Japhy Wilson - 30-may-2008 -
num.562
Facultad de Ciencias Políticas Univ. Manchester, Manchester, Inglaterra
Rural Cities The emblematic development project of the Sabines administration is the creation of the ‘ciudades rurales’ (rural cities). The rural cities are new urban spaces, in which the state will concentrate the small, isolated rural communities of Chiapas. 8 rural cities are planned for 2008, and 25 for the sexenio as a whole (El Heraldo 18/02/2008). The Rural Cities project has the full support of the federal government and the Interamerican Development Bank, and is being promoted through a discourse of ‘services’ and ‘quality of life’. In the words of Juan Mourino, federal Minister of Governance, Rural Cities "is a plan that has been directly presented to President Felipe Calderon, and appears a very novel attempt to resolve the problem of providing services and improving the quality of life of many of our country’s citizens."(31) But in contrast to the official line, the original PPP documents demonstrate that the Rural Cities project has its roots, not in the vision of Sabines, but rather in the policy prescriptions of multilateral organizations and the federal government itself. Furthermore, its motivation is not ‘social’, but strictly economic. In ‘El Sur Tambien Existe’, Santiago Levy emphasises that "the dispersed rural population in the south-southeast was practically double that of the rest of the country in 1995", and that "population dispersal obstructs potential economies of scale" (Levy et al 2002: 3). The Foundational Document of the PPP likewise identifies the "highly dispersed population" as one of the main "weaknesses" of the south-southeast, and proposes a solution identical to the Rural Cities project:
This strategy of resettlement is related to the neoliberal restructuring of the peasant economy. Levy explains the dispersion of the southern population as a consequence of maize subsidies, which had allowed land to continue to be exploited "itinerantly" (Levy et al 2002: 4). The World Bank’s Southern States Development Strategy also addresses the "low population density" of southern Mexico, using the econometric language of "thin markets" (World Bank 2003: 21-23). In the same document, the World Bank proposes a strategy to transform "the highly fragmented and community-based land tenure system" in the region, acknowledging the potential opposition of the populations affected:
The Programa del Sur also identifies a highly dispersed population as one of the region’s key problems (Comision Especial del Sur-Sureste 2007 6-7). Furthermore, it proposes Rural Cities as one of its ‘integral projects’, not only for Chiapas, but for the region as a whole (Comision Especial del Sur-Sureste 2007: 62). In a seminar on regional development, held in the Mexican Senate,(32) Martin Ramos, the President of the Special Commission for the South-Southeast (authors of the Programa del Sur), explained the Rural Cities strategy in terms very similar to those of the World Bank, identifying the floods in Chiapas and Tabasco in October 2007 as an opportunity to convince isolated communities to relocate to the new cities. Rural Cities was proposed by Sabines months before the floods, as a policy for the entire state "against population dispersal, generating cities that will be poles of attraction",(33) but after the disaster the project was relaunched as a solution for the communities displaced by flooding and landslides, in which "the reconstruction of houses will not take place where families were damaged and placed under risk, but will instead occur in secure locations with services, which will guarantee an improved quality of life for their new inhabitants".(34) It is precisely in the northwestern region of Chiapas most affected by the disaster that Sabines is constructing 7 of the first 8 rural cities. The logic is therefore identical to the strategy proposed by the World Bank, to ‘start small and in those communities more prone to accept change’. Productive Conversion and Social Control Once relocated in the rural cities, the ‘dispersed population’ of the Chiapas peasantry will no longer dedicate itself to self-sufficient production in the milpa, but instead to production for export on large-scale agroindustrial plantations. Concealed beneath the public discourse of the ‘services’ and ‘opportunities’ that the rural cities will provide to their new citizens, a key component of the project is the ‘Productive Conversion’, implemented by the Ministry of the Countryside. The ‘General Objective’ of this component is to "achieve the Productive Conversion within the production units of the Sustainable Rural Cities, via perennial agriculture and forestry plantations (Secretaria del Campo 2008). These "intensive plantations" will include commercial forests, tropical fruits and flowers, biofuels, cacao, and coffee (Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas 2007a). The strategy is perfectly consistent, not only with the agroindustrial corridors of the Declaración de Comitán and the Ministry of Tourism and Strategic Projects,(35) but also with the Plan Puebla Panama. According to Santiago Levy,
