The real cause of poverty suddenly dawned upon the governor of Mexico’s southernmost state this year. Naturally it has nothing to do with the way Capitalism functions, the problem according to Juan Sabines Guerrero from the so-called “left-wing” government, the PRD (Democratic Revolution Party), is that people in the state of Chiapas are too “disperse” and for that reason government services can’t reach them. Curiously, this realisation came to the functionary while large areas of Chiapas were gripped by massive inundations and the inadequacy of government and state institutions was (once again) painfully showing.

 

Today in Chiapas, those demanding the right to govern themselves are in ever increasing numbers. The EZLN, the Resistance Network Against the Federal Electricity Commission, various political prisoners collectives and civil society organizations who collectively identify themselves as the Other Campaign, and thousands of indigenous communities whose languages, customs and traditional governments form formidable opposition to Government control.
 

Miracle cure or disaster capitalism?
The Rural Cities Programme in Chiapas plans to establish regional centres where basic public services such as schools, housing, electricity, paved roads and sanitation are to be provided by PRD government. This, in exchange for expansive indigenous territories currently held under communal land title which communities would be obliged to abandon in order to “live like citizens”, as Sabines puts it. Family sized plots and employment opportunities in factories and other multinational enterprises part of each Rural City are also being offered. It should come as no surprise that Chiapas is rich in minerals, oil and bio-fuels. The battle for this territory is crucial for the fruition of free trade agreements such as NAFTA (1994), Free Trade Area of the Americas (since 1994) Plan Puebla Panama (2001) and the fresh ink on the security partnership with the US called the Merida Initiative (also known as Plan Mexico) seems to be the icing on the cake. As it is rural communities in Central America are increasingly obliged to produce products for export over local consumption. The Rural Cities plan in Chiapas aims to smash communal land ownership in order to secure export driven production and control over the general population.

But the Rural Cities idea is nothing new…
In the 1957 in an attempt to quash support for decolonialization forces in Algeria, particularly the National Liberation Front and the National Liberation Army, the French Government forcibly relocated rural communities in concentration camps under military supervision. The regroupement program transferred over 2 million people, targeting Muslims, over 3 years.

The US Army used a similar counter-insurgency tactic in Vietnam. “Relocation” consisted (consists) of destroying the fabric of rural society, using every military means possible to uproot the people and lay waste their homes, for the purpose of creating a captive mass of people with their spirits broken in the hope of facilitating easier penetration with a new ideology. Millions of Vietnamese villagers were transplanted into urban enclaves to loosen them from their traditional values to make the imposition of new ones easier.

Just south of Chiapas, during the Guatemalan civil war (1960-1996) and following the Army’s Coup under Mejia in 1983 rural communities were forcibly relocated in “model villages”. The Guatemalan government has since sold some of these cities to a corporation called Agro Aldeas.

Pushed by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, these strategies are aimed at restructuring territory for capital investment: removing rural populations from their lands. It’s all clearly spelled out in the Plan Puebla Panama´s first official documents signed by the Mexican Government.

Back in Mexico

Secret negotiations are known to be going on between the Government and major corporations including Coca Cola, corporate media such as Fundacion TV Azteca, Televisa, Teleton, and major banks such as Banamex and BBV. It’s likely that they are involved in funding the first 25 rural cities planned during Sabines’ 6 year term in Chiapas. The Agro Aldeas example in Guatemala gives us a pretty accurate idea of what their interests are. Nuevo San Juan Grijalba, the first of the rural cities in Chiapas is being constructed at the moment, alongside seven other cities in last year’s flood affected zone where twenty-five people died.

Looking at the Emergency Response Legislation being rolled out in NT and WA, we needn’t go so far from home to see similar strategies of displacement of indigenous peoples that use the rhetoric of welfare provision (be it providing welfare or withdrawing it) and emergency. Battles for communal land and cultural rights, are also seen all over the Pacific, where the Australian State plays an important counter-insurgent role. The Rural Cities Programme in Chiapas and its dispersion-poverty thesis is an example of the politics of welfare at its most extreme and the real agendas of “centre-left” political parties.