Neoliberalism, or High-Speed Crashes

How is it possible that a federal highway crosses and divides in two a biosphere reserve, La Sepultura Reserve, which exists by means of federal decree?  Because this highway is a PPP highway… In the last bulletin we noted some characteristics, but there is new information…

The Arriaga Ocozocuautla is a project recognized as part of the PPP, concretely one of the sections of the Pacific Corridor that “includes some 3,159 kilometers that goes from Panama to Puebla; at least 1,007 kilometers are located in Mexico, and include the sections Puebla-Coatzacoalcos, Coatzacoalcos-Ocozocuautla, Ocozocuaula-Arriaga, Arriaga-Tapacbula and Tapacbula-Puente Internacional de Ciudad Hidalgo.”  We have already mentioned that the foreseen budget for the year 2005 assigned to this highway is 170,000 pesos, which one supposes is a proof that in the budgets of the PPP “of all the mentioned investments in highway infrastructure, around 40% in total is concentrated in the south-southeast of the country, and principally here in Chiapas.”

This highway route is one of the few projects of the PPP that is financially assured… Much can do money, says the troubadour… One of the great problems of the PPP to date has been finding effective financing, since the resistance of a heterogeneity of social actors has shown against its implantation including the threat of reopening the conflict by the EZLN – has stopped many of the interested investors.  As a result, the projects of the PPP that would best function are those that they do not claim are part of the aforementioned plan: “Another sign is the sepulchral silence that we observe in Chiapas on the part of Pablo Salazar.  His muteness on the PPP is almost deafening, especially when inaugurating other works in Chiapas, previously tied with the PPP.  On recent dates Pablo Salazar has inaugurated infrastructure projects in Puerto Madero, at the airport in Palenque, and new sections of highway at various places in the state, without adorning his speeches with a single mention of the PPP.”

The crash of this highway has been with the La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve.  Established by decree of Federal Executive Power on June 5, 1995, with the character of a Biosphere Reserve, it has a total surface area of 167,309 hectares, of which 13,759 correspond with five nucleus zones.  It is located in the northeast of the Chiapan Sierra Madre and includes parts of the municipalities of Arriaga, Tonalá, Cintalapa, Jiquipilas, Villacorzo and Villaflores in the Coastal, Central and Frailescan regions of Chiapas respectively.  There are eight types of vegetation: pine forests, encino pine, mountainous mesophyll forest, caducifolia (tropical deciduous) forest, sub-perennial forest, subcaducifolia, cloud forest, chaparral, and sabana.  To date, there are 407 plant species catalogued but, due to the presence of ecosystems with high biodiversity, the number will increase significantly.  There are 406 terrestrial vertebrate species catalogued.

But the conflict most crushing – that the high-speed highway has a protected ecosystem – does not bring us to theoretical discussions about nature versus civilization or anything similar.  The inherent differences are in the question of development.

For the PPP, “human” development is the new strategy of relaunching, that Fox led with unusual force.  Thanks to the advice of a gringo publicity agency, “the strategy consisted of raising the profile in the declarative of the social aspects, particularly with respect to indigenous peoples and the need for public consultation about the Plan.”  For example, recently in Guatemala, Fox declared, “The PPP is a process of regional development that has to do principally with people, families and, particularly, with indigenous communities.”

But this “human development” is purely a façade.  “In sum, the new image of the PPP does not hide the evident: in essence, nothing has changed.  In the best of all cases there will be adjustments to the presentation, a renewed interest in projecting an image of unity, openness, transparency, and consensual decisions with civil society.  But the fundamental remains, continues to be an initiative designed to meet the needs of large capital and, as we shall see later on, of the strategic interests of the United States.  All this by means of a discredited and antiquated theory that makes 'development' a synonym of abundant infrastructure.”

