According to many analysts of globalization, the neoliberal economic model is not only in a serious crisis after 30 years, but represents the last phase of a capitalist system that is declining.  Economic, political and social indictors also apparently demonstrate this. And it is this transition from one economic model, or worse, from one global economic system to another, that will continue to cause much violence.

Economically the great multinational corporations are either going bankrupt or merging to become first – big oligopolies and then monopolies. This process is giving rise to huge numbers of unemployed, both in the northern and southern countries.  Control of the world production of food, medicine, technology, oil and other strategic resources remains in the hands of a few. Wealth is being so rapidly concentrated in so few hands that there are companies and multimillionaires with greater financial wealth and capacity than many countries joined together.  In 2003, this process will be marked by a crucial event: the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that will be held in Cancun in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico from September 10^th- 14^th.  This is the global scenario where the most powerful transnational companies represented by the richest and most industrialized nations in the world (G-7 – among whom are found the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy) expect to fine tune their strategies on two main directions:  rules and regulations that protect their position as rulers of the world, and agreements about agriculture.

Within the agenda of the WTO there is a strong interest in imposing global regulations regarding patents.  They mean to sell, privatize and commercialize everything.  Also, regulations concerning agriculture aim to give them control of the foodstuffs for all humanity. In Seattle in 1999 civil society managed to halt the WTO negotiation process, and we should once more prevent the progress of this monstrosity at the next WTO Ministerial Round.  For this monster refuses to take into account planetary civil society in spite of the cries of hunger and misery that rise up everywhere.  This principal, fundamental agenda is uniting a global effort by international civil society demanding an opportunity to be heard. Everyone with a little information must sound the alarm to mobilize around this event.

Already an alliance of the governments of impoverished countries such as some of the African, Asian and Latin American nations have begun to unite to stop the WTO’s economic massacre, whose resolutions will be obligatory for all members.  The next ministerial meeting of the WTO is related to the World Economic Forum that will be held in Davis, Switzerland during the first month of the year.  It is here that the richest and most powerful countries of the world will meet with the governments that represent their interests and even the interests of those who believe themselves to be wealthy.  This is another country club where the Cancun agenda will be finalized.  For this reason it is very critical that the new leftist president of Brazil, Lula, has accepted an invitation to the banquet that will plan the destruction of his government.

This year will also be marked by the preparations for the acceptance of China into the WTO.  China is the only country to have registered a major world growth in its economy. Admitting China to the WTO offers the industries that will move to this country more comparative advantages such as increased profits due to low salaries, lack of union, and the opening to a huge market. For their part, the rich countries are not advancing, and the United States wants to inject millions of dollars of subsidies into its economy and provide tax rebates to the rich.  This is okay for them, but if the impoverished governments of the south do the same kinds of things, they are accused of being “protectionists” and hindrances to  free trade and development.

The ecological crisis of global warming is getting worse.  This crisis is primarily caused by the richest and most industrialized countries of the world who refuse to reduce their levels of environmental pollution.  They continue to greedily consume and take all they can. This year their focus is on water.  The United Nations has decreed 2002 as the year of “Fresh Water.” Governments will initiate strategies – beginning with the Tokyo summit this year – under the pretext of saving what little water remains for us on the planet.  They will displace rural and indigenous people from the outskirts of tributaries and water tables and every other source of water that can be privatized.  That will be one of the foremost strategies of 2003. Not only will privatization be imposed on the resource of water, but also on the water systems, their infrastructure, distribution and consumption. Some years ago the World Bank (WB), which pushes for privatizations in the whole world, said that the wars of this millenium would be disputes for control of the water of our planet.  This must become another strong focus of the struggle from global and local resistance:  the defense of our source of life.

The global economic crisis is leading to more disputes over strategic resources.  We begin the year with one more war declared by the U.S. government administration.  And it is in Iraq where oil bubbles everywhere and the principle global key to the production of hydrocarbon can be turned off.  This war, protested everywhere, involves not only the dispute over oil but also the arms race and an economy that needs to be supported by the military machine in order to recover from crisis once again.

AT THE CONTINENTAL LEVEL: AMERICA

This year the Continent will face a key agenda: the negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the meetings of the trade ministers in November in Miami. The summit was originally scheduled for the month of April in Argentina. But in the face of the crisis and the social mobilization unleashed in this country where people die of hunger, President Bush preferred to secure the negotiation process by bringing the presidents into his territory, controlled through with strong measures against “terrorism.”  Or rather, out of terror of the anti-globalization movement.  (The situation in Argentina is the result of the application of the structural adjustment policies imposed by the IMF and WB).

