Between 50,000 and 100,000 people are expected to attend a Woodstock-like anti-establishment gathering at Larzac, southern France, this weekend.
The meeting is the brainchild of Mr José Bové, the former sheep farmer and leader of the French anti-globalisation movement who was released from prison a week ago. He served 7½ months of a 10 month sentence for destroying genetically modified corn. Mr Bové became famous for leading a raid against a McDonald's restaurant in 1999.
The main purpose of the Larzac gathering is to prepare opposition to the September 10-14th World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Cáncun, Mexico. At the closing session tomorrow a list of actions "to be taken in September against the WTO" is to be announced. Mr Bové participated in the riots that helped sabotage the 1999 WTO summit in Seattle, considered the founding event of the anti-globalisation movement.
Under the stalled Doha Development Round, the WTO is trying to reduce the $300 billion that industrialised countries spend annually to subsidise their farmers.
The Larzac protesters believe the WTO will make developed countries even richer by breaking down trade barriers, so they have made the organisation their bugbear. The anti-globalisation movement blames the Geneva-based organisation for the failings of member-states, including the US refusal to allow free access to generic medicine. Larzac has powerful historical resonance for French people, and a multitude of grievances and causes have grafted themselves on to the movement. Throughout the 1970s, farmers from Larzac - whose best known product is Roquefort cheese - demonstrated against confiscation of their land for a military base.
This weekend's meeting marks the 30th anniversary of the first, 60,000-strong protest against the French army. Under the banner, "Workers and farmers, same struggle," it united sheep farmers and workers from a factory who were being fired. In 1981, Francois Mitterrand abandoned plans to extend the base. Mr Bové says farmers are patient people and they will eventually defeat the WTO, just as they defeated the French army. Now Mr Bové and his cohorts are trying to rally a mostly a-political younger generation to their cause. Many of the tens of thousands of young people who arrived at the campsite yesterday came for the music; the popular musician Manu Chao and some 20 other groups will perform from 4 p.m. today until 6 a.m. tomorrow.
Larzac also brings together defenders of the regional language, Occitan, striking freelance entertainers who have sabotaged the summer festival season, teachers who went on strike against the government's reform of the pension system, opponents of genetically modified food and those who reject France's swing towards a liberal economy.