With a simple glance at the presentation of the PPP, in each one of its sections, there is an infrastructure mega-project that is just barely accompanied by some other action.  There is the System of Electricity Interconnection of the Central American Countries (SIEPAC), in the section “Energy Growth”; the International Network of Mesoamerican Highways (RICAM), which belongs to Arriaga Ocozocuatla, in “Infrastructure for Integration”; the “Mesoamerican Information Highway” (AMI) in “Technology for Development”; in the same way as the Integral Tourist Circuits in the Mesoamerican Region, in the “Mesoamerican Initiative of Sustainable Development,” just to give a few examples of the type of development that the PPP proposes.

The collision happens because the La Sepultura Reserve, like so many people, dares to ask: this development, at what cost?

Already for years now, there have existed warnings from the pen of Julia Carabias herself – of what one could suppose a development of the PPP style for the La Sepultura Reserve, just like she warned about the consequences of huge infrastructure projects for the provision of running water: “Another activity that severely affects this system is the construction of secondary roads and the maintenance of the primary network of roads, as is the case of the River Zanatenco (Tonalá) that has been gravely affected by the Villaflores highway – Tonalá and the River Los Amates (Villacorzo), tributaries of the Sierra Morena, which have been affected by a strong overflow and pollution from solid residues, principally sand and rocks.  Particularly the city of Tonalá was affected by the impact to the basin of the River Zanateco and it was even necessary to remove its principal outlet for the water supply.  In the same way, the River Lagartero (Arriaga) suffers from land slides and maintenance of the Federal Highway 195, in the section that coincides with La Sepultura, a site that contains that the principal taking of water for the city of Arriaga.”

Not only the La Sepultura Reserve, for many people, after bitter experiences, “it became evident that the infrastructure projects planned for the PPP did not represent any effort towards social development.  Currently civil society rejects the notion that “development” is the exclusive domain of the bureaucrats and private sector.  Development for whom, with whose money, for whose benefit, and decisions made by whom? are the questions that civil society is asking.

The clearest expression of what this collision assumes about “development” refers to comes from the people of the La Sepultura Reserve, on explaining the Conservation Plan of the Rio Lagartero to the Basin Committee (see previous bulletin).  In a clear manner they expressed: “It is important to be careful in planning development and in considering the environmental part (…) if we do not manage the basin well, if we continue without considering the environmental aspect, thinking only in development, then we are impacting the social base.”

It is the ability to achieve a good harmony between development and environment that would avoid social impacts, resistance, and citizen protests.  This would seem to be the message, it was the strategy that the government adopted as well.  The harmonious union between development and environment is the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor in Mexico; this is what we want to the government to create so that we are not concerned about this mega-project.

The World Bank grants Mexico financing of 19.1 million dollars on January 29, 2001 “to finance the Mexican portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, a network of tropical forests and other virgin ecosystems, with a great diversity of animal and plant life (…); the area covered by the corridor (Biological Mesoamerican), that extends from Mexico to Panama, houses many indigenous communities and also an abundant and rare flora and fauna.”  It was not until March 2003 that it was officially presented in Quintana Roo, with the presence of representatives of four state entities involved and the seven secretaries that will participate in the implementation of the initiative (Environment and Natural Resources, Agriculture, Communication and Transportation, Social Development, Public Education, Health and Agrarian Reform).

The government has not wanted to establish in a clear manner the relationship between the PPP and the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor; the ambiguity has become a good confusion strategy.  According to some opinions: “the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, another part of the PPP, is defined by the same, because the MBC purports to promote ‘sustainable ecological development’, while the PPP just wanted to corner the MBC and make it its ‘green arm’ of what is a ‘project of cementification,’” according to Tania Carrasco, specialist on social development of the World Bank in Mexico City.  Nonetheless, in the amiable version of the PPP, in the item “Mesoamerican Initiative for Sustainable Development” appears “as a strategic piece of the initiative the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor [that] promotes the conservation and the adequate use of resources in fragile ecosystems throughout the Mesoamerican region, whose territory represents 2% of the world’s surface area but houses 10% of the planet’s biodiversity.”

