ASEJ: Action for Social and Ecological Justice

Deeply indebted to the north, the World Bank and IMF coerce Latin American governments to privatize state-owned enterprises, reduce government expenditures, and open borders for “free trade”. This “neoliberal” model is forced on the region’s populations by multilateral institutions, which the U.S. dominates, like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB). Additionally, neoliberalism is being promoted globally through the World Trade Organization and in the Americas with agreements such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Complementing these “free trade” agreements in Latin America are a package of massive industrial regional infrastructure projects such as the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) covering the region from Mexico to Panama and the Integration of Infrastructure in the Region of South America (IIRSA) spanning from Colombia to Argentina.

The package of free trade projects proposed for the region, such as the FTAA, CAFTA, PPP and IIRSA are not spreading “freedom” nor “developing” the region as its champions would have it. Rather, these projects are widening the gap between rich and poor and ruthlessly exploiting workers, indigenous peoples, and women and destroying the environment. Growing disenchantment with the failures of this “free trade” model is widely documented even by its champions such as the IDB who begins their diagnosis of the region stating that 62% of all Latin Americans say that neoliberalism has worsened their economic situation; 72% say that privatization has not been a good idea; and 70% say that the state should maintain control of education, health care, water and electricity services.

The FTAA and CAFTA create the regulatory and legal framework for the acceleration of corporate-led globalization in Latin America by guaranteeing multinational corporations control of the regions abundant cheap labor forces, state owned services such as heath care and electricity and vast natural resources such as oil, gas, minerals, forest products, genetic material and commercial agriculture. Combined, the infrastructure megaprojects of the PPP and IIRSA, spanning from Mexico to Argentina, further entice corporate exploitation of the region providing investors with the infrastructure that they demand. Together the FTAA, CAFTA, PPP and IIRSA are pushing to create a singular Latin American free trade zone responding to the wishes of global capital and multinational corporations while failing to respond to the majority of peoples’ needs. As a result people are leaving their communities and immigrating to cities and to the United States in search of economic survival, only to face repression and economic hardship there.

Displace thousands of rural and indigenous peoples with massive industrial development projects including hydroelectric dams, mining, oil drilling, commercial agriculture and forestry. Pushing the rural work forces into assembly plant production in already overpopulated urban slums or to migrate to the Untied States.

Deny countries the right to regulate speculative investments-leaving national economies open to the wishes of a few transnational financial corporations.

Give corporations the right to privatize biodiversity and patent and exploit genetic resources and traditional knowledge found mostly in indigenous communities.

Create and privatize a regional energy market controlled by transnational corporations.

Brendan O'Neill
February 26, 2003
ACERCA campaigner for Action for Social and Ecological Justice (ASEJ)
brendan@asej.org
802-863-0571
Fax: 802-864-8203
PO Box 57
Burlington, VT 05402

October 12 Continental Day of Action: Saying NO to the Paving of Latin America (top)

Sixty thousand people, with banners raised, voices lifted, rejecting
the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) and celebrating 510 years of resistance
to the colonization of the Americas-that was what happened on October
12. Those 60,000 people gathered in small towns throughout the US and
on dirt roads in Central American villages, as well as in the largest
cities and in the middle of the largest highways. From Canada to
Colombia, they protested in front of US embassies, Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB) and World Bank offices, Spanish embassies,
monuments to Christopher Columbus and the headquarters of
corporations involved in the PPP.

Essentially a plan to transform much of southern Mexico and Central
America into a network of transit corridors and maquiladora zones,
the PPP literally paves the way for the Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA) (see EF!J September-October 2002). Rural and
indigenous communities that would be directly affected by the PPP
understand this only too well, and on October 12, they showed fierce
opposition to both measures.

The Pan-American highway was shut down at dozens of points, in every
country from the US to Panama. Close to the Mexican border, in
Cologenango, Guatemala, 1,000 Mayan Indigenous Peoples barricaded the
highway with rocks and planks of wood that were embedded with nails as they
listened to speeches by leaders of peasant groups opposed to the PPP.
Protesters vowed that they would not allow the construction of
hydroelectric dams on the Usamacinta River-the life of the indigenous
people of the region and threatened by the PPP.

Protesters in Guatemala also took over the international airport in
Petén-where tourists come to visit the famous Tikal ruins. In
addition, a raucous rally was organized at the offices of Unión
Fenosa, a Spanish corporation that is involved in the PPP and trying
to privatize electricity in Nicaragua and Guatemala.

In Chiapas, Mexico, more than 50 peasant and civil organizations
organized 12 roadblocks on major interstate highways and roads
connecting Mexico and Guatemala. In one location, 250 people held a
blockade for 24 hours on the south frontier highway.

In another case, more than 1,000 people from the Association of
Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI)
blocked the Trans-Isthmus highway on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in
Mexico, as well as the highway in Veracruz. They voiced their
rejection of the PPP and FTAA plans, which exclude indigenous input
and propose the pillaging of natural resources. UCIZONI Coordinator
Carlos Beas Torres said, "PPP means the construction of dams,
highways and port expansions. In other words, things that advance the
expansion of multinational corporations in the region. This means the
immediate expulsion of our communities from our lands."

Salvadoran organizers stretched the "day of action" to an entire
week, starting with blockades on key transit routes on October 12 and
continuing each day until the week ended on a hopeful note: a
seed-conservation fair organized in resistance to genetic engineering.

In Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua, indigenous people demonstrated
outside the World Bank and IADB offices. The IADB is the institution
funding much of the PPP development schemes. In Managua, Nicaragua,
demonstrators managed to shut down the IADB offices for the day.

A network of more than 30 organizations and 4,000 people blockaded
the Honduran borders of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua to
protest various governmental institutions. In addition, Mexican and
US activists collaborated to shut down both sides of the border in
San Diego/Tijuana, El Paso/Ciudad Juárez and Nogales, Arizona/Sonora.

Two thousand people marched in Santiago, Chile, to support the
ancestral and land rights of the Mapuche people. On the same day, a
group of 200 Mapuches reached the city of Concepción after marching
300 miles in 10 days. They were protesting the construction of the
Ralco dam mega-project, which will flood Mapuche lands. Similarly,
indigenous activists from Panama marched 200 miles from Costa Rica to
Panama City to protest the ecological destruction caused by mining on
their lands.

In more than 20 North American cities, community organizations led
rallies and protests in solidarity. As part of a rally attended by
300 people, "George Bush" and "Christopher Columbus" crashed the
Ithaca, New York, farmers' market, claiming they had come to conquer.
Huge Zapatista dolls paraded through the streets of Louisville,
Kentucky. In Washington, DC, Vernon Bellecourt, an American Indian
Movement activist, splashed his own blood on the Columbus statue.

In spite of the stunning array of actions with clear political
messages, the mainstream media missed the point. The Associated Press
reported that the actions were "protesting Columbus Day and
celebrating the region's Indian heritage." Yet there was so much
more. Teodosio Angel of UCIZONI explained a few days before October
12: "We will block roads, ports and borders and will protest
multinationals like Coca-Cola to demand that corporations and
governments stop robbing our natural resources and basic rights. For
510 years, governments and corporations have ignored us, and it
continues today with the PPP."

Bertha Caceres of COPINH (National Civic Council of Indigenous and
Popular Communities of Honduras) reminded all of us of the human
element of the October 12 actions. In an interview broadcast on Free
Speech Radio, Caceres noted, "This entire package of economic
policies impacts certain sectors more strongly, especially women. The
privatization of water, of health, of education, affects
women-especially single women with several children. In a place where
many households are nearly destitute, the impact would essentially be
the utter denial of our basic rights-the right to water, to health,
to education."

For more information on the resistance to the PPP, contact Action for
Community and Ecology in the Regions of Central America, POB 57,
Burlington, VT 05402; (802) 863-0571; info@asej.org; www.acerca.org.

Brendan O'Neill
ACERCA
brendan@asej.org
802-863-0571
Fax: 802-864-8203
PO Box 57
Burlington, VT 05402

Government offers negotiations in healthcare strike, but will Flores sign the legislative decree?

Organized communities in El Salvador won a major victory against the Plan Puebla Panama when government representatives confirmed that construction on the main loop of the San Salvador beltway would not begin this December, as originally planned. The government has removed from the 2003 budget $30 million destined towards beltway construction, which will delay construction until at least 2004. The $1 billion megaproject is a critical node around which gravitates the entire PPP road network, part of the key infrastructural groundwork for CAFTA; it would destroy communities and the environment as 4,500 families would lose their homes to construction. Communities across the San Salvador metropolitan area have been protesting against the beltway for over a year, blocking highways and chaining themselves to trees. On October 12, some 28,000 Salvadorans blockaded highways, bridges and border crossings at 11 points across the country, protesting against the PPP and CAFTA. Salvadoran President Francisco Flores has already seen his approval rating plummet to below 20% because of his intransigent refusal to end the healthcare strike; apparently worried about fallout in the upcoming 2003 legislative and 2004 presidential elections, he decided to put off the beltway project which has been so widely rejected by the Salvadoran people.

For months, the government has repeatedly refused offers by the STISSS and SIMETRISSS unions to negotiate an end to the month-long healthcare strike. Yesterday, Minister of Labor Jorge Nieto finally announced on national television his willingness to negotiate with the striking unions. Ricardo Monge, Secretary-General of the STISSS, welcomes the government's offer, but insists that workers will not be fooled by empty promises: "We have always been ready to sit down and negotiate an end to the privatization of health care," he explained, "but in order for real negotiations to begin in good faith, Flores must sign [the legislative decree outlawing privatization]." Should Flores carry out his threat to veto the decree, Monge predicts a "total social explosion, a crisis of grave dimensions" and warned that his union could not be held accountable for "the actions of individual groups of angry workers." Today, the Health and Environment Commission of the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly begins debate on Flores's voucher privatization plan On Thursday, over 3,000 doctors at private clinics carried out a one-day solidarity strike; on Saturday, some 6,000 doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, patients and supporters from San Vicente and Usulután marched in Usulután. This week, doctors at the Ministry of Health public hospital network are threatening to call an indefinite strike unless Flores signs the decree.