Located within the logic of the PPP, Rural Cities therefore functions as a form of what Marx called ‘primitive accumulation’ - the separation between the peasant and the land that is the basis of capitalist accumulation, without which capital would have neither labour nor natural resources to exploit. In the words of a bureaucrat at the Ministry of the Countryside, the intention of Rural Cities and the Productive Conversion is to "change the peasant’s mode of production".(36) The Productive Conversion is being implemented in Nuevo Juan de Grijalva and Santa Ana, the first two rural cities, which are currently under construction. As a community leader of one of the ejidos (agricultural communities) being relocated in Santa Ana explained, the government is offering the rural cities to the populations displaced by the floods, on condition that they abandon their traditional practices of growing maize and beans and raising cattle, and collaborate in the construction of orange, forestry, and African Palm plantations.(37) Despite its promotion as a ‘novel’ and ‘visionary’ project "unprecedented in any other region of the world" (El Heraldo 20/02/08), Rural Cities bares strong similarities to colonial and counterinsurgency strategies of social control. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Crown relocated indigenous communities through a strategy of ‘congregaciones’, or ‘reducciones’, replacing "indigenous conceptions of territoriality and uses of space" (Barabas 2003: 32) with a system of colonial towns that both represented and concretized the power of the Empire over the dispersed and potentially rebellious populations of New Spain. Similarly, in the 1980s, the Guatemalan state constructed the so-called ‘Aldeas Modelo’ (Model Villages), where it relocated populations displaced by the civil war into new ‘development poles’, as part of its counterinsurgency strategy. As with the Rural Cities, the Model Villages aimed to transform the ways of life and modes of production of the indigenous and peasant populations, through an integrated system of services, and "the forced conformation of peasant production to the interests of the dominant capitalist sectors"(38)
The Rural Cities project therefore functions not only as a form of ‘primitive accumulation’, but also as a form of social control and counterinsurgency. Concentrated in the rural cities, the indigenous and peasant communities will lose autonomy, not only in terms of their economic production, but also in terms of their cultural reproduction, which will now be subordinated to the cultural homogenization imposed by state health and education systems. The declared objective of Rural Cities is the "transition from social marginalization towards the formation of active and participatory citizens, who will be actors in the process of their own development and fulfilment",(39) but the actual implications of the project are precisely the opposite: state control of every aspect of the lives of the indigenous and peasant population, and the negation of their own cultural and economic practices. Rural Cities also functions as a counterinsurgency strategy in response to the development of zapatista autonomy. Although the state is constructing the first rural cities in the zones affected by last year’s floods, where there is no zapatista presence, there are other rural cities planned in the Fronteriza, Selva, and Los Altos regions, which constitute the geographical centre of the territory recuperated by the EZLN (Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas 2007b). In the words of a member of the Junta de Buen Gobierno (Good Government Council) at the caracol in La Realidad, with projects like Rural Cities, "the bad government offers us prepared land, with electricity, potable water, housing, they even offer to feed us. But all they are really promising is to fatten us up like pigs."(40) By contrast, the zapatista autonomous territories represent a concrete alternative in which the ‘dispersed communities’ of Chiapas are involved in an intensive process of development of autonomous health, education and production systems, beyond the control of the state, and beyond the accumulative and destructive logic of capital. These "liberated spaces, which are the seeds of a new, non-capitalist world" (Aguirre Rojas 2007), represent a major obstacle to the ‘abstract space’ of highways, tourist resorts, intensive plantations, and rural cities, that together constitute the new phase of the Plan Puebla Panama in Chiapas. Conclusion The Plan Puebla Panama continues. The same list of projects that appear in its Foundational Document - highways, ports, airports, plantations, urbanizations, and tourist megaprojects - keeps reappearing under the names of other development programmes, implemented by diverse multilateral organizations and distinct levels of government, and operating at various geographical scales. At the transnational level, the PPP is undergoing a process of reconstruction that will conclude this year with its relaunch under a new name. In southern Mexico the PPP now exists in the form of the Programa del Sur, which shares both its analysis and its prescribed projects not only with the PPP, but also with the World Bank’s Southern States Development Strategy. At state level, the PPP is being implemented via the Declaración de Comitán, which also includes the same list of projects, with the support of the federal government and the Programa del Sur. At this scale, the same hegemonic consensus that exists between multilateral organizations and distinct levels of government can be observed among the political parties - the PRD/PRI at state level and the PAN at federal level - in support of the neoliberal vision expressed in the PPP. This consensus, celebrated by Sabines with his slogan "Unity always brings good results",(41) is an instance of a global tendency towards ‘post-politics’:
In Chiapas, we can see that the PPP has entered a new phase, evolving from its initial focus on transport and communications infrastructure, to begin concretizing projects related to production, ‘services’, and territorial restructuring - agroindustrial plantations, ‘ecoarchaological’ theme parks, rural cities, etc. This complex process threatens to further crush the lived spaces of Mesoamerican cultures beneath the abstract space of transnational capital accumulation. As the case of Chiapas illustrates, the concretization of the PPP necessitates the territorial dispossession of indigenous and peasant populations - with paramilitary force if necessary - and their relocation in new population centres entangled in the highways and ‘corridors’ of the world market. But in Chiapas, as in much of Mesoamerica, things are not that simple for capital and its post-political technocrats. The rural cities and tourist theme parks will have to confront the resistance of the populations that they intend to displace, as in case of the Palenque-Agua Azul Integrally Planned Centre, where a year of intimidation and paramilitary violence has not succeeded in removing the zapatista communities from the area. Furthermore, in the process of the construction of zapatista autonomy, there exists the possibility of an alternative to capitalism that, despite its own difficulties and contradictions, deserves the continued support of all of us who wish to dwell in a world profoundly different from that which the Plan Puebla Panama implies. Bibliography Aguirre Rojas, Carlos Antonio, 2007, Mandar Obedeciendo: Las Lecciones Politicas del Neozapatismo Mexicano Mexico: Centro Immanuel Wallerstein Albores Guillen, Roberto, 2006, ‘Declaración de Comitán’, in ‘Proyecto de Observación y Vigilancia de los Derechos Políticos y Civiles de los Pueblos en Chiapas 2006, Informe Mensual Junio 2006’ Barabas, Alicia M. 2003, ‘Introducción: Una Mirada Etnográfica Sobre los Territorios Simbólicos Indígenas’ in Alicia M. Barabas (editor) Diálogos con El Territorio: Simbolizaciones Sobre el Espacio en las Culturas Indígenas de México, México DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 13-36 Capise 2007, ‘Informe: Tierra y Territorio, Caracol la Garrucha Parte 1’ CIEPAC 2005, ‘Las carreteras del PPP sepultan La Sepultura’, Comisión Especial del Sur Sureste 2001, ‘Chiapas: Sistema de Corredores Carreteros Interregionales’ Comisión Especial del Sur Sureste 2007, ‘Programa del Sur’ FONATUR 2004, ‘FONATUR en la Región Sur-Sureste de la Republica’ Foucault, Michel, 1977, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison London: Penguin Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas 2007a, ‘Ciudades Rurales Sustentables’ Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas 2007b, ‘Ciudades Rurales de Chiapas: La Propuesta’ Hardt, Michael, y Negri, Antonio, 2000, Empire Cambridge: Harvard University Press Harvey, Neil, 2006, ‘La Disputa por los Recursos Naturales en el Área del Plan Puebla Panamá’ in Daniel Villafuerte Solís y Xochitl Leyva (editors) Geoeconomia y Geopolitica en el Área del Plan Puebla Panamá México DF: Miguel Ángel Porrua Hiernaux-Nicolás, Daniel 2003, ‘Plan Puebla Panamá: ¿Una Nueva Visión de Desarrollo Regional?, in Eduardo Andrés Sandoval Forero y Robinsón Salazar Pérez (editors) Lectura Critica del Plan Puebla Panamá México DF: Libros en Red Lefebvre, Henri, 1994 The Production of Space Oxford: Blackwell Levy, Santiago et al, 2002, ‘El Sur También Existe: Un Ensayo Sobre el Desarrollo Regional de México’ Nolasco, Margarita et al, 2003, ‘El Territorio en la Frontera Sur: Espacio Apropiado Factica y Simbólicamente’ in Alicia M. Barabas (editor) Diálogos con El Territorio: Simbolizaciones Sobre el Espacio en las Culturas Indígenas de México, México DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 361-436 Presidencia de la Republica, 2001, ‘Plan Puebla Panamá: Capitulo México, Documento Base’ Secretaria del Campo, Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas, 2008, ‘Programa Ciudades Rurales Sustentables: Avances’ Swyngedouw, Eric, 2008, ‘Where is the Political?’ Department of Geography, University of Manchester Urry, John, 1990, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies London: Sage Publications Vásquez, Paola, et al 2008, ‘Alto a la Guerra Contra los Pueblos Zapatistas’, Rebeldía 58:5 16-25 World Bank 2003, ‘Economic Activity, Agglomerations, and Logistics in the Mexican Southern States’, in World Bank 2003, Mexico: Southern States Development Strategy Washington: World Bank NOTES:
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