The Plan Puebla Panama revived: looking back to see what
03/05/2004
- Opinión
During a tour of three Central American countries last March 24-26,
Mexican President Vicente Fox formally relaunched the Plan Puebla
Panama (PPP), which in Mexico had languished for a year and a half —
dying according to some, dead according to others. After much
fanfare during its inauguration in the early months of the Fox
presidency in early 2001, the PPP suffered, if not a premature
death, then a prolonged paralysis in terms of actions that
officially pertained to it, as well as a long silence from
government offices regarding its true intent and probable future.
This essay will review briefly the PPP's evolution over the past
three years, the opposition it has provoked among civil society of
Mesoamerica, the PPP's new designer image created with the help of
marketing experts, and, in conclusion, the lessons that the PPP has
taught grassroots movements for the immediate future. Given the
numerous and excellent analyses on the PPP (1) , we will not delve
into its components here.
The PPP is hatched and nearly dies within a year
According to Fox, the objective of the PPP is to overcome the
existing underdevelopment of a particularly poor part of the
American continent, that of the nine southeastern states of Mexico
and the seven Central American republics. This area has scarce
private and public investment, and its socio-economic indicators are
above only those of Haiti and Bolivia in this hemisphere.(2)
Fox draws on concepts that were in vogue half a century ago stating
that "underdevelopment" is attributable to a lack of inputs,
principally technology and capital. The PPP is designed, then, to
build, or improve, large infrastructure projects (toll highways,
airports, deep-water ports, electrical and telecommunications
grids), that, together with on-going projects (hydroelectric dams,
"dry" trans-isthmus canals), would motivate large private companies
to locate there. It is their presence (together with the capital,
technology and jobs that they bring) that will supposedly lead to
"development." In order to stimulate these decisions, PPP
infrastructure projects are designed to overcome the bottlenecks
that might cut into companies' profits (3) .
Fox's PPP is not, however, a new agenda, but rather a handy
"conceptual umbrella" that brings together several large projects
that have been ongoing, or in the pipeline, for years. The Plan
tries to link infrastructure projects in Mexico's southeast with
those of its Central American neighbors, in order to jump-start the
region's insertion into corporate globalization.
Yet this "developmentalist" vision has long been questioned, both by
new theories as well as on-the-ground practice, since it downplays
the structural problems of underdevelopment related to concentration
of economic and political power in the hands of elites and the
corresponding lack of opportunities for the majority.
Early on, it was clear to civil society in Mexico and Central
America that the infrastructure projects scheduled under the PPP
were not concerned with social development. Today civil society is
rejecting the notion that "development" is the exclusive reserve of
bureaucrats and the private sector.
Development for whom, with whose money, to benefit whom, and with
decisions taken by whom, are the questions that civil society is
asking today.
Plainly put, it's also a question of democracy. If a good part of
the funding is to come from public coffers, and if loans granted,
plus interest, are to be repaid through taxpayer contributions, then
an informed civil society should have a say in deciding on
"development" done supposedly on its behalf.
The PPP area covers approximately one million square kilometers and
65 million people in eight countries, around 50% of whom are
classified as being in extreme poverty.(4) Contrary to the
impoverishment of its inhabitants, the area is rich in natural
resources (water, timber, oil, gas, various minerals, plentiful
biodiversity) and well suited for generating hydroelectric power.
For inhabitants of the PPP area, the Plan was yet another
neocolonial form of extracting its natural wealth and exploiting the
cheap and abundant labor force of its population. It was also easy
to detect the PPP's conceptual links to other large-scale neoliberal
plans to promote corporate interests in the region, particularly the
FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), a continent-wide counterpart
of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
The PPP was born with several additional problems, not the least of
which was its antiquated notion that people, especially the poor,
are objects of "development", never its subjects. The PPP's
creators, bureaucrats at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB),
the World Bank, and the Mexican government, hammered out the scheme
without so much as a single consultation to measure people's
feelings on the matter. Second, the PPP ignored not only the
opinion, but also the make-up of the people who inhabit the region,
particularly the specific circumstances of the indigenous people
who, over millennia, have lived therein.
Third, and most important, the PPP's promoters underestimated the
rejection that the Plan would encounter among large sectors of the
region's population. Two months after the official launch of the
PPP, Mesoamerican civil society already had held its first regional
gathering to analyze the Plan.
In May 2001, over 300 representatives of Mesoamerican civil society
met in Tapachula, Chiapas to exchange information, create or
strengthen relationships and networks, and begin to think about
activities and alternatives. The PPP was, and continues to be, one
of the most important catalysts that can make Mexicans and Central
Americans stop thinking and operating solely in their own worlds,
separated in their planning and organization by a recent history of
differentiated grassroots struggles.
The PPP made it evident that corporate globalization, of which it
forms a part, is the same everywhere, and therefore it behooved
grassroots groups to respond as one. Since the Tapachula meeting,
this regional gathering (now called "With Globalization the People
Come First") has been held in three Central American cities, with
greater participation every time. The next encounter will be held in
July 2004 in San Salvador. The PPP was also a catalyst and motive
for several other regional and topic-based gatherings. There have
been forums on dams, biodiversity, water, agrotoxins, genetically-
modified substances, militarization, autonomy, grassroots economics
and others. It has also sparked local, national and regional
coordinating bodies against the PPP and neoliberalism. In Chiapas,
for example, the Chiapas Gathering on Neoliberalism was formed in
October.
2002, charged with the task of not only resisting the PPP and
neoliberalism but also coming up with alternatives. In Mexico, in
March 2002 the Mexican Alliance for People's Self-Determination
(AMAP) was created by uniting dozens of organizations in the nine-
state area covered by the PPP. AMAP networks work with similar
nationwide coordinating bodies in Central America and with anti-
neoliberal groups throughout the hemisphere.
Grassroots activism throughout the PPP area soon led the Fox
government to backpedal. Elitist in its origin, undemocratic in its
implementation, promoter of corporate interests, exclusive of social
concerns, particularly of indigenous people, the PPP's nature was
enough to stoke the embers of grassroots resistance. In early 2001,
when the PPP was little more than a declaration of intent from the
Fox transition team, the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National
Liberation) had already declared its opposition, renewed in July
2003 by Subcommander Marcos, "At the very least in the mountains of
southeastern Mexico, its implementation will not be permitted for
any reason."(5)
Concurrently with the mobilization and organization that the PPP
stirred up in southeast Mexico and Central America, a struggle broke
out among the campesinos (communal farmers) in Atenco, some 10 miles
northeast of Mexico City, when in October 2001 President Fox
expropriated 15 thousand hectares (37 thousand acres) of their land
in order to build a new airport for the country's capital. The nine-
month struggle that ensued as campesinos defended the lands won
through the "blood shed by our grandparents" in the Mexican
revolution 90 years before was an example of what grassroots
organization, resistance and mobilization could achieve, even in the
face of billion-dollar megaprojects. When the Atenco struggle ended
in victory for the campesinos, with the government rescinding the
expropriation order in August 2002, it became clear that Fox's
schemes of "development," through megaprojects by imposition and
decree, would never work. The option most feared, violence from
police forces, was eschewed by the government, given Fox's image,
curried abroad as a reformer, in addition to the unforeseeable
consequences it would bring, and the uncertainty that it would
provoke among foreign investors.
