CENTRAL AMERICA-MEXICO:
Summit Relaunches Development Plan
Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY,  (IPS) - The flagging Plan Puebla Panamá (PPP) received a new boost at the summit that brought together the leaders of the countries that launched the development plan six years ago: Mexico, the seven countries of Central America, and a new partner, Colombia.

The aim is to revitalise the PPP, which in the last three years has moved ahead slowly and with little transparency, and thus bolster development and fight poverty in the participating countries, according to the presidents who met Tuesday in the southeastern Mexican state of Campeche.

The PPP is an ambitious plan covering an area inhabited by 113 million people which includes productive and development projects, construction of roads and hydroelectric dams, joint management of natural resources, coordination of trade policies, electric power grid interconnection and the installation of "maquilas" (for-export assembly plants).

But activists and some observers believe the leaders have other reasons for backing the plan. With the exception of Nicaragua, where former Sandinista guerrilla fighter Daniel Ortega took office again in January, all of the countries involved in the PPP have governments that are in favour of the free market policies promoted by the United States.

"The PPP seeks to counteract and limit the model of integration that is being built in South America" by centre-left and leftist governments that are critical of the free market policies pushed by Washington, said Héctor de la Cueva, spokesman for the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade (RMALC).

"It is no coincidence that Colombia, an unconditional ally of the United States, has joined the PPP," he commented to IPS.

Alberto Arroyo, a professor of economics at Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University, agrees. In his view, the aim of conservative Mexican President Felipe Calderón, who hosted the summit, is to create a sort of counterweight to the influence achieved in South America by Venezuela’s charismatic and controversial leftist leader, President Hugo Chávez.

But Calderón says the PPP is just one more step towards the integration of Latin America as a whole, an objective he has espoused since taking office in December and in which he is seeking to play a leadership role.

The presidents attending the summit in Campeche promised to strengthen the PPP by improving the performance of mechanisms created for coordination and implementation. They also said they would periodically assess the progress made, in order to prevent the loss of momentum or time.

Besides Calderón, the gathering brought together presidents Álvaro Uribe of Colombia, Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, Antonio Saca of El Salvador, Oscar Berger of Guatemala, Manuel Zelaya of Honduras and Martín Torrijos of Panama, along with the prime minister of Belize, Said Musa and Nicaraguan Vice President Jaime Morales.

In their final statement, they invited specialised agencies and programmes of the United Nations, the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the European Union to enrich the agenda of integration in the area sometimes referred to as "Mesoamerica", made up of Central America and southern Mexico.

They also welcomed the request by Ecuador and the Dominican Republic to participate in the PPP as observers, and "respectfully" urged the U.S. Congress to speed up approval of the free trade agreements that Washington has signed with Colombia and Panama.

In addition, they agreed to reactivate a plan to install an oil refinery in one of the countries of Central America, with private sector participation. Mexico offered 80,000 barrels a day and Colombia announced that it would study how much of its oil would be refined at the plant.

Nicaraguan President Ortega recently said the PPP was nothing more than "good intentions" and said his aim was to provide strong support to the "Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas" (ALBA), an alternative integration project sponsored by Cuba and Venezuela.

Ortega was annoyed that Colombia had been included in the PPP, and accused that country of seeking support to cancel Nicaragua's rights over San Andrés island and the Roncador, Quitasueño and Serrana keys in the Caribbean, which have long been disputed by the two countries.

The PPP was designed by the administration of former Mexican President Vicente Fox (2000-2006), and was launched in 2001 amid much fanfare and the promise that it would make the Mesoamerican region an integrated and competitive zone by 2015, with a healthy and educated population who would respect cultural diversity.

In drawing up the plan, Mexico and the Central American countries received advice and support from the IDB, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

However, the only aspects that have progressed relatively successfully so far are the electric power grid interconnection among the partner countries, and the building and upgrading of roads and highways. These advances and other plans have already used up 4.5 billion dollars of investments.

Internal PPP documents to which IPS had access mentioned goals such as sustainable development, fighting poverty and support for indigenous peoples. However, the main emphasis was that Mesoamerica must become more competitive in order to join the global market.

Activists and social organisations that are opposed to the free market model promoted by Washington claim that the PPP is "neo-colonialist" by nature, and that its goal is to subject Mesoamerica to the economic and commercial interests of transnational corporations.

"While the PPP was on ice, social resistance fell away. But the demonstrations will certainly be back soon, because this plan is clearly against the interests of small farmers and indigenous people," de la Cueva said.

The PPP includes nine states in the southeast of Mexico, plus Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. It covers one million square kilometres which have a population of 70 million people, most of whom are poor.

Colombia, with its 43 million people, joined the PPP as a full member in October, bringing the population potentially affected by the project to 113 million.