La Jornada
July 6, 2001
By Gilberto Lopez y Rivas

Indigenous autonomies, understood to be local and regional sociocultural entities from which a pluralistic nation and culture may be constructed from the bottom up, confront our nation's oligarchy and its modernizing neoliberal programs. The Puebla-Panama Plan is an example of the most recent projects coming out of Mexico that seek to circumvent these autonomies through a process that is authoritarian, discriminatory, and exclusionary within the globalization process. This plan has been presented by the Mexican and Centro American governments as an instrument to push development into this region, arguing that its fundamental purpose is to find palliatives in the indices of poverty and marginal existence, and to find investment that, in addition to generating sources of employment, contributes to a better commerce.

In the explanatory section of the plan, it is stated that the quality of public acceptance depends on "the information used to modify institutions, design policies, and bring about actions capable of creatively taking advantage of developmental opportunities that support the globalization of the world economy." Thereby, the plan subordinates the national plan through a globalization process that is not being defined in terms of the interests and necessities coming from the widest sectors of the Mexican society.

The proponents of the plan proclaim that the Mexican economy has accomplished an active incorporation into the new world dynamic thanks to the free trade agreements the Mexican government signed with the U.S. and with the European Union and Central American nations. At no point was there any questioning about the conditions of inequality and disparity between the participating countries of such trade agreements. While it is argued that thanks to these agreements there exists "an indisputable economic and social development," at the same time, there is recognition that there are great disparities between some regions. So, in addition to postulating unclear economic growth and development, it intents to alleviate the disparities between the poorest zones of Mexico and Central America with the same economic model used to establish the trade agreements mentioned. Those who elaborated the Puebla-Panama Plan failed to mention that Mexico has suffered a considerable rise in the last decade of the number of people who live in extreme poverty. From 20 million poor existing in 1994, the number doubled to 40 millions by the year 2000. But this situation doesn't worry the federal government, except for the possibility that social conflicts may arise from poverty and marginalization.

In the context of the Puebla-Panama Plan, the indigenous populations and communities are considered the main work force susceptible of being exploited and abused by the big partnerships of national and transnational capital who have staked their interests in the big "bonanzas" of future investments in the region. In addition to causing a major pauperization of the most humble sectors of the population, the consequence of an economic plan of this nature brings with it a replacement of local and despotic oligarchies with oligarchies that are economically powerful financiers.

According to the government, the Puebla-Panama Plan has the intentions of generating "new public policies for the human development in the struggles against poverty, promotion of investments and productive developments, the fulfillment of strategic investments in the infrastructure that will permit the region to communicate more effectively and take advantage of the possibilities inscribed in the Mexican free trade agreements, a new policy on prices and tariffs on goods and services produced by the public sector, and programs to ensure a sustainable environment for economic growth." But if these were really the genuine intentions for this plan, it wouldn't explain why there was a breaking-off of the dialogue with the EZLN on the part of this administration and congress after imposing an indigenous law that would violate the words and the spirit of the San Andreas Accords. If the government truly were advocating for the development of the indigenous population and communities, the approval of the Cocopan laws would've been pushed through. But that wasn't the case, among other things, because it's approval would have generated important obstacles for the regional development project contemplated in the Puebla-Panama Plan. The fact that the indigenous populations and communities would have a say through their autonomy about the utilization of their natural resources, the communication systems, and the local governments, would not be compatible, in the absolute, with a project that includes the exploitation of natural resources on a grand scale, and the construction of superhighways and telecommunications.

From the point of view of the EZLN and the indigenous population, it is by principal threatening. For them the Puebla-Panama Plan could bring brief sources of employment, but in the long run it would become one more bastion of exclusion that has characterized the economic model that governs us. On the other hand, for the federal government, the plan signifies an opportunity for the Mexico of the great corporations to be inserted as the Central American hegemonic force in the global economy. With regional developments, the sovereignty, defined as the ability of a people to procure laws and self-governance, is eradicated to give place to economic powers that are ever more disassociated from the daily interests of the majority of the people, particularly those of the indigenous populations.

Translated from Spanish by Gene Ventura on November 30, 2001