The nature of the opposition—multisectoral, multiclass,
multinational, and growing— led to a noticeable disheartening of the
Fox administration towards its much-touted PPP, which led to several
political measures. In 2002, the head office of the PPP was banished
from the Office of the Presidency to a subsecretariate in the
Secretary of Foreign Relations, which, at first, alleged lacking the
funds to even house the new office. Likewise, the first coordinator,
the controversial Florencio Salazar was fired, and later accused of
the "erratic and inaccurate information" disseminated on the PPP in
its first year.(6) A moratorium on official declarations on the PPP
was declared, and the Plan's web site, the only official source of
information reasonably accessible to the public, disappeared. Thus
the PPP entered a sort of limbo, since Mexican bureaucrats didn't
deny its existence, but they said nothing about it, and generated no
public information.
Another factor dampened the Plan's aspirations: in spite of the
publicity that was stirred up by the fanfare at the PPP's
inauguration, it was unable to obtain the financing that the
government sought.
There were several reasons: the plunge of the Mexican (and world)
economy after September 11, the refusal of the IDB to grant
financing to the Mexican government for the PPP at the preferential
rates conceded to the Central American countries for the same
purpose, in addition to the contractionary effects brought by
reductions to the Mexican government's budget when the economy
failed to grow and the country entered a recession.
Funding from the private sector also failed to appear.
Forced to face reality, the government downsized its expectations,
since it would now have to finance the infrastructure projects in
Mexico with the country's own funds and/or through funding already
obtained elsewhere. But no fresh funds were forthcoming, neither
from private or multilateral banks, nor from other potential
sources, such as the European Union, in which Fox held high hopes in
2002.
During about a year and a half (June 2002- November 2003), publicity
on the PPP was virtually frozen, since signaling an infrastructure
project was tantamount to mobilizing civil society against it and
risking it being blocked, delayed or even cancelled—which, in fact,
occurred on several occasions throughout the PPP's territory.
The interim strategy, while another was being designed, was to
proceed with the infrastructure projects to the extent that
financial and social considerations allowed, but to not call
attention to them. Once finished and inaugurated, the projects could
be attributed to the PPP, much as Fox did during his recent tour of
Central America.
The PPP's new publicity strategy
During this year-and-a-half freeze, the PPP's "new image" was being
designed. It was first necessary to quell the opposition among the
governors of the states participating in the PPP, who had unleashed
criticism due to the "great misinformation," the delays in
financing, the "centralism" with which it had been designed, and the
"marginalization to which they had been subjected in the decision-
making process."(7)
In fact, in April 2003, the governor of Oaxaca, José Murat,
declared that the PPP "is rotten," and "only exists in the
imagination of those who are given to drawing up projects with
propagandistic purposes."(8) At the official launching of Mexico's
portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (9) , in March of
the same year, the governor of Chiapas, Pablo Salazar, withheld his
state's participation in the MBC until its links to the
"controversial PPP" could be cleared up.(10)
In response, a few months later the Secretary of Foreign Relations,
Luis Ernesto Derbez, called together the eight governors in an
effort to align them by creating a "coordinating commission," whose
public role would be to oversee meetings and agreements between the
federal and state governments, but also, we suspect, to unite
declarations. The governors suppressed their disagreement, and even
the rebellious Murat said afterwards that it was "indispensable to
maintain the [PPP] as it presently is, in order for it to receive
financing from international organizations."(11)
Nine months later, in March 2004, the Mexican government sought the
same show of unity at the 6 th Meeting of the Tuxtla Mechanism with
the Central American presidents. One of the reasons for the meeting,
according to Marcelo Antinori, PPP coordinator at the IDB in
Washington, was to "seek consensus on the PPP with the
presidents."(12) The absence of four of the seven Central American
leaders was interpreted in various ways, but Fox's declarations put
the accent on the unity of economic interests between Mexicans and
Central Americans.
The next step was to create a friendlier image of the PPP. The IDB
called in the U.S.-based advertising agency Fleishman-Hillard for
the purpose, for a fee said to have been close to one million
dollars. On the basis of its recommendations, the strategy consisted
in raising the profile of declarations having to do with social
aspects, particularly with regard to indigenous peoples and the need
to hold public consultations on the Plan. For example, in Guatemala
Fox recently declared, "The PPP is a regional development process
which has to do mainly with people, families and, particularly, with
indigenous communities". Days later, before the Central American
leaders in Managua, he would declare: We are united by concrete
development plans and projects, in which our indigenous communities
participate in their design and application. In Mexico, for example,
we have held more than fifty direct consultations of 36 indigenous
peoples, since we want development without discrimination, a
balanced and just development, with a human face, development that
respects the culture and practices of these communities.(13)
Notwithstanding the speeches, there is no record in Mexico of these
"consultations" on the PPP or any "concrete development plan"
designed and implemented by indigenous people in Mexico.(14) It is
true, however, that the Mexican government is holding consultations
with indigenous communities, through the offices of the National
Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (Conadepi), at
the behest of the Secretary of Foreign Relations. But these
consultations are "rigged," according to Gabriela Rangel of the
Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC), since the Commission
makes no reference to the PPP in its convocations and thus
participants arrive unprepared to debate the matter in full. The
nature of the consultations, unfortunately, does not seem to have
changed, since indigenous people continue to receive the customary
treatment of passive recipients of what are little more than Power
Point presentations.(15)
Another aspect of the new image is the removal of the most
controversial projects from the PPP, which are instead classified as
"secondary projects." The most notorious example in this regard is
the construction of dams.
Notwithstanding the undeniable interest of the Mexican government in
building dams on the Usumacinta River,16 which straddles Chiapas and
Guatemala, the official line from the PPP is to deny that the Plan
has anything to do with dams.
Similarly, the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, at first part of
the PPP, has since been separated, since the MBC hopes to promote
"sustainable ecological development," while the PPP only wanted to
incorporate the MBC as its "green arm" for what is basically a
"project of cementification", according to Tania Carrasco,
specialist in social development at the World Bank in Mexico
City.(17)
The pronounced drop in the federal government's budget for the PPP
(from US$677 million in 2002 to US$78 million in 2004, a decrease of
88.5%),(18) coincides with the relabeling of certain projects, in
addition to the general reductions carried out by the Secretary of
the Treasury (SHCP). Certain construction projects may no longer be
contained in the PPP, but they continue to advance, since funds are
simply channeled to the respective ministry in charge.
