they call them in Mexico.

     City police were bolstered by hundreds of black and gray-clad Federales, armed with sword-length batons and armored with plexiglass shields, helmets, and shin guards. There were also beige-clad WTO security troops.

     Huh? When did the WTO get an army?

     Well, to be honest, I don't think they did. The WTO security personnel seemed to be a sort of Mexican rent-an-army. Their patches were stuck on with velcro. Actually, I think they ran out of patches, as many went around with no more mark of authority than their swagger and a fuzzy circle of unused velcro. Why Mexico had so many security personnel available to lend the WTO is a question I never got answered.

     But these guys were ready for trouble, and I've never been through so many security checkpoints per kilometer in my life. The scrutiny was all but unbearable. There was no goose-stepping, but the constant demand for my papers had me wishing for velcro of my own, so I could just walk around with my passport stuck outside my clothes, ready for inspection.

     Fortunately, serious trouble never really happened. In fact, only about 1,000 anti-capitalists descended upon Cancun (which means, by the way of nothing in particular, "house of the snake," Kukulcan being the great serpent-god of the Maya).

     There were about 150 Korean union laborers who mysteriously found themselves in possession of enough money to fly around the world and spend a week on the Mayan Riviera. Some rumors had it that the AFL-CIO gave them the money, but there was no way to know.

     These people were bolstered by some 5,000 to 10,000 Mexican farmers and other Mexicans who came to rail against US agricultural subsidies and other injustices. The city of Cancun provided giant tents, water, porta-potties, power, and even ambulances around parks where the globalophobics were supposed to camp.

     On September 10th, the first day of the WTO talks, the globalophobics and the Mexican farmers marched toward the convention center where the talks were being held. The police closed the few remaining gaps in a three-layered, barbed wire and chain-link barrier they had assembled across the road (the only other road to the conference center being 15 kilometers away, out by the airport), and the protestors were repulsed. Some managed to climb over the barriers and clashed violently with the police line, but the barrier held and not enough protestors managed to climb over for the march to break through.

     I'm not sure if it was at this point, or just soon thereafter that one of the Korean activists, Mr. Lee Kyung-Hae, climbed up on the barrier and, shouting something like "WTO kills farmers," stabbed himself in the heart with a knife. (That this contradicted his thesis was not noticed by the press, nor the other protesters).

     There was a great deal of outrage over this, even though rumors quickly circulated that Mr. Lee had staged such gory acts in the past, even going so far as stabbing himself in the stomach during a Geneva round of talks.

     We decided to interview some of the Koreans (see www.bureaucrash.com), and found that this stunt was not unexpected. Attempts had even been made to keep Mr. Lee from coming to Cancun for fear that he would do something similar — though they didn't think he had meant to kill himself (rather that he had made a mistake with the knife). This did not stop them from mounting candlelight vigils and laying the blame on the WTO. Angry crowds even chanted vengeance slogans. (I filmed some of this, but thought it the best not to point out that Mr. Lee's killer was already dead).

     Apparently, such theatrics did not sit well with the Mexican farmers, who, we were told, pulled out en mass and left the globalophobics to stew in their own mess. The main protestor encampment was certainly a ghost-town when we went to check it out the next day.

     I interviewed one Mexican couple, both of whom had jobs made possible by the global tourist trade that flows through Cancun. These people were highly outraged that, in addition to Mr. Lee's stunt, some protesters had apparently gone to a Mexican department store after being repulsed from the barrier and burned a Mexican flag.

     I should say that the young couple, who were very conscious of Mexico's millions of poverty-stricken people, were sympathetic to the cries of "injustice" shouted by the protestors. However, they thought it terrible that Mexico had welcomed the protestors with open arms, provided for their needs, etc., and that the protestors had ignored the Wal-Mart, a perceived vanguard of globalization, and attacked a Mexican store instead. Desecrating their national symbol added insult to injury, and then protestors went out defacing historical monuments (one, I was told, was erected to honor a famous socialist), and causing problems for the local working people.

     This was something I heard from many Mexicans. Thanks to the globalophobics, whose ideals they had thought so noble, many now had to go a half-hour out of their way to get to their jobs, and the rich tourists out in the hotel zone by the convention center were blocked from coming into town and spending their money on local products and services.

