Fifty years ago, the former Belgian Congo received its independence under
the democratically elected government of former prime minister Patrice
Lumumba. Less than seven months later, Lumumba and two colleagues were, in
the contemporary idiom, “rendered” to their Belgian-backed secessionist
enemies, who tortured them before putting them before a firing squad. The
Congo would not hold another democratic election for 46 years. In 2002,
following an extensive parliamentary inquiry, the Belgian government assumed
a portion of responsibility for Lumumba’s murder.

But controversy has continued to swirl over allegations of U.S. government
responsibility, as the reception for Raoul Peck’s acclaimed film, “Lumumba,”
demonstrated. After all, the U.S. had at least as much, if not more,
influence in the Congolese capital as Belgium. It was the major financier
and political supporter of the U.N. peacekeeping force that controlled most
of the country. According to still classified documents that I first
revealed eight years ago, members of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA)
“Project Wizard” covert action program dominated the post-Lumumba Congolese
regime. However, a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation of alleged CIA
assassinations concluded that while the CIA had earlier plotted to murder
Lumumba, he was eventually killed  “by Congolese rivals.
It does not appear from the evidence that the United States was in any way
involved in the killing.”

It is now clear that conclusion was wrong. A new analysis of the
declassified files of the Senate “Church” Committee (chaired by Democratic
Senator Frank Church), CIA and State Department, along with memoirs and
interviews of U.S. and Belgian covert operators, establishes that CIA
Station Chief Larry Devlin was consulted by his Congolese government
“cooperators” about the transfer of Lumumba to sworn enemies, had no
objection to it and withheld knowledge from Washington of the impending
move, forestalling the strong possibility that the State Department would
have intervened to try to save Lumumba. I detail this evidence in a new
article in the academic journal, Intelligence and National Security, vol.
25, no. 2 (The full article is available from the publisher.)

Here, briefly, are the most important new findings:

- Former U.S. officials who knew Lumumba now acknowledge that the
administration of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower mistakenly cast him
as a dangerous vehicle of Soviet influence.

- Covert CIA actions against the Lumumba government, often dovetailing with
Belgian ones, culminated in Colonel Joseph Mobutu’s military coup, which was
“arranged and supported and indeed managed” by the CIA alone, according to
Devlin’s private interview with the Church Committee staff.

- The CIA station and U.S. embassy provided their inexperienced and
politically weak Congolese protégés with a steady stream of political and
military recommendations. The advice arrived both before Congolese
government decisions and shortly afterwards when foreign advisers were
invited in to offer feedback. Devlin’s counsel was largely heeded on
critical matters, especially when it came to Lumumba. Thus Mobutu and former
president Joseph Kasavubu were persuaded to resist political pressures to
reconcile with Lumumba, and Mobutu reluctantly acceded to Devlin’s request
to arrest him. After both Devlin and the American ambassador intervened, the
government dropped its plan to attack U.N.
troops guarding Lumumba. And after Lumumba was publicly brutalized by
Mobutu’s troops, the U.S. embassy – under pressure from the State
Department, which was concerned about African governments’ threats to pull
out of the U.N. force – pushed Kasavubu into promising Lumumba “humane
treatment” and a “fair trial.”

- In this context of U.S. adviser-Congolese leader interactions, Devlin’s
decision not to intervene after he was informed by a “government leader”
of a plan to send Lumumba to his “sworn enemy” signaled that he had no
objection to the government’s course. It was also seen that way by Devlin’s
Belgian counterpart, Colonel Louis Marliere, who later wrote, “There was a
‘consensus’ and …no adviser, whether he be Belgian or American, thought to
dissuade them.” Considering Congolese leaders’
previous responsiveness to CIA and U.S. embassy views, Devlin’s permissive
attitude was undoubtedly a major factor in the government final action.
(Its last-minute switch of sending Lumumba to murderous secessionists in
Katanga instead of murderous secessionists in South Kasai does not change
the crucial fact that Devlin gave a green light to delivering Lumumba to men
who had publicly vowed to kill him.)

- Furthermore, shortly before the transfer, Mobutu indicated to Devlin that
Lumumba “might be executed,” according to a Church Committee interview.
Devlin did not suggest that he offered any objection or caution.

- Cables show that Devlin did not report to Washington the impending
rendition for three days (i.e. until it was already underway), forestalling
the strong possibility that the State Department would have intervened to
try and protect Lumumba as it had done several weeks earlier. When news came
that Lumumba had been flown to Belgian-supported Katanga (but before it
became known that he was already dead), a top State Department official
called in the Belgian ambassador to complain about Belgian advisers’
possible contribution to the Congolese government’s “gaffe” and to insist
upon the need for “humane treatment.”