The FTAA is a horrible commercial agreement that will further erode the sovereignty of the governments and peoples of the Continent. Fear of not moving forward on the deal has led the U. S. government to strengthen bilateral negotiations thus hastening free trade agreements with Central American, Caribbean and South American countries. Through this route, the U.S. is achieving what it had hoped to achieve in one blow with the FTAA.

Facing the refusal of the governments to consult with the people, the continental social movements have focused on giving the opportunity to speak by convening the continental popular plebiscite about the FTAA.  Millions of people are focusing on this process of consciousness raising and education about the agreement.  More than ten million people voted in Brazil and more than 98% of them rejected FTAA.  In April of 1991 in Quebec, Canada, thousands of citizens from the entire Continent mobilized against the presidents who were negotiating as always with the big businesses behind society’s back.  This year there will be more major mobilizations from many continental sectors. The Third World Social Forum will take place at the end of January this year in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Here the comprehensive agenda of worldwide civil society is armed.  This is an opportunity for the Continent to speak.

The planetary situation leads the U. S. government to lay siege to its own backyard attempting to dollarize the economy of the continent, to achieve deregulation of all the countries and create only one regulation and commercial energy policy for investments, etc. This is meant to guarantee commercial routes, sales of surpluses, better comparative advantages, more power over the governments and control of and access to the strategic resources (oil, water, gas, biodiversity, wood, etc.).  This economic project goes hand in hand with a military project to secure its application. The increase of U. S. military bases on the whole continent is alarming. The soldiers leave their barracks and attack not only the territory but also society, political life, and democratic institutions.

Consequently any government that does not uphold North American interests is threatened with a coup in order to reinstall dictatorships of the past.  After taking power, these dictatorships imposed the IMF policies with the support of the U.S. government and the military. The governments of Venezuela and Cuba and the new governments of Brazil and Ecuador are extremely threatening to U.S. interests today. The Mexican government is a different story.  President Vincente Fox is a faithful ally of W. Bush in preventing any renegotiations of NAFTA. At the end of 2002 he confirmed that NAFTA would only be renegotiated in the next ten years regarding any adaptations needed to pass the FTAA. (La Jornada, December 11, 2002).

The IMF and the WB have exerted pressure and have an impact on the drawing up of the policies for all the indebted countries. They continue to control the governments more and more directly.  On the continental level third element supports this process but passes unnoticed by the majority of society:  the Inter-American Development Bank which also forms part of the system that fuels, nourishes and sets aside the resources needed by the FTAA and PPP.

AT THE REGIONAL LEVEL: FROM PUEBLA TO PANAMA

Plan Puebla Panama, as a regional expression of the FTAA, is going to deepen the loss of national sovereignty.  These will be some of the effects in the PPP region:

• More poverty and migration of people from the countryside.
• Sale or expropriation of lands for hydroelectric dams and large expansions of mechanized farming.
• Agricultural exportation of monocultures such as African palm and eucalyptus.
• Construction of infrastructure.
• The extremely indebted governments will incorporate their businesses, sell their assets, and modify their constitutions.  They are already deregulating their control over electrical energy and overturning any policy of food sovereignty, or control over their highways, borders, customs, and biodiversity.

It is for this reason that we must take the opportunity to speak out in the region and the social movements of regional resistance are joining together against PPP – a plan that the governments want to impose without consulting society. Regional meetings against the PPP have taken place in Tapachula, Xela and Managua, and the next forum will take place in Tegucigalpa, Honduras this year. The social mobilization against PPP has achieved something similar to what global civil society gained when it defeated the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in 1998. Still, points from the MAI were taken up through free trade agreements and other spaces for multinational worldwide negotiations.  If the same happens with FTAA, it will be revived by means of U. S. strategy of imposing bilateral free trade agreements.  So, even though the governments of the region and the IDB don’t talk much about PPP now because it has been politically defeated by society, they continue to generate their projects with considerably greater effort.

Regional and local expressions of resistance are increasing. Alliances are growing and spaces for sharing analysis, reflections and alternatives are being consolidated. The Mexican Alliance for Self-determination of the People is being strengthened. Also very significant this year, the III Week of Cultural and Biological Diversity as well as the II Mesoamerican Forum Against the Dams that will take place in Honduras. PPP has already suffered various defeats at the hands of the resistance of the campesinos and indigenous organizations in the whole region.

AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL:  MEXICO

This year the country will also be marked by the electoral process for the Congress of the Union. The process will be a lens through which we can see the events that will unfold this year.  Many congressional agendas are paralyzed and remain up in the air. The electoral reforms, like other congressional initiatives, will be held hostage to negotiations and electoral pressures. The order of the day will be opinions, threats, demands disqualifications, and continuous attempts to stain the already totally discredited image of the electoral process.  Nevertheless, it is possible that abstention rates will be very high because of the great disillusionment created by the new party in power.  So we see that Mexico is not safe from the crisis of “electoral democracies” which is a worldwide phenomenon.

The country could see a surplus from the sale of oil at a good price due to the war the U. S. wants to launch against Iraq and because of the crisis in Venezuela involving its oil that is also coveted by the Bush administration. Deplorably, this money will go to stabilize public finance and to pay part of the external debt owed to the WB.  Mexico occupies third place in global indebtedness to the WB.

Economically, Mexico is entering an extremely difficult year.  No economic growth is anticipated and a new wave of unemployment is expected. This crisis will be especially terrible for the countryside as the borders are opened to 93% of the highly subsidized farming and livestock products from the U. S. The following products will flood in from the U.S.: cattle and pork meat fattened with hormones from the U. S., genetically engineered vegetables, genetically engineered sweetener for soft drinks and cookies, strange dairy products and genetically engineered chickens, bald and sickly.  We are already eating these anomalies. The importation of sick chickens coming from that country to the north has been halted. If globalization must give way to a localization process, now is the hour for defending the small and local: land, vegetables, backyard projects, pens of chickens and hens – and life itself!

Sugar, corn, pineapple, dairy and other agricultural sectors are stuck in a deep crisis.  The health and education sectors are at the breaking point despite President Fox’s assurances that they will not be privatized.  Then there’s the electricity sector. The government is intimidating the Federal Electric Commission (CFE) and the Center for Light and Power (LFC) enter and leaving them no air to breathe – the object being to bankrupt them as soon as possible and to proceed with the privatization of what remains of the state companies. We are talking about thousands and thousands of medical workers, nurses, teachers, and workers in other fields that the government wants to get rid of. This strategy will worsen the situation by insisting on the (in)famous “voluntary retirement” of state workers. Thus the government would add them to the list of the half million unemployed people who became unemployed in 2002 due to the same kinds of government policies. 

In this scenario, the Mexican Army continues to trample state structures (executive, legislative and judicial) in the three levels of government (federal, state and municipal) and society itself.  But the WB also stomps on state structures. For the first time in history, the WB made public a document always before kept confidential for Mexico called Assistance Strategy Project (EAP), which lays out the strategy that the Bank says the country ought to follow in social and economic matters. This is a Structural Adjustment Project (SAP), and should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand what is happening in the country. Society does not command her own destiny, nor do the political parties, the Congressional Union or the President of the Republic, but rather the WB and the IMF.

In the midst of this national panorama, folks are acting against the free trade agreement with a campaign called “the countryside can take no more (El Campo No Aguanta Más).” This initiative is strengthened by the national front of resistance against the privatization of electrical energy. This makes even more urgently necessary the search for local alternatives of resistance and new experiences. Civil society must achieve what the political parties can’t do.

AT THE STATE LEVEL: CHIAPAS

Situated in the crisis, the new government born from the alliances of 2000 now stands alone without alliances. The government is penned in by the lack of economic resources, with grave deficiencies in the health and education sectors.  What the state does have is large amounts of fresh water, making Chiapas a strategic factor for WB ambitions.  The WB has cited education, health, and water as the principle excuses for robbing the state. So, hunger and greed are joined together – a government that needs resources for social expenditures and a bank that wants the strategic resources of the state. The WB tries to impose the same global cycle in Chiapas: loans, debt, structural adjustment and more poverty. All this happens with the deplorable assistance, energy, and enthusiasm of the Chiapas state government. It is not enough that in Chiapas access to adequate, fair and non-discriminating health services for the campesinos is the lowest in the country, but that many children die within hospital walls.  The recent infant deaths in the hospital in Comitan have exposed the precarious situation of access to any kind of health care in this state.

