Mexico
Zapatistas challenge rape of the rainforest
As the Zapatista march makes 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 penisula .
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 globalisation as an opportunity, but we’ve got to seek globalisation with human and environmental quality,".
Protestors 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 ninety per cent of Mexican Indians have no sewerage, sixty per cent 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 globalisation 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 US$9 billion. It is the economic side of a counter-insurgency plan whose military face is the low intensity war against the Zapatistas.
The central idea of the programme, 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 (sweat-shop) industries.
The Plan was originally devised by a member of the previous PRI government and is now being supervised by multi-millionaire 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" (see www.ciepac.org/analysis/pulsar for more information on Pulsar).
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 Centre 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 countries surface water which generates 45 per cent of its hydroelectric power is found there.
More than half of the species of Mexican tropical trees, 3,500 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 PRI 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 further hydroelectric dams and the privatisation 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 is would involve the " modernisation" of the transport infrastructure (trains, roads, airports) in order to facilitate the extraction of goods and resources and their removal from the area.
In fact road building programmes have already started in Chiapas for this purpose – as well as to make containment of the EZLN easier for the government and right ring paramilitaries.
The second stage is a concerted drive towards agricultural modernisation to increase exports (which includes 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 "modernisation" 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 seach for individual profit regardless of cost which are intergral to the plan.
Ironically of course 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.