The more than 45 000 large dams that have been constructed throughout the world have displaced more than 80 million people from their lands and their homes.  All of these dams have flooded more than 400 000 square kilometers of land, the equivalent of all the territory of the United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland and Austria.  It is also equivalent to 77% of Central America’s territory; or to the flooding of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Belize and Panama combined.  Sixty percent of the world’s rivers, the veins that give life to our planet, have been dammed.  Although the dams have contributed to the generation of electrical energy, they have done very little to control flooding.  They have supplied water for irrigation but they have also raised the price of food and salinized lands.

Dams have contributed to climate change, the impoverishment of peoples and they have indebted governments.  Unique jungles, forests, animals and plants have disappeared and historic monuments have been buried under water.  The construction of large dams has generated corruption and large economic interests where there could have been other alternatives for generating electricity.  Serious studies on the environmental, social and cultural impacts have not been taken into account.  In general, the people most directly affected by the dams have not been consulted and they have been forcibly displaced, even murdered.  The large dams have resulted in a large world-wide movement of discontent and protest.  These, and others, are the conclusions of the World Dams Commission (WDC) in the year 2000, the commission sponsored by the World Bank, businesses and governments to evaluate the impact of large dams in the world (www.dams.org).

At the heart of the problem in this discussion about large dams is the vision of development.  What kind of development, how to achieve this type of development, who wins and who loses.  This model of development is one of privileged capitalism, the accumulation of wealth, competition in which the losers are excluded.  It is a race toward the goal of accumulating more and more.  Governments, business people, private and multi-lateral banks such as the World Bank (WB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) have started this process.  They have even evaluated their loans that finance large dams and they have concluded that a large number have not fulfilled their duties. 

The corporate business body, tending to the monopoly of this neoliberal model needs a motor to drive its development project:  electrical energy.  Without it there is neither production nor surplus.  In this context, big money is behind the fury of activity in the energy sector which is in the hands of governments and all sources that produce energy with the goal of being privatized:  enriched uranium (nuclear energy), water (hydroelectric energy), wind (wind energy) as well as gas, solar heating and steam.  After the motor, what is needed in order for its development project to function is highways, dry canals and railway lines/routes.

In this contest we should look at the process of integration that the American government is trying to achieve via the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) plan and its regional expression in the Plan Puebla-Panama, Mercosur or the free trade agreements between the United States and the Dominican Republic, Central America, Chile, Colombia, etc..

The hydroelectric plans join all the American continents – Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador, among many others.  However, in the same way, the force of the large Movement against Dams in Brazil and other struggles are strengthening the Latin American Network against Dams.  And in two years, the Meso-American Forum against Dams has risen out of the local struggles of the people.  These processes have brought about greater awareness of the need to protect rivers, the environment, cultural heritage and the lives of these same peoples.  It has also resulted in the struggle for a distinct development project, a sustainable project that respects human rights, an antidote to competition and exclusion.

In March 2004, Mexican President Vicente Fox stated in Honduras that the Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP) is the instrument for sustainable regional economic development.  Contrary to what some analysts have said, that the PPP had died, Fox assured that the PPP is consistently advancing and that it has changed into an employment project that is underway.  He explained that this project is a first step with investment and infrastructure to strengthen development and moreover, human capital in the region, combating poverty, the distribution of income and expanding economies.  Fox insisted that the PPP fully respects indigenous families and communities, and hence, “nobody is going to impose a highway”, nor an investment project which is not accepted in good faith.  Regarding this, the leader denied plans to install an electricity generating plant on the Usumacinta River, which would affect the environment or destroy archaeological sites.  He reiterated that the PPP is a regional development plan that puts the well-being of the community first and that has as its highest priority that the people; the families and in particular, the poorest of the people, benefit through the means of sustainable development.  Nonetheless, one week before armed individuals shot at the indigenous peoples who were marching for the International Day Against Dams in El Peten, Guatemala.  At the same time, more assassinations of indigenous leaders occurred in Honduras who are maintaining strong resistance to the mega-projects of the PPP and against the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

