Ninety-eight global organizations protested against the Plan Puebla Panama, Plan Colombia, and the FTAA.

They oppose the construction of cams at the expense of rivers and villages in the region. They cry out for the application of justice against those responsible for State-imposed genocide.

La Jornada
March 31, 2002
By Hermann Bellinghausen

San Cristóbal de la Casas, Chiapas (March 30, 2002) - In the context of the growing indigenous resistance ot cross-border plans for development in Mexico and Central America, 98 organizations from many countries assembled in the Cooperative Union Maya Itza, Guatemala, in the Mesoamerican Forum for Life. They protested against plans to build dams at the expense of the great rivers and the rural communities of Mesoamerica. The organizations demanded "water, light and land for the rural communities." They also declared themselves against commercial treaties such as the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), designed and agreed to on the shoulders of the communities that will be affected.

According to the forum, which met the 21 to 23 of March, "between 40 and 80 million people in the world have been displaced by the construction of these projects. The projects have been created to benefit groups with economic power with the support of international and multilateral financial institutions. These projects are also closely linked to the harmful actions proposed in the PPP, Plan Colombia, commercial treaties and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

We contest that these projects completely breech environmental and natural resource legislation at the national and international level, and so we are obligated to adopt resistance methods of struggle and to reiterate the validity of alternative proposals that might come from rural villages.

The Mesoamerican Forum agreed to oppose the construction of dams, "because of the fact that they alter the natural course of rivers, they flood and displace communities located within the flood basin. Dams destroy sacred and historic spaces, as well as causing the death of ecosystems and their great biodiversity. Dams also violate the right to self-determination of indigenous communities.

The construction of dams must be stopped, they said,"the construction flagrantly violated the self-determination of the communities living in our territories, and also affect the inheritance and world view of the indigenous communities of the region."

The 98 organizations present called all communities of Latin America "to continue their popular resistance against the construction of dams and neo-liberal politics that accompany the dams. Likewise, the organizations renounced and condemned the institutions that had financed the dam projects (the World Bank, International Development Fund, Central American Bank for Economic Integration), the governments that endorse the projects, and the Transnational Corporations "linked to this dirty business" (AES, Union Fenosa, Endesa, Harza, among others). The organizations emphasized, in particular, their rejection of the construction of any dam on the Usumacinta river, between Mexico and Guatemala, "because it will seriously damage the communities and ecosystems within its flood basin."

In the same way the organizations rejected any project related to the generation of hydroelectricity in the framework of the PPP. They determined that "the evacuation plan of the Mesoamerican mountains, especially of those mountains that comprise the biological corridor of Mesoamerica, is and inseparable part of the regional planes to occupy basins and construct dams."

The Forum demanded in their declaration all these statements and, "prompt and complete justice for those responsible for State-imposed genocide, and the corresponding reparation of damages cause to those affected by the dams. And that the persecution, intimidation, forced disappearances, death threats and dislocation strategies in communities and organizations must end." They demanded that national governments cease the imposition of these projects that are not supported by the communities and villages.

The delegates, assembled in Peten, Guatemala, expressed their solidarity with Latin American movements that struggle against the dams: Usumacinta en Guatemala-Mexico; Chaparral en Frontera; Intibuca in El Salvador-Honduras; Izantun and El Cajon in Mexico; La Maroma in El Salvador; Susuma in Honduras; El Tigre on the border between El Salvador-Honduras; Chalillo in Belize; Bayano and Tabasara in Panama; and Guigui in the Dominican Republic.

Finally, they declared their rejection of complimentary projects related to biopiracy, commercial treaties and intellectual property. The declaration was signed by organizations from Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and the Dominican Republic. Organizations from the United States, Spain, and Italy also participated.

This may indicate that only fifty organizations from Mexico and Guatemala, many of which in deep resistance struggles, comprised more than half of the participants in the Forum and came from mainly indigenous regions in the various countries.