The Wto Should Take A Look In Cancun’s Back Yard.
Puerto Juarez is the
oldest settlement in Cancun. Past the local fishing boats moored on the
stunning white beach, you can see the profile of the Hotel Zone where the WTO
ministerial meeting is about to begin. The contrast is breathtaking.
Cancun was created just
33 years ago. Fishers and their families have been in Puerto Juarez for about
70 years. Many of the traditional families are now being displaced. According
to the locals, people have no rights and some have no water because powerful
developers are intent on expelling them from the beach so they can build new hotels
in a mirror image of the Hotel Zone.
Jose Aguillon owns a
small beachfront restaurant and fishing boat. His was the first stop on the
tour of ‘real’ Cancun organized for journalists by a number of groups including
Friends of the Earth and the World Development Movement, alongside the local
organizers of the Mexican Space in Cancun.
Snr Aguillon apologized
that “there are few people around today, because they afraid.” A few days ago,
he had a visit from the local council. They told him that his restaurant
license would not be renewed. Plain clothed officials came to watch over the
media tour.
There were two likely
reasons. First, the authorities want to close his restaurant down because poor
people gather there. They will be
unsightly in the proposed new luxury hotel zone. Second, Jose Aguillon was
prepared to talk to the international media about the harsh realities of life
for local people in Cancun - a truth that would contradict the claim that
foreign direct investment is essential to create development and jobs in poor
countries. It would also tarnish the image of golden sands, wealth and first
world services being lapped up by the WTO delegates, journalists and lobbyists who
now occupy Cancun’s Hotel Zone.
Snr Aguillon’s message
was simple: “They promised tourist development that would help indigenous
people, help the local people and help the poor people. And we noticed at the
beginning of the process that that was lies, that wasn’t the way it was going
to be.” The cruise ships and hotel chains are all foreign controlled. Tourists
buy an all inclusive package, including arts, crafts, restaurants and fishing
excursions. Foreign investors now control all development in Cancun. Small
businesses simply cannot survive.
“All the money stays in
the hands of the same people. That’s what creates the poverty, alcohol,
vandalism and lack of services. We live day to day. Our livelihoods depend on
the weather. If the weather is good, we work. If not, we can’t. The permits we need to purchase to run a
business here are too expensive for us and they are turned down for reasons we
don’t understand and aren’t told to us. The point seems to make sure we can’t
continue to exist.”
“Paradoxically, it has
become easier to get permits to run the little restaurant and fishing boat than
it used to be. But it is impossible to compete with the transnational companies
that are all backed with foreign money.”
“All this started with
NAFTA. In 10 years”, he said, “there has been no widespread development for the
people. Foreign investors take all the money back home. Some 600 families live
in this community. Soon they will have no choice but to work for the foreign
companies for a pittance, putting on white suits, being people’s servants and
taking orders, or set up small tourist stands.”
“People used to be happy”,
he said. “Here by the shore on the water there used to be thousands of
lobsters, shrimps and clams. People could live from the sea. Just recently a
friend was arrested, had his boat confiscated and sent to jail because he took
seven kilogrammes of shrimp. The people of Cancun do not have any part of
Cancun for themselves.”
Down the road at the
port this perverse form of ‘development’ was also making its mark. A new facility
was under construction, designed to cater for 200-300 boats. The small
operators and cooperatives that ran the old port would shortly be redundant.
The new port building also had an OXXO convenience store, which based on
similar experience elsewhere would soon displace the small stores in the town.
What has this got to do
with this week’s WTO ministerial meeting? A great deal has been invested in the
argument made by the IMF, World Bank and WTO that poor countries need foreign
direct investment. Negotiations on a new agreement to promote and protect
foreign direct investment are top on the list of ‘new issues’ ministers are required to decide on. This would see
the failed negotiations on a Multilateral Agreement on Investment reborn.
Already, foreign
investors in services such as tourism, fishing, restaurants, food stores,
hotels, leisure services and ports can secure guaranteed rights to set up
business and be treated at least as favourably as locals under the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The right to regulate can also be
restricted, if governments have committed those services to the GATS rules. New
negotiations launched in 2000 require governments to make commitments of
further services. The European Union has asked Mexico for extensive new
openings in tourism, retail services and environment, including water. The
Cancun ministerial is expected to set new deadlines for governments to table
their offers in response to such requests.
The water issue is
especially sensitive. Numerous World Bank loans to Mexico have contained
conditions mandating water privatization and cost recovery. In 2003 the World
Bank approved another loan for Mexico to provide infrastructure services,
including water, for eligible states. Conditions for eligibility include
economically efficient pricing, self-sufficiency through cost recovery,
appropriate competition and regulatory frameworks, and enhancing the
participation of the private sector.
