Carlos Fazio
Spring 2001

The Puebla Panama Plan (PPP) is part of a comprehensive program combining political, economic and military interventionism. Official propaganda and rhetoric, however, have presented it as a plan that will bring peace, development and new jobs to the region of southeast Mexico and Central America.

The PPP is a genuine expression of contemporary capitalism and, as such, is part of a vast and renewed process of privatization and transnationalism in southeast Mexico and in the whole of Central America. Strictly speaking, it is part of the United States' imperial geopolitical strategy for the continent. Participants include sectors of finance capital, multinational consortia and Mexican and Central American oligarchies. One of the principal objectives of the project is to assure the exploitation of labor and strategic resources in the region as well as to ensure market penetration by U.S.-based transnational corporations.

The PPP, with intellectual origins in the United States, is not a new project. Rather it represents the second phase of the old geopolitical plan of the Reagan era , set in motion by the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Since 1994, NAFTA has been overseen by the U.S. and now appears to be a kind of Trojan Horse offered by the Bush administration, the first step in creating the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) set to begin in 2005. In the new phase of imperial expansionism, the FTAA (which will cover the area from Alaska to Patagonia) is the tool that the U.S. needs in its 'interimperial' competition for markets with Europe and Japan. The government headed by Vicente Fox will play a subordinate role to the interests of the White House, Wall Street and multinational corporations based in the United States. The job given to Fox is that of 'recruiter' or 'salesman' for the oligarchies of the region.

The Fox administration's rush to launch the Puebla Panama Plan had less to do with national priorities than with U.S. interests as it was faced with the Presidential Summit of the Americas in Quebec last April. In secret negotiations and with the complicity of several governments of the region, Washington began to exert pressure beginning in the middle of last year to move the date of the FTAA's launch from 2005 to 2003. The PPP was intended to be a positive example of development and job creation programs.

As with Plan Columbia, the aim of the U.S. with the PPP is to intervene in Mexico's political and social conflicts and to allow transnational oil companies (closely linked to the Bush administration) to enter Mexico and greatly increase their profits. The U.S. would also like to accelerate the process of privatizing airports, seaports, electric power, water, gas Pemex (Petroleos Mexicanos). Other aims include new agrarian reforms designed to protect large landholders involved in agribusiness and large-scale ranching to the detriment of indigenous property owners in southeastern Mexico. Eventually, the U.S. hopes to have unrestricted access to the raw materials and enormous wealth and biodiversity of the Lacandon Jungle, The Chimalapas in Oaxaca and the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor which extends to Pananma.

Since the days of Miguel de la Madrid, Washington has considered everything that happens in Mexico to be a matter of domestic importance. In this sense, the PPP is a response to strategic and national U.S. security interests such as free access to oil, natural gas, electricity and water as well as the interdiction of drugs and illegal immigrants. Control of internal markets for the benefit of multinational corporations is also defined as as being a matter of U.S. national security. At the same time, the plan represents part of the Pentagon's strategic repositioning in Latin America in response to growing discontent with neoliberal policies and the possibility of outbreaks of violence. Militarization and paramilitarization, under U.S. supervision, of states like Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero is another response. Another is the precaution of deploying 12,000 U.S. troops in Guatemala - an obvious attempt at containing the Zapatistas and other guerillas in southern Mexico.

Statements made by several government officials, including Interior Minister Santiago Creel, attest to the fact that the military/repressive component of the PPP is geared toward counterinsurgency efforts. Creel said as much in an article published in the June 18, 2001 edition of The Washington Post. For his part, Florencio Salaazar, considered to be most responsible for the project, admitted that the project will be applied to a region that suffers from a high level of economic marginalization and the potential for social conflict. Historically, the region has been a breeding ground for armed guerilla groups. These factors combined represent a serious threat to the integration of all areas of the country. The old ghost of 'balkanization' or a supposed tendency toward separatism has resurfaced. The Fox administration, joined by legislators from the National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), blames the Zapatista movement.

