On a recent delegation to the state of Chiapas, Mexico, we learned that Chiapas is considered both the central and starting point for the Mesoamerica Project, a giant development plan for building infrastructure needed to attract capital investment and dramatically expand trade via NAFTA, CAFTA, and an eventual trade agreement with Colombia.

The Mesoamerica Project (MP) was once called Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP), an ambitious plan that met with widespread grassroots resistance and sent PPP administrators back to the drawing board. In December 2006, Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderón, announced he would revive PPP, renamed the MP in 2008, at a meeting of the governors of affected states and presidents of member countries.

The MP, like the PPP, includes the seven southern (and heavily indigenous) states of Mexico: Puebla, Veracruz, Tabasco, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Chiapas, Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo. It also includes seven Central American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Belize and Panama. Colombia has been added as a full partner in the revised plan.

The San Cristóbal-Palenque Toll Road is the current mega-project in Chiapas. It is a super highway connecting San Cristóbal de las Casas with Palenque, the world-famous archaeological site built by the ancient Maya. The new toll road intends to cut through numerous communal farms occupied by descendants of those ancient Maya. Not surprisingly, many of the present-day Maya object.

The MP contemplates separate "corridors" for different economic activities; for example, factories (sweat shops), mono-crop agriculture, extractive industries, and tourism. The toll road would facilitate a tourist corridor, including the area surrounding the Agua Azul Cascades, a series of turquoise blue waterfalls that cascade down a mountain and form pools for swimming.

 Continuous violence in Bolom Ajaw, a Zapatista community with land adjacent to a virgin waterfall, recently brought to light the government plan for a "world-class resort destination." This plan includes a Boutique Hotel, a European 5-Star Hotel, a conference center with golf course, and a lodge with helipad overlooking the waterfall on Bolom Ajaw's property.

Bolom Ajaw has been harassed and attacked continuously for the past four years by members of the PRI. On 1/21/10, 57 armed PRI members invaded, began construction on three cabins, and several weeks later they ambushed a group of Zapatistas, resulting in one death and 14 injuries. The  PRI remain on Bolom Ajaw's land and the region is heavily militarized to protect them. The intent is to privatize it and sell it to resort developers. The Zapatistas of Bolom Ajaw refuse to sell or privatize and are, therefore, in the way.

The Mesoamerica Project promotes the conversion of a peasant economy of subsistence agriculture and communally owned land into a neoliberal economy with private property, cheap labor, resource extraction, agro-industrial plantations, and cultural and ecological tourism. This implies the displacement of tens of thousands of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands throughout the region.

[The author is a founding member of the Chiapas Support Committee in Oakland, California. She organizes delegations to Chiapas and writes for “Chiapas Update.”]