Update/Plan Puebla Panama
Call, Wendy
Imagine this: Congressional representatives scramble out of their seats, ignoring their leader's exhortations to remain calm. They sprint out the back door of the building, trying to jump...
...6 Responsibility for the PPP program shifted last summer from the Office of the Presidency NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10UPDATE / PLAN PUEBLA-PANAMA to the Foreign Affairs Secretary--a move considered by many to signal the plan's slipping profile...
...On October 12, 2002, Indigenous Peoples' Day, more than 60,000 people blocked roads, took over airports, rattled the gates at Mexican and U.S...
...Mexican politics and economic troubles are only part of the story...
...Even as the United States-Mexico agenda has stalled, Central America is attracting increased attention in Washington, as the Bush administration negotiates a free trade deal with the nations of Central America-a move widely regarded as an effort to advance FTAA talks...
...As a result, life grows more precarious for millions of campesinos in the countryside...
...In 2000, the PPP was presented as afait accompli...
...Despite setbacks, however, several PPP programs are moving forward...
...Melquiades Morales, governor of Puebla, Mexico, canceled the first phase of "Proyecto Milenium," [sic] a planned highway and assemblyplant corridor designed to draw investment away from Mexico City and the northern border...
...By 2008, PPP-built highways are planned to tie central Mexico to the Panama Canal, traversing eight nations and accounting for 85 percent of the $4.5 billion PPP budget...
...They sprint out the back door of the building, trying to jump the Wendy Call is a freelance writer who divides her time between Massachusetts and Oaxaca, Mexico...
...Fox emerged quickly after his election as the lead promoter of the PPP, an ambitious InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) proposal intended to build the physical infrastructure needed to plug southern Mexico and Central America into the NAFTA zone...
...She can be reached at <wendycall@world.oberlin...
...The program's headquarters have moved from Mexico City to Panama City, and will rotate twice a year...
...She is working on a book entitled No Word for Welcome: Mexican Villages Face the Future, about indigenous communities in Oaxaca and globalization...
...The IDB long maintained it could not organize public consultations on the PPP, as that March against Plan Puebla-Panama, Qu Guatemala, November 2001...
...Cowboys on horses shatter the building's glass facade...
...The scene offers a small window onto the growing desperation in the Mexican countryside, and a little taste of the gathering storm that is Mexico's farmers' movement...
...7. "Desaparecen 'superoficinas'," El Universal, June 28, 2002, p. 1 8. For a review of PPP setbacks in the last year,"El gobierno mexicano frente al PPP: Se busca una nueva estrategia ante al rechazo popular," Miguel Pickard, Boletin Chiapas al Dia #329, January 22, 2003, "La SRE, sin presupuesto para encargarse del Plan Puebla Panama," Proceso, December 19, 2002, and Summary of "Proposal and Decree of the Expense Budget of the Federation for the Fiscal Year 2002," Prepared by Jos6 Alberto Garcia Ponce, Social Policy Advisor PRD Parliamentary Group, House of Deputies, January 16, 2002...
...It was conducted in Spanish-a language spoken by few in that country...
...This is unlikely to happen, however, as IDB officials have said that PPP planners can't Cristina Cooper lives in the path of a Nicaraguan railway proposed in Plan Puebla-Panama...
...Morales said publicly that the project was canceled "because of the peasants' demands...
...Engineers planning the project nearly cut El Salvador out of the SIEPAC network last fall, after every other country in the region had accepted the plans...
...be concerned with agricultural issues or land tenure for peasants...
...3 Citizen resistance, along with the economic impacts of the U.S...
...2 Two years ago, newly elected Mexican President Vicente Fox announced his backing for a regional development plan, known as Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP), as the solution to underdevelopment in rural southern Mexico and Central America...
...SIEPAC adds millions of dollars to the public debt of each Central American nation and increases reliance on destructive hydroelectric dams for power generation, without providing any guarantees that the power it transmits will be affordable...
...In Mexico, rural issues have risen to the top of the public agenda as NAFTA is fully implemented...
...The situation is dire: Already in 2001, Mexico had a two-billion-dollar agriculVol XXXVI, No 5 MARcH/APRIL 20039 Vol XXXVI, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 2003 9UPDATE / PLAN PUEBLA-PANAMA tural trade deficit with the United States...
...8 Officials at the IDB--a key funder and intellectual author of the PPP-have recently expressed regret over Vicente Fox's lessened interest in the program, saying they aren't optimistic about the Mexican government's commitment to the PPP...
...As an example of the meetings' shortcomings, they point to the session held in Belize...
...1 This all happened in Mexico City on December 10, 2002, Human Rights Day...
...5 Mexican leadership for the PPP initiative has also lost momentum...
...Because of this, many nongovernmental organizations concerned about the PPP have urged that rural issues be addressed by the Plan Puebla-Panama...
...3. See, for example, the website of Action for Social and Ecological Justice: <http://www.asej.org/ACERCNA/ppp/ppp.html#oct> 4. "Puebla-Tecamachalco highway put on hold," Business News Americas, September 10, 2002 and "El PPP no se quebr6: Melquiades Morales a 'Marcos'," Proceso, February 3, 2003...
...recession, have derailed several PPP initiatives...