Electricity workers from the STSEL union entered their sixth day of hunger strike today, protesting against illegal firings, the privatization of electricity generation, and the privatization of health care. Two fired workers and one member of the union's Board of Directors are camped out in front of a prominent government building, drinking only water as they seek to focus international attention on the Salvadoran government's labor and human rights abuses. This weekend, they were joined at rallies by workers from across the electrical sector, as well as from other unions in the FESTRASPES public-sector union federation. The STISSS and the SIMETRISSS have also expressed their solidarity and gratitude for the electricity workers' sacrifice, and a SIMETRISSS doctor is on hand around the clock in case of medical emergency. Hunger striker Roberto Flores, Secretary of Organization of the STSEL, urged US solidarity activists to pressure Flores (see October 23 CISPES action alert), expressing that "whether I live or die depends on the government's actions." If the government still refuses to negotiate, STSEL has not ruled out a nationwide strike in the electricity sector that would shut off the lights for much of El Salvador.

When Vincente Fox, in early 2001, announced his comprehensive plan for a major transportation and industrial corridor from Puebla, Mexico all the way to Panama, it immediately drew fire from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Subcommandante Marcos denounced the plan saying, "the Isthmus is not for sale!"

The plan, which calls for vast displacement of native communities, rampant and uncontrolled ecological devastation, and massive industrial development will irrevocably damage this region--rich in culture, biodiversity and natural wealth.

Plan Puebla Panama, the name given by Fox to this disastrous scheme, has already seen tremendous alliances built to oppose it. Because of the PPP's critical role in providing the infrastructure necessary for the continual expansion of global trans-oceanic trade, it also provides the anti-corporate globalization and global justice movements with a uniquely possible opportunity to effectively halt the expansion of free trade.

Central America has always been an important resource colony for both the United States and the world, offering rich resources and cheap "expendable" labor on the narrowest strip of land separating Atlantic and Pacific. Central Ameria is also critical as the land bridge connecting North and South America. With the globalization of free trade, the aging Panama Canal can no longer sustain the increasing volume of goods from Pacific Rim factories bound for US and European markets.

This growing ship trade can be traced back to the establishment of extensive networks of sweatshops in Asia. Partially assembled products from a low paid work force in Asia need to find their way to the gluttonous Eastern U.S. and Western European markets.

Economic globalization drives the need for transportation alternatives to the clogged and obsolete Panama Canal. For over 100 years, the expansion of capitalism has led to proposals for cross-isthmus dry canal mega-projects for trans-oceanic movement of goods. These mega-projects involve the construction of massive deep-water ports on both coasts, capable of hosting the largest ocean freighters. These ports will be connected by high speed rail lines and highways. This massive transportation corridor will open the region to further exploitation of the region's forests, minerals and oil and lead to the development of extensive networks of maquiladora sweatshops (where components manufactured in Asian factories can be assembled into finished products). The dry canal megaprojects will also involve the construction of industrial shrimp farms, oil refineries, smelters and vast industrial development, leading to wide swaths of ecological and cultural devastation along the Isthmus.

At least five such dry canals are proposed along Central America's isthmus, including southern Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia and elsewhere. In Mexico and Nicaragua the canals will obliterate some of the richest, most biodiverse rainforest lands, home to indigenous communities.

Although these transoceanic mega-projects have been planned for years, President Fox of Mexico has packaged these plans in a new "regional integration" proposal: the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP). The PPP will include all seven Central American countries and southern Mexico, a region encompassing 102 million square kilometers and 63 million citizens. In Mexico, this region contains the most cultural and biological diversity in the country. The PPP proposes to link the trans-oceanic megaprojects with the development of a north-south industrial and transportation infrastructure.

Funding is anticipated from the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and Central American Development Bank. The funds would be invested in new highways, port and airport expansion, tele-communications, and gas and oil pipelines.

Fox touts the PPP as bringing "the fruits of globalization" to Southern Mexico and Central America, advancing Bush's Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA-ALCA) south to the Darian peninsula of Panama. Here, Plan Colombia kicks in to complete US dominance over this critical region and to open the Free Trade "gateway" into South America.

The geographical scope of the PPP includes important petroleum assets, 34 million hectares of virgin timber, spectacular fresh water reserves, 30 million low-wage workers, and the World Bank-created "Meso-American Biological Corridor," a much-coveted gold mine of biodiversity.
In its essence, the PPP has three goals: (1) increase the transportation and industrial infrastructure in the region, improving the capacity for export industries, (2) catalyze a shift of the region's economy from agriculture to assembly plant maquiladoras and manufacturing, and (3) expand private control over the vast natural resources in the region. Land privatization is key to all of these goals and underpins the PPP.

The PPP is clear about its plan to remove rural and indigenous communities from the lands that have sustained them for thousands of years, and to place them in urban slums located adjacent to sweatshop factories.

Rich rainforests, and all of its inhabitants, are threatened by the PPP
photo: ACERCA

Managed Land Degradation

What will happen to the land when the people are removed?
Alfonso Romo serves as a PPP advisor and directs Grupo Pulsar, one of Mexico's most important transnational corporations. Romo is a biotech seed giant and Grupo Pulsar currently has tree plantations in Chiapas (nearly 50,000 acres). More plantations are planned. These chemical-intensive, non-labor-intensive operations will irreparably damage the land without even offering significant local employment. With Romo's ties to biotechnology there is certainly a future possibility of genetically engineered tree plantations being developed throughout the Central American Isthmus. The World Rainforest Movement has reported that the development of primarily non-native tree plantations in the region is directly due to the demand for raw materials for packaging for sweatshops.

