4th Summit of the Americas

4th Summit of the Americas
4th Summit of the Americas logo
Host country	Argentina
Dates	November 4–5, 2005
Follows	3rd Summit of the Americas
Precedes	5th Summit of the Americas

The 4th Summit of the Americas was held at Mar del Plata, about 400 km (250 mi) southeast of Buenos Aires in Argentina, on November 4–5, 2005.

This summit gathered together the leaders of all the countries of the American continent, except Cuba. Major security arrangements and massive popular protests against the presence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush, on Latin American soil, took place in the days leading up to the summit.

The summit was characterized for a regional opposition against the US sponsored FTAA ( Spanish: ALCA ).

The "Summit of the Americas" is the name for a continuing series of summits bringing together the leaders of North America and South America. The function of these summits is to foster discussion of a variety of issues affecting the western hemisphere. These high-level summit meetings have been organized by a number of multilateral bodies under the aegis of the Organization of American States. In the early 1990s, what were formerly ad hoc summits came to be institutionalized into a regular "Summits of the Americas" conference program.

The theme of the Fourth Summits of the Americas was "Creating Jobs to Fight Poverty and Strengthen Democratic Governance". The Declaration and Plan of Action of Mar del Plata, signed by the attending heads of state and government at the conclusion of the event, was expected to deal extensively with the topic of job creation. Nevertheless, most of the deliberations concerned the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

These original objectives dealing with job creation in Latin America however quickly dissolved over a disagreement in the wording of a clause encompassing the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), with Brazil and Argentina (two countries with highly competitive agricultural industries) in particular refusing to negotiate a deal where the U.S. does not limit barriers and subsidies to the U.S. agricultural industry. Talks about the FTAA, a possible free trade zone encompassing thirty-four nations in the American Continent, began on 11 December 1994 at the first Summit of the Americas in Miami, United States. The concept of a 34-nation free trade zone, however, only came to prominence and the public consciousness seven years later at the Quebec City Summit of the Americas which was met with large protests and demonstrations by people involved in the anti-globalization movement. President Bush stated prior to the Mar del Plata Summit that the U.S. would continue to push in favor the FTAA agreement despite opposition from some left-wing governments in the region. Though President Bush acknowledged that progress on the FTAA talks had stalled, he stated that the Doha Round global trade talks aimed at securing a global trade pact by the start of 2006 had to now take priority over the FTAA stating to reporters in Washington: "The Doha round really trumps the FTAA as a priority because the Doha round not only involves our neighborhood, it involves the whole world", he said. President Bush also went on to urge the Brazilian government to put pressure on the European Union to cut its farm subsidies, a major issue in world trade negotiations.