Officially, for the entire PPP region, what is the total budget and
what aspects are included? Unfortunately there is still little
clarity. The Mexican government handles a total figure of US$4.4
billion, but it is far too low, according to InterAction, a
Washington-based NGO, which calculates that US$10 billion would be
needed over ten years, based on projects already approved and in the
pipeline.(19) Officially, there are 28 megaprojects for the eight
components of the PPP, listed below. (The percentage of funds from
the total budget assigned to each component appears in parenthesis):
1— Highways (85.2% of the total budget)
2— Electrical interconnection (11.1%)
3— Promotion of tourism (1.3%)
4— Human development (0.8%)
5— Prevention and mitigation of disasters (0.7%)
6— Trade facilitation (0.6%)
7— Sustainable development (0.4%)
8— Integration of telecommunication services (0.03%)(20)
The amounts budgeted for each component demonstrate the emphasis
placed by the PPP, today and since its inception, on the
construction of highways to connect especially strategic or
sensitive areas in Mexico and Central America.
One of them is the Atlantic Corridor that runs around the Gulf of
Mexico, site of some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the
region. By means of this Atlantic highway corridor the region is due
to be linked to the United States by modern toll roads, to be
concessioned to private companies.
Similarly, the second most important component, electrical
interconnection or SIEPAC (System of Electrical Integration for the
Countries of Central America), will in the end create one integrated
energy grid from Canada to Panama, to facilitate the sale of
electricity to, principally, the "energy-starved U.S. economy."(21)
Yet the grid will not stop in Panama.Colombian president Alvaro
Uribe recently expressed interest in having Colombia's electrical
grid linked to the PPP's. The president's wit led him to suggest
that the PPP's initials should now mean "Plan Puebla Putumayo," for
the country's southern-most province. "We want total integration of
Colombia into the Plan Puebla Panama," Uribe said. "This would begin
with the electrical interconnection line between Colombia and
Panama, whose initial studies will be made available to us in April
[2004], and the second project would be the construction of a gas
pipeline, with the expectation that not only Colombia should be
joined to Panama, but also to Venezuela. This is necessary in order
to link the continent from the United States to the Patagonia."(22)
Can the Plan Puebla Patagonia be far away ?
In summary, the PPP's new image cannot hide the obvious: in essence,
nothing has changed.
Perhaps there will be some adjustments in presentation, with renewed
interest in projecting an image of unity, openness, transparency,
and decisions made by consensus with civil society.
But the basic fact remains—it continues to be a custom- designed
initiative for big-money interests and, as we shall see further on,
for strategic interests of the United States. An enormous effort
founded on a now discredited theory that makes "development"
synonymous with abundant infrastructure.
It is prudent, however, to predict that there will be, in fact,
greater openness, transparency, consultations, but lacking in
substance. The expression of grassroots discontent and rejection
will persist, but today the task before the Plan's administrators
will be to channel it towards vacuous and innocuous exercises.
Perhaps an amusing example in this regard is the Mexican
government's web page on the PPP, available on the Internet once
again after a year-and-a-half absence
(http://ppp.sr.gob.mex/index.php) with, obviously, a virtual forum,
where visitors can express their opinions on the PPP.
Unsurprisingly, opinions left therein are largely critical of the
PPP, but can there be any doubt that this channel of expression,
along with the "real" consultations held with civil society,
indigenous people, women, will change absolutely nothing?
Will the PPP survive Fox's six-year mandate? Sources close to the
government have opposing opinions. César Bustamante, in charge of
the PPP at the IDB offices in Mexico City, believes it will, not
only in Central America, but also in Mexico.
However, this does not imply a change in the real importance it
would have for Mexico, since the Plan today has changed into "more
of a political mechanism for economic and energy integration." On
the other hand, Fernando Cuevas, head of the Energy Unit at the UN's
ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean)
office in Mexico City, says that the PPP is "Fox's idea that will
fall apart at the close of his administration." There is no one
behind it, Cuevas believes, not in his party, not in his government.
But the PPP will continue in Central America, because it was there
that the IDB put its money. In Mexico, it will continue only for
those companies who win contracts, for example to build highways in
Panama, Cuevas concludes.(23)
Lessons from the PPP for the grassroots movement
The PPP Coordinator at the IDB Marcelo Antinori said it clearly last
February: "Now it is more explicit that the PPP means Mesoamerican
Economic Integration."(24) He was seconded by Harry Brautigam,
president of the Central American Bank of Economic Integration
(BCIE): "For the BCIE, the PPP means an indispensable compliment for
the economic expansion of the region and a platform to prepare
Central America for its entry into the Central American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA)."(25)
Not surprisingly, the declarations are identical to what the Plan's
opponents pointed out three years ago: the PPP cannot be separated
from the logic behind economic integration plans for the region, and
the world, as conceived by the ideologues of neoliberalism, be they
NAFTA, FTAA or the WTO.
It is on these wider concerns that the grassroots movements will
have to focus, especially in regards to disseminating information
and awareness to greater sectors of the population. The specific
details behind the PPP, whether one project or another is contained
therein, whether the budget has risen or fallen, are relatively less
important, in the face of the threat posed by neoliberalism's
concept of development and view of the future.
The threat of such a vision, the struggles that await Latin American
civil society, and the challenges for grassroots activists and
educators in creating awareness on these topics goes beyond the PPP,
NAFTA or the FTAA. The larger problem, mainly for our sovereignty as
nations, perhaps resides in the "deep integration" with the United
States that is presently being prepared by elites.
Mexico and Canada are on the front line. Deep integration as an idea
has been making the rounds among strategists since at least the
beginning of this century. Fox picked up on it after his election,
called the idea "NAFTA-plus" and sent up conceptual trial
balloons.(26) It has been well debated in Canada, at least in
academic circles (27) . It picked up new meaning after the September
11, 2001 attacks, with the "double-time" incorporation of Mexico and
Canada into the U.S. armed forces' Northern Command.
At its simplest, deep integration means the creation of a new space,
the "North American continent," where Mexico, Canada, and the United
States would be integrated, obviously under the tutelage of the
latter. Apart from a single North American military force, there
would be a common border, a single currency, homogeneity in
economic, security, migration and refugee policies, a single
identification card, i.e., the fusion in almost all respects of the
three countries. The Mexican economist Alejandro Alvarez says that
"the Community of North America is the single greatest challenge for
Mexico in the 21 st century."(28) Certainly part of Canadian civil
society has understood the meaning of "deep integration" and has
sounded the alarm, in a still weak and incipient manner, to
Canadians.
The same needs to be done in Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
The PPP's real intentions are a good basis to alert civil society to
the impact that it will have on our lives in the short term, but
linking it, through grassroots education, to the future awaiting all
of us under neoliberalism is perhaps the most urgent task at hand..
La Chronique des Amériques Avril 2004 N o 12.
NOTES
* Miguel Pickard is an economist and co-founder of CIEPAC (Centro de
Investigaciones economicas y politicas de Accion Comunitaria) in San
Cristobal de Las Casas, Chipas, Mexico.
[www.ciepac.org]. Special thanks to Daniel J. Nemser for editorial
suppport for the English version of this essay.