In any case, recognized or not the band with the PPP, the economic sustenance of this apparently ecological mega-project rests on the profitability, recently discovered as capital, of the environment.  The MBC is the umbrella for the patents, transgenics, biopiracy and the sale of environmental services, introducing, not the sustainable development as claims the discourse, but “another more general and injurious element: biodiversity, water, trees, air, become ‘services’ that are bought and sold.  Initially ‘paid’ through apparent ‘rewards,’ but when these are cut, someone will have to continue paying.  Here the marketing and privatization of collective resources is surreptitiously introduced; although we should all have rights to collective resources, respecting and strengthening their historical custodians and their ways of life, not just to pass them on to those who can pay for them.”

Officially, clearly, these are not the objectives of sustainable use of the environment that the MBC says it is promoting.  It is proposed, nonetheless, “to aid existing projects in the zone (of organized groups, individuals, women’s groups, communities, ejidos, NGOs, local governments, etc.) through studies, trainings, consulting; drive the development of pilot projects that promote the sustainable use and the conservations of biodiversity; as well as foment small-scale projects of ecological restoration.”

The Sepultura Reserve is included in the interests of the MBC, although in second place to the El Triunfo Reserve, also called the Corridor of the Sierra Madre of southern Chaiapas.  The interest in this case generally arises from the cloud forests for their carbon capture that large transnational corporations can then buy to offset the environmental damage they cause; for this reason, La Sepultura appears in second place, because it only has a small portion, of its eight types of vegetation, that would be cloud forest.

These disputes between development and environment provoked by the mega-project that is the PP and that they want to solve with our mega-projects with the MBC is rapidly unmasked when presented with the budgets: of the 28 projects of the PPP officially in progress, highways is in first place with 85.2% of the total budget; sustainable development, within which is contemplated although with independent financing the MBC, has barely .4% of the budget.

Other of the signs included that clearly tilt the MBC in the neoliberal balance is the presence of huge conservationist NGOs that are those that truly carry out the proposals of these biological corridors.  Various of these NGOs have been involved in bioprospecting research and in transgenic research in the interior of these natural protected areas.  In La Sepultura, concretely, there is the Nature Conservancy and PRONATURA, precisely giving that trainings that supposedly the seven secretaries and four governmental offices will assume with the MBC.  One curious fact in reference to Mexican sovereignty is that this type of traditional conservationist NGO tends to be, in the work table of the biological corridor, with the same status and therefore, with the same possibilities to vote as the governmental offices, federal and state, and on occasion, have more functions than state offices.

The highway of Arriaga will be, if its inhabitants do not stop it, high speed.  It will be a bleeding wound, just as it is now, of the conflict between “sustainable development” of the PPP and the exhaustion of potable water of the entire city.  Sustainable development versus ecological conservation; or transnational capital earnings versus health and dignity of the people of Arriaga; it is the same conflict.  But at high speed.

Highways = The Thirst of the Poor

If you check the last bulletin you can see clearly what the water problem in Arriaga has to do with the PPP, since it is the highway that the SCT is promoting and that forms part of the Pacific Corridor that filled the water source of the city with waste and sediment.

But this is not the only thing.  How curious it is that the PPP change the order of water in one city, in these times in which it is predicted that the next wars will be for water.  In the same manner that Environmental Services have converted into a new strategy for capitalist production, the policy of water privatization attempts to do the same with this liquid; extract benefits.

Already in the 1980’s, the principles of the neoliberal model in the sector were very clear: “Transform the status of water from a public good to a private good; reorganize the governability of water and of sanitation services based on the principles of the ‘free market,’ and subordinate the socio-political, cultural and ecological dimensions to the rationality of the market and the requirements of the global financial interests.”  And those are what are reflected in the problem of Arriaga that we developed in the previous bulletin, although in Arriaga it is still a public good… so far.

