Bulletins of CIEPAC
"Chiapas day by day"

"The Plan Puebla Panama transforms a territory of communities and regions into a space of flows- conforming to a neoliberal vision that privileges the mobility and circulation of goods over the construction of integrated spaces- This strategy ends up funtionalizing space, transforming it into what Henri Lefebvre called ‘abstract space’, governed by geometrical laws and the productivist rationality of accumulation, rather than by principles referring to the formation and maintenance of spaces of quality, identity, and ‘dwelling’" (Hiernaux-Nicolas 2003)

"The location of the state (of Chiapas) is a strategic point for exports, and for the importation of foreign products, given that it is the geographical centre of the Puebla-Panama region" (Roberto Albores Gleason, Minister of Tourism and Strategic Projects, Government of Chiapas 18/01/08)

Capitalist development implies the profound and incessant transformation of human reality, the disenchantment of nature, the instrumentalization of life, and the subordination of the world to the monolithic logic of money. It is a historical process, underway for over 500 years, in which capital advances ever further in its territorial domination of the planet, expanding its reproduction, accelerating its circulation, intensifying its exploitation of humanity and the environment, and reducing the immeasurable diversity of our cultures and biospheres to mere objects of commerce.

This process, which the philosopher Henri Lefebvre called "the production of abstract space" (Lefebvre 1994), has entered a new phase in the 21st Century, which constitutes a ‘second generation’ of the neoliberal project. The first generation, consisting of the Structural Adjustment Programmes and Free Trade Agreements of the last decades of the 20th century, created new transnational spaces for the accumulation of capital (e.g. NAFTA). The second generation implies the deep restructuring of these spaces, particularly in their least developed regions, reconstructing them in accordance with the perceived exigencies of ‘global competitiveness’, in order to market them to national and transnational investors.

Plan Puebla Panama

A significant example of this second generation of neoliberal reforms is the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), launched in 2001 by the then President of Mexico, Vicente Fox, in conjunction with the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB)⁽¹⁾. The PPP is a development programme for the Mesoamerican region (southern Mexico and Central America), focused upon a set of infrastructure ‘megaprojects’ - highways, ports, airports, railways, energy systems etc. - that unites the region concretely, thus complimenting the NAFTA and CAFTA free trade agreements, and physically integrating the area into global circuits of capital. With these megaprojects, the PPP aims to provide the spatial hardware necessary to attract national and foreign private investment to the region, transforming the mode of production of the Mesoamerican countryside, from a predominantly peasant economy still largely based on social property and self-sufficiency, towards a neoliberal system based on private property, cheap labour, agroindustrial plantations, natural resource extraction, and ‘cultural’ and ‘ecological’ tourism.

This strategy of territorial domination implies not only the intensification of the uneven development and inequalities of the region, the accelerated destruction of its environment, and a further increase in the growing wave of migration towards the USA, but also the radical symbolic and representational transformation of a place with deep cultural and historical roots. Mesoamerica is "a meaningful space, culturally appropriated, in which (indigenous peoples) live, work, obtain their sustenance, and practice their rituals, and which both represents and serves as the material basis for their visions of the world (Nolasco et al 2003: 363). The PPP replaces this "cultural territory- woven with representations, conceptions and beliefs" (Barabas 2003: 23), with an abstract space of monoculture plantations, natural resource inventories, commodity flows, and tourist simulations of the same indigenous cultures threatened by the PPP’s implementation.

