Colombia's Integration Into Plan Puebla Panama

[struggle4progress]

Implications Of Colombia's Integration Into Plan Puebla Panama

by Fernando Arellano Ortiz, ALAI, published in Argenpress 21/07/2006
Translation by Tlaxcala

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.

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 ...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0607/S00341.htm

[Judi Lynn]

1. I'm praying their plans will be thwarted by the REST of Latin America,

and decent people supporting those good governments throughout the world. This is simply EVIL. From the article:

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”.

Thank you, struggle4progress. So many people need to know about this depravity.