CISPES - Solidarity with El Salvador - Neocolonialism in Central America: An Analysis by Raúl Moreno

Neocolonialism in Central America: An Analysis by Raúl Moreno

Wednesday, 25 February 2009

Raúl Moreno, a Salvadoran economist, has written extensively on the dangers and injustice inherent in free trade agreements, privatization and other neoliberal economic projects. Moreno serves as Research and Monitoring Coordinator at FESPAD (Foundation for Study and Application of the Law) and is on the economics faculty at the University of El Salvador. Members of the January CISPES delegation to El Salvador met with Moreno to learn more about the massive infrastructure development being ushered in with the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and how we can support community resistance to these exploitative projects.

Many of us have wondered, “What is the United States' abiding interest in Central America anyway? It’s not like they have oil…” Moreno explained the ultimate objective of the United States is to control natural resources throughout the Americas: water, land, gold, plant and animal species. Central America is in a privileged geographic position, between the Pacific and the Atlantic, between Asia and Europe. In the battle among the global economic superpowers, the U.S. is desperate to maintain influence in this key region, relying on a joint apparatus of free trade agreements, infrastructure development, and militarization under the guise of fighting terrorism and drug trafficking. CAFTA: The Legal Framework of Domination
     According to Moreno, the fundamental goal of CAFTA – the Central American Free Trade Agreement – is the subordination of El Salvador’s legal framework and sovereignty to the interests of U.S. businesses. Upon ratifying CAFTA, Central American governments were forced to change their domestic laws, for example, to criminalize violations of intellectual property rights, to become “CAFTA compliant.”
     CAFTA's Chapter 10, the investment chapter, is what Moreno calls an “authentic blank check for U.S. corporations,” giving powerful rights to international investors. An alarming example of a corporation invoking these rights is Pacific Rim, a Canadian/U.S. mining corporation on the verge of suing the Salvadoran government for $77 million for not granting gold mining permits despite widespread, organized community resistance.
     Among other rights, corporations can sue governments if their laws or actions prevent the company from maximizing profits. There are several startling precedents under NAFTA, which contains investor rights language almost identical to CAFTA’s. The Mexican government closed a waste treatment facility owned by California-based Metalclad after it poisoned a community’s water supply. Metalclad sued the Mexican government in a secret NAFTA tribunal and won. Mexico was ordered to pay $15.6 million in “lost profit” to Metalclad and to re-open the plant.

Megaprojects: The Infrastructure of Exploitation
     While CAFTA provides the legal framework, the U.S. needs more adequate infrastructure to facilitate the extraction of natural resources from Central America. Enter the “megaprojects”: highways, dams, electricity transmission, ports. These projects are financed and planned under various initiatives involving the U.S. government, including Plan Puebla Panama and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
     A series of superhighways is envisioned across Central America, with the Northern Longitudinal Highway stretching across northern El Salvador. Despite the environmental risk of running closely along the Río Lempa, the biggest river in El Salvador, the highway route is designed to intersect with a “dry canal,” a high-speed railway connecting the ports in La Unión, El Salvador, and Puerta Cortés, Honduras, to facilitate the movement of goods and natural resources to Asia, Europe and the United States.
     Other megaprojects in the works include a network of electrical cables crisscrossing Central America, financed by loans from the Inter-American Development Bank, the Bank of Spain, and the European Union, and to be owned by Empresa Propietaria de la Linea, a conglomerate of global energy corporations. Raúl Moreno remarked, “The free trade agreements allow the corporations to do whatever they want, and then the people of Central America create the infrastructure for them to run their operation. This is neocolonialism.”
    Perhaps the most infamous megaprojects are the dams, which have been met with heavy resistance from communities in El Salvador and Guatemala. Salvadorans have organized to prevent the construction of dams that would cause the displacement of entire communities. One of the leaders of this resistance, Catholic priest Padre Confesor, has notably proclaimed, “They will have to take us out of here dead.”

Militarization: Repressing the resistance
     Seeing the powerful grassroots movements building in El Salvador to defend land and resources, the U.S. and Salvadoran governments are building up police and military power to silence opposition to their plans. They use a classic pretext: waging a war on drugs, gangs, and terrorism. Within a month of implementing CAFTA, the U.S. announced the opening of the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA), a new police training school in El Salvador. Furthermore, social movement organizations argue that resistance to free trade agreements and megaprojects is one of the real reasons why the U.S. is now spending an additional $1.5 billion in military training, weapons and surveillance equipment through the Congressionally-funded Plan Mexico.
     Since the opening of the ILEA, there have been over 30 assassinations of social movement organizers in El Salvador, as well as violent state repression of demonstrations. In July 2007, 13 people were arrested, tortured and charged with terrorism under El Salvador’s new “anti-terrorism” law after protesting the privatization of water.

“We must conjugate a verb: Resist” –Raúl Moreno
     The resistance to U.S. domination must have two dimensions. The first is to actively reject and organize opposition to the “death projects”: CAFTA, the dams, the mines, the highways and water privatization – even in the face of an increasingly repressive state apparatus. The second is for the marginalized and dispossessed to construct grassroots alternatives themselves. As Moreno explained, real popular power must always come “from below, from within and to the left.”
     There is a crucial role for U.S.-based solidarity activists to play in building a movement within the U.S. to dismantle the apparatus of domination. There is a clear call for action in solidarity with the Salvadoran movement as it organizes to overturn CAFTA, cut off the Millennium Challenge funds for the Northern Highway, and close the ILEA. Raúl Moreno concluded, “Another world is not only possible. It is necessary and it is urgent.”