Indymedia Chiapas
November 23, 2001

II Forum: "Frente a la Globalizacio'n: El Pueblo es Primero" Xelaju', Guatemala

Neil Harvey, is currently doing research in Chiapas, at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologi'a Social.

IM: What do you think of the significance of this forum as far as a potential for an alliance and strengthening of solidarity between indigenous communities throughout Latin America?

NH: I think that this is a very important opportunity and listening to some of the comments in the various meetings that have been going on in the past couple of days. I think that there is a real interest and awareness that this is an opportunity not to be missed. This is a very important moment for the indigenous organizations to work together that discovering that exactly the problems, the loss of land to the big mega-projects, whether it is road building in the Pe'ten in Guatemala, or new kind of industrial parks in Central Mexico, Puebla. They're realizing that they have to work together and put forward not just opposition to the Plan Puebla Panama but concrete proposals for the kinds of development that they want.

IM: How do the amendments to Article 27, which ended land reform fit into the Plan Puebla Panama?

NH: Those amendments were made back in 1992, almost ten years now. I think they were the first step towards the privatization of land resources that have been under the control of peasants and indigenous communities in Mexico. The reforms led to privatization in areas, which have commercial potential. Already that's been happening. It opens the way for new projects under the Plan Puebla Panama to gain access to those lands and where those communities would be pressured into selling those lands, which were previously outside of the market. Plan Puebla Panama therefore builds on what Article 27 did regarding land tenure.

IM: Strategically, how necessary are the changes to Article 27 in the implementation of Plan Puebla Panama?

NH: I think very important. Before Plan Puebla Panama, the changes to Article 27 were very important for the implementation of NAFTA for investors to set up new businesses or agro-business in areas of Mexico, where peasant communities, indigenous communities were prevalent then Article 27 opened the door for that to begin. Plan Puebla Panama continued that.

IM: Communities in Chiapas, whose primary struggle has focused on land disputes, how are they seeing the Plan Puebla Panama?

NH: As yet at another attempt to reduce their ability to produce for themselves and the market on their own terms. I think that it is seen as a threat and those organizations that have often fought for land and are still fighting for access to land in order to produce for their own families and communities see the possibility of new roads, new infrastructure as clearly an opposition to what their priorities are. They feel as if they have not been consulted and it's true the plan has been drawn up far from the reality of the communities in Chiapas. And now, people expect it to simply roll over and join in the game. That's not happening. That's on of the things that the Plan Puebla Panama designers didn't take into account would be the political opposition, particularly in Chiapas but other parts of Mexico and Central America.

IM: In lieu of the threat of the Plan Puebla Panama, how do you see communities' ability to resist the Plan and to protect their plan?

NH: That's what this forum is about I guess, is to take stock of what the plan is about, what is happening so far, what the projects are, where they are and what's on it's way, but also to take stock of the status of the organizations and the organized response to this. I sense that there are many organizations represented, they said over 260 from Central America and Mexico came to this meeting, it's the second of its type and they're will be a third in Nicaragua next year. So there is this process of organization and mobilization going on. What is still lacking and we may precede this in the next day or two are a series of concrete proposals for action and to protest the Plan Puebla Panama and promote alternatives. Down on the ground, in various communities I think the level of resistance depends a lot on the level of information. That is one of the big problems everybody is noting, that information may be spread around here at this kind of meeting but we need to get into the communities in the language that is accessible and in a way that people respond to it and can see that their interests are at stake here. That takes awhile for that to occur. But if that happens, given the experience of organization particularly in Chiapas that they're would be stronger resistance.

IM: What alternatives exist to the neoliberal model for development in the agricultural sector of Mesoamerica, especially Mexico?