- The Church Committee failed to uncover the full truth about the U.S.
role because of its inattention to the covert relationship between the CIA
and Congolese decision makers, CIA delays in providing key cables, and
political pressure to water down its original draft conclusions.

Devlin died in 2008 after consistently denying any knowledge of his
Congolese associates’ “true plans” for Lumumba, and maintaining that he had
“stalled” the earlier CIA assassination plot. Yet declassified CIA cables
disprove his claims.

One horrible crime cannot, by itself, change history. But the murder of
Patrice Lumumba, the most dynamic political leader the Congo has ever
produced, was a critical step in the consolidation of an oppressive regime.
At the same time, it crystallized an eventual 35-year U.S.
commitment to the perpetuation of that regime, not just against Lumumba’s
followers but against all comers. In the end, Mobutu’s kleptocracy would
tear civil society apart, destroy the state and help pave the way for a
regional war that would kill millions of people.

There can no longer be any doubt that the U.S., Belgian and Congolese
governments shared major responsibility for the assassination of Lumumba in
Katanga. The young prime minister was an imperfect leader during an
unprecedented and overwhelming international crisis. But he continues to be
honored around the world because he incarnated – if only for a moment – the
nationalist and democratic struggle of the entire African continent against
a recalcitrant West.

If the U.S. government at last publicly acknowledged – and apologized for –
its role in this momentous assassination, it would also be communicating its
support for the universal principles Lumumba embodied. What better person to
take this step than the American president, himself a son of Africa?

[Stephen R. Weissman is author of "An Extraordinary Rendition," in
Intelligence and National Security, v.25, no.2 (April 2010) and American
Foreign Policy in the Congo 1960-1964. He is a former Staff Director of the
U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Africa.]

To read article from AllAfrica.com click here

Which is why it was so nice to see The Economist, of all places, write about a recent UC Berkeley study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on how being rich makes you systematically less generous. Actually, the authors of the study note that

lower class individuals proved to be more generous, charitable, trusting, and helpful compared with their upper class counterparts. Mediator and moderator data showed that lower class individuals acted in a more prosocial fashion because of a greater commitment to egalitarian values and feelings of compassion.

On the bright side, the study showed it was possible to foster traits of generosity and compassion among the rich through things like imaginative writing exercises. Perhaps when Bill Gates called his friends asking them to change their last wills and testaments, he opened with “imagine you’re broke and hungry”. Of course, noblesse oblige is hardly a solution to social problems – much less noblesse à volonté – as The Guardian and Peter Wilby have noted. But what, exactly, should you call it when billionaires get to set the terms on which they acquire wealth and give it away, of what counts as a good cause and what an unworthy one. Don’t call it the Nanny State, because this isn’t about governments hectoring anyone to do the right thing. It’s about a few men deciding what’s good not just for the country, but the world. Call it patriarchy. Call it the Daddy State.

• The rains don’t come as they did before, which has altered our traditional production cycles.
• There are more and more devastating extreme climate events, like hurricanes, cyclones, and monsoons that destroy our farms, and ever more severe droughts that kill our crops while our animals die from lack of water.
• There are more and more devastating extreme climate events, like hurricanes, cyclones, and monsoons that destroy our farms, and ever more severe droughts that kill our crops while our animals die from lack of water.
• In no case have the bad governments or the corporations responded adequately to the mounting losses we are suffering, nor do they take responsibility for the wounds they are inflicting on the Mother Earth and our climate.
• We fight against the False Solutions to climate change promoted by transnational corporations and governments:
• Carbon credits and trading mechanisms are really just privatizing our atmosphere and climate. They allow polluters of the atmosphere to keep polluting, and are leading to massive land grabs and mass evictions of peasant communities so that giant corporations can “cultivate climate credits” in the form of environmentally disastrous monoculture plantations of Eucalyptus, etc., that are really Green Deserts.
• Agrofuels are another lie that allows corporate criminals to highjack public coffers to plant industrial monocultures – many times with GMOs – and evict peasants and family farmers from our lands – while they do not significantly moderate climate effects.