The development of roads through the North Atlantic Autonomous Region of Nicaragua and around the Lacandon Rainforest of Chiapas have led to dramatic increases in the logging of the native forests in those regions. Forests on indigenous lands and in protected reserves alike are being ravaged, legally and illegally, by national and multi-national ventures. Indigenous peoples in forested areas often act as the last line of defense of their forest homeland. With the expansion of road construction throughout the Isthmus and the removal of indigenous peoples from the remaining forested lands, the forests will be opened wide for unchecked clearcutting and high grading.

This transformation of the land from forest to clearing has other impacts on the people and ecosystems. When Hurricane Mitch struck Central America in October of 1998, the most devastation occurred as a result of the massive mudslides and floods that ensued. The areas that suffered the most devastation and the highest losses of life were those areas that had been ecologically damaged and deforested years before. Where the rainforests still stood, the damage was minor, because the soils were able to retain the heavy rains, but where the land was bare, the rain had nowhere to go except into huge river floods, and without tree roots to hold the soil in place, the saturated earth slid off of the hillsides over the communities below.

Miltary convoy driving through Indigenous Villages.
Photo: ACERCA

Militarization

The United States military has a long and disastrous history throughout Latin America. Currently, US military presence is strongest in El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. After Hurricane Mitch, many American troops that were sent to the region for relief efforts never left. It has been reported that 12,000 U.S. troops will be deployed in a joint operation in Guatemala. The PPP both opens a corridor and provides a new excuse for militarization by the U.S. all the way from Mexico to Colombia. US factories, refineries and smelters in such an "unstable" region will require the heavy and on-going presence of the American military.

Indigenous activists in the region report an increase in military operations in Central America since September 11. George Bush's "War on Terrorism" is being used as an excuse in the region to crack down on activism.

The on-going US Navy bombing of Puerto Rico's island of Vieques and the presence of the Southern Command of the U.S. military in Puerto Rico, is also key in the overall military dominance of the region.

Indigenous

The PPP is potentially the greatest threat to indigenous communities and culture since the landing of Columbus as neoliberal economics is pitted against indigenous thought and wisdom.

As described above, one of the main goals of the PPP is the privatization of land and displacement of indigenous communities from their homelands. Indigenous culture and language is intimately tied to the land. Indigenous communities and culture in the region are already under assault by the increasingly dominant American capitalist consumer culture, and the loss of their land base will almost certainly sound the death knell for the remaining traditions that the indigenous communities still retain.

Uruguayan-born writer Carlos Fazio states that geo-politics are key to the PPP. To Fazio, the Plan represents a counter-insurgency strategy directed at the rebel, largely Mayan, Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and other armed groups in southern Mexico and Central America. The Zapatistas' goals of indigenous autonomy and the collective use of land and natural resources are "antithetical" to the PPP. In La Jornada, Fazio stated, "The father of this plan lives in Washington…" describing Fox's neoliberal affinity and the U.S. strategic, economic, and energy ambitions in the region.

Resistance: Finding the Achilles Heel

This massive remaking of the region is key for the continued expansion of globalization. Without this new transportation infrastructure, global trade cannot continue to expand. The Central American region remains a linchpin for the expansion of global trade. However, because of this critical importance to economic globalization, it is also its Achilles Heel.

If these mega-project developments can be stopped, a serious problem arises for the multinational corporations who need to ship capital goods from ocean to ocean, from South America to North America or who dream of cheap assembly plants throughout the region.

Civil Society Rises Up

The forces against corporate economic globalization are on the rise. Opposition to the PPP has already started in southeastern Mexico and Central America. This spring, some members of civil society organized their own consultation: a meeting about the PPP in Tapachula, a city on the Chiapas-Guatemala border. Present were over one hundred organizations, including groups from most of the southern Mexican states, as well as Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. The group met for nearly three days and emerged with a common strategic response to the PPP. At the end of the meeting, the group issued a statement reading, in part:

"Given that any development plan must be the result of a democratic process, and not an authoritarian one, we firmly reject the Puebla-Panama Plan…. We condemn all strategies geared toward the destruction of the national, peasant and popular economy, [and] food and labor self-sufficiency."

Opposition is also mounting in the U.S. In Washington, DC, on October 1, 2001 approximately fifty people representing 21 organizations gathered to discuss Plan Puebla Panama (PPP). The meeting was called for by ACERCA with Mexico Solidarity Network, Global Exchange and CISPES to build the foundation for a broad US-based movement against the PPP in solidarity with the global south.

The meeting brought together many U.S. based NGOs and representatives from Mexico, Honduras, Panama and Colombia. The afternoon meeting resulted in an informal coalition that will work to support the inhabitants of the region that will be affected by the PPP.

We, in the anti-corporate globalization movement have the opportunity to join with our southern allies in exploiting this Achilles Heel. It is also our responsibility to listen to and support development plans that come from the people of the affected region while dealing a major blow to corporate economic globalization. As one of our southern allies said, "it is time to build corridors of resistance to the PPP."

This briefing paper was prepared by ACERCA with PPP information provided by Wendy Call, John Ross, and Mexico Solidarity Network

ACERCA
(Action for Community & Ecology in the Regions of Central America)
(Acción para La Comunidad y La Ecología en Las Regiones de Centroamericana)

Plan Puebla Panama: The InterAmerican Development Bank Paves Latin America (top)
-by Brendan O 'Neill

The InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) is literally paving the way for corporate globalization in Central America with the massive industrial development project called Plan Puebla Panama (PPP). PPP and its southern twin, the Regional Infrastructure Integration Initiative (IIRSA), threaten the social and ecological integrity of all of Latin America.

