Socialist Action /April 2001
Mexico's Plan to Rape the Rainforest
By SUSAN MOORE
As the Zapatista march made its way from the Lacandon
rainforest in Chiapas to Mexico City, Mexican President Vincente Fox addressed
big business at the World Economic Forum meeting at the tourist resort of
Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula.
Speaking at the end of a two-day meeting organized
by the World Economic Forum to discuss the financial and political future
of his country, Fox stated: "We see globalization as an opportunity,
but we've got to seek globalization with human and environmental quality,".
Protesters marked this gathering of the Forum in
the same way as they did its recent gathering in Davos-with demonstrations
which were attacked by riot police. The World Economic Forum is a key symbol
of unfettered markets and borderless trade which leaves much of the world's
population mired in poverty.
Today 90 percent of Mexican Indians have no sewage,
60 percent no running water. For the Mexican establishment the key issue
at stake at the Forum was a new neoliberal offensive in the shape of the
infamous Plan Puebla-Panama. This project aims to kill two birds with one
stone: promoting economic globalization and undermining the Zapatista struggle
for autonomy.
Plan Puebla-Panama aims to turn the area between
Puebla (just south of Mexico City) and Panama into a "development corridor"
in order to integrate these regions into the global economy, and has a budget
of $9 billion. It is the economic side of a counterinsurgency plan whose
military face is the low-intensity war against the Zapatistas.
The central idea of the program, according to its
supporters, is to create the economic conditions for the inhabitants of
this region-primarily subsistence farmers-to work in the oil, tourism, and
maquiladora (sweatshop) industries.
The plan was originally devised by a member of
the previous PRI government and is now being supervised by multimillionaire
Alfonso Romo, president of the agro-biotechnology transnational Grupo Pulsar.
Referring to the Chiapas part of this project, Romo has stated that it is
"the one I like best out of all my business enterprises." Romo
has a joint project in association with Conservation International (of which
he is a board member) in the Lacandon rainforest, allegedly for conservation
purposes.
According to Miguel Pickard, from the Center for
Economic Research and Community Action Policies (CIEPAC), it is likely that
behind these so-called environmentally-friendly projects lurk "biopiracy"
activities-the robbery of medicinal plants and knowledge for patents by
transnational corporations.
The Lacandon rainforest hosts key resources in
terms of water, oil, and biodiversity. According to the World Bank, Chiapas
is an "interesting experimental field in biotechnology and biodiversity
for business investors."
The rainforest covers 1.9 million hectares, and
25 per cent of the country's surface water, which generates 45 percent of
its hydroelectric power, is found there. More than half of the species of
Mexican tropical trees, 3500 plant species, 114 of mammals, and 345 of birds
have their home in this area.
Since 1997 the forest has been partly under Zapatista
control. Clearly both the previous PRl government and Fox's administration
are extremely unhappy that the EZLN's presence prevents them from pillaging
this natural wealth in the way they would like. There are also plans for
more hydroelectric dams and the privatization of water supplies, which would
be very difficult to carry through with the present relationship of forces
in Chiapas.
The Mexican side of the project has four stages.
The first would involve the "modernization" of the transportation
infrastructure (trains, roads, airports) in order to facilitate the extraction
of goods and resources and their removal from the area.
In fact, road-building programs have already started
in Chiapas for this purpose-as well as to make containment of the EZLN easier
for the government and right-wing paramilitaries. The second stage is a
concerted drive towards agricultural modernization to increase exports (including
biotechnology).
The third is support for small and medium-sized
businesses, and attracting companies to the region, including maquiladoras.
The last is to exploit the potential of the region as a tourist attraction,
principally through more road construction.
It is clear that this "modernization"
of Chiapas can only take place if many of the indigenous communities of
the area are driven out, in contradiction with the spirit of the San Andres
Accords, which the Fox government claims to genuinely wish to implement.
The Zapatistas, on the other hand, defend the communal
ways of the communities of the forest, which are so counterposed to the
relentless search for individual profit regardless of cost that is integral
to the plan.
Ironically, such initiatives as the Plan Puebla-Panama
may actually serve to increase support for the Zapatistas as it is so evident
that the only ones who will benefit from such schemes are multinational
corporations and their friends in government.
Socialist Action /April 2001 |