From the Spring 2002 issue of WCCN's Sister State Update [1]

by Carlos Arenas, WCCN Executive Director

Plan Puebla-Panamá (PPP) is a set of transnational megaprojects related to: commerce, roads, tourism, electrical interconnection, telecommunications and environmental management. Mexican President Vicente Fox first unveiled PPP on November 30, 2000. The announcement was part of a very ambitious development plan for the South and Southeastern Mexico that would extend through all of Central America, as part of Fox’s vision to promote economic globalization in the so-called Mesoamerica region. After Fox’s announcement, multinational financial institutions gave their support, with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) acting as the main catalyst.

Geographically, PPP will cover seven Mexican states and all Central American countries, specifically focusing on the biological and cultural corridor known as Mesoamerica. This includes the most isolated areas of that region, where local communities have fostered and protected its biodiversity for centuries against all kind of conquerors - old and new.

According to the IDB, PPP's objective is "to empower the human and ecological richness of the Meso-America region, as part of a sustainable development that respects cultural and ethnic diversity" . However, environmental organizations, such as ACERCA, have called the PPP "a counter-insurgency plan against indigenous peoples because of the land privatization where people believe in the collective use of land, cooperation and autonomy within the state."

In the case of Nicaragua, PPP impinges on the Atlantic Coast, known for its natural beauty and the cultural richness of its indigenous and Afro-Nicaraguan communities. The Nicaraguan component of PPP is of concern to these communities because PPP will promote the construction of a transoceanic dry canal. According to ACERCA, "the PPP proposes to link the trans-oceanic megaprojects with the development of a north-south industrial and transportation structure."

A Rich and Strategic Frontier

The Mesoamerican region contains the main Mexican oil fields and is one of the richest areas in biodiversity on the planet. After September 11, 2001, the resources for some of the projects included in PPP were affected by the economic crisis in the United States and the economic uncertainty that ensued. Meanwhile, Mesoamerica's strategic importance has increased since September 11. It seems that the geopolitical objective is to extend economic globalization to the border between Panama and Colombia, and to at the same time to protect their richness against the deterioration of the political situation in Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador.

There is a natural barrier between Panama and Colombia, known as the Darien gap. It will be used as a natural break against any external threat to this economic dream. This gap historically has been a natural barrier that for centuries has blocked any kind of connection between South and Central America. The growing armed conflict in Colombia and the revolutionary political process in Venezuela, in addition to the unresolved political crisis in Ecuador, have convinced many U.S. strategists in Washington D.C. about the necessity to isolate North and Central America from the currently unstable Andean region. As a result, during the last several months the negotiation of a new free trade agreement between the United States and Central America countries progressed from being a remote idea to an issue that apparently will be a reality in the coming months.

Owners and Administrators

According to the official line from PPP, indigenous and Afro communities living in the Mesoamerican region are called to participate in this grand development project. It is important to keep in mind that those communities are currently owners of the land where they live, maybe without legal titles that prove their ownership, but they have been there for centuries. The main offer that makes to nations and local communities is to become "administrators" - not owners - of local resources. For Central American governments, being an administrator means being able to implement their own projects for welfare, tourism, commerce, roads, electricity, and telecommunications.

For local communities, being an administrator signifies a long-term process of dispossession of their land and resources. This is because under PPP the owners of those lands will be transnational investors. Thus, the communities in Mesoamerica will become administrators of someone else's environment and its biodiversity, but there will be little chance for the communities themselves to be owners. this is one of the main reasons behind the growing opposition to PPP.

A Land of Resistance

Hundreds of years ago, the peoples of the Mesoamerican region were divided by the creation of nation-states. New borders affected the communities, but those people found ways to adapt to the new realities and to survive despite the new divisions. Thus the Mesoamerican region has a long history of resistance to domination, defending their cultural and ethnic heritage. Some of that resistance was expressed in the 1980s with the resistance of the Miskitos in the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, which won the autonomous status of that region. In the 1990s, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico was the most important local struggle against economic globalization, but it was not the only one; Mesoamerica is endowed with many dynamic organizations committed to social justice.

Plan Puebla-Panama cannot advance without a minimal consensus of the local communities. Those populations have been strengthenng their interconnectedness - among themselves as well as with organizations in the North. For example, last December in Managua some local organizations and NGOs - such as La Red de Defensa del Consumidor (Network for the Consumer Protection), the Centro Humbolt, and the University of the Autonomous Region of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast (URACCAN) - organized a press conference to make public their opposition to PPP . Currently, PPP is on the agenda of many progressive organizations in the U.S. working with Central America and, of course, it is on WCCN’s agenda. WCCN will strive to promote a clear understanding of PPP’s implications. As always, we will do so from the perspective of the people - not the multinational corporations.

For more information about "Plan Puebla-Panama", visit the following websites:

• http://www.iadb.org/ppp [2]
• http://www.acerca.org/plan_pueblo_panama.html [3]