NH: I think they're have always been alternatives, but they have not been as well known as they should be. They are alternatives based on community organization. In the case of Mexico, in Chiapas for example, it would be small scale coffee producers who have prior to Neoliberalism were already organizing their own forms of production, and marketing in ways that cut out intermediatories and allow for those communities to retain more of the benefits from the sales of those projects and develop other activities in terms of social projects for education and health. What Neoliberalism does, I think, is not just economically puts such alternatives on the defensive but in terms of information that we know about development shoves to the corners and into the margins, what's already been in process or attempts to build up other forms of economic organization. The main difference I would see between the neoliberal models and alternative models is that the alternatives aren't just about economic issues. They have to meet some economic need, but they also involve in the best of the cases other projects as I mentioned, related to health care, education, human rights, women's participation, rights of indigenous peoples. I think that's one of the challenges of a forum like this is to strengthen those alternatives and to move the debate out of the camp of the economists and more into the realm of social justice, human rights, indigenous peoples' rights and culture. The most successful resistance in Mexico I would see as being the Zapatista movement, having created the spaces for the development of autonomous municipalities with many problems and limitations we know. But the only way in which Neoliberalism has resisted in a form that allows for alternatives to grow and to prosper is by establishing some form of autonomy, of distancing the life of the community, the priorities of the community from the priorities of the market and of establishing another mechanism to support those priorities. One of the big problems that we are finding here in this forum is that the priorities of the Plan Puebla Panama, of the Free Trade Area of the Americas that's being constructed, those priorities are not the priorities of the communities involved, that are affected. I think that there is room for alternatives to be developed, it requires again more information, more analysis, more support in solidarity. There has been various attempt to build cross border linkages for fair trade between coffee producers, for example in Chiapas in some other parts of Mexico to consumers around the world. They provide some indication of some of the possibilities.

IM: Maquiladoras play a big part of the Plan Puebla Panama in Southeast Mexico, ninety-six proposed maquiladoras for the Southern region in Mexico. It seems as if one of the functions of the maquiladoras is to begin to draw people away from the land, particularly, to draw from Zapatista communities, autonomous communities away from that land. How will these maquiladoras pose a threat, begin to desintigrate these areas and what are the benefits for these same transnational corporations that are sponsoring the maquiladoras once that land is unoccupied or more disintegrated?

NH: The benefits for the transnational corporations of having land unoccupied or available, in other hands, in private hands is to use those lands for commercial ends. For example, the production of what is being put forward now as part of the Plan Puebla Panama is the monoculture of eucalyptus plantations in Southern parts of Mexico. So far, that has been resisted in mostly Chiapas. In parts of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec it's already occurring. But those are the kinds of plantations that provide materials for the packing needs of maquiladoras, they have a commercial value. Again, the land for the communities such as the Zapatista autonomous municipalities doesn't have that commercial value it has a very different set of values and more than one value. And the main value it does have is to survive as an autonomous community, as people with the capacity to decide on their own forms of development. If the maquiladoras draw people away and disintegrate the community organization then that capacity to decide on what they want to do with their resources is lost and the land will become available for commercial ends only. That is really the logic and philosophy of Plan Puebla Panama and of NAFTA is to pursue a purely commercial logic, seeing that is the way to progress. What it does consider, is what is destroyed in the process and what it doesn't consider also is the resistance that those communities are currently mounting to.

IM: Can plans like these be seen as economic blackmail, potentially, counterinsurgency programs for specific regions within an overall region?

NH: Yes, I think that these plans, in the case of Chiapas with a clear goal of defeating the Zapatistas, as a model of development through counterinsurgency or counterinsurgency through development It's been tried in other countries where they're have been some conflicts and insurgencies. In Chiapas, it's been occurring prior to the Plan Puebla Panama. Back in 1994, as soon as the rebellion occurred, the Mexican government began with its plan, the Plan Pa~adas as part of counterinsurgency, to offer money in order to gradually to try and ware away the bases of support for the Zapatistas. It has not functioned in the way that the government would have wished. The Zapatistas are still present, they are still a political force in the country and still a point of reference for other organizations throughout the continent and throughout the world.