AUT: BIG PULP vs. ZAPATISTAS , by John Ross/Masiosare (fwd)

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 12:17:18 -0700
From: NUEVO AMANECER PRESS <amanecer@xxxxxx>
Reply-To: chiapas-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: Multiple recipients of list <chiapas-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: BIG PULP vs. ZAPATISTAS , by John Ross/Masiosare

TODAY IS 300 DAYS SINCE THE MASSACRE AT ACTEAL TOOK PLACE
IN CHIAPAS.   NAP asks that we all think about the economic interests
that are playing a big role in the  repression of our indigenous brothes and sisters
PEACE            -            JUSTICE               AND      LIBERTY
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TRANSLATED BY HELEN HAMILTON RIVAS for NUEVO AMANECER PRESS
**********************************************************************
http://serpiente.dgsca.unam.mx/jornada/mas-ross.html
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Masiosare, Sunday, October 18, 1998
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                         BIG PULP VS. ZAPATISTAS

Cellulose Dreams in Southeastern Mexico
John Ross (*)

The projections made by transnational planters for Southeastern Mexico
are pharaonic.  International paper planted 30 million hectares,.
Temple Inland Corporation operates an area of 240,000 hectares in
Tabasco.  Smurfit Newsprint has 400 hectares in Campeche.  The Smurfit
family forms part of the Celtic Tigers.  One of their investors is a
confidant of Carlos Salinas in Dublin.  Kimberly-Clark plans to convert
vast areas of natural forests in Durango and Chihiuahua into toilet
paper.

[Image]  Shortly after the massacre of 46 Tzotzil Maya en El
Acteal,            Roberto Albores Guillen, replacement governor of
Chiapas, met with the three Roman Catholic bishops in the area to pray
for peace and reconciliation.   With them, attentively, was the Cardinal
of Monterrey, Adolfo Suarez Rivera, a veteran member of the oligarchy
that has been entrenched in Chiapas for the last century and a half.
The Cardinal brought along his good friend Alfonso Romo, whose corporate
empire, Pulsar, includes brokerage houses, cigarette factories, lumber
mill and paper companies.  The businessman was also on the dais praying
for peace and reconciliation through investment and jobs.

In an area belonging to abjectly poor Maya, Pulsar proposed--in
conjunction with powerful wood and paper products producers (such as
Simpson and Louisiana
Pacific, described as `prospective companies')_extensive junco (large
eucalyptus) plantations to generate employment for 10,000 discontented
Indians.

Also proposed was an enormous cellulose plant for Tabasco, where 8,000
hectares are planted with experimental varieties in Balancon, near the
Campeche border.

Currently, Pulsar has different test sites in Chiapas, including 600
hectares in the Tujila Valley, right outside of Ocosingo, an area where
the rebel Zapatista Liberation Army  (EZLN, Ejercito Zapatista de
Liberacion Nacional) wields considerable influence.  Apparently, the
plan is to provide the rebels productive employment planting eucalyptus
trees in the Lacandon Jungle.

"We have no political agenda," says  Jose Antonio Rios
 Bosch of the Pulsar office in Villahermosa, Tabasco. "Of course we
would like to achieve  a peaceful solution to the conflict, but our
interest is in providing jobs and sustainable agriculture in a difficult
area."

Pulsar's plan to "promote" peace in Chiapas enjoys backing from the
World Bank.   A short time before the outbreak of the Zapatista
rebellion, Romo traveled in this southeastern state with the president
of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, who expressed afterwards his total
support for the scheme based on plantations as a viable way to calm
turbulent waters.

The world Bank has set aside more than five million dollars for seeds
for commercial paper plantations in Southeastern Mexico.  In the 1970s,
the bank contributed to the destruction of forests and the increased
social tensions in that same region with massive loans to peasants and
cattlemen in Chiapas, Tabasco and Veracruz.

Since 1994, when the Free Trade Treaty went into effect, a string of
giant lumber and pulp mills associated with national [Mexican]
corporations to do business in the region.  Some secured their
investments, others went bankrupt.  Louisiana Pacific  pulled out of its
chip-mill operations in Ensenada (where logs were being shipped from
Northern California, where timber is now becoming scarce), and Boise
Cascade is losing its shirt in  Guerrero's la Costa Grande, where there
is a guerrilla presence.  International paper has been kicked out of
some communal lands [ejidos] in the Sierra Tarahuamara---80% of the
remaining forests are concentrated in 8,400 ejidos, 27% of which are
under control of indigenous communities increasingly reluctant to sign
agreements for the exploitation of their trees.

Thanks to peasant resistance in areas of endemic conflicts and with a
frightening lack of infrastructure for access to natural resources, the
big U.S. wood and pulp producers, such as International Paper, have
decided to plant their own woods and lands in southeastern Mexico, in an
extensive region inhabited by empoverished laborers, many of whom are
descendents of the Maya and not a few of whom support the EZLN.

BIG PULP PLAYERS

Transnational companies operating in southeastern Mexico are:

INTERNATIONAL PAPER, which, discouraged by its experience in Chihuahua,
planted 30,000 acres in  Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz y Campeche.