1 A number of excellent English-language resources have been
published online by the Americas Program at the Interhemispheric
Resource Center, at http://www.americaspolicy.org/citizen-
action/spotlight/.
2 The PPP comprises the nine states of Mexico's southeast (Puebla,
Veracruz, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and
Quintana Roo), in addition to the countries of Central America
(Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and
Panama).
3 For example, the lack of adequate port facilities, to bring in raw
materials, or good roads to distribute finished products, are often
cited as bottlenecks by potential investors.
4 Colegio de Mexico professor Julio Boltvinik, one of the country's
leading researchers on poverty estimates the "indigence index" in
the Mexico portion of the PPP as 65.8%, defining indigent as that
part of the population that can cover less than half of the minimum
norms of income and basic needs, calculated on the basis of family
income and living conditions (housing, services in the home, access
to health, education, free time and basic belongings). See "Planes,
desigualdad y pobreza" in La Jornada, June 22, 2001, available
online at http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2001/jun01/010622/022a1eco.html
. Boltvinik calculates the index by means of the "Integrated Poverty
Measuring Method", a full explanation of which is available in Julio
Boltvinik and Enrique Hernández Laos, Pobreza y distribución del
ingreso en México, Siglo XXI, Mexico City, 1999. See also Armando
Bartra, "Sur: megaplanes y utopías en la América equinoccial" in
Mesoamérica: los ríos profundos, A. Bartra (coord), Instituto Maya,
Mexico City, 2001, p.29: "In Central America 78% of the population
lives in poverty and 60% in extreme poverty, rising to 70% in
Honduras and Guatemala. The data are from 1990 and if we compare
them with those from 10 years previous we see that the percentage of
poor people dropped by 7 points while those in misery increased by
13 points, in other words the social basement is quickly expanding
in population".
5 From the EZLN's web page:
http://www.ezln.org/documentos/2003/200307-treceavaestela-d.es.htm..
6 See bulletin no. 329, "Grassroots Protests Force the Mexican
Government to. Search for a New PPP Strategy", at
http://www.ciepac.org/bulletins/ingles/ing329.htm.
7 "Modificarán la SRE y gobernadores el PPP," Proceso, June 27,
2003.
8 "Lanza Murat dura crítica contra el PPP," El Universal, Mexico
City, April 4, 2003, p.18.
9 "The Mesoamerican Biological Corridor is a regional initiative
that seeks to conserve biological diversity and ecosystems in a way
that promotes sustainable social and economic development."
Translated from the MBC's web page at www.biomeso.net (Spanish
only). See also the Mexico section of the MBC at
http://www.conabio.gob.mx/institucion/corredor/doctos/index.ht ml or
search the World Bank's web site, www.worldbank.org for numerous
documents in English on the MBS. See, for
example,http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/LAC/LAC.nsf/ECADoc
ByUnid/2B9835DF5991FDC085256D660045E1DA? Opendocument
10 "Causa controversia inicio del Corredor Biológico," El Universal,
Mexico City, March 4, 2003, p.12..
11 "Plantea Derbez 'relanzar' el PPP," El Universal, June 27, 2003,
p.14.
12 InterAction, "Reunión entre ONG y IDB-PPP," February 12, 2004,
p.13. Available at http://www.interaction.org/idb/ppp.
13 Sistema Internet de la Presidencia, declarations of Fox in
Managua, March 25, 2004.
14 César Bustamante of the IDB in Mexico City stated in an interview
granted to Luca Martinelli of the University of Pisa on March 12,
2004 that the Mexican government had not to date held even one
consultation on the PPP.
15 After one such consultation in Juchitán, Oaxaca in December 2003,
the Coordinator for the Defense and Territory of the Indigenous
People of the Isthmus declared "The first phase of this
consultation, convoked by Conadepi, the Secretary of Indigenous
Affairs and the Development Planning Commission, has shown that it
does not respond to the authentic concerns for the wellbeing of the
indigenous peoples, but rather it is a disguised "poll" on the
acceptability of development models planned for the needs of large
multinational corporations who seek to control world trade by means
of diverse trade treaties and agreements, be these the Plan
Millenium, the Escalera Náutica, or the Plan Puebla Panama. [...] We
believe that Condadepi's role should be to contribute to
establishing a political relationship of respect with the indigenous
people and cease using the disguise of indigenism." Source:
Communiqué from the Coordinator, December 17, 2003.
16 "This is the greatest of rivers in Mexico" and it flows through
"an underdeveloped, impoverished part of the country. If we work
together responsibly, we can help the region, not hurt it," Julio
Acosta, coordinator of hydroelectric projects for the Mexican CFE
(Federal Electricity Commission), told the New York Times, September
22, 2002, "Mexico Weighs Electricity Against History".
17 Interviewed by Luca Martinelli of the University of Pisa, March
9, 2004.
18 Calculated based on "El PPP en el Proyecto de Presupuesto de
Egresos de 2004" by José Alberto García Ponce, advisor to the
Chamber of Deputies, LIX Legislature, November 2004. García
calculated his figures using (real) 2004 pesos, which we have
converted to dollars at US$1 = MX$11. Figures include both Program
75—Development of the South-Southeast Region and Program 77—Plan
Puebla Panama from the Mexican federal budget.
19 See "Supplemental E-Bulletin" by InterAction, April 2002, at
http://www.interaction.org/files.cgi/539_PPP_Supplement_Upda te.pdf.
20 Presidency of Mexico, "Informe de avances y Perspectivas," 2002.
21 Alejandro Alvarez Béjar, "México en el siglo XXI: ¿hacia una
comunidad de Norteamérica?" Memoria, Mexico City, No. 162, August
2003, available at
http://ww.memoria.com.mx/162/alvarez.htm
22 "Plantea Colombia sumarse al PPP," Reforma, Mexico City,.
23 Both Bustamante and Cuevas were interviewed by Luca Martinelli,
University of Pisa, March 11-12, 2004.
24 InterAction, February 12, 2004, Ibid.
25 "NotiCen", Latin America Data Base, University of New Mexico,
April 1, 2004, Vol. 9, No. 13.
26 Robert Pastor published in August 2001 one of the most complete
books on deep integration, Towards a North American Community.
Pastor is a close friend of Jorge G. Castañeda, advisor to Fox
during his election campaign in 1999-2000, and his Secretary of
Foreign Relations during two years.
27 In October 2003, the Centre for Research on Latin America and
the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University and the Canadian Centre
for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) held a public forum on "Canada, Free
Trade and Deep Integration in North America: Revitalizing Democracy,
Upholding the Public Good", at York University in Toronto. Contact
Ricardo Grinspun (ricardo@yorku.ca) for Conference papers. See also
the Council of Canadian's web site, www.canadians.org, for an essay
by Maude Barlow on "deep integration" in "The Canada We Want", as
well as information on a 7-city tour of Canada by the Council in
March 2004 on "Colony of Country?: The Future of Canada-US
Relations".