PPP and IIRSA are "regional integration" projects that call for the construction of hydroelectric dams and high-impact roadways throughout indigenous territories and intact rainforests, the dredging of deep water ports in fragile ocean ecosystems and the creation of sweatshop factories in industrial development zones throughout the region. These projects, coordinated by the IDB, will be funded by development bank loans, private corporations and public institutions.

PPP and IIRSA will lay the infrastructural foundation upon which "free trade" can be built and expanded over the geographical area encompassed by the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The PPP covers Mexico through Central America, while IIRSA picks up in Colombia where the PPP leaves off, reaching into South America. Critics of the PPP argue that, like the FTAA and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it was created by a handful of regional political and corporate elites. The IDB has only held token "consultations" with hand-chosen organizations in the region and has intentionally excluded those who will be impacted most by the project.

The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is currently being negotiated by the US, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. This agreement to advance free trade and to "forge closer economic relations" follows in the same neoliberal vein as NAFTA. Negotiators hope to have an agreement before December 2004. In the words of President Bush, the passing of CAFTA would be another step toward completing the FTAA. Any advancement in CAFTA or the FTAA promises to intensify corporate pressure to implement the PPP and IIRSA.

PPP: Development for Whom and by Whom?

PPP was originally proposed by Mexico's President Vicente Fox to link the region from Puebla, Mexico, all the way to Panama, with a north-south industrial transportation corridor (i.e. superhighway to move goods) running along the Pacific Coast. In addition, the PPP calls for the creation of key industrial development zones (i.eŠsweatshops), as well as the dredging and privatization of deep water ports that would destroy critical habitat. A series of "dry canals" (superhighways and high speed railways) running east-west across southern Mexico and Central America would connect the ports on both coasts with the industrial zones and the north-south corridor. The dry canals threaten to displace rural indigenous people and destroy the ecosystems of the region.

Other PPP megaprojects include the creation and privatization of a regional energy grid involving the construction of dozens of hydroelectric dams from Panama to Mexico, which would feed industrial development. This promises to flood indigenous communities and ecosystems. Additionally, privatization of basic services and natural resources would enable massive oil, mineral, forestry and commercial agriculture development by multinational corporations.

Resistance to the PPP

Indigenous organizations such as the Organization of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI) have adamantly rejected a proposal for a dry canal through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, Mexico. Since the announcement of the dry canal in 1997 UCIZONI declared, "The Isthmus is not for sale!" Thus, resistance to this dry canal by UCIZONI and other indigenous organizations existed long before it was formally incorporated as one of many megaprojects of the PPP.

From March 4-18, Action for Community and Ecology in the Regions of Central America (ACERCA) led a delegation of North American activists and grassroots organizers to Nicaragua's North Atlantic Autonomous Region. Indigenous communities living in the region are opposing a PPP project that would expand the Bilwi-Puerto-Cabezas port into the largest in the Caribbean. DELASA, a private US corporation, is a major player behind this $150 million, three-part business plan that threatens to irrevocably alter the entire region. The company intends to enlarge and pave a road from Managua to Bilwi and to expand the Bilwi-Puerto-Cabezas port. This would result in the displacement of many nearby communities. Indigenous resistance to these projects includes coordination between ACERCA, the Sumu/Mayagna indigenous community organization (SUKAWALA) and the Nation of Mosquita Consejo de Ancianos.

Unified opposition and alternatives to these corporate globalization projects create the possibility for the development of locally based, socially and ecologically just alternatives. While the anti-globalization movement has targeted the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, we must also target shameless regional banks like the IDB. Opposition to the FTAA has been strong, but to fully combat corporate globalization, we need to unify the struggles against the PPP, IIRSA, CAFTA and the FTAA.

With every proposal of the PPP, whether in the form of a hydroelectric dam or a dry canal, the privatization of natural resources or the creation of sweatshops, there is solidarity, resistance and alternatives being built from the bottom up. At a July forum against the PPP in Managua, Nicaragua, ACERCA dialogued with more than 1,000 activists from around the world about how to stop the PPP in its tracks. The final declaration of this event included a call to Northern activists to participate in an international day of action on October 12, demonstrating our absolute rejection of the PPP and FTAA, in solidarity with Mesoamerican resistance.

To get involved with the Network in Opposition to the Plan Puebla Panama (NoPPP) and to organize for the day of action against the Plan Puebla Panama, contact ACERCA, (802) 863-0571; brendan@asej.org; www.acerca.org.

Brendan O'Neill is the Central America and Colombia campaigner at Action for Community and Ecology in the Regions of Central America (ACERCA). He has participated in two international forums against the Plan Puebla Panama.

What is NoPPP? (top)

PURPOSE OF NETWORK

NoPPP is a network of Northern organizations working to stop the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) and the model of corporate globalization behind it. Our members seek direction from grassroots organizations and anti-PPP movements in the region of Mexico and Central America. This is a network only, not a coalition nor an organization.

The purpose of the network is to share information between organizations and build strategic alliances to support both the movements in the region and actions taken in the North (U.S./Canada/Europe) to stop the PPP. We seek to include grassroots groups, immigrant organizations, working class groups, students, and all other constituencies that oppose the PPP and the model of corporate globalization for the purpose of sharing information and building alliances across a broad base.