TEMPLE INLAND CORPORATION, with headquarters in Texas, number six on the
list of pulp producers in the U.S. and number two in cardboard-box
production.  Former CIA Director Bobby Inman is on the board of
directors.  Temple Inland owns a plantation of 240,000 hectares in
Huimanguillo, Tabasco, with the Mexican company, Planfosur,

These same two transnational associations project similar activity in
the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in new areas of integrated tree plantations
in President Ernesto Zedillo's Transthmic Megaproject, which would
effectively serve as the extension from Mexico City to the Pacific Coast
for multinational companies and function as an alternative route for the
increasingly blocked Panama Canal.

SMURFIT NEWSPRINT, whose plans are to put 260,000 hectares in cellulose
production in Campeche.  Smurfit had operations in Saint Louis and
Oregon in the United States, but is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland,
where former president Carlos Salinas is currently living.

The Smurfit family is part of the group known as the Celtic Tigers,
which has been very successful in the European Common Market.  According
to the Irish Times, one of the Tigers is investor Tony Ryan, a confidant
of Salinas.


KIMBERLY-CLARK, whose subsidiary in Mexico is headed by Claudio X.
Gonzalez, one of Salinas' favorite magnates.  The company plans to
convert vast areas of natural woods, mainly in Durango and Chihuahua to
toilet paper.

PHARONIC PROJECTIONS

Before the European invasion of 1519, southeastern Mexico was covered
with a densely wooded canopy extending from the Yucatan Peninsula to the
Lacandon Jungle and Guatemala.

Today those woods are a museum piece, in enclaves such as Los Montes
Azules, ("Blue Mountains") a biosphere reserve protected by the United
Nations, with the Zapatista command nearby.

Mexico lost, thanks to woodcutters, almost eight million hectares
annually because of arsonists, the cattle industry, and slash-and-burn
agriculture.  The country's new forestry laws carry incentives to
eliminate the remaining forests.
Once the area is deforested, it can be reclassified to degraded forest
land and receive subsidies for tree plantations.

The plans for the transnational planters for southeastern Mexico are
imperial.  Thousands of acres of degraded forest are available for the
production of cellulose, even though the Forest Planters' Association
claims that for the time being they would only plant a tenth of this
surface with eucalyptus and other rapid growth species.

Pulsar, with close ties to the Government  (Pedro Aspe,   [Image] former
treasury secretary, heads the Stock Exchange), has planted almost a
million hectares in Tabasco and Veracruz to produce cellulose for the
next 25 years.

The Commercial Forest Production Plan, corporation, formed in November,
1994, plans to invest 400 million dollars in exporting six million cubic
meters of cellulose annually.  The plan comprises shipments by train
from Dos Bocas, Tabasco, where the eucalyptus pulp will presumably be
shipped by northern companies.  Simpson and Louisiana Pacific are on the
list of potential providers.

The Pulsar plan also includes a counterinsurgent environmental
strategy:  Anticipating environmental objections, Romo and his
associates designed a public relations offensive to convince public
opinion that the commercial production of tress will preserve native
forests.

Environmentalists rejected eucalyptus monoculture because these trees
absorb tremendous amounts of water and natural oils, and the pesticides
applied by commercial planters contaminate underground aquifers.

"We carefully observed the environmental impact of our projects.  There
is sufficient underground water in these sites.  We would not have
chosen them if there weren't," said Romo.


                                   ***

The scheme to convert Maya Mexico into a vast eucalyptus plantation is a
direct consequence of the reform of Article 27 of the Constitution and a
direct repercussion of the Free Trade Treaty.  This reform allowed
peasant communities and ejidos to sell or rent their lands to
transnational agroindustries.

The reform was cooked up by Carlos Hank Gonzalez, a magnate who has
appeared on Forbes' supermillionaire list, head of the PRI and one of
the most powerful politicians in the country.

Article 27 was updated by then under secretary Luis Tellez, who later
was Chief of the office of the President and is now Secretary of
Energy.  Tellez also promoted two secondary laws in 1992, a forestry law
proposal that legitimized commercial plantations and a 1997 reform that
literally granted the planters their wishes.  The new regulations put
into operation a series of proposals made in June, 1995, by Edward
Kobacker, Vice President of the forestry division of International
Paper.  The letter was leaked to Jaime Aviles, of "La Jornada."  The
"Kobacker Law," as Aviles calls it, authorized the big pulp mills to
acquire parcels of land of unlimited size, contrary to the legal
proscription.

"This is a competitive business.,  We cannot have limits on the amount
of land we're permitted to own," said Jesus Rivas, General Coordinator
of Pulsar.

Kobacker and his associates also got subsidies through the new forestry
law.  The Mexican Government will return 65% of the first seven years'
investment in development.  The subsidies to commercial planters
displaced those intended for businesses using natural forests.  In 1997
the ratio was nine to one.  The majority of the candidates for subsidies
for exploitation of forests are ejidos and
indigenous communities where the tree planters are "universally
associated," according to the Mexican Network of Agricultural and
Forestry Organizations."

