Implications Of Colombia's Integration Into Plan Puebla Panama
by Fernando Arellano Ortiz, ALAI, published in Argenpress 21/07/2006
From July onwards, Colombia will form part of the one-sided geopolitical mega-project that seeks to consolidate the
neoliberal model in the western Latin America with the aim of privatizing highway infrastructure, public services and
natural resources. This economic and political strategy is promoted by Washington via Mexico's President Vicente Fox and
counts with the financial support of the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, while various multinational
companies are committed to its implementation. Nonetheless, the impact President Alvaro Uribe's announcement, that in
his second period in office Colombia will join Plan Puebla Panama, will have in the country at every level in the
immediate future has gone unnoticed by public opinion, probably through ignorance as to Plan Puebla Panama's causes and
consequences
Multinationals after the peoples' wealth
But what is Plan Puebla Panama and what are its political and economic objectives? In the first place, Plan Puebla
Panama, dreamed up by Washington, was proposed by President Fox in 2000 and accepted by Central American leaders in 2001
in the context of the Tuxtla framework for dialogue (1). It is a fundamental component of the United States'
geostrategic plan to complement the free trade treaties it has with Canada, Mexico and Central America and those it is
in the course of completing with Andean countries like Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
The aim of the plan is very clear : to help multinational companies privatize ports and airports, highways, electrical
energy, water, gas, oil and, above all, to get unrestricted control of the huge resources of biodiversity of the
Lacandona forest (2), and the Chimalapas in Oaxaca (3) in Mexico and of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor that
reaches all the way to Panama. It has a planned cost of US$25 billion and seeks to open up Central America and Colombia
to free trade.
In this way it will create a "development corridor" from the central Mexican state of Puebla across six Central American
countries down to Panama, a region of 102 million square kilometres and 63 million people. This area also includes
important oil wealth, 34 million hectares of virgin timber, spectacular fresh water reserves, 30 million low wage
workers and the "Mesoamerican Biological Corridor" cooked up by the World Bank, a much coveted source of biodiversity.
The importance of Colombia
To all that, one now has to add the immense resources of a South American country like Colombia which according to
President Uribe's calculations will very soon join this geopolitical megaproject. In this country the eyes of the
multinationals are set on El Choco, (4) not only for its natural diversity but also because it is an important source of
fresh water and oil reserves. The Tapon of Darien (5) is also in this department, a forest zone which will join Central
and South America once a stretch of the Panamerican Highway is built there. As if the foregoing were not enough, the
possibility is also mooted of using nuclear charges to open up an interoceanic canal that would end up being an
alternative to the Panama Canal.
As researcher Miguel Pickard of Mexico's Political and Economic Research Centre for Community Action (CIEPAC) points
out, "the PPP does not spring from a strategy to eliminate endemic poverty as the Fox government asserts, but as an
ingenious conspiracy to channel enormous sums of public money into infrastructure projects that, it is hoped, will
induce private investment."
Plan Houston-Puebla-Bogotá
Not for nothing is the Colombian government negotiating a free trade treaty with its counterparts in Central America.
What inspires the Uribe Velez administration more than trade with that region is the preparation of the legal and
institutional framework to permit Colombia's expeditious entry into Plan Puebla Panama which in future ought to be
called the Plan Houston Puebla Bogota since the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the US State
Department seek political and economic control of a Mesoamerican and South American region from Texas though to
Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
Although the Bush and Fox governments play an important role in promoting Plan Puebla Panama, its real motor is in the
Inter American Development Bank's head office in Washington DC since this bank is the one that designed it and is
largely able to finance it. Its president, the Colombian Luis Alberto Moreno, heads Plan Puebla Panama's Financial
Committee. Other financial investors are the World Bank, the European Union, the Spanish government and other bilateral
agencies. As for the multinational corporations that regard with enthusiasm the profitable business of exploiting the
region's land, subsoils and rich biodiversity, one might mention among others: International Paper Company, Boise
Cascade, the Mexican conglomerate Pulsar, the Spanish comapny Endesa and the US companies Harken Energy, Applied Energy
Services, Duke Energy, Harza, Delasa Prescott and Follet, Tribasa, Caros, GAN, ICA, Imbursa, Texas Connection,
International Shipholding Corporation, Monsanto, Shell, Dow Chemical, Exxon, y Hutchinson Holdings.
Rampart against Venezuela
From the political point of view, Plan Puebla Panama is an excellent mechanism for Washington to facilitate
geopolitical, economic and operative support to neoliberal governments like those in Central America and Colombia and in
that way to oppose and weaken any alternative development model like those being promoted by Presidents like Hugo Chavez
in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. In other words, the integration of a community of nations under the influence
and guidance of Washington and international financial capital will end up consolidating a rampart against the
Venezuelan government's obvious growing political influence in South America.
Consequences and resistance
The implementation of this megaproject for multinational businesses puts at risk the survival of thousands of
communities because not only will those businesses attack the ecosystem but also pillage the region's natural resouces,
exploit plentiful cheap labour and accelerate the displacement of indigenous peoples and rural working families from
their lands driving them into the maquiladoras. Likewise, the big biotechnology companies like Monsanto, Syngenta,
Diversa and Pulsar have the chance to carry out “biopiracy”.
All this is why many rural working family and indigenous people's organizations, in Mexico and Central America and
hundreds of social organizations are organizing mass resistance to Plan Puebla Panama. Meanwhile, in Colombia there is
as yet no awareness nor has any debate begun on this neoliberal macroproject which, with great caution, has barely even
been sketched out by re-elected President Uribe
Translator's notes.
1. The Tuxtla Framework for Dialogue is a regional consultation and cooperation forum including Belize, Costa Rica, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama
2. The Lacandona region covers 957,240 hectares in the north east of Chiapas – about 13% of the total area of the State.
3. The forest of Chimalapas is located on the borders of the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas near the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec.
4. Choco is a department of Colombia located in the west of the country between the western watershed of the Western
Cordillera and the Pacific coastal plain. In the north it borders Panama and the Caribbean, in the east the Colombian
departments of Antioquia, Risaralda y Valle del Cauca; in the south the department of Valle del Cauca and in the west
with the Pacific Ocean. It is the wettest area in Colombia with rainfall normally between 4000 and 8000 mm per year
resulting in stupendous forest vegetation and abundant rivers.
5. The Tapon of Darien is an area of mountainous forest that separates the existing stretches of the Panamerican Highway
between the Panama canal and the north east of Colombia.
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Translated from Spanish into English by toni solo, a member of Tlaxcala ( www.tlaxcala.es), the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation is Copyleft.