While expected to abide by our binding principals, particularly as it pertains to respecting and working with grassroots southern-based efforts and initiatives each member organization is encouraged to formulate its own work plan to fight the PPP and look for support from organizations inside or outside of the network. Participating organizations should not expect a NoPPP governing body or structure to come up with a campaign plan for members to support.

Communication Mechanisms and Membership Commitments

The PPP organizing member listserve and periodic conference calls are presently the specific communication mechanisms for the whole network. Additionally, organizations are encouraged to build alliances with each other outside the formal NoPPP mechanisms. NoPPP also hosts a PPP informational listserve for anyone that wants information on the PPP -all members should promote this informational listserve to activists and organizations. Members commit to posting all relevant PPP news and announcing organizing events to the over 200 members from all over the world of the informational listserve. We host a NoPPP webpage on the ACERCA website yet we are also considering having an independent web site for NoPPP.

We aim to hold conference calls every two months (sometimes more, during periods of high activity) to update each other on the PPP and actions/movement-building against the PPP. The purpose of these calls is not to discuss structure nor to hash out NoPPP campaign plans, but to find out what members and our Southern partners are doing and to build alliances as organizations within the network.

Before joining NoPPP we ask that you provide the basic information in our NoPPP invitation. On the conference calls NoPPP members provide updates on their PPP work and their southern partners PPP work. If you can’t be on the call we ask that you submit relevant and brief updates to the organizer listserve before the call. This complements our goal of being guided by southern partner’s realities and experiences.

Decision Making
NoPPP may decide on some occasions to endorse a plan of action as a network. This will only happen if all participants in a conference call agree with the endorsement, the decision is then posted to the listserve, where members have a specified time period to comment. The same goes with any other decisions to be made. When taking on a collective task, project or initiative as NoPPP we encourage a non-hierarchical, inclusive, and consensus-seeking decision making process.

Coordination of Calls
In order to ensure that the conference call coordination responsibility does not fall on one organization we have a team of Conference Call Coordinators (CCC), made up of 4-6 organizational representatives. These reps would each be responsible for coordinating 1-3 conference calls per year, in rotating order. The organization responsible creates and circulates a draft agenda (generally consisting of updates on PPP organizing from involved parties), finds a conference call system, arranges to pay for the call, identifies a facilitator and note-taker and post the notes from the meeting. CCC members will commit to the team on a yearly basis.

Outreach
An Outreach Committee has been formed to recruit more organizations into the network. WE ARE PRESENTLY FOCUSING ON IMPROVING OUR INTERNAL DIVERSITY AND PLURALITY BY SEEKING YOUTH, PEOPLE OF COLOR, WOMEN AND GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY BASED (CBO’s) ORGANIZATIONS TO JOIN. We clarify to any new members that this is an informational and alliance-building space, not a centralized coalition that is going to provide a ready-made campaign. Although, we have an outreach committee we hope that all members will actively engage in our outreach inviting organizations that share our goal to stop the PPP and the model of corporate globalization that is behind it.

To join the PPP informational listserve e-mail acerca@sover.net
For more on NoPPP go to http://www.asej.org/acerca

Join NoPPP- Network Opposed to the Plan Puebla Panama! (top)

Greetings from NoPPP,
We, the Network Opposed to the Plan Puebla Panama (NoPPP), cordially extend an invitation to your organization to become a member of our growing network. The network was formed in October, 2001 to respond with solidarity, partnerships, and action to the growing resistance and concern from Mexico to Panama over the largest industrial corporate development project to ever be launched in the region-the Plan Puebla Panama.

The PPP is a plan to integrate the infrastructure and regulatory systems from Puebla, Mexico through Panama by constructing transportation and industrial corridors, dredging deep water ports, privatizing a regional energy grid, and developing key free trade zones. NoPPP echoes those statements drafted at the international forums against the PPP, recognizing that the PPP, Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) fail to respond to the needs of the regions’ poor, indigenous peoples, women, farmers and labor forces. Conversely, we see that these “free trade” projects respond in kind to the needs of multinational corporations at the cost of self-sufficiency, sovereignty, basic human rights and widespread ecological destruction. Our members form partnerships and alliances and share information with other member organizations and southern organizations to stop the projects of the Plan Puebla Panama and develop economic, social and ecologically just alternatives.

To Join NoPPP please mail the following information to:
ACERCA (NoPPP)
PO Box 57
Burlington, VT 05401
Or e-mail to: U.S..: Adrian (CIS) elzorroadrian@hotmail.com
Stephen (Agricultural Missions) stephen@neccusa.org
Canada: Gloria (SJC-Montreal) sjc@web.ca

Organization Name/PPP contact person E-mail
Mailing Address phone:
Fax:
Website:

What have you done related to PPP organizing? What are you currently doing with PPP organizing?

What are the key organizations (north/south) that you are working with on PPP organizing?