Water privatization in Mexico is a recent phenomenon (when compared with other Latin American countries) and it seems to be that standards like those of Arriaga without a highway, evidently, are those that will be followed in many cities.  On the other hand, the federal and state governments have been making legal changes to initiate privatization of this public good.  In concrete, “the governor Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía signed on January 30, 2003 the agreement with the National Bank of Public Services and Works (Banobras) and the National Water Commission (CNA) that will also administer hydroelectric dams of the country.  The central objective of the agreement is ‘to establish conditions that favor the participation of the private sector, to improve water and sanitation systems in the federative entities, increase their efficiency and expand their coverage.’  This will be done with debt funds that at the same time will subsidize the companies that buy control of the water.”

Beyond this concrete state agreement that would be applicable to Arriaga, the objective of water privatization in Mexico is to “modify the laws over the control the state has over water, improve infrastructure with public funds and through great debt that the citizenry will pay for, increase costs of services and achieve privatizing the administration, operation and maintenance of the water, sanitation and sewer systems of the cities that have more than 50,000 inhabitants that are potentially good businesses for large companies, given that this is where businesses, factories, tourism, and most domestic consumption are concentrated.”

There are a series of steps being taken at the state and federal levels to start, initially in city with more than 50,000 inhabitants, but also in smaller cities, privatizing policies.  In one of the first steps, “Banobras manages the Infrastructure Investment Fund that is supplied by the World Bank.  Together with the National Water Commission, in the framework of PROMAGUA, they commit in the agreement to cover 75% of the costs of the integral Diagnostic and Planning Study about the potable water system in question.  Then, the state and municipalities contribute the remaining 25%.”  Following this, it come that “the government will allocate, through the National Bank of Public Services and Works (Banobras) the financial resources of 40% to improve infrastructure that companies will then buy, improvements that they will not have to pay for.  Other percentages state governments are and municipal governments are giving, but the private companies, nothing.”  This kind of credit is what they have in Arriaga, to improve the water catchments system, despite the fact that there already existed the warning from SEMARNAT which we reproduced earlier that the place for water catchments was too close to the highway.

Another of the important steps for this privatizing policy that would take place is to forgive some receipts and debts of water, as a sort of hook.  In a parallel manner, in the River Lagartero Basin Committee they talked about seeking the possibility of debt forgiveness by the CFE for the water pumps used in the wells.

After another series of legislative steps that are still taking place in Mexico, bringing forward bad management or inadequate use of natural resources, the state government awards or contracts a company, under the supposed neoliberal idea that any private company will manage the resources more efficiently than any public entity, due to which they are place in charge of the service.

This case still has not occurred in Arriaga and, in case it were to happen, it is good to bring here the words that have been said in the Basin Committee, on the thread of the presentation of the River Lagartero Conservation Plan: “The local capacity both of the Basin Committee and the participating groups: Reserve, NGOs in the part of the cloud forests, organized production groups that are also participating, was evaluated… and we see that a process of formation, that there is a good responsibility, that the management of the Basin, the municipality, assumed the responsibilities in terms of the management of the basin and that this potential does exist.”  At this moment, in Arriaga, this argument would not be applicable.

Another signal that these steps are taking place at an accelerated pace in Chiapas constitutes the State Commission on Water and Sanitation (CEAS), one of the big ones absent in the meeting of the Basin Committee, despite the fact that, according to what they state in their mission, the problem of Arriaga could be one of their great standards.

CEAS vertáis itself on its own webpage.  Below the box “For whom do we do it?,” referring to for whom they direct their action, it says: “At the establishment of the State Commission on Water and Sanitation, we all form part of it, we assume the responsibility of contributing our work so that the institution is able to solve the problems of our clients: ‘CHIAPAN SOCIETY’ (underlining ours).”  A State Commission has clients?  Wouldn’t it be more logical if it has users, even citizens?  Perhaps the approach that only clients can have water?  That to be a citizen of the state will not be sufficient to have the right to water, a fundamental right?