A vital matter for the United States regarding internal consumption and industrial growth is energy. Energy was a top priority in the Declaration of Mexico issued at the Hemispheric Conference of Energy Ministers which took place here at the beginning of the year. The matter was taken up again at the Quebec Summit by President Bush when he brought up the old idea of integrating the energy networks of the countries of North America. Such an alliance between 'the shark and the sardine' is a way of concealing the fact that energy from the other countries will flow to the seat of imperial power. This is considered to be a way for the U.S. to safeguard its national security interests and is another facet of the old Common Petroleum Market of the North instituted by Ronald Reagan in the early eighties. This common market was based on the petroleum reserves of Mexico and Canada and was a prelude to NAFTA.

Three key instruments of in the implementation of the PPP are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). These three institutions, all based in Washington, are part of the international financial framework that James Petras refers to as the "imperial foreign legion". They are the institutions that, in the eighties, were used by the White House and Wall Street creditors to impose on our countries the 'noose' known as external or foreign debt. Jacques Rogazinski, the Salinas administration's privatization "wizard" and current director general of the Inter-American Development Corporation (which is dependent on the Inter-American Development Bank), announced on March 4 that his institution would commit "important resources" to developing a regional business infrastructure as part of the process of regional integration. The IADB will initially contribute some two billion dollars to the PPP. Last year, Mexico received 10 billion dollars or 25 per cent of IADB funds destined for the region. In this sense, the PPP is a project that will serve to obtain more credit, or put another way, to amass more debt. Washington will continue to use debt as an instrument of domination in the service of its imperial ambitions.

The PPP - Imperial Mare Nostrum

In Mexico, the Puebla Panama Plan is the continuation of a globalization and development project implemented by the local financial oligarchy using 'recipes' from the World Bank, the IMF and the IADB. Rhetoric and Orwellian discourse aside, the project represents a renewed process of unfettered colonization in southeastern Mexico. It is a new top-down, authoritarian imposition of power on workers and campesinos with the imprimatur of the Fox administration.

For its part, after the signing of NAFTA, Mexico has subscribed to a series of treaties and agreements on regional cooperation. It has also signed free trade accords with several countries in the region. In the 'brave new world' of the PPP - which will span the area from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico to Puerto Colon in Panama - member states will have to coordinate and harmonize regulatory frameworks, market deregulation, the lifting of restrictions on competition, removal of entry barriers to markets and the modification of pricing policies, tariffs and subsidies (to the poor). Following the launch of the project in El Salvador and Panama last May, Fox became the administrator of the sub-regional changarro or shop, the cacique in charge of seeing that reforms are carried out.

Without the involvement of an organized and coordinated opposition in Mexico and Central America it is foreseeable that after long-term adjustments and the implementation of an exclusive model based on specialization, U.S. corporations will take control of sectors of the economy that produce valuable processed, or value- added, goods. This will mean that local manufacturing and agribusiness firms will become little more than assemblers and suppliers of raw materials and unprocessed agricultural products. Moreover, once local production has been eliminated U.S. suppliers will be able to dictate prices.

Regarding its Mexican component, the PPP at this stage is conceived of as an infrastructure building project that conforms to a national security plan. According to the small amount of official information available, one of the short-term objectives of the PPP will be the creation of inter-modal transportation corridors that integrate road, sea and rail transport. This will be in conjunction with the renovation of airports in the area and the installation of gas lines and assembly plants with the goal of creating a production network.

One of the basic components of the PPP is the "integration" of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrow 'waist' of Mexico that touches the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The U.S. has coveted the isthmus for nearly two hundred years. According to official documents, the entire Mexican component of the project revolves around this area of geopolitical importance. The Isthmus Zone will become an area that serves U.S. export companies on the Atlantic side while the Pacific side will become a center of production for the Pacific Rim, the motor of today's global economy. When the project is complete, the Gulf of Mexico will have become a mare nostrum for imperial interests.

Fox's Social Changarrismo

Another aspect of the plan is the ideology of social changarrismo. (translator's note: the term changarrismo comes from Fox's famous comment that what indigenous people in Mexico need is "tv, Volkswagens and changarros". Loosely translated, changarros are 'mom and pop' businesses). Changarrismo attempts to mask a policy of hyper-exploitation of the indigenous Mayan workforce. That Mexico is destined to become a nation of assemblers is implicit in the Puebla Panama Plan. This vision of the future is based on, among other things, the "comparative advantage" of an abundant supply of unskilled workers, or put another way, cheap labor. This reserve army that exists in the outlying areas of the world today works in conditions comparable to those of the 19th century meaning semi-slavery according to Noam Chomsky. This serves the interests of the maquiladora owners who threaten to abandon the belt of assembly plants along the northern border due to "high production costs, excessive regulation, the rising cost of labor and a substandard infrastructure".

