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What is the Puebla Panama Plan?

FeaturesWhat is the Puebla Panama Plan?

PLAN PUEBLA PANAMA (PPP)

WHAT IS THE PPP?

The Puebla Panama Plan (PPP) is defined as a sustainable and integral development project, created and proposed by Mexican president Vicente Fox. It is directed to the southern states of Mexico, (Campeche, Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Veracruz and Yucatán) and the Central American countries (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama). It proposes to re-launch the Mexico-Central America cooperation, consolidating the commercial opening scheme, managing resources for infrastructure of common interest, strengthening and expanding the institutional mechanisms for policy coordination.

This project began its formal march in San Salvador on the occasion of the Extraordinary Summit on “Mechanisms of Dialogue and Agreement of Tuxtla”. Its priority is, according to its proponents, “to contribute to raising the standard of living of the inhabitants” of the region with the character of promotion and management of investment-generating employment, in addition to the modernization of infrastructure, to facilitate integration processes. According to the agreement of the Central American and Mexican presidents, within the framework of what the PPP stipulates, it undertakes to promote the so-called “Mesoamerican Initiatives”. It contains eight components, in thefollowing order:

•     Sustainable development
•     Human development
•     Prevention and mitigation of natural disasters
•     Promotion of tourism
•     Facilitation of commercial exchange
•     Road integration
•     Energy interconnection
•     Integration of telecommunications services

The PPP is part of the capital expansion strategy that responds to the neoliberal globalization, which seeks to implement a LACA (ALCA).

What implications does it have in our reality?

The conception of the PPP is antidemocratic; the Central American governments approved a design prepared by the Mexican government as intermediary of the North American government for the region. It is a prefabricated geopolitical project that seeks to build in Mesoamerica an area of   services and infrastructure, designed from the logic of transnational corporations, national oligarchic groups and international financial organizations which gives place to the violation of the sovereignty of the countries and the self-determination of the peoples, because it deprives them of their right to participate in decision-making processes.

The PPP also takes up severely questioned projects due to its environmental and social risks, as well as lacking effective mechanisms of social participation. It is an exclusive, illegal and illegitimate economic model that violates the compromises of contents in the Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), ratified by most of the countries of Mesoamerica.

There is no consideration of the rights of national workers and migrants and generations of repressive policies towards them. It promotes the construction of infrastructure works such as reservoirs in rivers, transport terminals, bridges, etc., which cause disastrous consequences such as the destruction of forests, expulsion of the indigenous and peasant population from their lands, impact on the environment… This megaproject, at the service of the transnationals, does not take into account the needs in terms of human, economic, social and cultural rights of our peoples, but instead facilitates the privatization of basic public services (electricity, potable water, telephone services, social protection), and strategic natural resources (water, oil, forests, biodiversity, etc.). The execution of this plan will include proposing the opening of the markets and the generation of the processes of production of merchandise, putting at risk the alimentary security, with the use of seeds of genetically modified products and the use of agrochemicals, because the transformation and the commercialization of food products is in the hands of millionaire companies that seek to profit from the misery of the people.

The PPP is part of a strategy of expansion of the capital and neoliberal globalization, as well as being an important complement for the realization of the LACA (ALCA), which seeks to maintain relations of dependency and underdevelopment, to subject our peoples to a model of regional development based on the maquiladoras. They only consider us sources of raw materials and cheap labor for the dominant countries that do not allow us to take off.

Despite the rejection of the Zapatistas, they will inaugurate Plan Puebla Panamá
11/3/01

MEREDITH SERRACIN

Mexico City – Although the column of Zapatistas who left their refuge in Tuxtla Gutiérrez three weeks ago to reach the center of the Mexican capital, changing arms for flowers, the language of “Sub-commandant Marcos”, sometimes poetic, sometimes aggressive, he continues to preach an agenda charged with ideology and populist causes. Radical on the eve of his entry into Mexico City, the Zapatista caravan towards the Mexico City Congress crossed the Zapata insurgent route warning its main protagonist, Sub-commandant Marcos, against new armed struggles if the dialogue does not advance, attacking the Government of Vicente Fox, and adding the active adhesion of indigenous groups and extra-parliamentary social forces.

