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An international trade tribunal based here has ruled that Mexico violated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and ordered the government to pay 16.7 million dollars to a US company.

Anti-globalisation campaigners claimed victory Monday after blockading a major international economic conference in a pitched battle with police in which scores of people were hurt.

Rainforest activist Ricardo Carrere argues that it's time to reject free trade and return to the environmental principles that guided the 1992 Earth Summit.

It wasn't just the politically provocative photographs that got Fred Lonidier's exhibit at Tijuana's public university taken down. It was the fact that he had the audacity to leaflet maquiladora workers outside the factory gates and invite them to the gallery that got his show yanked.

At stake in upcoming WTO negotiations is the question of who will control and benefit from the world's forests.

TIJUANA -- For two weeks, Tijuana has teetered on the brink of official lawlessness, as city and state police continue to defy Baja California's legal system. Raul Ramirez, member of the Baja California Academy of Human Rights, warned last week that ''the state is in danger of violating the Constitution and the Federal Labor Law... as it succumbs to the temptation to use force.''

TECATE, Mexico -- Tecate's coat of arms dubs this Mexican town ''Baja California's Industrial Paradise.'' About 30 miles from Tijuana, the city is home to the Tecate brewery and also houses an industrial park filled with assembly plants, or maquiladoras. This ''industrial paradise'' is one of several Mexican border boomtowns that is part of a global production system.

On April 20, the leaders from 34 countries of the Western Hemisphere will meet in Quebec City to negotiate the most far-reaching trade agreement in history -- the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Here is a chronology of FTAA Negotiations.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) includes an array of new corporate investment rights and protections that are unprecedented in scope and power. NAFTA allows corporations to sue the national government of a NAFTA country in secret arbitration tribunals if they feel that a regulation or government decision affects their investment in conflict with these new NAFTA rights.

When United States negotiators fly into Thailand to thrash out a bilateral free trade deal next week, they will be greeted with jeers rather than this country's famed smile of welcome.