To join the PPP informational listserve e-mail acerca@sover.netFor more on NoPPP go to http://www.asej.org/acerca

To join NoPPP contact ACERCA
PO Box 57, Burlington, VT 05402
(802) 863-0571 acerca@sover.net
www.acerca.org , www.asej.org

Fact Sheet on the PPP (top)

Plan Puebla Panama (PPP)
The Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) and the Mexican government have a plan to transform the landscape and the economy all the way from central Mexico to southern Panama. The "Plan Puebla Panama" proposes the industrialization of the region, connecting the region with dry canals, superhighways, a regional energy grid, and constructing a string of new "development zones" of sweatshops. These megaprojects are meant to open doors for transnational corporations from the north intensifying the pressure for the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (CAFTA). Communities throughout Mexico and Central America have called for a complete rejection of the Plan Puebla Panama arguing that it in no way responds to the basic needs of the region's people and is completely contrary to community-based initiatives for economic, social, cultural and ecological just alternatives.

The PPP: Corporate Welfare
The PPP is already creating the following megaprojects from Puebla, Mexico to Panama:
… North-South Pacific Coast industrial corridor (superhighway to move goods)
… Free trade sweatshop zones and the dredging/privatization of deep water ports that will destroy critical fisheries
… Connection of ports, the industrial corridor, and sweatshop zones with "dry canals" coasts
… The creation and privatization of a regional energy grid involving the construction dozens of hydroelectric dams from Panama to Mexico to feed industrial development while flooding indigenous communities and ecosystems
… Privatization of basic services and natural resources enabling massive oil, mineral, forestry, and commercial agriculture development by transnational corporations
The PPP: more Poverty, Privatization and Plundering
The PPP was proposed by Mexican President Vincente Fox in March 2001, who declared, "The Plan Puebla Panama is much greater than Zapatismo or any other indigenous community." While the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) is the primary financial institution behind the planning, financing and execution of the PPP, the World Bank is also involved in this corporate globalization project. Additionally, the PPP has drawn transnational corporate investors including: International Paper, Monsanto, Duke Energy, Harken Energy, Applied Energy Services, ENDESA (Spain), and SIT Global.
Join with the III Foro Mesoamericano to Oppose the PPP
Between the 16th and 18th of July, 2002 in Managua, Nicaragua, more than 1,000 delegates from over 350 organizations declared: "We call for mobilizations and demonstrations on the 12th of October as a demonstration of our total rejection of the PPP and the FTAA, to coincide with different expressions of struggle on this day of Mesoamerican resistance."
Mobilize & Resist on October 12, 2002
For more information contact ACERCA & Action for Social and
Ecological Justice: acerca@sover.net, 802-863-0571; www.acerca.org

Network Opposed to the Plan Puebla Panama Talking Points (top)

The Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) and the Mexican government have a plan to transform the landscape and the economy all the way from central Mexico to southern Panama. The "Plan Puebla Panama" proposes the industrialization of the region, connecting the region with superhighways and a regional energy grid, and constructing a string of new "development zones" of maquiladoras. These megaprojects would literally pave the way for corporate colonialism in the region intensifying the push for the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Communities throughout Mexico and Central America have called for a complete rejection of the Plan Puebla Panama as it promises to ruthlessly exploit southern Mexico and Central America's natural environment, labor, and indigenous communities to serve the interests of transnational corporations.
These are some of the statements that have come out of the 3 international forum against the PPP held in Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua:
… There has been no serious consultation with communities affected by the PPP by either the IDB or the involved governments.
… The budget priorities of the PPP are dramatically skewed. In the Mexican government's 2002 budget for the program ($697.4 million), 82% of funding is devoted to transport projects while only 2.9% is targeted for health or "social development" projects. Meanwhile, there is no specific attention to rural development.
… Few, if any, PPP-related projects call for environmental impact statements. While some of the proposals outline plans for studies of their ecological impacts.
… Public information about the PPP is scattered, incomplete, and confusing. The single largest document available (at www.presidencia.gob.mx) is devoted to general information about the demographics and natural resources of the region, with no details about PPP projects. Documents at the IDB website give spotty details and contradict each other. A country-by-country breakdown of projects and budgets is not available anywhere.
… The PPP responds to U.S. interests, not the needs of communities in the region.
… The development model that underpins the PPP will destroy local and rural economies and will reduce regional food security.
… The lack of public consultation regarding the PPP violates international agreements, including Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization on indigenous rights.
… The PPP represents a grave risk to the rich biological and cultural diversity of the region.
… The Mesoamerican Biological Corridor program-which the Mexican government plans to incorporate into the PPP-represents a threat to local peoples' land tenure.
… One of the PPP's aims is to reduce migration by Central Americans and Mexicans to the United States, but the plan fails to realistically address the social and economic problems that spur migration.
… The PPP should be canceled and replaced with a regional development plan that: supports sustainable rural development, ecological values, and enhances food security.
A Special thank you to Wendy Call for her extensive contribution which helped generate much of the above information on the Plan Puebla Panama.

PPP's CORPORATE INVESTORS (top)

Who are some of the multinational corporations that are investing in (and will be profiting from) the Plan Puebla Panama?
… International Paper Company and Boise Cascade are currently purchasing land in Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico for plantation forestry. International Paper is also investing in research for genetically engineered trees.
… Grupo Pulsar- a Mexican biotechnology corporation, is investing in Chiapas in plantation forestry, biotechnology, and research on genetically engineered trees.
… ENDESA (a Spanish corporation) is the principal investor in the regional energy interconnection initiative to privatize energy and develop hydroelectric dams.
… Harken Energy, Applied Energy Services (AES), Duke Energy, and Harza are all U.S. energy corporations that are investing from Mexico to Panama in the development of hydroelectric dams and the privatization of the energy grid.
… DELASA Prescott and Follet is U.S.-based investment group that has a 25-year lease on the privatization, port modernization and creation of megaprojects (including factory zones and road expansion) in the port town of Bilwi-Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.
Other investors include:
Tribasa, Caros, GAN, ICA, Imbursa, Texas Connection, International Shipholding Corporation, Monsanto, Shell, Dow Chemical, Exxon, Shell, and Hutchinson Holdings.
Adapted from a poster by Mexico's Citizen Democracy Movement (MCD) and the Mexican Action Network Confronting Free Trade (RMALC). Additional research conducted by the Working Group of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec / GTCI (Mexico) and Action for Community and Ecology in the Regions of Central America / ACERCA (USA).

