IRC Americas Program Special Report
The Plan Puebla-Panama Revived:
Looking Back To See What's Ahead
By Miguel Pickard | June 2004
Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
www.americaspolicy.org
During a tour of three Central American countries last March 24-26,
Mexican President Vicente Fox formally relaunched the Plan
Puebla-Panama (PPP). Originally launched in Mexico with great fanfare
in March 2001, the Plan had since languished for a year and a half,
dying according to some, dead according to others. The
announcement of the ambitious plan for the economic integration of
the region immediately sparked controversy but remained pegged to the
drawing board as the government stalled on implementation and
government offices maintained silence regarding its true intent and
probable future.
How has the PPP actually evolved over the past three years' What
impact has the opposition among civil society groups throughout
Mesoamerica had' Can the relaunch, replete with a new designer image
created with the help of marketing experts, really revive the Plan'
Finally, what lessons have grassroots movements learned from the
PPP'1
The PPP hatches 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, consisting of the nine southeastern states of Mexico and
seven Central American republics. This region 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. Private investment, together with the capital,
technology and jobs it brings, will supposedly lead to "development."
To stimulate these decisions, PPP infrastructure projects are
designed to overcome the bottlenecks that might cut into companies'
profits and provide incentives for investment.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.4
Early on, it was clear to many civil society groups in Mexico and
Central America that the infrastructure projects scheduled under the
PPP were not concerned with social development. These groups reject
the notion that 'development' is the exclusive reserve of bureaucrats
and the private sector, and demand a perspective that takes into
account who benefits, who pays, and who decides the nature of
development.
Plainly put, it's also a question of democracy. If most of the
funding is to come from public coffers, and if taxpayers will be
required to pay off loans, plus interest, for generations, 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.5 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 nine million indigenous people who live in the
region. Their cultures, local economies and conditions are scarcely
considered, despite the fact that many communities have lived in the
area for millennia.
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, an important catalyst for compelling Mexicans and
Central Americans to think beyond local and national issues and
overcome their separation.
The PPP made it evident that the corporate globalization driving this
type of mega project affects all countries, albeit in different ways,
and therefore grassroots groups should 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 with similar nationwide coordinating bodies in Central
America and with anti-neoliberal groups throughout the hemisphere.
Elitist in its origin, undemocratic in its implementation, promoter
of corporate interests, exclusive of social concerns, particularly of
indigenous people, it's no wonder that the PPP stoked the embers of
grassroots resistance. Grassroots activism throughout the PPP area
soon led the Fox government to backpedal. 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. In July 2003 Subcommander Marcos repeated
the message of resistance, 'At the very least in the mountains of
southeastern Mexico, its implementation will not be permitted for any
reason.'6
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
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 mega
projects.
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 mega
projects by imposition and decree, would never work. The option most
feared, violence from police forces, was eschewed by the government,
given Fox's image abroad as a reformer and the prospect of a
prolonged and politically costly conflict with local residents.
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.
At first the new office claimed it did not even have funds for a
locale. Likewise, the first PPP coordinator, the controversial
Florencio Salazar, was fired and later accused of disseminating
'erratic and inaccurate information' on the PPP in its first year.7 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 of reductions
in 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 from national coffers and/or through the limited 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.
For 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 blockage, delay or cancellation. In fact, this occurred on
several occasions when organized communities blocked highways and
infrastructure projects throughout the PPP 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 not to call attention to them. Once
finished and inaugurated, the projects could be attributed to the
PPP, 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 what they called 'misinformation,' delays in
financing, and 'centralism' inherent in the project. Governors
largely objected to the PPP not because they disagreed with the aims
but due to the 'marginalization to which they had been subjected in
the decision-making process.'8
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.'9
At the official launching of Mexico's portion of the Mesoamerican
Biological Corridor, 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 nine 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 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 6th Meeting of the Tuxtla Mechanism for
Dialogue 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 for 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 regarding 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 Central American leaders in Managua,
he declared: 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. Teodocio
Angel, a member of UCIZONI, an indigenous-rights organization in the
Isthmus of Tehuantepec, who participated in one such 'consultation'
in December 2003, agrees. 'It was all rigged' says Angel, since 'the
majority of the nearly 100 participants at the December meeting were
CONADEPI employees, or beneficiaries of CONADEPI handouts. They
loaded the auditorium with their own people and asked leading
questions such as 'Would you approve if the PPP were to bring greater
funding for your region'' 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 now 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,
which straddles Chiapas and Guatemala, the official line from the PPP
is to deny that the Plan has anything to do with dams.16 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%), coincides with the relabeling of certain projects and general
reductions imposed by the Secretary of the Treasury (SHCP).18 Certain
construction projects no longer labeled as part of the PPP continue
to advance, with funds channeled through the ministry in charge.
So what is the official budget for the entire PPP region and what
does it cover? 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
consortium of NGOs, 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 mega projects 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
As seen in the figures, highway construction takes top priority
within the PPP, and this has been true since its inception. One of
the most strategic links 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 will be
connected directly to the United States by modern toll roads, to be
run through private concessions. 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 to advance the
strategic interests of the United States.
There may be more consultations in the future but so far they lack
substance. Grassroots discontent and rejection of the PPP will
persist, but today the task before the Plan's administrators will be
to channel it towards vacuous and innocuous exercises. An example 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.sre.gob.mx/index.php) with
a virtual forum where visitors can express their opinions on the PPP.
Opinions expressed there are largely critical of the PPP, but this
channel of expression, along with merely cosmetic consultations is
not likely to change anything.
Will the PPP endure beyond 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. The Plan today, he states,
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 complement 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 and
expressed in NAFTA, FTAA or the WTO.
The grassroots movements will have to focus on these wider issues, to
disseminate information and awareness to greater sectors of the
population. The details of the PPP'its specific projects and changing
budgets'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 go beyond the PPP,
NAFTA or the FTAA.
The larger problem 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 21st century.'28
Canadian, Mexican and Latin American citizens must recognize and
respond to the threat to sovereignty and liberty inherent in 'deep
integration'. The PPP provides a case study for educating and
alerting civil society to the negative impact of top-down economic
integration on our lives in the short term. But most importantly, it
shows the urgent need to link these plans to the future that awaits
us all under neoliberalism if these plans are not perhaps the most
urgent task at hand.
Miguel Pickard is an economist and researcher, co-founder of CIEPAC
(Centro de Investigaciones Económicas y Políticas de Acción
Comunitaria www.ciepac.org) in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas,
Mexico and an analyst with the IRC Americas Program. A previous
version of this article was published in La Chronique des Amériques
Avril 2004 No 12.
Resources for this article can be viewed at:
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/mexico/2090.html
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