NAFTA, the FTAA and ... the PPP?

By Kari Lydersen, LiP Magazine. Posted September 10, 2001.

A wide toll highway and modern railroad tracks cut across the country, through coastal marshland, dense rainforest and mountainous highlands where small fields of blue agave and corn cling to the steep hillsides. Peasant farmers who live in the small towns along the way glance up as the trucks and trains thunder by, gazing at the trucks and boxcars full of cheap clothing made in China, electronics made in Japan, oil drilled in Colombia, shrimp farmed in Oaxaca and lumber from Chiapas, bound for northern Mexico, the United States, or beyond.

Some of the peasants linger along the side of the road, trying to sell tortillas or mangoes to the drivers. But the drivers, on a tight schedule delivering goods and raw materials for multinational companies, rarely stop or even slow down.

When the peasants sit down for dinner at night, eating totopos and beans and hearing the vague rumble of the trains and trucks in the distance, they might talk about the changes of the past few years. About the relatives and friends who have migrated to the U.S. looking for work, because the free flow of cheap Illinois corn, Florida oranges and other U.S. products into Mexico has made it even harder for Mexican farmers to sell their goods to their own neighbors. Or because the land where they used to farm has been leveled for eucalyptus plantations or maquilas (factories).

They might talk about the fishermen they know in the coastal towns, who are one by one leaving the sea for factory jobs because the ocean-dwelling shrimp they catch with nets cannot compete on the market with the industrial shrimp farms. These farms now cover thousands of acres of land in the area, acres that once hosted tangled, thriving mangrove ecosystems but now leak a stinking mix of chemicals and shrimp excrement into the surrounding lagoons.

If they are Mixe, Mixteca, or one of the other indigenous groups in the area, they might tell stories about the past, when they still lived on their traditional land, now claimed for the highway, railway, eucalyptus and maquilas. They might also share legends of the countless strange and beautiful plants and animals of the Chimalapas rain forest, which is steadily being eaten away by the mass development going on around and inside it.

Free Trade Nightmares

Such despondent images sum up many people's worst fears for the future of Mexico -- in this case, for the lush Isthmus of Tehuantepec -- in the face of the swelling tide of free trade and corporate globalization.

In the seven years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect, gloomy images abound. While imports from Mexico to the U.S. are up by several billion dollars, the number of Mexicans living in extreme poverty is up as well -- 79 percent of Mexicans now make below the poverty level of $7.50 a day. Poverty has increased particularly in agrarian areas as corn, coffee and other products imported from the U.S. can be bought more cheaply in Mexico than locally-grown products, due in part to the fact that U.S. produce relies largely on mass farming methods and, thanks to NAFTA, no longer faces import tariffs. Rising waves of people have migrated to the U.S. in search of work as their local economies steadily deteriorate.

Over the past year, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement, which would essentially expand NAFTA to the entire Western hemisphere, has come closer and closer to reality, despite the massive protests against it during the Summit of the Americas meeting in Quebec City in April.

Now, the latest spoonful in this multi-course free trade alphabet soup is being served to the residents of Mexico and Central America, though as with the FTAA, many people there still don't know what they're being asked to eat.

This most recent offering is the Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP), a pet project of Mexican President Vicente Fox that was introduced in September 2000 and treated, privately, as one of his top priorities over the past year. The plan follows in the footsteps of several grandly-named plans before it: former Mexican president José Lopez Portillo's Alpha Omega plan of the late '70s and former president Ernesto Zedillo's Trans-Isthmus Megaproject of the '90s. But with a characteristic bigger-is-better approach that he must have honed in his time as a Coca Cola executive, Fox has taken the idea to a whole new level.

All of these plans essentially aimed to create a new "dry canal" transportation corridor through southern Mexico, something to lure and facilitate the burgeoning wave of inter-American trade, and to serve as an alternative to the increasingly backed-up Panama Canal for trade between Asia and North America.

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrowest point in Mexico with the state of Oaxaca on the south side and Veracruz on the north side, has been a major trade corridor since before the Spanish conquest. Through the centuries it has always been crucial, not only as a trade corridor but as an area wealthy in natural resources and biodiversity. In fact, the Chimalapas jungle on the isthmus is ranked first in biodiversity in the country, with more virgin forest than the Lacondon jungle in Chiapas. The oceans and lagoons off the isthmus have historically been rich in fish and shellfish, just as the earth below has been rich in minerals and oil.

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