28 Alejandro Alvarez Béjar, Ibid.
April 2004
The Plan Puebla Panama revived: looking back to see what's ahead
Miguel Pickard
During a tour of three Central American countries last March 24-26,
Mexican President Vicente Fox formally relaunched the Plan Puebla
Panama (PPP), which in Mexico had languished for a year and a half —
dying according to some, dead according to others. After much
fanfare during its inauguration in the early months of the Fox
presidency in early 2001, the PPP suffered, if not a premature
death, then a prolonged paralysis in terms of actions that
officially pertained to it, as well as a long silence from
government offices regarding its true intent and probable future.
This essay will review briefly the PPP's evolution over the past
three years, the opposition it has provoked among civil society of
Mesoamerica, the PPP's new designer image created with the help of
marketing experts, and, in conclusion, the lessons that the PPP has
taught grassroots movements for the immediate future. Given the
numerous and excellent analyses on the PPP (1) , we will not delve
into its components here.
The PPP is hatched and nearly dies within a year
According to Fox, the objective of the PPP is to overcome the
existing underdevelopment of a particularly poor part of the
American continent, that of the nine southeastern states of Mexico
and the seven Central American republics. This area has scarce
private and public investment, and its socio-economic indicators are
above only those of Haiti and Bolivia in this hemisphere.(2)
Fox draws on concepts that were in vogue half a century ago stating
that "underdevelopment" is attributable to a lack of inputs,
principally technology and capital. The PPP is designed, then, to
build, or improve, large infrastructure projects (toll highways,
airports, deep-water ports, electrical and telecommunications
grids), that, together with on-going projects (hydroelectric dams,
"dry" trans-isthmus canals), would motivate large private companies
to locate there. It is their presence (together with the capital,
technology and jobs that they bring) that will supposedly lead to
"development." In order to stimulate these decisions, PPP
infrastructure projects are designed to overcome the bottlenecks
that might cut into companies' profits (3) .
Fox's PPP is not, however, a new agenda, but rather a handy
"conceptual umbrella" that brings together several large projects
that have been ongoing, or in the pipeline, for years. The Plan
tries to link infrastructure projects in Mexico's southeast with
those of its Central American neighbors, in order to jump-start the
region's insertion into corporate globalization.
Yet this "developmentalist" vision has long been questioned, both by
new theories as well as on-the-ground practice, since it downplays
the structural problems of underdevelopment related to concentration
of economic and political power in the hands of elites and the
corresponding lack of opportunities for the majority.
Early on, it was clear to civil society in Mexico and Central
America that the infrastructure projects scheduled under the PPP
were not concerned with social development. Today civil society is
rejecting the notion that "development" is the exclusive reserve of
bureaucrats and the private sector.
Development for whom, with whose money, to benefit whom, and with
decisions taken by whom, are the questions that civil society is
asking today.
Plainly put, it's also a question of democracy. If a good part of
the funding is to come from public coffers, and if loans granted,
plus interest, are to be repaid through taxpayer contributions, then
an informed civil society should have a say in deciding on
"development" done supposedly on its behalf.
The PPP area covers approximately one million square kilometers and
65 million people in eight countries, around 50% of whom are
classified as being in extreme poverty.(4) Contrary to the
impoverishment of its inhabitants, the area is rich in natural
resources (water, timber, oil, gas, various minerals, plentiful
biodiversity) and well suited for generating hydroelectric power.
For inhabitants of the PPP area, the Plan was yet another
neocolonial form of extracting its natural wealth and exploiting the
cheap and abundant labor force of its population. It was also easy
to detect the PPP's conceptual links to other large-scale neoliberal
plans to promote corporate interests in the region, particularly the
FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), a continent-wide counterpart
of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
The PPP was born with several additional problems, not the least of
which was its antiquated notion that people, especially the poor,
are objects of "development", never its subjects. The PPP's
creators, bureaucrats at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB),
the World Bank, and the Mexican government, hammered out the scheme
without so much as a single consultation to measure people's
feelings on the matter. Second, the PPP ignored not only the
opinion, but also the make-up of the people who inhabit the region,
particularly the specific circumstances of the indigenous people
who, over millennia, have lived therein.
Third, and most important, the PPP's promoters underestimated the
rejection that the Plan would encounter among large sectors of the
region's population. Two months after the official launch of the
PPP, Mesoamerican civil society already had held its first regional
gathering to analyze the Plan.
In May 2001, over 300 representatives of Mesoamerican civil society
met in Tapachula, Chiapas to exchange information, create or
strengthen relationships and networks, and begin to think about
activities and alternatives. The PPP was, and continues to be, one
of the most important catalysts that can make Mexicans and Central
Americans stop thinking and operating solely in their own worlds,
separated in their planning and organization by a recent history of
differentiated grassroots struggles.
The PPP made it evident that corporate globalization, of which it
forms a part, is the same everywhere, and therefore it behooved
grassroots groups to respond as one. Since the Tapachula meeting,
this regional gathering (now called "With Globalization the People
Come First") has been held in three Central American cities, with
greater participation every time. The next encounter will be held in
July 2004 in San Salvador. The PPP was also a catalyst and motive
for several other regional and topic-based gatherings. There have
been forums on dams, biodiversity, water, agrotoxins, genetically-
modified substances, militarization, autonomy, grassroots economics
and others. It has also sparked local, national and regional
coordinating bodies against the PPP and neoliberalism. In Chiapas,
for example, the Chiapas Gathering on Neoliberalism was formed in
October.
2002, charged with the task of not only resisting the PPP and
neoliberalism but also coming up with alternatives. In Mexico, in
March 2002 the Mexican Alliance for People's Self-Determination
(AMAP) was created by uniting dozens of organizations in the nine-
state area covered by the PPP. AMAP networks work with similar
nationwide coordinating bodies in Central America and with anti-
neoliberal groups throughout the hemisphere.
Grassroots activism throughout the PPP area soon led the Fox
government to backpedal. Elitist in its origin, undemocratic in its
implementation, promoter of corporate interests, exclusive of social
concerns, particularly of indigenous people, the PPP's nature was
enough to stoke the embers of grassroots resistance. In early 2001,
when the PPP was little more than a declaration of intent from the
Fox transition team, the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National
Liberation) had already declared its opposition, renewed in July
2003 by Subcommander Marcos, "At the very least in the mountains of
southeastern Mexico, its implementation will not be permitted for
any reason."(5)
Concurrently with the mobilization and organization that the PPP
stirred up in southeast Mexico and Central America, a struggle broke
out among the campesinos (communal farmers) in Atenco, some 10 miles
northeast of Mexico City, when in October 2001 President Fox
expropriated 15 thousand hectares (37 thousand acres) of their land
in order to build a new airport for the country's capital. The nine-
month struggle that ensued as campesinos defended the lands won
through the "blood shed by our grandparents" in the Mexican
revolution 90 years before was an example of what grassroots
organization, resistance and mobilization could achieve, even in the
face of billion-dollar megaprojects. When the Atenco struggle ended
in victory for the campesinos, with the government rescinding the
expropriation order in August 2002, it became clear that Fox's
schemes of "development," through megaprojects by imposition and
decree, would never work. The option most feared, violence from
police forces, was eschewed by the government, given Fox's image,
curried abroad as a reformer, in addition to the unforeseeable
consequences it would bring, and the uncertainty that it would
provoke among foreign investors.