For its part, the Mexican Alliance for Peoples’ Self-Determination (AMAP) sent out a communiqué responding to president Vicente Fox in which it assured: “One more sign of PPP’s materializing is expressed in the suite of aggressions which represent the imposition of all of these projects in rural and indigenous communities and above all in the social response to said aggressions.  Some examples are:  the violation of the human, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights of the indigenous peoples of the Tehuantepec isthmus in Oaxaca where Mix, Zapoteco, Mixteco, Zoque, Chinanteco, Chontal and Kunat or Huave indigenous peoples have mobilized to state their categorical rejection of the mega-projects that are already developing in the region such as the Oaxaca-Isthmus-Huatulco super-highway.”  The AMAP assured that, “The construction of this highway network has meant the dispossession of the crop lands of the campesinos (small-scale farmers) and the destruction of ancient Zapoteca-culture archaeological remains, such as what happened along the Guelaguichi-Tehuantepec stretch.  These state and federal government plans to supposedly “modernize” highways actually just constitute infrastructure for the establishment of tourist and industrial corridors in the region.  This is the case of the Salina Cruz-Huatulco tourist corridor project that threatens to do away with ejidal (a traditional communal system) and communal land ownership and the natural resources that the Chontal people have protected for hundreds of years.”

This is the context of the social resistance to neoliberal development infrastructures.  The problem is not the infrastructure itself; we all want electrical energy, roads and highways.  The central focus is in the proposed development framework, who pays for the infrastructure and who benefits; whether or not human rights and the environment are respected; if it is sustainable; or who ends up winning and who ends up losing.

From this platform, during the Third Chiapas Conference Against Neoliberalism that took place from March 19^th to 21^st, 2004 in the municipality of Huitiupan, Chiapas, the call for the First Mexican Front Against Dams Conference was made.  Here we present the text of the resolution.

ANALYTICAL RESOLUTION ABOUT DAMS
The III Chiapas Front Against Neoliberalism Conference

Alerted to the gradual and silent incursion of dam construction projects imposed by large transnationals in alliance with corrupt governments and given the broken promises of the authorities to cancel such projects, we gather in Huitiupan, Chiapas, about 80 colleagues, affected, threatened and displaced by the dam construction projects.

United, rooted by these lands and in the firm and unbreakable decision to defend them from the neoliberal invaders of the transnational companies, we have arrived in the community of Huitiupan, campesinos and campesinas, indigenous peoples, workers, students, members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and of social groups and organizations from the municipalities of Simojovel, Chenalho, Amatan, Chalchihuitan, El Bosque, Pantelho, the southern border region, the Chiapas highlands, and other states such as Guerrero and Oaxaca as well as our sister Republic of Guatemala, with the goal of sharing and analysing our experiences in order to strengthen our struggle in defence of our lands, our natural resources, our culture, our territories and our own lives.

To follow up our agenda we return to the agreements forged in the II Chiapas Front Against Neoliberalism Conference carried out in Nuevo Huixtan, Chiapas, February 8^th-9^th, 2003; the agreements of the Second Meso-American Forum Against Dams, “For People’s Water and Life” held in La Esperanza Intibuca, Honduras, July 17^th-20^th, 2003, and the Rasi Salai declaration passed at the Second International Conference of People Affected by Dams and their Supporters in Thailand, November 28^th-December 4^th, 2003.  In the same way, we incorporate the advances achieved by the meetings and forums carried out in the centers of resistance: the meeting against the Jalapa del Marques hydroelectric project in Oaxaca; the forum to denounce the planned Arcediano dam in Guadalajara, Jalisco; and the Gathering in Solidarity with the Campesinos of La Parota in Acapulco, Guerrero.

PRONOUNCEMENTS.

1 – We whole-heartedly condemn and denounce the cowardly, ferocious and inhumane attempted shooting of two Guatemalan campensino colleagues of El Peten on March 15^th, 2004 and we demand that the authorities explain where these brutal acts came from.  We, all of the organizations present, continue to endorse and support through solidarity and concrete means, the colleagues of the Peten Front Against Dams in its struggle in defence of their right to a just and dignified life and the safe-guarding of their own lands, rivers and environment.

