The three lead architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement – or at least its three loudest cheerleaders – met in Washington Monday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the deal. Former President George H.W. Bush, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gotari toasted NAFTA’s success and urged its expansion to the entire Western Hemisphere. Mr. Bush even tossed in a killer impression of Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound” for comic relief.

The spreadsheet may justify the toast: Since NAFTA took effect in 1994, two years after the signing, Canadian exports to Mexico and the United States increased 95 percent and Mexico has surpassed Japan as America’s No. 2 trading partner. Other numbers – a poll commissioned by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which organized the commemorative conference – suggest the party has a somewhat exclusive guest list. Not quite half of Americans are convinced the United States has been a winner in the agreement; 52 percent of Mexicans and 47 percent of Canadians are sure they have been losers.

Not a particularly good perception for a situation that was supposed to be win-win-win. Part of the public skepticism is warranted. Some half-million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the United States and Canada in the NAFTA years; despite assertions that many more good-paying jobs have been created, the worker who lost a job operating a machine tool knows the replacement job operating a cash register is not as good. There may not be more trade strife between the three nations, but allegations of treaty violations add a more strident tone.

There is, however, a success story not sufficiently told and vital to the plan to expand NAFTA to a hemispheric Free Trade Zone of the Americas. Much of Latin America and South America is in deep turmoil. Argentina has a lower standard of living than it had a century ago, it is bankrupt and on the brink of social collapse. Currency crises have destroyed the economies of Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay; Colombia is in civil war, Venezuela is mobilizing. Only two Latin American countries have weathered the global economic slump: Chile, which has pursued an open, liberalized economy on its own for years; and Mexico, where, though progress is too slow, exports are up and labor and environmental standards are improving.

The rest of the region is in grave and immediate danger of becoming what columnist Nicholas D. Kristof calls “the next Africa” – a place neglected by affluent nations, of crumbling living standards, rampant disease, despair, crime, coups and endless war. Affluent North America will pay a heavy price for continuing its neglect of Latin America.

Completion of the agreement to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas is scheduled for 2005, but opposition in Latin America is high and the central point of opposition is the one most likely to ignite popular revolt – agriculture. The $300 billion in subsidies and tax breaks American farmers get from their government is the overarching concern of these prospective trading partners, yet American negotiators steer the discussion to how Latin America can be opened up to U.S. businesses providing services such as insurance, telecommunications and health care. Many there see the agreement as leading to little more than the massive exploitation of natural resources; here, the operative term is development. Unless these issues are sufficiently resolved, Mr. Perot may get the last laugh.