December 29, 2004
Mesa Global
Today I spoke with a new group called Mesa Global. They are sort of an umbrella group that came together a few years ago for organization resisting Plan Puebla Panama and CAFTA. This coalition consists of labor, indigenous, campesino, human rights and women's organizations. They talked about the importance of people in the US understanding that Plan Puebla Panama(PPP) is the link between NAFTA and CAFTA. PPP has already got many foreign investors behind it, but CAFTA would provide more of a formal implementation of the broad plans of PPP.
The strategy of PPP and CAFTA is an "integrated one," according to Mesa Global. They told me that the new highway plans would link up major industrial and shipping corridors. The influx of US grains, particularly corn at cheaper prices, will force many small rural farmers off the land seeking work in the growing Maquiladora zones. This will hit Guatemala particularly hard since it has the largest rural small farmer population in Central America. The damn projects would provide sufficient energy resources for the new sweatshop factories. This all sounds like a great plan to investors, but what they don't take into account is that this plan doesn't take into account that it will create more displacement and moreenvironmental distruction. They told me that people in the US need to look at what has happened in the northern Mexican border, the current major sweatshop corridor along the US border.
"Look at the working conditions it has created, the environmental problems and the other social factors that these Free Trade Zones have created." The factors, I was told, are that these sweatshop zones become havens for drugs and prostitution, which eventually leads to more violence against women as we have seen in places like Juarez and Chihuahua.