As Theotonio dos Santos has explained, according to the fundamentalist rationality of neoliberalism, the cost of labor limits investment. The more that work is unskilled and workers are interchangeable the better it is for investment. In accord with this thinking, President Fox will seek to keep maquiladoras from leaving the country by giving the Southeast special status that will include fiscal exemptions and subsidies ( in the form of industrial parks, energy and highways) for businesses that locate in the area. Businesses will be offered an abundant supply of workers at rock-bottom wages and without benefits. The organization of special areas that contribute raw materials, capital and cheap labor is a demonstration of one of the essential formulae of the current hegemonic model sanctified with the passing of NAFTA: unregulated movement of capital and goods but not of workers. A formula for domination for the purpose of exploitation might look like this: deregulation/cheap labor/access to markets/natural resources/accumulation and repatriation of capital. The 'atomized' worker, unable to act collectively or in solidarity with others, works to produce profits that will be transferred to the headquarters of multinational corporations or will go toward payment of the external debt.

Around the world, the "free market" requires increasing militarization of borders in order to impede the movement of migrant workers. This is linked to the "flexibility of the labor market", an essential component of all World Bank programs. It is the bank's most important "reform" even though the institution admits that it has a "bad reputation". In reality, "flexibility" is a euphemism that alludes to the reduction of wages and the dismissal of workers. The World Bank continues to demand the elimination of barriers to the movement of workers and the flexibility of wages. But, as Chomsky explains, this doesn't mean that workers will be able to go wherever they wish. Instead it means that workers will be freely dismissed from their jobs. " They want to eliminate barriers in order to throw people out of their jobs and attain a flexibility of wages that translates to downward flexibility for workers, not upward mobility.". One of the greatest contradictions of the current world economy stems from this: the unskilled workforce has not been "globalized". There are more restrictions on crossing international borders today than there were in 1913. The new "humanitarian" policy, a Fox administration 'gem', has been declared a great "achievement". It will allow the U.S. Border Patrol to fire 'pepper launch' rubber bullets at migrant workers trying to cross the border illegally. These bullets use a powder that irritates the eyes and lungs. This is one of the "compromises" obtained from the State Department by Jorge Castañeda.

In tandem with the U.S. militarization of the northern border and as part of these "compromises", Mexico will add two more militarized barriers in order to contain internal and external migration according to Interior Minister Santiago Creel. In the June 18, 2001 edition of The Washington Post Creel confirmed that together with the "reinforcement" of the southern frontier " elite units" of the army and police will be deployed in the most critical areas of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This explains the navy's counterinsurgency courses and the training of elite army units by Guatemala's elite counterinsurgency unit and self-styled "messengers of death" known as the Kaibils.

As was subsequently publicized in the midst of a controversy, the first migratory filter (Plan Sur) will be established along the border with Belize and Guatemala. It will be used to contain and regulate the flow of illegal workers from Central and South America crossing Mexico en route to the United States. The second wall will be installed along the Coatzacoalcos-Salina Cruz corridor which traverses the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This will be used to intercept and regulate Mexican workers traveling in their own country. In this way, the old wish of ultraconservative Republican "think tanks" will come true - moving the maquiladora belt from the northern border to central Mexico (Santa Fe Document II, 1990). This is to say that the Puebla Panama Plan will be used as an instrument to contain immigration. This is what Mexican and U.S. officials define as a project to regulate a "secure and ordered immigration" as part of "a shared responsibility". A triple sealing of borders ( the Coatzacoalcos-Salina Cruz corridor will be the dividing line between the two Mexico's, north and south) will allow the flow of "free trade" ( goods and capital) but not of workers. Fox will be doing the dirty work for the United States.