...At the same time, a team of engineers coordinating construction on the Electrical Integration System for Central America (SIEPAC) have established their headquaretzaltenango, ters in San Salvador...
...on walls of foreign-owned factories...
...Farther south, the Salvadoran government cancelled a six-lane beltway planned for the national capital (a complement to the PPP) after communities in the proposed path of the roadway mobilized in opposition...
...Today, this inter-oceanic link is part of the PPP's proposed highway network, which covers more than 5,500 miles...
...While access to electricity is a critical issue in most of Central America, the $320 million SIEPAC project responds to the needs of big corporations, not residential users...
...7 The 2003 Mexican federal budget shows a $37 million cut in that secretariat's allocation, and a $491 million reduction in the overall PPP budget...
...In response, hundreds of thousands of farmers have united under the banner El Campo No Aguanta Mas-"The countryside can't take any more...
...As negotiations for the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) proceed, Central American farmers anticipate similar problems...
...However, perhaps as a result of government inaction and growing public unrest, the IDB finally stepped in and organized a series of consultation meetings in Central America, which many NGO observers characterized as merely perfunctory...
...5. Available in English at: <http://www.ciepac.org/bulletins/ingles/ing329.htm> 6. "En seis afos esperan concluir conexi6n vial de Mexico a Panama," EFE News, February 4, 2003...
...Out front, protesting farmers putter around on tractors, smear manure on the sidewalk, pelt the walls with rotting vegetables...
...With Mexico as an early proponent of the PPP, many observers assumed that Central America would be a tougher sell, given the history of difficult internal relations in the isthmus...
...4 Similarly, a planned superhighway in the neighboring state of Veracruz was re-routed after widespread public protest because it would have cut through a cloud forest...
...2. "Mexico's farmers: Floundering in a tariff-free landscape," The Economist, November 28, 2002...
...Construction crews are pouring asphalt across Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec to connect the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico...
...On January 1, 2003, a number of key protections for Mexican farmers were phased out under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA...
...Each year there are fewer protections for Mexican farmers...
...9 These new highways will be large-scale, multi-lane constructions designed for international commerce, often coming with high tolls that will make them inaccessible to local users...
...Now, however, it seems that promise has gone the way of his campaign pledge to end the conflict in Chiapas "in fifteen minutes...
...A grid of power lines that will soon carry electricity from Panama to Mexico, SIEPAC was a narrow victory for PPP planners.10 The Salvadoran national assembly nearly rejected the $40 million IDB loan for the Salvadoran portion of SIEPAC, because of public opposition spearheaded by Salvadoran unions and consumer organizations...
...The Salvadoran national assembly finally approved the loan after DCbased IDB officials traveled to San Salvador to lobby for it...
...The movement against the PPP surged to life more quickly than the program itself...
...embassies, shut down border crossings and spray-painted "No PPP...
...In the past eight months, three different individuals have filled the position of PPP director for Mexico...
...would infringe on national sovereignty...
...However, when Fox and the IDB speak of PPP-built highways, a regional electrical grid and new industrial zones for maquiladora manufacturing, many of the region's residents fear that the developed strategy that guides the PPP will mean the loss of their land and traditional livelihoods...
...Today, however, largely as a result of citizen groups questioning the plan, the future of the PPP-or, at least, Mexico's leadership in the project-is less certain...
...A few pigs trot by, wearing tags with the names of the president and three cabinet members...
...The plan, it was argued, would provide farmers, campesinos, and other rural Mexicans with new economic possibilities...
...By the end of 2002, just two years after Fox publicly announced the program, Mexicans and Central Americans had already held three international gatherings and dozens of regional meetings to discuss the PPP and plan their response...
...It was one of the first demonstrations by a newly united movement of rural Mexican producers who are increasingly dissatisfied with Mexico's insertion into the global economy...
...edu> This article was first published in Interhemispheric Resource Center's Americas Policy...
...Mexicans and Central Americans 'Can't Take Anymore' 1. "lrrumpen campesinos en San L~zaro," La Jornada, December 11, 2002, <http://ww.jornada.unam.mx/2002/dic02/021211/ 005n3pol.php?origen=index.html> and "Campesinos Attack the Mexican Congress," Hector Carre6n, La Voz de Aztldn, December 12, 2002...
...Thousands learned about the PPP and developed strategies for opposing it...
...http://www.americaspolicy.org> fence that surrounds their meeting place...
...Today, however, Fox rarely mentions the PPP...
...As the Mexican government increasingly refuses to discuss the PPP, Mexican communities who will be affected by PPP projects are left with only the IDB as a sounding board...
...The plan for this highway predates the PPP by five years, but was delayed until late 2002 by community opposition...
...9. "En seis arflos esperan concluir conexi6n vial de Mexico a Panama," EFE News, February 4, 2003...
...Several Mexican PPP projects have been cancelled while SIEPAC moves ahead...
...En evento conjunto con Presidente de Honduras, Flores pide a Ia Asamblea avale cr~dito para energia," El Salvador de Hoy, August 22, 2002, <http://www.elsalvador.com/noticias/2002/8/22/nacional/nacio 10.html...
...One of the farmers tells the media: "This is just a little taste...
Vol. 36 • March 2003 • No. 5
