Free Trade agreements such as NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) and now CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement) have chipped away at the social and economic values of working class communities throughout the hemisphere.

Far too many tears have been shed over the dinner tables of U.S. and Mexican families over the past 11 years of NAFTA. CAFTA must be stopped now to avoid causing such pain for thousands more Americans as well as the millions of Central Americans poised to loose their traditional way of life and family economic stability if CAFTA if ratified by the U.S. Congress.

I can vividly recall my own introduction to “Free-Trade”. Nine years ago I sat with my family around our dinner table - crying. The brick factory where my father had worked for the past 31 years was closing its doors and moving part of its production to Mexico. These tears and troublesome conversations over how we as a family would survive without my father’s income were how I came to know NAFTA and understand the impact of international trade on my own life.

My dinner table tears are just a small piece of the complexities of international trade agreements. However, my tears were not shed in isolation. Since 1994 nearly 900,000 workers in the U.S., like my father, have lost their jobs as a direct result of NAFTA. Two hundred and thirteen thousand manufacturing jobs were lost in the state of North Carolina alone.

The people of Mexico have not fared well under NAFTA either; over 1.5 million agricultural jobs have been lost in the country resulting in skyrocketing numbers of migration and increased poverty. What’s more, Mexicans have to pay significantly more today to put the same amount of food on the table as they did pre-NAFTA. In fact, the Centro de Investigaciones Economicas, Sociales y Tecnologicas de la Agroindustria y la Agricultura Mundial (CIESTAAM) found that the price of a basic basket of food rose 275% in Mexico from 1994 to 2002.

Now after 11 dismal years of NAFTA, the United States is dreadfully close to signing DR-CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. All indications signal that DR-CAFTA will prove to be worse, economically as well as socially, than NAFTA.

Oxfam America estimates that DR-CAFTA will deeply affect the food security of Central America where19 million inhabitants of the region (three out of every five) are poor. The agreement will also devastate the livelihood of 5.5 million small farmers in the region. This prediction is particularly hard to hear in places like Nicaragua where agricultural production accounts for 42% of employment in the country.

Here in the United States major industries such as sugar and textile have spoken out against CAFTA because more U.S. jobs will be outsourced, more tears around the dinner tables of U.S. families. And for what gain? For access to Central American markets? The combined GDP of the six Central American CAFTA countries totals only $84 billion annually. This is about the same as the economy of New Haven, Connecticut, which is but a drop in the bucket for the total $11 trillion economy of the U.S. as a whole.

The issue is not the concept of trade itself but rather that trade agreements such as CAFTA make it increasingly difficult for working families on both sides of the Rio Grande to maintain the basic necessities of food, water, medicines, shelter, and security. The greatest impact if CAFTA is ratified will not be on the stock market but rather on the aspects of life that are generally considered universal values.

The loss of dignity of a U.S. textile worker in Ohio unable to put food on the table because his job was outsourced. A Salvadorian family to unable celebrate Holy Week together- wondering whether their sons and daughters have successfully crossed the border to the U.S. for work.

The youthful smile of a 14-year-old in Honduras lost through hours sewing pants in a maquila because CAFTA does not ensure labor standards. Access to clean and affordable water in Nicaragua since environmental regulations are not universal under CAFTA. Or the ability for Guatemalan seniors to afford life-saving medicines since access to generic medicines will become nearly impossible under CAFTA.

Stop CAFTA now. Do not allow more tears to fall on the dinner tables of working families throughout the Americas. Demand that trade agreements should be based not on market value alone but on human values as well.