The nature of the opposition—multisectoral, multiclass,
multinational, and growing— led to a noticeable disheartening of the
Fox administration towards its much-touted PPP, which led to several
political measures. In 2002, the head office of the PPP was banished
from the Office of the Presidency to a subsecretariate in the
Secretary of Foreign Relations, which, at first, alleged lacking the
funds to even house the new office. Likewise, the first coordinator,
the controversial Florencio Salazar was fired, and later accused of
the "erratic and inaccurate information" disseminated on the PPP in
its first year.(6) A moratorium on official declarations on the PPP
was declared, and the Plan's web site, the only official source of
information reasonably accessible to the public, disappeared. Thus
the PPP entered a sort of limbo, since Mexican bureaucrats didn't
deny its existence, but they said nothing about it, and generated no
public information.
Another factor dampened the Plan's aspirations: in spite of the
publicity that was stirred up by the fanfare at the PPP's
inauguration, it was unable to obtain the financing that the
government sought.
There were several reasons: the plunge of the Mexican (and world)
economy after September 11, the refusal of the IDB to grant
financing to the Mexican government for the PPP at the preferential
rates conceded to the Central American countries for the same
purpose, in addition to the contractionary effects brought by
reductions to the Mexican government's budget when the economy
failed to grow and the country entered a recession.
Funding from the private sector also failed to appear.
Forced to face reality, the government downsized its expectations,
since it would now have to finance the infrastructure projects in
Mexico with the country's own funds and/or through funding already
obtained elsewhere. But no fresh funds were forthcoming, neither
from private or multilateral banks, nor from other potential
sources, such as the European Union, in which Fox held high hopes in
2002.
During about a year and a half (June 2002- November 2003), publicity
on the PPP was virtually frozen, since signaling an infrastructure
project was tantamount to mobilizing civil society against it and
risking it being blocked, delayed or even cancelled—which, in fact,
occurred on several occasions throughout the PPP's territory.
The interim strategy, while another was being designed, was to
proceed with the infrastructure projects to the extent that
financial and social considerations allowed, but to not call
attention to them. Once finished and inaugurated, the projects could
be attributed to the PPP, much as Fox did during his recent tour of
Central America.
The PPP's new publicity strategy
During this year-and-a-half freeze, the PPP's "new image" was being
designed. It was first necessary to quell the opposition among the
governors of the states participating in the PPP, who had unleashed
criticism due to the "great misinformation," the delays in
financing, the "centralism" with which it had been designed, and the
"marginalization to which they had been subjected in the decision-
making process."(7)
In fact, in April 2003, the governor of Oaxaca, José Murat,
declared that the PPP "is rotten," and "only exists in the
imagination of those who are given to drawing up projects with
propagandistic purposes."(8) At the official launching of Mexico's
portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (9) , in March of
the same year, the governor of Chiapas, Pablo Salazar, withheld his
state's participation in the MBC until its links to the
"controversial PPP" could be cleared up.(10)
In response, a few months later the Secretary of Foreign Relations,
Luis Ernesto Derbez, called together the eight governors in an
effort to align them by creating a "coordinating commission," whose
public role would be to oversee meetings and agreements between the
federal and state governments, but also, we suspect, to unite
declarations. The governors suppressed their disagreement, and even
the rebellious Murat said afterwards that it was "indispensable to
maintain the [PPP] as it presently is, in order for it to receive
financing from international organizations."(11)
Nine months later, in March 2004, the Mexican government sought the
same show of unity at the 6 th Meeting of the Tuxtla Mechanism with
the Central American presidents. One of the reasons for the meeting,
according to Marcelo Antinori, PPP coordinator at the IDB in
Washington, was to "seek consensus on the PPP with the
presidents."(12) The absence of four of the seven Central American
leaders was interpreted in various ways, but Fox's declarations put
the accent on the unity of economic interests between Mexicans and
Central Americans.
The next step was to create a friendlier image of the PPP. The IDB
called in the U.S.-based advertising agency Fleishman-Hillard for
the purpose, for a fee said to have been close to one million
dollars. On the basis of its recommendations, the strategy consisted
in raising the profile of declarations having to do with social
aspects, particularly with regard to indigenous peoples and the need
to hold public consultations on the Plan. For example, in Guatemala
Fox recently declared, "The PPP is a regional development process
which has to do mainly with people, families and, particularly, with
indigenous communities". Days later, before the Central American
leaders in Managua, he would declare: We are united by concrete
development plans and projects, in which our indigenous communities
participate in their design and application. In Mexico, for example,
we have held more than fifty direct consultations of 36 indigenous
peoples, since we want development without discrimination, a
balanced and just development, with a human face, development that
respects the culture and practices of these communities.(13)
Notwithstanding the speeches, there is no record in Mexico of these
"consultations" on the PPP or any "concrete development plan"
designed and implemented by indigenous people in Mexico.(14) It is
true, however, that the Mexican government is holding consultations
with indigenous communities, through the offices of the National
Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (Conadepi), at
the behest of the Secretary of Foreign Relations. But these
consultations are "rigged," according to Gabriela Rangel of the
Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC), since the Commission
makes no reference to the PPP in its convocations and thus
participants arrive unprepared to debate the matter in full. The
nature of the consultations, unfortunately, does not seem to have
changed, since indigenous people continue to receive the customary
treatment of passive recipients of what are little more than Power
Point presentations.(15)
Another aspect of the new image is the removal of the most
controversial projects from the PPP, which are instead classified as
"secondary projects." The most notorious example in this regard is
the construction of dams.
Notwithstanding the undeniable interest of the Mexican government in
building dams on the Usumacinta River,16 which straddles Chiapas and
Guatemala, the official line from the PPP is to deny that the Plan
has anything to do with dams.
Similarly, the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, at first part of
the PPP, has since been separated, since the MBC hopes to promote
"sustainable ecological development," while the PPP only wanted to
incorporate the MBC as its "green arm" for what is basically a
"project of cementification", according to Tania Carrasco,
specialist in social development at the World Bank in Mexico
City.(17)
The pronounced drop in the federal government's budget for the PPP
(from US$677 million in 2002 to US$78 million in 2004, a decrease of
88.5%),(18) coincides with the relabeling of certain projects, in
addition to the general reductions carried out by the Secretary of
the Treasury (SHCP). Certain construction projects may no longer be
contained in the PPP, but they continue to advance, since funds are
simply channeled to the respective ministry in charge.
