PPP Spotlight #3: June 12, 2003
Roads, Secondary Projects Catalyze PPP Opposition
Wendy Call, Americas Program PPP Specialist
The Salina Cruz link is one of the first completed in a Mexico-Central America highway network--a PPP top priority. Two days after the toll road opened, 400 people, including Córtes Vásquez, gathered in the town of San Juan Guichicovi, Oaxaca, for the National Gathering for Mesoamerican Response and Resistance to Globalization. Held May 16-18, 2003 in an indigenous Mixe town of 10,000, the gathering brought together representatives from most of the Mexican states included in the PPP: Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tabasco, and Veracruz, as well as activists from Canada, Honduras, Italy, Nicaragua, Spain, and the United States.
The meeting came just two weeks before top officials from the eight PPP countries met at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington to sign a memorandum of understanding for the "Mesoamerican Sustainable Development Initiative." This initiative includes short-, medium-, and long-term programs and actions the IDB says will "enhance the region's capacities in areas such as environmental policy development harmonization of environmental standards, norms, best practices and environmental management and governance." A meeting held for civil society organizations in Washington, DC two weeks before the memorandum signing made clear that the PPP focus is on environmental management, not preservation, while issues like renewable energy have no place in the program. [ more ]
RESOURCES
Citizen Action Profile:
Citizen Organizing Against the PPP