Everybody predicts zero results from the 6th Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization -WTO-, inaugurated December 13 in Hong Kong. Even Director General Pascal Lamy reiterated the request to reduce expectations and seek unity. Meanwhile, there are new attempts to postpone, once again, the most controversial issues, or to change them without attracting too much (or bad) attention; and then to seek an elegant way out, negotiated in the exclusive meetings of the so-called "Green Room", to which only the ministers present have access. But the problems are not going to disappear just because they are evaded. Agriculture continues to be presented as the bone of contention, as in fact it is. But beyond that, the debates that the issue has generated reveal that the main problem of the WTO is the claim that commerce is "the" paradigm, that it is self-sufficient, that it is independent of other human relations and that it constitutes in and of itself the prototype for generating well-being. Yet even Lamy states that the reason-for-being of the WTO is not to distribute well-being but to generate wealth. From its beginnings in 1995, this body has come across as an instrument of the Group of the 8 most industrialized countries - the G8 -, to promote its interests, reducing the global South to an area of influence of its members. Therefore, the emergence of the Group of 20 - G20 -, led by Brazil, with significant clout in this meeting, has not only had the virtue of revealing that the South exists and can express its own interests, but also that the enormous disparities between regions and countries cannot be avoided under the pretext that everything will be solved through the uniformity of trade rules. With a record of failed major meetings (Seattle in 1999, Cancun in 2003, and others) the preoccupation now is not to add a new fiasco; because at this point the controversies, of all types and from all sides, include viewpoints that express from the inside that it is not only the WTO model that is at issue, but the very foundations of the Consensus of Washington. In this state of things, more than a few voices are talking of the necessity to revamp the whole WTO, so as to reorient it towards the formulation of policies for facilitating, guiding and coordinating bilateral and multilateral processes, based on the fact that preventing the formation of protectionist trade blocks was among its original purposes. There are also those who think that free trade agreements and the WTO process should follow separate paths. The round of negotiations that was supposed to culminate at the present meeting started in Doha, Qatar, in 2001. Its agenda was to guarantee and increase world-wide development through the pillar of free trade. But as the definition of that pillar is - to say the least - uncertain, problems continue to arise: the issue of agricultural subsidies on the part of both great powers, followed by that of industrial goods, then patents, among others. Moreover, there are the aforementioned geo-economic disparities, in the face of which matters such as cotton, bananas or sugar, that are on the agenda of the present meeting, appear as sectoral issues. The repentance for having disregarded the requirements of Southern countries comes too late. The offers of marginal benefits for the poorest countries are no longer so important on the agenda, because the differences between the United States and the European Union on issues such as agriculture demonstrate that it is not just a question of North and South, but of a model based on competition and impositions, on which, sadly, the fate of the world hangs. WTO off the land, WTO out of water On the arrival of the activist march against the WTO to the area surrounding the venue of the Ministerial Meeting, coinciding with its inauguration, about two hundred peasant farmers from Korea, members of the Via Campesina, jumped into the sea and swam across the stretch of water that separates the tightly militarized convention center from the closest accessible place. From there they shouted "No to the WTO!", "Yes to farmers' rights!", while from dry land, thousands of demonstrators echoed them. A mixed assortment of organizations from around the world has been holding, since December 12 in Hong Kong, a significant agenda of mobilizations, debates and cultural activities of resistance. The epicenter of the activities is without a doubt the rural movement, which maintains its purpose of stopping the negotiations and keeping agriculture out of the WTO. They are joined by a variety of groups, such as fisher-people, that are also taking on symbolic mobilizations, in their case on the sea. Similar initiatives have been taken up by cultural movements and others. At this rate, as Honduran farmer leader Rafael Alegría holds, one by one all the issues will have to stay out of the WTO.