The local water company
in Cancun, Ondeo, is 50 per cent owned by Suez of France, the world’s largest
water company. Suez is a cornerstone member of the European Forum on Services
that drives the EU’s position in the GATS negotiations. In 2002 it secured the
contract for Cancun’s water from Azurix, a subsidiary of Enron. Suez claimed
that this and other Mexican water contracts would earn it US$70 million in
annual revenue.
The real meaning of
water privatization was soon evident down the road from Snr Aguillon’s
restaurant. A pumping station provides a relatively clean and reliable water
supply to local residents. But not to all of them. A stone’s throw away from
the pumping station lives the family of Snr Faustino Gaspar Trinidad. Their
house has no water. To have it connected they need papers that show they are
legal tenants. They’ve lived on the land in their own house for many years. But
they don’t have the paperwork. It got lost at the Council. Each time they try
to secure new documentation, that gets lost too. Sometimes, they say, the
tanker drivers given them water, out of solidarity.
The landowner is billionaire
Carlos Hank Gonzales, former Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Tourism,
and one of Mexico’s most influential businessmen implicated in the corruption
scandals that surrounded former President Salinas. His local corporate vehicle
Trivasa has been linked to an Enron-style corruption scandal. Another of his
firms is a co-partner with French water company Suez.
Snr Hank has flagged
the land where the Gaspar family lives as the site of a new hotel zone. They
were offered 6000 peso to move. When they refused, the local authority and
landowner came with machines to destroy the house. The municipal government
documented their complaint. But those papers were never served and disappeared
too. They commented that “Developers have big pockets”.
Some of their
neighbours have moved. Three years ago 17 fishing families were successfully evicted
to make way for a hotel development and relocated to a remote but beautiful
lagoon at Rio Manati. This was presented as an opportunity to develop their own
tourism venture. Accepting the challenge, the families have been developing
eco-tourism with fresh fish restaurant, bird watching, fishing and exploring
the rich natural environment fed by mangroves. They have invested heavily in
equipment for tourism and sustainable aquaculture.
Access is a problem -
the dirt road would deter all but the most determined tourist. So is the
absence of electricity, although they are working on innovative solar energy
strategies. Two other threats may spell the death knell for the project, and
force them to search for another new livelihood.
The first is a rubbish dump
two kilometers up the road, right next to the mangroves. The dump receives all
the refuse from Cancun, even though it’s in the separate municipality of
Mujeres. The 24,000 hotel rooms in Cancun generate as much rubbish as the
400,000 people who live in Cancun. The toxins from decomposing rubbish leach
into the mangroves, polluting the lagoon. This, in turn, kills the fish larvae
that spawn in the lagoon. As guardians for the environment, they explained they
had been trying to get environmental regulation and restrictions on fishing to
safeguard an irreplaceable heritage, to no avail. That’s not surprising. The dump
is owned by the same Carlos Hank Gonzales. As vultures circle the tip, our
guide quips that “we would rather have these vultures than the ones at the WTO”.
Developers are now
eyeing up the site at Rio Manati as a commercialized tourist venture,
displacing the families’ livelihoods yet again. In a familiar story, they don’t
have the formal paperwork to support their ownership of the land. It disappeared
long ago within the offices of the local council. The families are trying to
regularize the situation so they can’t be removed. Without those documents,
developers can lay claim to the site. Presumably, if they succeed Snr Hank will
be involved, and discover a profitable way to resolve the pollution threat to the
lucrative tourist venture, as well as fixing the road and laying on
electricity.
To a large extent the
North American Free Trade Agreement, which covers both services and investment,
has already locked open the doors of Cancun and its surrounds to foreign
capital from the US and Canada. Their transnational corporations are ‘free’ to
operate in a largely unfettered regulatory environment. The people whose
communities they destroy, whose environments they despoil, whose livelihoods
they terminate, whose self-determination they negate and whose dignity they
leave in tatters, have no legal right to keep them out. Nor, any longer, does
the Mexican government.
Extending this ‘free
trade zone’ to the world through the WTO agreements on investment and GATS reduces
Mexico, and places like Cancun, to a mere playground for those transnational
corporations and foreign investors that want to profit from this stunning
location. The contrast between a development model designed to promote the
profits of the world’s transnationals, and one that protects the basic rights
of people to clean drinking water, fish from their oceans, a clean environment,
a secure income and protection from intimidation, eviction and repression could
hardly be more stark.
From Jane Kelsey in Cancun