Economics < Side

Putting People First: Building Alternatives to Plan Puebla-Panama

"Proponents of Plan Puebla-Panama ignore the initiatives that indigenous groups are already taking."

Not everyone is excited about the next multi-billion dollar series of development projects planned for Central America.

Dubbed "Plan Puebla-Panama," the project would take 25 years to complete as it tries to create alternate trade routes to the Panama Canal and exploit natural resources, land and labor throughout the region. The project has the backing of the Inter-American Development Bank, the UN Development Programme, the eight governments of the Central American region and numerous private investors.

But an international network of environmental justice and Latin America solidarity organizations, including IDEX, are challenging Plan Puebla-Panama and supporting alternatives. Why?

The plan would cause irreparable environmental damage to indigenous communities and tropical jungles in its path - through clear cutting, flooding and dredging crucial local ports. It also would strip communities of their communal property and force them to relocate. Oil and gas development projects, planned throughout the region, are likely to leave a legacy of contaminated rivers and environmental health problems.

To attract foreign investment and utilize the labor of those displaced from their lands, free-trade zones would appear - clusters of assembly plants for the garment and high-tech industries with low wages and little enforcement of labor and environmental laws.

While claiming to want to lift local people out of poverty, proponents of Plan Puebla-Panama ignore the initiatives that indigenous groups are already taking towards economic self-sufficiency and sustainable development. In the Mexican state of Chiapas, for example, indigenous development organizations DESMI and K'inal Antzetik have created networks of organic agriculture and crafts cooperatives that trade with each other and band together to sell their goods to the international fair-trade market at good prices.

Indigenous communities and their supporters are determined to have their say. In November 2001, representatives of over 300 organizations from throughout southern Mexico and Central America gathered in Xela, Guatemala at a forum called "In the Face of Globalization, People Should Be the Priority." They declared their opposition to Plan Puebla-Panama and its anti-democratic nature.

Working together with groups in the region, IDEX and other U.S.-based NGOs hope to pressure the Inter-American Development Bank and other multilateral institutions to pull their support for the Plan Puebla-Panama and to listen to the voices of the people they claim to be helping.