The Evolution of the PPP

For these reasons, the PPP was immediately and forcefully rejected by Mesoamerican peasant and indigenous organisations. Their opposition, combined with the global recession of 2001 and the incompetence and corruption of the region’s political classes, discouraged private investment and stalled the PPP’s advance. As a strategic response to the resistance, in 2003 Fox and the IDB made the PPP disappear from public view and official discourse (Harvey 2006: 216). The strategy worked: journalists and academics announced the death of the PPP, and the resistance turned its attention to other themes. But beneath the radar, the PPP has stealthily continued. On his arrival in power in 2006, the new President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, announced that he would relaunch the PPP, after a period of ‘reconstruction’. Since then, the bureaucrats at the Office of the Plan Puebla Panama in the Mexican Ministry of International Relations have been working on this reconstruction, reducing the list of projects from over 100 to 20, in order to give ‘more focus’ to the PPP.⁽²⁾ Of the 20 that remain, the majority continue to be focused upon transport, energy, and communications infrastructure. The same strategy will therefore continue, although it will be relaunched under a different name, in order to break with the PPP’s bad reputation, and to broaden the concept of the project to include Colombia, which entered the PPP as a full member in 2007. The results of the reconstruction will be revealed at the next Tuxtla Summit, in June 2008.

With its name-change, the PPP will therefore become invisible. While its transnational dimension will be implemented under its new name, the megaprojects planned for southern Mexico, which were previously included in the PPP, are now starting to appear in the content of other programmes and initiatives, operating at other scales. One of these is the ‘Programa del Sur’ (Programme for the South), a proposal for the development of Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca produced in 2007 by the Mexican Congress’s Comision Especial del Sur-Sureste (Special Comission for the South-Southest). The main architect of the Programa del Sur is Carlos Rojas, Secretary of State during the Salinas and Zedillo presidencies. One of the original inspirations for the PPP, listed as such in its ‘Documento Base’ (Foundational Document), is an earlier Rojas proposal called the ‘Iniciativa del Sur’. With the Programa del Sur, he is now repackaging the same idea.

The Programa del Sur is focused on many of the same megaprojects included in the Mexican Chapter of the PPP. It also has much in common with the World Bank’s ‘Southern States Development Strategy’ for Mexico, published in 2003. Like the Programa del Sur, the World Bank document presents itself as a new strategy for the development of Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca. Nevertheless, its economic analysis and list of projects is virtually identical to that of the PPP, including the PPP’s most controversial proposals, such as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Megaproject. Nevertheless, despite their obvious similarities and connections, the PPP is scarcely mentioned in the World Bank document, and not once in the Programa del Sur. Furthermore, in contrast to the PPP, these ‘new’ strategies were launched with virtually no publicity. The PPP is thus managing to disappear completely from public view, while simultaneously consolidating itself as a hegemonic strategy operating at multiple spatial scales, and promoted by diverse development agencies and levels of government.⁽³⁾ Through this evolution, and despite the obstacles it has confronted, the PPP is steadily advancing in its implementation. This process can be clearly observed in the case of Chiapas.

The PPP in Chiapas

In contrast to its historical position as the most marginalized state of the Mexican periphery, Chiapas now finds itself as "the ideal centre of the Plan Puebla Panama; door to Central America" (World Bank 2003: 30), with a "diversity of biological and agricultural resources, a great abundance of water, significant hydrocarbon reserves, unique historical and archaeological sites, and abundant human resources, which present promising investment opportunities" (Presidencia de la Republica 2001: 183). The key role of Chiapas in the PPP is also due to the unresolved armed conflict between the Mexican state and the EZLN. This conflict inspired the powerful neoliberal technocrat Santiago Levy to write ‘El Sur También Existe’ (‘The South Also Exists’), which provided the theoretical basis for the PPP.⁽⁴⁾ The document begins with the proposal that, while the launch of NAFTA on the 1st of January 1994 constituted "unequivocal proof that Mexico was ready to enter modernity" (Levy et al 2002: 1), the uprising in Chiapas demonstrated the need to implement a programme of infrastructure megaprojects in the region, to allow investors to take full advantage of "the wealth of the southeast in terms of natural resources capable of encouraging agricultural development, forestry, tourism, and manufacturing" (Levy et al 2002: 39). The implication is that the domination of the Mexican southeast by large-scale capital would bring zapatismo and popular resistance to an end.