     The anti-trade activists had indeed created new barriers to trade, albeit temporary ones.

     In another Wonderland twist, the Koreans bought hundreds of yards of ½-inch rope, and, with the practiced skill of a military review squad, pulled it, braided it, and braided it again into thigh-thick hawsers. With these, one layer at a time, they pulled down the very trade barrier their actions had caused to be erected.

     Even more strangely, rather than storm through and engage the police line behind the tumbled wall, they then all sat down and held some sort of vigil. Maybe they knew they now lacked the numbers to take the police on, but it was still a bizarre turn of events.

     Even more bizarre, however, were the number of people who had traveled so far ... for nothing. At least nothing they could articulate.

     Many people refused to be interviewed, not because they knew I disagreed with them (at least, not at first, though they did seem to catch on by the end of the week), but because they could not answer my questions.

     These were not hard questions, like, "How would you calculate the correct cost of goods without the price system?" but easy ones, like "Why are you here? What do you think of all this? What motivates you?" And even when I could get them to agree to an interview, their answers were often contradictory, if not outright incoherent.

     One fellow, when I told him an interview would only take a minute of his time, turned around and slapped his sleeping buddy's leg and said, "Hey, man, this guy wants to interview you." The awakening friend picked up his guitar and played me a song rather than answer any questions.

     A pair of German girls told me they had just arrived, and would be able to answer my questions after they had been there a while.

     Others, hunkered down in spaces cleared in the trash piling up between their dome tents (made from petroleum products and a few traces of materials extracted from the earth via heavy mining processes), simply refused any comment.

     Weren't they there to get press? To bring attention to the plight of the world's "victims of globalization?" What the heck?

     And then there was the violence.

     When my companions expressed any pro-trade opinions, instead of passively collecting opinions about so-called fair trade, we were threatened with violence. This happened more than once. So much for peace and love.

     I am no fan of riot police or the Mexican government, but I have to admit that the authorities in Cancun bent over backwards to avoid conflict with the protestors. They did not enter the protester encampments and made no effort to clear them from the avenues and traffic circles where they pitched their tents and posted their banners. To my knowledge, the police never made any aggressive moves; they simply resisted when the protesters tried to march on the convention center and arrested some of the vandals when caught in acts of destruction.

     Most notably, I saw no officials with guns, not even with "rubber" bullets such as those used by the Seattle police. With their bodies, the police held back the protestors, some of whom had home-made armor (football helmets and pads, motorcycle helmets and lacrosse gauntlets, etc.). And some of the police paid the price for this restraint with broken bones.

     However, not all the protestors were violent and/or incoherent. I met a South African gentleman with an NGO circulating "Africa Is Not For Sale" T-shirts, who admitted that real free trade might work. His objection was that trade as practiced today, planned and restricted by the worlds' governments, especially the most powerful ones, was hardly real free trade. He had a point.

     My Bureaucrash friends met a small band of Mexican farmers from Oaxaca who had stayed after the other farmers left. These people said they had no beef with free trade, per se. It was unfair trade masquerading as free trade — specifically and particularly, massive US and EU agricultural subsidies — they had a problem with.

     Farm subsidies might seem like a domestic issue to most Americans, but when the borders are opened and Mexican farmers find themselves competing with US farmers backed by billions of dollars of subsidies ... I can certainly see why the Mexican farmers might complain. These folks were so reasonable, that in spite of their communitarian leanings, we were able to persuade them to hand out pro-trade literature to their fellow protestors.

     Unfortunately, not all were so reasonable. Nor clean. The smell of literally unwashed pseudo-intellectuals, demanding that the WTO and the world take them seriously — or at least obey their wishes — was repulsive. The mental chaos of their thoughts was worse.

     It was an amazing experience. The crying need for economic education, eco-sanity, and simple logic struck me with redoubled force.

     It was a moving experience. I found myself more motivated than ever to fight the forces of unreason, to do my best to boost the efforts of pro-market and pro-freedom advocates around the world.

     I hope you are too.

     If you're already in the fight, healing ignorance and opposing unreason, more power to you.

     Please let me know if and how I can help. If not, please consider supporting FMN/ISIL's work promoting freedom around the world, it's what we're all about:
www.isil.org/store/membership.html#donate

Louis James is a Director of ISIL/Free-Market.net/