• La Industrial agriculture is responsible for 11 to 15%
• Deforestation causes 15 to 18% additionally
• The processing, packaging and transport of food provoke 15 to 20%
• The decomposition of organic garbage: 3 to 4%
• In sum, the industrial food system generated between 44 and 57% of global greenhouse gas emissions

• We produce for local food systems, with agroecological methods that avoid fossil fuel consumption.
• A Food Sovereignty based on local production of healthy food by peasants and family farmers is the best way to deal with the Climate Crisis and the Food Crisis
• FOOD SOVEREIGNTY COOLS THE PLANET

• At the last Climate Summit, in Copenhagen, our voices were excluded, and we had to take to the streets to be heard.
• The UN has refused to include the results of Cochabamba Forum in the agenda for Cancun.
• We must take to the streets again in Cancun, this time in larger than ever numbers, with our allies and friends from around the world, to make sure that the voices of reason are heard in Cancun and around the world.
• We will hold an ALTERNATIVE PEOPLES CLIMATE FORUM in the camp, open to the world.
• We need resources so that thousands of peasants and indigenous people, who earn less than USD 300 a year per family, can get to Cancun and be heard. This is a life and death struggle for us.
• We need support for buses, tents, latrines, drinking water, outdoor cooking facilities, corn, beans and rice, a health post, sound equipment, a generator, etc.
• If you cannot be in Cancún yourself, with your support WE CAN BE YOUR VOICE.

Back in the early 1990s, many of Seedling’s pages were devoted to
discussions about international treaties and public research agendas. 
Corporations were part of the discussion, but mainly as a looming threat,
one group of actors pushing forward the industrial model of agriculture that
was destroying agricultural biodiversity. Fast- forward twenty years, and
the landscape has changed. Corporate power in the food system has grown by
leaps and bounds. Today corporations set the global rules, with governments
and public research centres following their lead.

To read full article from GRAIN click here

Women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in poorer countries. Sex-specific data aggregation and the integration of female farmers’ produce into school programs are recent innovations boosting the status of rural women.

(WOMENSENEWS)–The women who grow more than half the world’s agricultural produce have gained international recognition and aid since the start of the global food crisis in 2007.

Instead of being seen as a minor, vulnerable group, international aid agencies have begun keeping sex-specific data and reaching out to them as development partners, said Jeannette Gurung, director of the Washington-based Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and National Resource Management

To read full article from womensEnews click here

You could see this as a cynical attempt to grab votes in a country that’s home to the largest number of hungry people on the planet. And the Congress party is hardly above such cynicism.

But you could also see it as part of a trend by an increasing number of countries recognizing that freedom from hunger is so fundamental, that they want to build the human right to food into the very fabric of their countries laws, into their constitutions. India is by no means the first country to propose such a sweeping approach. Brazil earlier this year approved a change in its constitution to tackle hunger, joining a small group of countries adopting this kind of legislation.

Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, lucidly explains why more and more countries are putting the right to food at the basis of their legal documents here, and suggests that having a constitutional right to food helps

(a) by ensuring that governmental bodies will be held accountable, if they do not comply with the obligations the said framework imposes on them; (b) by ensuring that the right to food will be at the centre of national development strategies, which developing countries may then refer to in their dialogue with donor countries seeking to provide international aid; (c) by strengthening the position of countries in negotiations related to trade or investment, by referring their partners to the obligations they are imposed vis-à-vis their constituencies at domestic level.

That’s all well and good, but what if there’s no such thing as a right to food? Although the right is widely recognized, though not by the United States, there are two substantive questions we didn’t really get the chance to talk about on this morning’s show. First, is merely waving around the right to food sufficient to get the government to take action? Clearly not. As my friends Rahul Lahoti and Sanjay Reddy have noticed, the right to food in India is failing in a variety of ways. As Jeremy Bentham observed when talking about rights: “‘wants are not means; hunger is not bread.”

Second, then, does India’s failure around the right to food point to the charade of the idea of the right to food at all? To put it more generally, are rights really just discussions about things like due process and the operation of government? In other words, are civil and political rights the only rights there are? My co-guest on the show was Chris Jochnick, and he pointed out that even in the US, there’s a recognition of things like economic rights. Even in the US, there’s a widely recognized idea that children ought to be educated. If a person is to thrive in society, they need the advantages of a basic education, and the right to education isn’t a political or civil right, but an economic, social and cultural one

Which brings us back to the very origins of the distinction between social, economic and cultural rights on the one hand, and political and civil rights on the other. I wish we’d had time to talk about the Magna Carta, and in particular the insights from Peter Linebaugh’s fantastic book The Magna Carta Manifesto, which points out that right from the beginning, civil rights and economic rights went hand in hand.

You can’t have the right to life, liberty or happiness without the right to food. It seems as if, we’re coming back to that 800 year old realization.