Thus far, the PPP has achieved neither capital’s full domination of the Mexican southeast, nor the eradication of the EZLN. Nevertheless, during the sexenio (six-year term) of Fox as President of Mexico and Pablo Salazar as State Governor (2000-2006), there were significant advances in the PPP’s implementation in Chiapas. In infrastructure, these advances included the completion of the Tuxtla-San Cristobal and Ocozocoautla-Las Choapas (Veracruz) highways; the modernization of Port Chiapas (previously Port Madero) and the Arriaga-Tapachula highway; the construction of the Angel Albino Corzo international airport; electricity integration between Mexico and Guatemala; and the construction of a fibre-optic system between Tuxtla and Ciudad Hidalgo. Other advances included an expansion of African Palm and eucalyptus plantations; an increase in state support for ecotourism projects; and the launch and failure of a maquiladora in San Cristobal de las Casas.

In 2006, Juan Sabines Guerrero won the election for Governor of Chiapas, representing the PRD, supposedly Mexico’s ‘left-wing’ party. However, far from being abandoned in Chiapas, the PPP has entered a new and more intensive phase in its concretization, including further infrastructure projects, the development of ‘economic corridors’ in tourism, logistics, and agroindustry, and the launch of the ‘Rural Cities’ project. In order to understand this apparent contradiction, we have to understand the form and context in which Sabines came to power-

Roberto Albores and the Declaración de Comitán

Just one week before being announced as the PRD candidate for Governor of Chiapas, Juan Sabines Guerrero was a key figure in the state structure of the right-wing PRI. A few months previously, he had abandoned his position as Municipal President of Tuxtla Gutierrez, representing the PRI, to compete to become the PRI’s candidate for state governor. His rivals included Jose Antonio Aguilar Bodegas, and Roberto Albores Guillen, a big-time rancher from Comitan and governor of Chiapas from 1998 to 2000, during which time he became notorious for his support for paramilitary groups, and for the violent dismantling of several zapatista autonomous municipalities (La Jornada 06/06/05).⁽⁵⁾ When Aguilar Bodegas won the candidacy in controversial circumstances (La Jornada 07/04/06), Albores and Sabines made a pact in which Albores promised to use the full weight of his political machine in support of the Sabines campaign for state governor, with Sabines now representing the PRD.⁽⁶⁾ In return, Sabines had to sign a document in the presence of a public notary, in which he promised to implement a development plan drawn up by Albores and his advisors (La Jornada 09/06/06, 06/12/06).

This development plan, known as the Declaración de Comitán (Comitan Declaration), is nothing less than a "mini-PPP for Chiapas".⁽⁷⁾ The Declaración announces that "Chiapas looks to enter the future with great and legitimate ambitions for progress. The state has everything necessary to achieve its structural transformation, and to realize the great works that this transformation demands". Its first priority is ‘Infrastructure for Prosperity’, including the construction of new highways - San Cristobal-Palenque, Tapachula-Talisman/Ciudad Hidalgo, and Arriaga-Ocozocoautla; the paving of 2000km of rural roads; and the ‘reactivation’ of the state’s airports. The Declaración also includes forestry plantations, "an extensive zone of tropical agricultural plantations for export", the construction of a "new Cancun in the north of Chiapas", and the promotion of maquiladoras through the creation of "free trade zones, exempt from taxes, and provided with communication, energy and water systems" (Albores 2006).

Sabines signed the Declaración de Comitán in June 2006, and Albores was as good as his word, visiting more municipalities and making more public appearances than Sabines himself in support of his electoral campaign. Once in power, Sabines began paying his debts to Albores, using the Declaración as the basis for his official development plan, ‘Chiapas Solidario’, and giving a place in his cabinet to Albores’ son, Roberto Albores Gleason, as Minister of Economic Development (La Jornada 06/12/06). Albores Gleason immediately began to take the lead in implementing his father’s project. In June 2007, for example, "in representation of Governor Juan Sabines Guerrero", Albores Gleason launched the ‘Strategic Plan for the Attraction of Investments in Chiapas’. He presented the Plan alongside Eduardo Sojo, current federal Minister of the Economy, and key member in Fox’s Office of the Presidency during the formulation and launch of the PPP in 2001.⁽⁸⁾ In language highly reminiscent of the PPP, Sojo and Albores Gleason explained that:

(The Strategic Plan consists in) "making Chiapas a more competitive state for the attraction of foreign and national investment- The state has sustainable natural resources that guarantee security to the investor. Its strategic location also converts Chiapas into the best logistical option in relation to central and south-east Mexico, north-eastern North America, Asia, and Central and South America."⁽⁹⁾

In October 2007, Sabines took a further step in fulfilling his promise to Albores Guillen, reforming the State Law of Public Administration, to divide the Ministry of Economic Development into two new ministries - the Ministry of the Economy, and the Ministry of Tourism and Strategic Projects (STPE). With this division, in which the majority of the power of the old Ministry of Economic Development was diverted to the STPE, Sabines managed to construct a new government department specifically dedicated to the implementation of the Declaración de Comitán, and run by none other than Roberto Albores Gleason.⁽¹⁰⁾ Using almost the same words that appear in the Declaración, Albores Gleason explained that the role of the STPE is the "radical transformation of the economic structure" of Chiapas, based on "tourism- strategic projects, economic corridors, and competitiveness", with the aim of "positioning Chiapas as a paradise of investment opportunities"⁽¹¹⁾

TO BE CONTINUED...

NOTES:

Other similar projects include Regional Infrastructure for South American Integration (IIRSA), the Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Program, and the Asian Highway Network

Interviews conducted in the Office of the Plan Puebla Panama, Mexican Ministry of International Relations, November 2007

The PPP also has the support of other powerful multilateral organizations. In 2006, the OECD published its ‘Review of the Mesoamerican Region’, the proposals of which coincide exactly with the PPP’s strategy of agroindustry, logistics, and ‘light manufacturing’ (i.e. maquiladoras). In 2007 the UNDP, in cooperation with the Mexican Office of the PPP, produced a report called ‘Lineamientos para un Agenda del Sureste’ (‘Outline for a Southeast Agenda’), focused upon the same projects identified in the PPP

Levy was influential in the Zedillo government, as Junior Minister of the Treasury, and as one of the most capable and dogmatic of Mexico’s new generation of neoliberal economists. The federal government financed the ‘change team’ that oversaw the transition from Zedillo to Fox, and it was Levy who controlled the funds. He therefore came to have great influence in the change team, which gave him the opportunity to sell his ideas for the development of the Mexican south. Later, as director of the Mexican social security system (IMSS), Levy became one of the key actors in the Fox administration, and is now Chief Economist at the IDB.

Las Abejas, the organization whose members were victims of the Acteal massacre in 1997, expressed their rejection of the Albores candidacy: "Violations of human rights, and the impunity of their perpetrators, are evil weeds. If you do not cut the weeds at their roots, they grow back. We now know that Albores wishes to become governor of Chiapas again. He is returning to continue his bad policies- Under Albores, our zapatista brothers in the autonomous municipalities suffered attacks and persecution- The evil weeds were not pulled up, and now Albores wants to return. Will his return be followed by the return of paramilitaries and military-police operations?" (La Jornada 25/07/04)

Sabines won the PRD candidacy in return for the promise to win votes in Chiapas for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in his campaign for the Mexican Presidency. This pact further justifies the controversial stance taken by Subcomandante Marcos against AMLO during his electoral campaign, when Marcos argued that the PRD did not constitute a genuine alternative to the neoliberal model and the decadence of the Mexican political class

Interview with Miguel Angel Garcia, Maderas del Pueblo, 05/04/08

Interview with a bureaucrat closely involved in the PPP from 2001 to 2003, Mexico City, 22/11/07

http://www.cocoso.chiapas.gob.mx/documento.php?id=20070628061541

http://www.cocoso.chiapas.gob.mx/documento.php?id=20071123065330

http://www.cocoso.chiapas.gob.mx/documento.php?id=20071228104704