2 -  We reject the imposition that the governor of the state of Oaxaca is trying to carry out with the Benito Juarez Dam expansion project in an attempt to convert it into a hydroelectric dam, in Jalapa del Marques, Oaxaca.  The campesinos of the zone suffered the dispossession of their lands in 1961 with the construction of the existing dams.  They are not willing to suffer a new aggression.  We denounce, together with them, the threats of the government of Oaxaca in the sense that, the expansion of the dam as well as the displacement of campesinos in the communities of Guiechiqero and Cerro de Chivo for the construction of an expressway, were carried out, say what they will, regardless of the will of the people who were opposed to the projects.

3 -  We lament the misinformation and confusion generated by the Bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, Felipe Arizmendi, to the effect that, via a supposed exchange of letters to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the press was told that the dam construction projects in Chiapas had been cancelled. It should be said that the CFE already has bids on the table for the construction of dams on the Usumacinta River and that other dam projects, such as the one in Itzantun, were only suspended, not cancelled.  These projects, if they are not definitively suspended by the resistance of the people, will affect many campesinos, in particular indigenous ones, in Chiapas.

4 – We confirm support and solidarity for those affected by the dams, in particular in the states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero and Jalisco.  We commit ourselves to mutual and reciprocal support every time a community is seen to be threatened.  Our support will be given through the diffusion of real and concrete information about the problems and, above all, we will reinforce this support with our physical presence in the affected places.

5 – We will work on the consolidation of the Chiapas State Front Against Dams, looking for a symbol that can unite us in the struggle.  In the same way, we will strengthen the resistance fronts and committees of the states of Oaxaca, Jalisco and Guerrero.

6 -  We extend the same denunciation made by the Chiapas Front Against Dams, Southern Border, in Nuevo Huixtan, of the intensification of the low-level and distant flights, by Mexican army planes that spread a liquid that kills the plants in sown fields, as well as the boxes filled with flies that are harmful to the crops of the campesinos of the region.  A monitoring system is to be established.

ACCORDS

- The colleagues of the municipalities of Huitiupan, Simojovel, Chalchihuitan, Amatan, Pantelho and El Bosque in the state of Chiapas, make public the decision of the people to CANCEL definitively the dam construction project of Itzantun.  This accord is endorsed by all of the groups and organizations attending the Third Chiapas Conference.

-   Colleagues affected by and in resistance to the construction of dams in the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, Jalisco and El Peten (Guatemala), will work on the composition of a National Front Against Dams, and in this way we can co-ordinate our actions to the greatest extent.  The formal composition of this front will be the objective of the First National Conference Against Dams, which will be, carried out in Jalapa del Marques, Oaxaca, in September of this year.

- Propose through the Latin American and International network, an international symbol that can unite those affected by the construction of dams projects.

-          Within fifteen days, technical and specific information about the projects in each region should be exchanged via an e-mail network.

-          Once all of the information is gathered, we will work on the creation of a website at the national level and for the El Peten region about the resistance to dam projects.

-          The colleagues of Chiapas, in co-ordination with the colleagues of Huitiupan will, in these weeks, make a brochure explaining the path of struggle and resistance that they had all these years in face of the Itzantun project.

-          Send delegates to the III Meso-American Forum Against Dams, the IV Biological and Cultural Diversity Week and the V Forum Against Plan Puebla-Panama that will take place in July 2004 in San Salvador, Central America.  Work on the organization and participate in the First National Conference Against Dams to be held in Jalapa del Marques, Oaxaca, December 24^th-26^th, 2004.

Huitiupan, March 21^st, 2004.

NO TO DAMS!
UNITED, WE, THE PEOPLE, CANCEL THE NEOLIBERAL DAM CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS!
OUR STRUGGLE IS IN DEFENCE OF OUR LANDS!  LAND IS NOT TO BE SOLD!

This is the text of the resolution.  There is no doubt that civil society  is mobilizing with more and more force generating the hope that another world is possible.

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