PPP INSTITUTIONAL SPONSORS (top)

Which public and multilateral institutions are financing the Plan Puebla Panama?
1) The federal governments of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. They will use taxpayer funds to finance any "high impact" investments that will not generate immediate profits for the private sector.
2) The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) administers the Mexico Fiduciary Fund, which finances the PPP infrastructure projects. The IDB acts as the coordinating body for investment in the PPP.
3) The Inter-Institutional Technical Group (GTI) of the PPP includes the IDB, the Central American Economic Integration Bank (BCIE), the Latin American Economic Commission (CEPAL), the Andean Development Corporation (CAF), INCAE, United Nations Development Program (UNDP), The Central American Integration System (SICA), and the Secretary of Central American Integration (SIECA).
4) Other participating organizations include: Latin American Association of Integrations (ALADI), Central America Environment and Development Commission (CCAD), Coordination Center for the Prevention of Natural Disasters in Central America (CEPREDENAC), Central American Indigenous Council (CICA), Indigenous and Peasant Coordination of Community Agroforestry (CICAFOC), and Fund for Development of Indigenous Peoples (FONDIN).
5) The World Bank and the UN's Global Environmental Facility (GEF) administer the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which has been tied to the PPP.
6) Other financial investors and donors include the World Bank, the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation, the European Union, Spanish government, and other bilateral agencies. Within Mexico, funds and support also come from the governments of the following states: Campeche, Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Veracruz, and Yucatan.
Adapted from a poster by Citizen Democracy Movement / MCD (Mexico) and the Mexican Action Network Confronting Free Trade / RMALC (Mexico). Additional information from International Rivers Network / IRN (USA) and Interaction (USA).

Frequently Asked Questions about the Plan Puebla Panama (top)
Written by CIEPAC, Chiapas, Mexico, ciepac@laneta.apc.org , http://www.ciepac.org/
October 21, 2002 http://www.zmag.org/chiapas1/index.htm>CHIAPAS

1. Is there a one or two sentence summary of what the PPP is?
On one level the Plan Puebla Panama is very easy to understand. It is a vast infrastructure construction project, designed to please big business, that covers 9 states in south-southeast Mexico and the 7 Central American republics.

2. Who is pushing the PPP the hardest?
Ostensibly the answer is Mexico, since the PPP was supposedly conceived by the present Fox administration, but its antecedents lie in plans and projects previously designed by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank for Mexico and Central America. After Fox was inaugurated in December 2000, he put a number of the construction projects in Mexico and Central America into a single PPP package. Fox presented the package to the Central American presidents in a summit meeting in El Salvador on June 15, 2001, which was subsequently approved.

3. Does the PPP have anything to do with NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)?
NAFTA is a 1994 trade agreement that sets the rules for trade among nations, in this case between Mexico, Canada and the US. Now, the US seeks to expand the same rules to all 34 countries in North, Central and South America, plus the Caribbean nations (except Cuba), in a trade agreement known as the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas).

The FTAA, we might add, has a geopolitical dimension of great importance to the United States. It would create a single trading block, from the Yukon to the Patagonia, under US hegemony, that will rival the European and Asian blocks. FTAA carves out the Western Hemisphere for the United States, at least in terms of trade.

So the trade agreements (NAFTA and FTAA) are a necessary prerequisite for the proper investment climate that corporations are looking for. The PPP goes a step further by channeling billions of state funds to develop needed infrastructure to further interest corporations.

4. How does the PPP tie into other plans?
The PPP ties in with a similar infrastructure project in South America called IIRSA (South America Regional Infrastructure Integration Initiative). The PPP and IIRSA seek to create basic infrastructure, or improve that which exists, in an effort to entice large corporations into investing in the area. The improvements in infrastructure would essentially boost corporate profits by easing, for example, the movement of goods in and out of the region, by improving roads. Yet the cost of infrastructure projects would be borne to a large degree by the people of the countries involved, either through direct taxpayer payments, or through loans taken out by participating countries that will eventually be repaid through taxpayer contributions.

5. Why is the PPP of importance to people who live outside the Mexico-Central American region? Why should it be of particular interest to Americans?
Because mostly American MNC interests will be benefited. The PPP will make it easier for large multinational corporations (MNCs) to invest in a region that is rich in oil, mineral deposits, timber, tourism sites. It is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world, making it of interest to pharmaceutical, seed, and genetic-research firms. It is also strategic for the areas geography since it is the narrowest part of the Americas, making it a natural corridor for east-west trade.

6. But wait. You say MNCs will be interested, but MNCs come in all shape and sizes. The PPP wouldn’t benefit just American MNCs, would it?
Quite right. Investment capital from throughout the world might find it profitable to invest in the PPP