One of the causes of the leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) is its opposition to the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP), the nationalist and isthmic integration project that President Vicente Fox will inaugurate tomorrow in the presence of the Central American governors of the states involved. The event will take place in the presidential palace of Los Pinos, near the Bosques de Chapultepec and about three kilometers from the Zócalo where the caravan of the Zapatistas were established. Every time that Marcos refers to this program promoted by Fox, he cites important analysts, such as Carlos Fazio, who maintains that the PPP hides the interests of transnational corporations, in an effort to try to control important social processes, such as migration to the United States, and take advantage of the resources of the available biodiversity and the geographical advantages of the area.

“The Transístmico project – Marcos declares – is to transfer the functions of the Panama Canal to the Mexican Republic, but effectively cutting the country in two or three parts. We must ask ourselves why the secessionist projects of the last months have come precisely from Yucatan and of Tabasco, and those who are proposing it are not Zapatistas; it is separating us from the rest of the nation, that is the project”.

He adds that the Puebla-Panama Plan is an expression of the project that is leading to the fragmentation of the nation. “If someone wants this country to fragment it is this process of globalization and they will do everything possible to achieve it.” He maintains that the world’s great interests would love the Zapatistas to ask for a separation from Mexico, because they prefer to deal with banana republics, which they control better.

Other critics allege that the Puebla-Panama Plan is a counterinsurgency instrument, but in the opinion of Sub-commandant Marcos it is more than that: “The problem is not only us, it is about the destruction of a nation. We had talked about three Mexicos, and the businessmen had talked about three Mexicos: the north works, the south sleeps, and the center eats what the north produces, something like that they said: we said: the north is being absorbed, the center is in dispute and the south is forgotten.”

There is no doubt that the arrival of Marcos and his followers at the Zócalo will attract a large audience, although possibly not “as many or more than those who came to hear the Pope,” as predicted by an enthusiastic CNN broadcaster. However, not all the trajectory of the Zapatista caravan came out to demand. Divided the family of revolutionary general Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919) on sub-commandant Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), one of his grandchildren received them as the main administrators of a traveling circus. “Marcos is a rag doll who has not done anything for the poor in seven years,” he declaredto the envoy of the capitalist newspaper La Jornada, Emiliano Zapata, 58 years old, whose legendary grandfather led the southern troops of the agrarian revolution of 1910 against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Annoyed by this unexpected rejection, Marcos responded “I come to pay honors, not to usurp his legacy.”

Maya train will damage indicenous territory, says Sub-commandant Marcos
By Xicohtencatl- –

CDMX.- AUGUST 15, 2018

Sub-commandant Marcos, leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, assured that the projects to plant a thousand hectares of trees, build the Mayan Train, and create the corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, will only destroy indigenous territories. The Zapatista leader assured that of the four presidential candidates, the government chose the one that is more right-wing. He affirmed that the so-called Fourth Transformation promised by Andrés Manuel López Obrador is actually the fourth transformation of the PRI, because governments change, but if the system of domination is maintained, things will remain the same. Sub-commandant Marcos, who now calls himself Sub-commandant Galeano, affirmed that the governments condemned the indigenous peoples to oblivion and sent them to the mountains. He indicated that now that governments realize that mountains contain wealth, they want them for the nation. He announced that they will defend them until death because the government will defend itself. In a note published by the newspaper La Jornadait is indicated that the Zapatista leader proposed consolidating a network of resistance and international rebellion because the National Indigenous Council will no longer be a movement of indigenous groups, but will incorporate citizens from all over the world. He said that the resistance network will be extended in any region of the world where citizens struggle to change the system of government.

[email protected]
August 31, 2018
Finca Solana
Corozal Town

CLINTON CANUL LUNA´S NOTE: Commandant Marcos, now known as Galeano, has demonstrated the guts to fight against a neoliberal capitalist system in defense of the indigenous people and the poorest in Chiapas by means of the Zapatista National Liberation Army movement. That is something that Belizeans should consider — fighting for what they believe is theirs. Commander Galeano has raised his fight against an incalculable Mexican army and a capitalist government, supported by the most militarily and economically powerful nation in the world. And the struggle is not only for a few Mexicans, but throughout the Americas. That can only be conceived among a united and egalitarian people; not like the cultural practice in Belize that believes in a god of individualism, not in an egalitarian God. Because of this, and because of their supposed democracy and freedom, they will lose what they have never fought for by shedding a drop of blood; however, they  believe in the Guajiro dream of the mythology of 1798 when there was not even a Belize like today — only St. George´s Caye and Belize Town were inhabited. So, get up Belizeans with your testicles in your hand and fight for what you think is yours; otherwise, long live Guatemala! For those from the south and west; and for us from the north: long live Mexico! While we decide to join the liberation movement of the Americas.

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