The conference drew delegations from some 80 countries and was designed to put some pressure on the imperialist governments to increase what are called "foreign aid" budgets by 50 percent and to put the funds toward the "development" of semi-colonial countries to cut hunger and increase levels of education and health care.

Washington's $10 billion foreign aid allocation is organized to advance the interests of the small number of superwealthy families that rule the United States. It extends credits and grants to purchase goods from U.S. companies and helps prop up regimes loyal to U.S. imperialism. The countries that receive the lion's share of "aid" are Israel and Egypt, which receive $2.8 and $2 billion respectively.

Addressing the proposals and themes of the meeting in a speech that was boycotted by U.S. officials, Cuban president Fidel Castro summed up the imperialist system of finance capital as one that "constitutes a system of plunder and exploitation like no other in history." (See speech below.)

The Financial Times reported that in his speech to the meeting Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez "invoked the spirit of Simón Bolívar, legendary Latin American national liberator, and made a rhetorical call for the IMF to be supplanted by an International Humanitarian Fund, saying that the IMF's structural adjustment programs had been 'mortal poison' for the people of the developing countries."

A "Monterrey Consensus" document adopted at the meeting bore the marks of the dictates of the U.S. delegation. The general language of the document proposed to "eradicate poverty...and promote sustainable development," and reaffirmed a previously adopted UN goal of halving the number of those living in extreme poverty by 2015. No program for attaining the target was adopted, other than to emphasize the central role of the U.S.-dominated World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), along with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations itself.  
 
Results of imperialist order
Information distributed by the conference organizers hinted at the scope of the oppression and exploitation imposed by the imperialist order upon the 4.6 billion people in semicolonial countries. According to UN figures:

•Some 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day;

•11 million children under the age of five die each year from preventable causes;

•More than 850 million people are illiterate;

•One billion people have no access to clean water, and more than twice that number lack access to basic sanitation.

U.S. officials at the conference, including President George Bush, made clear that a promised 50 percent increase of Washington's foreign aid budget to $15 billion by 2006 will find its way only to countries that undertake a broad range of "reforms," meaning an end to trade barriers to U.S. goods, along with government austerity drives, the slashing of social programs, and the sale of government-owned enterprises to local and foreign capitalists.

In his Monterrey speech, Bush said, "To be serious about fighting poverty, we must be serious about expanding trade. Greater access to the markets of wealthy countries has a direct and immediate impact on the economies of developing nations."

U.S. treasury secretary Paul O'Neill added that if "we are going to have real economic development in the world, most of that will come from capital coming into those countries to create jobs. We're not going to do it with welfare."

The New York Times summed the U.S. approach up this way: "If the United States is to open its wallet, poor nations must open their markets. If they undertake political, legal, and economic reforms, Washington will help them trade their way to prosperity." It added that Washington's "list of deserving nations will be much shorter than the list of needy ones."

On the eve of the conference both Bush and U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell increased the pressure on the government of Argentina to carry out draconian austerity measures in order to receive further loans from the IMF.

"We are hoping that Argentina will make the necessary reforms, the tough decisions necessary to earn the confidence of some of these international financial institutions," Bush said. "The country itself is going to have to have to make some tough calls, starting with reforming the relationship between the [provinces] and their budgets and the central government."

Powell said the Argentine people "have to be willing to make the necessary sacrifices...to go through the structural reforms that are necessary."

The second in command at the IMF, Anne Krueger, added at a press conference in Moscow: "Obviously, we are not going to be able to lend into a situation where they continue having the same difficulties."

The Argentine peso has lost 70 percent of its value since January, when the government in Buenos Aires ended a one-to-one peg with the dollar.  
 
Impact of imperialist trade barriers
A World Bank report publicized during the conference presented a different picture of the impact of such commerce. The "greatest trade barriers in the world" are those imposed by the "rich" imperialist nations, wrote bank officials.

WTO director Michael Moore, arguing for so-called free trade policies to be more widely adopted, cited estimates that agricultural subsidies paid by governments in North America and Western Europe effectively push exporters in the semicolonial countries out of markets worth $250 billion a year. Such subsidies overwhelmingly favor wealthy capitalist farmers and big business. Washington spends twice as much on direct subsidies to agribusiness as it does on foreign aid, reported the Times.

Shortly after delivering his speech, Castro left Monterrey, explaining that "a special situation created by my participation in this summit obliges me to immediately return to my country."

In a press conference March 22 Ricardo Alarcón, the leader of the Cuban delegation following Castro's departure, exposed Washington's role and the collusion of the Mexican government in the incident.

Before the conference, he said, "persons of high authority in the Mexican government" had told Cuban representatives of "pressure" from the U.S. government in opposition to Cuba's--and specifically Castro's--participation. In a further outrage, Mexican officials excluded Alarcón himself from participation in a "retreat" for government leaders on the grounds that the event was reserved for heads of state. In face of this affront, representatives of governments from the Caribbean and elsewhere boycotted the retreat in protest.

Alarcón described as "fundamentally false" statements by Mexican foreign minister Carlos Castañeda to the effect that nobody in the government had been authorized to place limits on Cuba's participation.  
 
 
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