In Chiapas the military remains in place and puts down more roots. Mexican soldiers have been seen traveling while accompanied by convoys of Israeli soldiers.  Paramilitaries have not been arrested and continue to live with impunity. Zapatista prisoners and deaths are still a reality. The government continues threatening the indigenous people with eviction from the Montes Azules Biosphere in the Lacandon jungle.  These are the same people who were displaced and abandoned by the government in the past.  Now biotech companies envision great genetic banks and millions of dollars in profit for pharmaceuticals and genetically engineered foods. So the government would displace these people once more and “relocate” them to other places such as cities with the sweatshops of PPP. For this purpose the WB has “invented” the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor that forms part of PPP. It is used as a pretext for the eviction of the indigenous peoples, but not for the eviction of the timber companies that continue extracting tons of wood from the jungles and forests, with the permission of the government and the army.

The low prices of farming products are forcing many people to migrate from the countryside. The greatest damage here is to the living conditions of women.  And the government still enforces its plans so that the campesinos will privatize their lands in the areas where the government wants to build infrastructure or great hydroelectric dams and sow thousands of hectares of monoculture crops for export. Incredible as it may seem, the new government’s strategy for relieving the poverty of campesinos and indigenous people would be to make them day laborers. They would thus be pawns on their own land, renting it from the huge mechanized farms that are so ecologically destructive. They would also be producing eight to ten tons of corn per hectare using large amounts of lethal agrochemicals, in turn subsidizing the needs of the big transnational companies and destroying the corn native to the state and with it, people’s food sovereignty.  It would also permit the introduction of genetically engineered Monsanto soy into Chiapas.

The construction projects for the hydroelectric dams have generated an even greater mobilization in the indigenous communities. The population in nearby communities have become alerted to the threat of the construction of dams in the basin of the Usumacinta and Boca del Cerro between Chiapas, Tabasco and the jungle of the Guatemalan Peten, as well as on other rivers.  The population and some of the national and international press have become aware of the social, ecological and cultural impact that would be caused by more large dam projects. Resistance and meetings for exchanges of experiences from communities in other affected regions have been strengthened and accompanied by the popular consultations in the indigenous and campesino communities concerning  the FTAA.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, the global community experienced a change of direction. Immediately, most of the indigenous lands of the American continent were militarized and the race to war (against terrorism) was accelerated as well as the U. S. government’s need to control the strategic resources of Latin American and the Caribbean. Pressure was increased to hasten treaties regarding free trade, most notably the PPP and FTAA.  And those who feel the greatest impact are the poorest people. It is for this reason that the absence of a position statement by the EZLN was noticed by many social sectors.  Such a statement of position would clearly have helped, as it has on other occasions, to guide and update the analysis of the global economic situation and its impact on the indigenous peoples who flee death and hunger in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador and other Central American and Caribbean countries. For these are countries that have been inspired by the analysis and strategies of the Zapatistas. Many didn’t make a move, while waiting for a statement.  The Zapatista silence lasted so long that it became difficult to understand.

Towards the end of 2002 the EZLN reappeared, proposing a meeting for the month of April, 2003, on the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. But the supposed beneficiaries of such action rejected it. The terrorist group, ETA, refused the mediated help with the Spanish government that the EZLN offered. What seemed to many as move by the EZLN to enter European territory would not be necessary. Europe comes to Mexico in order to protest together with global civil society against the WTO meeting. This is also a major scenario which should cause us great concern today. Perhaps a word from the EZLN about the global economic situation, and even more, about the continental situation and the grave problems afflicting the Americas would strengthen and encourage civil society as it acts. They later did this on January 1, 2003, when thousands and thousands of Zapatistas marched into town and occupied the central plaza of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. They demonstrated that their numbers are great, that they are not divided and that they continue to be alive in the fullest sense of the word.  And that they will deliver another surprise soon.

The WTO, the FTAA, PPP , the free trade agreements, the realities of the Mexican, Argentine, Brazilian, Venezuelan, Ecuadoran, Carribean, Salvadoran peoples, as well as the North American continental militarization can not be analyzed separately from the search for alternatives and new paths. The distinct spaces for the coordination of global civil society, the continental, Mesoamerican and national forums, etc., wait for a word from the EZLN. This years the Zapatistas must once again forge a new and unexpected strategy – as always. And it is precisely this element of surprise which makes them the Zapatistas.

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