Finally, International Paper and its counterparts gained government
protection against the insurrection and a resolution on the uncertain
situation in Chiapas, where Kobacker promised to dedicate 400,000
hectares to cellulose production. The military fence around the EZLN and
its supporters has been a palpable demonstration of the commitment by
the government of Ernesto Zedillo to the security of transnational
corporations.

Curiously, Victor Sosa, the new forestry director of Semarnap, is a
consultant to International Paper.

THE ZAPATISTA ALTERNATIVE

The Zapatistas warned that the Mexican Government must find a "final
solution" to its agrarian problems.  According to Subcomandante Marcos,
the reform of Article 27 furthered poverty in Chiapas, marginalized the
indigenous population and forced the rebels to declare war on the
government.

After two weeks of confrontations and four years of low-intensity war,
the EZLN is as resolved as ever.

During the process of conversion of the San Andres Accords [1995
agreement between the Zapatistas and Mexican Government, which the
Government has refused to honor] into a constitutional amendment,
President Zedillo has repeatedly spoken of the "Balkanization of
Mexico," which,  he confessed, would be the result of such changes.  His
critics call such rhetoric a "smokescreen" hiding the true intentions of
the neoliberal president to rent out southeastern Mexico to
International Paper and its U.S. associates for their eucalyptus
plantations.

In March, 1998, Zedillo finally sent a severely truncated version of the
Accords to Congress.  The initiative has no definitions of territories
and gives a green light to landowners to rent southeastern Mexico to
International Paper and its partners.

WHAT DO WE EAT?

  [Image]  With government credit suspended and waylaid by the coyotes
who bought crops at minimum prices, the ejidos and southeastern
communities have been so marginalized by commercial banks that they risk
losing their equipment and lands forever.  Pulsar and Panfosur suspended
their rental contracts for seven years along with cash payments.  The
tree planters offered to share earnings once the crop is in.  The rental
lands pay 70 dollars per hectare a year if the crop has been prepared by
the planters and 40 dollars otherwise.  The rental agreement allows the
ejido to have cash to pay bank loans.

Meanwhile the landowners who will plant trees on the plantations (a
thousand dollar daily quota) which will eventually destroy the soil and
spread pesticides for 25 pesos a day, the minimum wage.

According to researcher Esperanza Tu~non of the Center for Environmental
Investigation (Centro de Investigaciones Ambientales), located in
Tabasco, pregnant women are sent on spraying jobs.

Mexico has a paper production deficit, which weighs heavily, of 500
million dollars at the end of the production year.  Almost 85% of these
debts are annual, but the nutritional deficit is more severe.
Approximately 40% of the population suffers some level of malnutrition,
according to the National Institute of Nutrition.  From 21 to 23 million
Mexicans now live in extreme poverty, according to the UN definition.

It is bad policy to turn food producing lands into eucalyptus
plantations for the international pulp and paper industry. According to
Luisa Pare, a researcher on agricultural economics and member of the
National Council for Sustainable Sylviculture (Consejo Nacional Civil
por la Silvicultura Sustentable).

Not only does this deprive  the poorest of the poor_mainly rural
indigenous people_of their sustenance, but it increases their dependence
on grain harvesters such as Cargill and Archer Daniels  Midland.  Corn
producers in Mexico have taken a beating from these imports, which have
grown since the beginning of NAFTA.

Nevertheless, says Pare, renting these productive lands to planters is
bad business.  500 kilos of corn per hectare produces 131 dollars a
year.  A farmer who plants tropical fruit trees, such as mamey, can earn
500 dollars, but desperation and market restrictions do not allow
Mexican workers many options between a making a long-term investment in
a food crop and accepting money from planters.

Eucalyptus plantations beyond Laguna del Rosario, near Huimanguillo,
Tabasco, where Planfosur and Temple Inland recently rented 30 thousand
hectares from neighboring ejidos and will be harvesting crops until
2001.
The lands are flat plains here and the tropical air is carries a light
odor of petroleum production.  The main petrochemical complex is visible
on the horizon, 30 miles to the northeast, en route to the coast.

Everything in Tabasco, which has the largest land holdings in the
country, smells of oil.   Acid rain, pipeline leaks have harmed dozens
of hectares and forced many ejidos to sell their degraded lands to
planters at cost.

In spite of Temple Inland's promise of huge earnings, the ejido members
are not as enthusiastic.  "Folks in Nuevo Progreso say they've already
lost.  They have not had even one corn stalk," says Mario Valencia,
commissioner of Puente de Rosario ejido, of 360 hectares of crops that
are surrounded by soccer fields and eucalyptus trees.

"It is a small farm.  We planted yucca, lemons, oranges, pineapples.  We
are only fourteen families, but we work hard," says Mariano proudly.

"Planfosur came here and tried to convince us to rent them our land for
eucalyptus, but we would not give them lands for seven years. They
wanted to take water and dry out the land so that nothing would grow
again. What do you suppose we'd eat?  Paper?, I asked the man.
"
 (*) John Ross is a  free-lance writer.  He is currently living in
Mexico City.  His most recent book is "The Annexation of Mexico:  From
the Aztecs to the IMF," published by Common Courage Press.

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