The Face of Counterinsurgency

The Puebla Panama Plan also hides a process of agrarian counter-reform linked to the destruction of agricultural industries initiated by the Salinas administration. As shown in the draft documents of the PPP, the plan will begin new reforms of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution with the goal of disposing of land currently part of the ejido system or being held communally. Once privatized, these lands will be used for plantation-type agricultural which requires vast amounts of land in order to be farmed in a scientific way. This process will bring about a new regime of large landholders, benefiting multinational, national and foreign monopolies and oligopolies. These groups propose to control world food production. A hidden part of the PPP is allowing the biopiracy of multinationals and foundations such as DuPont, Pulsar, Monsanto, Novartis and Diversa. The widely publicized policy of social changarrismo and agrarian counter-reform are two sides of the same coin. As we have seen, with the carrot of "development" and "job creation" the PPP attempts to convert indigenous campesinos of the Southeast into super-exploited wage earners in urban and semi-urban maquiladoras or in single-crop plantations that will produce crops for export. One of the prime objectives of such a policy is to force indigenous campesinos from the country to the city ("deruralization" in the vocabulary of the project) with the aim of separating them from their land and the natural resources that lie on top of and below it.

Another "novel" formula contained within the PPP is the "association" of investors like Romo, Slim and Zambrano, all multimillionaires listed by Forbes magazine, with regional farmers whether they come from the ejidos, communal lands or own their own property. According to the plan, farmers will be able to put up their land as capital and will have the option of working it for a salary. Once again we have 'the shark and the sardine'.

The Puebla Panama Plan is the antithesis of the San Andres Accords, partially reflected in the Cocopa Law which motivated President Fox but was "whittled down" by the duo of Cavallos and Bartlett in the Mexican Senate. The law was altered in a way that was very beneficial to large landholders and investors. The PPP is part of the final phase of the counterinsurgency plan for Chiapas and other majority indigenous states, especially Guerrero and Oaxaca. This model, more visible in Chiapas due to the international response to the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), began with repression, psychological warfare and civic action followed by a military siege of extermination, silence, hunger, dirty war and paramilitarization. The ultimate repression, which seemed to be a kind of paralyzing "lesson", consisted of the massacres at Acteal, Aguas Blancas, El Charco and El Bosque.

Now, when the army has set up a siege of annihilation around Zapatista strongholds in Chiapas and has prepared military bases at San Quentin and Tonina for rapid deployment troops, Fox insists on signing the "pacification" with the EZLN. As Jorge Castañeda said in Madrid on January 28, the PPP "is the corollary to peace".

This is why the work of pacification is now combined with "development" which will generate investment from international capital which has always hated concepts of Mexican foreign policy that have their basis in the Constitution., concepts such as self determination and peaceful resolution of conflicts. This is why the rulers of Mexico see indigenous autonomy and self-determination as a threat. They call it "balkanization" and "separatism". In this context and with the maxim "he who pays, rules" - which in this case should be "he who invests, commands" - in mind, the PPP is set to destroy the social fabric that binds communities together and to eliminate the rebellious Indians' right to autonomy. The "consultations" with communities said to be part of the PPP, the famous synergies, are a myth. Capitalism, which is today more savage and depraved than ever, seeks to concentrate capital not to bring about social progress. It was against this same oligarchy that the EZLN took up arms in 1994. It was against the alienation created by NAFTA and the free ride given to large landowners by the counter-reforms of Article 27.

Peace in Chiapas exists because the Cocopa Law was passed. It will continue to build with the discussion of the important topics of San Andres. If not, there will be no just or dignified peace. Among the pending and fundamental matters for the indigenous campesinos that met in Nurio, Michoacan as the Zapatistas marched on the capital was the national agrarian or land crisis. Yes, it is necessary to reform Article 27of the Constitution. But not in the way proposed by the PPP. Instead, it should reclaim the spirit of Emiliano Zapata, summed up by two simple demands: The Land Belongs to the People Who Work It! and Land and Freedom!

Carlos Fazio is a correspondent for the Buenos Aires daily Clarin and for the Montevideo weekly Brecha. He is also co-editor of UNESCO's Dialago magazine and a consultant to UNICEF and UNESCO.

Translated from Spanish by Shannon Stice on December 5, 2001.