CAUSSE DU LARZAC, France, Aug. 8 — Call it a summer camp for antiglobalization crusaders.
Tens of thousands of people, young, old and in-between, gathered on this sunbaked, wind-swept plateau in southwest France today, heeding the call of organizations opposed to the way global commerce is being reorganized. They were brought together to discuss ways to influence World Trade Organization talks in Cancún, Mexico, in September.
It was a Woodstock against globalization. Pamphlets were handed out by environmental groups, trade unions and opponents of nuclear energy and the wars in the Middle East, Iraq and Chechnya. Rock bands and circus acts performed and vendors hawked local specialties from sausages to wine to pungent Roquefort cheese, which is manufactured in a nearby village.
Much discussion revolved around the menace to diversity in the food world as rules of global commerce empower giant multinationals to crush the small farmers who produce the hundreds of varieties of French wine and cheese.
Among the stars of the show is José Bové, the 50-year-old sheep farmer, union leader and national hero for his refusal to bow to globalization. The big gathering took place only a short distance from Millau, the town where in 2002 he organized the bulldozing of a McDonald's restaurant to protest the Americanization of France. He spent six weeks in jail for that escapade.
Last week, Mr. Bové was paroled from a 10-month prison sentence he had been serving since February for destroying genetically modified rice in 1998. "In France, there has never been a public debate, never a discussion of the mandate" given the European Union for Cancún, he said in an interview. "It's something being done on the backs of the people."
Mr. Bové, a wiry man with a mustache, still pale from his jail cell, said the main topics of the three days of debate, which end Sunday, would be essentially the Cancún agenda: farming, services, intellectual property rights in food and medication, and projected accords on international investment, which he called tantamount to a "surrender of all sovereignty."
President Jacques Chirac has been eager to include nongovernmental organizations in the debate leading up to major global meetings like Cancún. Mr. Bové, wearing a T-shirt that read, "Other Worlds Are Possible," said the weekend events, which the organizers hope will attract as many as 100,000 people, were an appeal to Mr. Chirac to draw a broader public into the discussion.
"We need a general debate," he said.
Many organizations that came encapsulated resistance to the social changes sought in France by Mr. Chirac and his conservative prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
Daniel Retureau, director of international institutional relations for the General Confederation of Labor, among the most radical French trade unions, said many French citizens linked global liberalization with efforts by Mr. Raffarin, at the behest of the European Union in Brussels, to put pensions, health care and education on a sound financial footing. "Brussels says competition," Mr. Retureau said, "but it's privatization."
Mr. Bové and other organizers chose Larzac because of its notoriety in the 1970's when local farmers went to jail for resisting French government plans to expand a local military base. A decade of stubborn resistance ultimately led President François Mitterrand, after his 1981 election, to drop the plan. The peaceful victory established the plateau and its farmers as symbols of opposition to government dictate.
Gwyn R. Williams, a Cambridge University anthropology student who is writing a thesis on Larzac, said local farmers saw themselves as offering hospitality for a broader cause, including, for instance, "farmers who lose the right to plant their own seed, because multinationals control the seed."
Because the commercial liberalization favored by the World Trade Organization is generally associated with the United States, they generally viewed Cancún as "the Americanization of the entire planet," he said.
Lori M. Wallach, the director of Global Trade Watch at Public Citizen in Washington, said she would emphasize in the debates the "two hottest topics" at Cancún, namely proposed accords governing international investment and procurement.
Many critics attack them because, she said, "they expand the notion of one size fits all" by imposing uniform standards globally. The accords have met resistance from developing countries, but are favored by the United States and the European Union.
French critics of Cancún, she added, are "more aware of quality of life issues than Americans," including for instance the quality and diversity of food products. "In the United States, it's more of an economic reaction."
Indeed, one reason for the choice of Larzac, one of France's best known gastronomic regions, was to underscore that concern.
Pierre Caron, 72, a retired schoolteacher from the Vaucluse region, slurped oysters under an umbrella with Daničle Alvernhe, another former teacher. The oysters were sold by one of many food vendors that dotted the sprawling campsite.
Their main concern, both agreed, was the future of French culture and education, which was undermined by a drive toward privatization.
"We believe the accords at Cancún would by very profitable for private investors," Mr. Caron said. "Our system's not perfect, but we need more discussion."
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