Written by Andalusia Knoll
There’s a popular saying in Latin America that if they’re going to globalize commerce and capitalism, we’re going to globalize the struggle. With that pretext the Mesoamerican Peoples Forum was launched in 2001 in Tamaulipas, Mexico to combat Plan Puebla Panama, a neoliberal plan, replete with mega projects, launched by the Interamerican Bank of Development and promoted by former Mexican president Vicente Fox. Plan Puebla Panama has since been re-baptized as Project Mesoamerica incorporating Plan Colombia and the Mexican Merida Initiative, two U.S. conceived projects that funnel millions of dollars into army budgets supposedly to combat “narcotrafficking.” Therefore Plan Mesoamerica combines militarization with the promotion of the same mega projects including superhighways, dams, and open pit mines that have devastating consequences for the people and land across Mesoamerica.
Over the past 10 years the forum has traveled from Tamaulipas to meet in different cities and towns in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama to return back to The School of Social work in Minatitlan, Veracuz Mexico in April 2011. With the same spirit of resistance to neoliberal domination and commitment to defending the land over 500 people gathered for this VIII Mesoamerican Peoples forum. Participants included members of social justice organizations, human rights defenders, women, youth, indigenous peoples and campesinos, many of whom had to deal with lengthy processes of acquiring visas to enter Mexico. The central themes of the forum were:
The Crisis of Global Capitalism and Opportunities to Dispute Hegemony and Social Transformation, The Struggle for Food and Energy sovereignty, Land defense, The Common Good, and Popular Alternatives, Patriarchal Violence and the Struggle against Domination, and Militarization and Criminalization of Social Protest.
The forum was dedicated to Bety Cariño, founder of community organization, CACTUS, who was assassinated by paramilitaries in 2010 on a caravan bringing supplies to the autonomous indigenous Triqui community in San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, Mexico. Through heartfelt testimonies, delegates from across Mesoamerica paid homage to Cariño, her work with CACTUS and the organizing committee of the Mesoamerican Peoples Forum and demanded justice as no one has been held responsible for her death.
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