Officially, for the entire PPP region, what is the total budget and
what aspects are included? Unfortunately there is still little
clarity. The Mexican government handles a total figure of US$4.4
billion, but it is far too low, according to InterAction, a
Washington-based NGO, which calculates that US$10 billion would be
needed over ten years, based on projects already approved and in the
pipeline.(19) Officially, there are 28 megaprojects for the eight
components of the PPP, listed below. (The percentage of funds from
the total budget assigned to each component appears in parenthesis):
1— Highways (85.2% of the total budget)
2— Electrical interconnection (11.1%)
3— Promotion of tourism (1.3%)
4— Human development (0.8%)
5— Prevention and mitigation of disasters (0.7%)
6— Trade facilitation (0.6%)
7— Sustainable development (0.4%)
8— Integration of telecommunication services (0.03%)(20)
The amounts budgeted for each component demonstrate the emphasis
placed by the PPP, today and since its inception, on the
construction of highways to connect especially strategic or
sensitive areas in Mexico and Central America.
One of them is the Atlantic Corridor that runs around the Gulf of
Mexico, site of some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the
region. By means of this Atlantic highway corridor the region is due
to be linked to the United States by modern toll roads, to be
concessioned to private companies.
Similarly, the second most important component, electrical
interconnection or SIEPAC (System of Electrical Integration for the
Countries of Central America), will in the end create one integrated
energy grid from Canada to Panama, to facilitate the sale of
electricity to, principally, the "energy-starved U.S. economy."(21)
Yet the grid will not stop in Panama.Colombian president Alvaro
Uribe recently expressed interest in having Colombia's electrical
grid linked to the PPP's. The president's wit led him to suggest
that the PPP's initials should now mean "Plan Puebla Putumayo," for
the country's southern-most province. "We want total integration of
Colombia into the Plan Puebla Panama," Uribe said. "This would begin
with the electrical interconnection line between Colombia and
Panama, whose initial studies will be made available to us in April
[2004], and the second project would be the construction of a gas
pipeline, with the expectation that not only Colombia should be
joined to Panama, but also to Venezuela. This is necessary in order
to link the continent from the United States to the Patagonia."(22)
Can the Plan Puebla Patagonia be far away ?
In summary, the PPP's new image cannot hide the obvious: in essence,
nothing has changed.
Perhaps there will be some adjustments in presentation, with renewed
interest in projecting an image of unity, openness, transparency,
and decisions made by consensus with civil society.
But the basic fact remains—it continues to be a custom- designed
initiative for big-money interests and, as we shall see further on,
for strategic interests of the United States. An enormous effort
founded on a now discredited theory that makes "development"
synonymous with abundant infrastructure.
It is prudent, however, to predict that there will be, in fact,
greater openness, transparency, consultations, but lacking in
substance. The expression of grassroots discontent and rejection
will persist, but today the task before the Plan's administrators
will be to channel it towards vacuous and innocuous exercises.
Perhaps an amusing example in this regard is the Mexican
government's web page on the PPP, available on the Internet once
again after a year-and-a-half absence
(http://ppp.sr.gob.mex/index.php) with, obviously, a virtual forum,
where visitors can express their opinions on the PPP.
Unsurprisingly, opinions left therein are largely critical of the
PPP, but can there be any doubt that this channel of expression,
along with the "real" consultations held with civil society,
indigenous people, women, will change absolutely nothing?
Will the PPP survive Fox's six-year mandate? Sources close to the
government have opposing opinions. César Bustamante, in charge of
the PPP at the IDB offices in Mexico City, believes it will, not
only in Central America, but also in Mexico.
However, this does not imply a change in the real importance it
would have for Mexico, since the Plan today has changed into "more
of a political mechanism for economic and energy integration." On
the other hand, Fernando Cuevas, head of the Energy Unit at the UN's
ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean)
office in Mexico City, says that the PPP is "Fox's idea that will
fall apart at the close of his administration." There is no one
behind it, Cuevas believes, not in his party, not in his government.
But the PPP will continue in Central America, because it was there
that the IDB put its money. In Mexico, it will continue only for
those companies who win contracts, for example to build highways in
Panama, Cuevas concludes.(23)
Lessons from the PPP for the grassroots movement
The PPP Coordinator at the IDB Marcelo Antinori said it clearly last
February: "Now it is more explicit that the PPP means Mesoamerican
Economic Integration."(24) He was seconded by Harry Brautigam,
president of the Central American Bank of Economic Integration
(BCIE): "For the BCIE, the PPP means an indispensable compliment for
the economic expansion of the region and a platform to prepare
Central America for its entry into the Central American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA)."(25)
Not surprisingly, the declarations are identical to what the Plan's
opponents pointed out three years ago: the PPP cannot be separated
from the logic behind economic integration plans for the region, and
the world, as conceived by the ideologues of neoliberalism, be they
NAFTA, FTAA or the WTO.
It is on these wider concerns that the grassroots movements will
have to focus, especially in regards to disseminating information
and awareness to greater sectors of the population. The specific
details behind the PPP, whether one project or another is contained
therein, whether the budget has risen or fallen, are relatively less
important, in the face of the threat posed by neoliberalism's
concept of development and view of the future.
The threat of such a vision, the struggles that await Latin American
civil society, and the challenges for grassroots activists and
educators in creating awareness on these topics goes beyond the PPP,
NAFTA or the FTAA. The larger problem, mainly for our sovereignty as
nations, perhaps resides in the "deep integration" with the United
States that is presently being prepared by elites.
Mexico and Canada are on the front line. Deep integration as an idea
has been making the rounds among strategists since at least the
beginning of this century. Fox picked up on it after his election,
called the idea "NAFTA-plus" and sent up conceptual trial
balloons.(26) It has been well debated in Canada, at least in
academic circles (27) . It picked up new meaning after the September
11, 2001 attacks, with the "double-time" incorporation of Mexico and
Canada into the U.S. armed forces' Northern Command.
At its simplest, deep integration means the creation of a new space,
the "North American continent," where Mexico, Canada, and the United
States would be integrated, obviously under the tutelage of the
latter. Apart from a single North American military force, there
would be a common border, a single currency, homogeneity in
economic, security, migration and refugee policies, a single
identification card, i.e., the fusion in almost all respects of the
three countries. The Mexican economist Alejandro Alvarez says that
"the Community of North America is the single greatest challenge for
Mexico in the 21 st century."(28) Certainly part of Canadian civil
society has understood the meaning of "deep integration" and has
sounded the alarm, in a still weak and incipient manner, to
Canadians.
The same needs to be done in Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
The PPP's real intentions are a good basis to alert civil society to
the impact that it will have on our lives in the short term, but
linking it, through grassroots education, to the future awaiting all
of us under neoliberalism is perhaps the most urgent task at hand..
La Chronique des Amériques Avril 2004 N o 12.
NOTES
* Miguel Pickard is an economist and co-founder of CIEPAC (Centro de
Investigaciones economicas y politicas de Accion Comunitaria) in San
Cristobal de Las Casas, Chipas, Mexico.
[www.ciepac.org]. Special thanks to Daniel J. Nemser for editorial
suppport for the English version of this essay.