Beyond all this, the primary objective that CEAS declares is: “Create an inventory of goods, resources of water and sanitation systems, of hydrological reserves and human resources of the sector in the State.”  Wouldn’t it be a bigger priority to prevent and solve problems like those of Arriaga?  And moreover… once the inventory is done, where does it go?  Who will have access to the information on water and sanitation systems, as well as hydrological reserves of the State?  It is curious that the State will conduct an inventory, as though it were a grocery store taking stock, of its human and hydrological resources… Are they going to sell them, too?

Hopefully all the questions that we ask here do not point to where they seem to because “access to potable water is a resource that also measures human rights.  A bad water quality or lack of water has repercussions on the health and quality of life of the population.  All of us have the right to this resource.”  It is demonstrated that access to potable water is one of the indicators of poverty levels, in cities or in rural communities; and evidently, access to water is an indicator of health and wellbeing of people.

As Cecilia Chérrez, of Ecological Action (Ecuador), says: “It is clear that something very ugly is cooking with water.”  And we find the optimism of the resistance: “But without a doubt the thirst to control of the corporations will continue encountering resistance in other cities like Cochabamba, of other peasants like Pedro Carbo, of youth like those in South Africa who wrote on the walls, ‘Enjoy water, break the meter!’”

Trying to find a balance, “after two years since the Puebla Panama Plan has started and despite the investments made, they have not succeeded in bringing together the efforts of the state and federal authorities of the governments of Central America to concrete their objective.  Interviewed separately, the governors of Yucatan, Campeche, Tabasco and Chiapas, coincided in nothing that their resources flowed very slowly and the actions of the PPP did not advance at the pace that the south-southeastern region of the country demand, and that continuing in this way it would take another 15 years to consolidate.”

Certainly, the PPP does not advance as neoliberalism wants, thanks to the resistance of communities and the economic juncture of Mexico.  But we should not forget that the PPP has suffered genetic mutations: it is no longer the “development” mega-plan that was originally proposed.  Now the PPP seeks a “sustainable development,” that will be sold to us in the form of transportation and communications, which is the only thing that matters now in this plan.  The PPP is no longer a plan to obtain direct profits, now it is a plan that makes possible access to true sources of capital: the environment: water, biodiversity, minerals, air….

Now the PPP is the plan that will make possible the infrastructure and communications to make possible the extraction and exploitation of the natural resources of Chiapas and Central America.  The MBC is now a mere capitalist projects: one that seeks exploitation and capital; it only needs highways and internet to transport the resources.  The PPP is now the logistical company of the authentic capitalist enterprise: the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.

The Environmental Services and the privatization of water are now new tools of capital to fool us, exploit us, definitively humiliate us.  We should not forget the words of Andrés Barreda: “Services speak of servants, of servitude… The services have in common mediation.  What they have in common is that they are activities of intermediation: so that they connect with another thing.”  The PPP is a project of “sustainable development” because it connects cities to each other (and people, we are told, but they ask us for visas to travel on the highways); the MBC is a project for “the conservation of the environment” that connects transnational corporations with the evasion of their environmental responsibilities.

Capitalism is always “in connection” with itself, always generating benefits for the few.  And meanwhile, here we have Arriaga, a town, an example of what happens with capitalism services, with its “good intentions.”

Arriaga: a town without water, soon with water but only for a few; a town that no longer has a healthy environment, right of the Mexican Constitution that a PPP highway (state and federal) treads on it forever; a town whose citizens have had their condition of citizenry trampled upon, as if they were not Chiapans, as if they were not Mexicans and did not have the rights of everyone, the human rights and the rights stated in the Mexican Constitution, as if they did not have them.

In South Africa the cry of youth for dignity for their water is: “Enjoy the water, break the meter!”  Who knows if in Arriaga the cry will be: ENJOY THE WATER, FOR THE HIGHWAY!

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