Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

CHIAPAS, MEXICO - "We've decided. We reject it completely. We won't take their herbicides or fertilizers. We won't work in their factories." So said a member of the catechist body in the Zapatista community of Polhó after two days of recent meetings about Plan Puebla-Panamá.

Haven't heard of Plan Puebla-Panamá? You aren't alone. Mexican organizations and citizens' groups are just learning about it. Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) is a free trade agreement that has been in the works since the beginning of the Fox administration in December. It will establish open markets from Puebla (just south of Mexico City) all the way down through Central America to Panama, creating a regional free trade bloc. "Free trade" means free reign for corporations like Nestle, which nearly single-handedly bottomed out the price of Mexican coffee this year by threatening to import mass quantities from Asia and Africa.

The indigenous way of life presents problems to multinational corporations like Nestle. Indigenous people live a mostly rural and dispersed life, while the free market needs a cheap centralized labor force. Therefore everything possible is done to urbanize and bring small-scale subsistence indigenous farmers into the market economy.

A first step toward that centralization is creating conditions in which staying put is intolerable. The widespread displacement of indigenous people in Chenalhó County and around Chiapas through low-intensity warfare, over years, creates conditions which can't continue.

"We'll leave the problems here, move to where there is better land, and jobs nearby," said an indigenous man living displaced in Chenalhó for the last three years. He ate lunch with the CPT Mexico team as he told of his hope to buy a huge tract of land along with a hundred families nearer to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital city of Chiapas.

The jobs to which he refers would likely come through the arrival of maquiladoras in the region. Developing Chiapan maquiladoras, or factories most often owned by foreign investors or corporations, is a component of Plan Puebla-Panamá. New opportunities for work might seem like a welcome appearance. Not necessarily. Not this kind of work. Maquiladoras, which line the Mexican-U.S. border, are sweat-shops in Spanish which pay the lowest wage possible, quickly firing any workers who begin to whisper of unions or better conditions or higher pay.

In the face of the creeping incursions of government and corporate power-holders, Tzotzil people in Chenalhó continue to assert their autonomy -- ethnic, cultural, and in many cases, political autonomy. "We reject it completely." These people who have nothing are turning away the only aid offered by the government as a matter of resistance. Can North Americans do the same-- reject the perks that come with quiet compliance, and openly resist?