1 A number of excellent English-language resources have been
published online by the Americas Program at the Interhemispheric
Resource Center, at http://www.americaspolicy.org/citizen-
action/spotlight/.
2 The PPP comprises the nine states of Mexico's southeast (Puebla,
Veracruz, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and
Quintana Roo), in addition to the countries of Central America
(Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and
Panama).
3 For example, the lack of adequate port facilities, to bring in raw
materials, or good roads to distribute finished products, are often
cited as bottlenecks by potential investors.
4 Colegio de Mexico professor Julio Boltvinik, one of the country's
leading researchers on poverty estimates the "indigence index" in
the Mexico portion of the PPP as 65.8%, defining indigent as that
part of the population that can cover less than half of the minimum
norms of income and basic needs, calculated on the basis of family
income and living conditions (housing, services in the home, access
to health, education, free time and basic belongings). See "Planes,
desigualdad y pobreza" in La Jornada, June 22, 2001, available
online at http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2001/jun01/010622/022a1eco.html
. Boltvinik calculates the index by means of the "Integrated Poverty
Measuring Method", a full explanation of which is available in Julio
Boltvinik and Enrique Hernández Laos, Pobreza y distribución del
ingreso en México, Siglo XXI, Mexico City, 1999. See also Armando
Bartra, "Sur: megaplanes y utopías en la América equinoccial" in
Mesoamérica: los ríos profundos, A. Bartra (coord), Instituto Maya,
Mexico City, 2001, p.29: "In Central America 78% of the population
lives in poverty and 60% in extreme poverty, rising to 70% in
Honduras and Guatemala. The data are from 1990 and if we compare
them with those from 10 years previous we see that the percentage of
poor people dropped by 7 points while those in misery increased by
13 points, in other words the social basement is quickly expanding
in population".
5 From the EZLN's web page:
http://www.ezln.org/documentos/2003/200307-treceavaestela-d.es.htm..
6 See bulletin no. 329, "Grassroots Protests Force the Mexican
Government to. Search for a New PPP Strategy", at
http://www.ciepac.org/bulletins/ingles/ing329.htm.
7 "Modificarán la SRE y gobernadores el PPP," Proceso, June 27,
2003.
8 "Lanza Murat dura crítica contra el PPP," El Universal, Mexico
City, April 4, 2003, p.18.
9 "The Mesoamerican Biological Corridor is a regional initiative
that seeks to conserve biological diversity and ecosystems in a way
that promotes sustainable social and economic development."
Translated from the MBC's web page at www.biomeso.net (Spanish
only). See also the Mexico section of the MBC at
http://www.conabio.gob.mx/institucion/corredor/doctos/index.ht ml or
search the World Bank's web site, www.worldbank.org for numerous
documents in English on the MBS. See, for
example,http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/LAC/LAC.nsf/ECADoc
ByUnid/2B9835DF5991FDC085256D660045E1DA? Opendocument
10 "Causa controversia inicio del Corredor Biológico," El Universal,
Mexico City, March 4, 2003, p.12..
11 "Plantea Derbez 'relanzar' el PPP," El Universal, June 27, 2003,
p.14.
12 InterAction, "Reunión entre ONG y IDB-PPP," February 12, 2004,
p.13. Available at http://www.interaction.org/idb/ppp.
13 Sistema Internet de la Presidencia, declarations of Fox in
Managua, March 25, 2004.
14 César Bustamante of the IDB in Mexico City stated in an interview
granted to Luca Martinelli of the University of Pisa on March 12,
2004 that the Mexican government had not to date held even one
consultation on the PPP.
15 After one such consultation in Juchitán, Oaxaca in December 2003,
the Coordinator for the Defense and Territory of the Indigenous
People of the Isthmus declared "The first phase of this
consultation, convoked by Conadepi, the Secretary of Indigenous
Affairs and the Development Planning Commission, has shown that it
does not respond to the authentic concerns for the wellbeing of the
indigenous peoples, but rather it is a disguised "poll" on the
acceptability of development models planned for the needs of large
multinational corporations who seek to control world trade by means
of diverse trade treaties and agreements, be these the Plan
Millenium, the Escalera Náutica, or the Plan Puebla Panama. [...] We
believe that Condadepi's role should be to contribute to
establishing a political relationship of respect with the indigenous
people and cease using the disguise of indigenism." Source:
Communiqué from the Coordinator, December 17, 2003.
16 "This is the greatest of rivers in Mexico" and it flows through
"an underdeveloped, impoverished part of the country. If we work
together responsibly, we can help the region, not hurt it," Julio
Acosta, coordinator of hydroelectric projects for the Mexican CFE
(Federal Electricity Commission), told the New York Times, September
22, 2002, "Mexico Weighs Electricity Against History".
17 Interviewed by Luca Martinelli of the University of Pisa, March
9, 2004.
18 Calculated based on "El PPP en el Proyecto de Presupuesto de
Egresos de 2004" by José Alberto García Ponce, advisor to the
Chamber of Deputies, LIX Legislature, November 2004. García
calculated his figures using (real) 2004 pesos, which we have
converted to dollars at US$1 = MX$11. Figures include both Program
75—Development of the South-Southeast Region and Program 77—Plan
Puebla Panama from the Mexican federal budget.
19 See "Supplemental E-Bulletin" by InterAction, April 2002, at
http://www.interaction.org/files.cgi/539_PPP_Supplement_Upda te.pdf.
20 Presidency of Mexico, "Informe de avances y Perspectivas," 2002.
21 Alejandro Alvarez Béjar, "México en el siglo XXI: ¿hacia una
comunidad de Norteamérica?" Memoria, Mexico City, No. 162, August
2003, available at
http://ww.memoria.com.mx/162/alvarez.htm
22 "Plantea Colombia sumarse al PPP," Reforma, Mexico City,.
23 Both Bustamante and Cuevas were interviewed by Luca Martinelli,
University of Pisa, March 11-12, 2004.
24 InterAction, February 12, 2004, Ibid.
25 "NotiCen", Latin America Data Base, University of New Mexico,
April 1, 2004, Vol. 9, No. 13.
26 Robert Pastor published in August 2001 one of the most complete
books on deep integration, Towards a North American Community.
Pastor is a close friend of Jorge G. Castañeda, advisor to Fox
during his election campaign in 1999-2000, and his Secretary of
Foreign Relations during two years.
27 In October 2003, the Centre for Research on Latin America and
the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University and the Canadian Centre
for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) held a public forum on "Canada, Free
Trade and Deep Integration in North America: Revitalizing Democracy,
Upholding the Public Good", at York University in Toronto. Contact
Ricardo Grinspun (ricardo@yorku.ca) for Conference papers. See also
the Council of Canadian's web site, www.canadians.org, for an essay
by Maude Barlow on "deep integration" in "The Canada We Want", as
well as information on a 7-city tour of Canada by the Council in
March 2004 on "Colony of Country?: The Future of Canada-US
Relations".
28 Alejandro Alvarez Béjar, Ibid.
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