Introduction
After torrential storms in much of South-East Mexico in October and November 2007, the Chiapas state government, led by Juan Sabines Guerrero, put forward the Sustainable Rural Cities program. The program is meant to provide housing for thousands of victims who had lost their loved ones, houses, land, animals and personal possessions. However, the real aim of the Rural Cities program is to “organise” the use of resources in the countryside, which means separating campesinos from the land where they currently live. The program will concentrate people from the countryside into small villages, then transfer ownership of their land and its exploitation to big companies.
The origins of the Rural Cities Program
At the end of June 2008, the leaders of Mexico, Central America and Colombia decided to relaunch the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) renaming it the “Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project”, or Mesoamerican Project. This new name is an attempt to rejuvenate the PPP, although its logic remains the same: to integrate the whole territory from southern Mexico to Colombia and make it conform to the needs of large-scale capital. Over 100 economic projects made up the PPP when it began in 2001, but it was agreed to leave only a score of these, concentrating on energy, electricity, health, education, telecommunications, agro-fuels, roads and housing.⁽¹⁾
Thus we now face a “concentrated PPP”. The founding document of the PPP, in its chapter on Mexico,⁽²⁾ points out that one of the objectives is to generate a sustainable management of resources; hence the need to promote programs of territorial rearrangement due to the highly dispersed population in Southern and South-East Mexico. Similarly, in November 2008, the World Bank published its World Development Report 2009, subtitled “Reshaping Economic Geography”, which claims that economic integration is the key to bringing development to all corners of the world. Economic integration, says the report, means, among other things, bringing urban and rural areas closer together. To quote the World Bank: “The policy challenge is getting density right, harnessing market forces to encourage concentration and promote convergence in living standards between villages and towns and cities.”⁽³⁾
This is the context in which to view the Rural Cities Program that the government of Juan Sabines intends to carry out in Chiapas, with the same guiding principles: reorganising rural spaces, concentration to overcome dispersion, and bringing rural production into the market framework. It is obvious that the logic of the Rural Cities project is overwhelmingly economic and not social, as its supporters say. 

Nestlé y Bancomer provide the school. Evidently, the original idea to build Rural Cities comes not from the Chiapas government but from multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).⁽⁴⁾ Rural Cities in Chiapas are thus a part of the mosaic of neoliberal plans, projects and businesses stretching across Mexico.⁽⁵⁾
At the inaugural meeting of the Mesoamerica Project in June 2008, President Felipe Calderon stated that “not only have we decided to speed up the pace but also to move towards an complete integration and development project for the region, and to open the door to social development projects, as in housing and health, which have been planned and approved.”⁽⁶⁾ At the same time, Calderon announced an extensive housing programme that includes the funding of mortgage loans for 50,000 dwellings, seeking to extend the Mexican model of house-building throughout Central America. The president of the Advisory Council for Rural Cities, Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, also president of the Azteca Foundation, stated that “there will be Rural Cities not only in Chiapas or even Mexico, but throughout Latin America and the world, and they will be legacy of President Calderon and Governor Sabines, because they solve many problems at the same time, because they reach the root of the problem”⁽⁷⁾.
Historical background of the Rural Cities
To “confine” a sector of the population within cities that are built to isolate this same population from their usual surroundings is not a new strategy. The Rural Cities in Chiapas are a variant of the population control that has been used in other kinds of wars. In “hot” wars, such as invasions by countries in the North against so-called colonies in the South, forced confinement of the campesino population is often a part of a much wider strategy of counterinsurgency and pacification. by. Various examples include: the British in their wars in Malaya and Kenya in the early 1950s, the French in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s, the USA in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and with some modifications, in Iraq in the first decade of the 21st century, through the isolation and controlled access to certain neighbourhoods in Baghdad. Another example nearer at hand is the model villages (later called “poles of development”) created by the Guatemalan army in the 1980s and 1990s to cut off the civilian peasant population from the insurgents of URNG (the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity).
Cutting off the population from its surroundings in wars is similar to “removing the water from the fish.” The fish in this case are the guerrilla forces or insurgents who can escape detection by “swimming” in a “sea” of the population that protects and supports them. Forcibly confining the civilian population in villages controlled by the regular army makes the insurgents` movements easier to detect. Moreover, it hampers their access to their bases of support for the purposes of recruitment, and restricts dissemination of propaganda for their cause.
The places where civilians are compelled to relocate and concentrate are known by various names: concentration camps, regroupment camps, internment camps, native reserves, model villages, new villages, strategic hamlets, development zones, agro-villages, and now, the oxymoron Rural Cities.
Some aspects of these regroupment centers are repeated in nearly all these forms. Apart from the general objective of keeping the population isolated from insurgents in wartime, and from natural resources in the current offensive of plunder by the Chiapas government, in general there is an attempt to make the rural people change and “modernise” their traditional way of life. The idea is to destroy traditional, campesino and community forms of exchange and lifestyles, forcing the population into the capitalist mode of production with small properties oriented towards the external market. Another objective is to indoctrinate the population through the control of school curricula, churches and the media. In Guatemala, for example, in the model villages established in the 1980s:
The aim was ideological indoctrination and the imposition of values alien to the communities, allegiance to Guatemalan national symbols, the flag, the national anthem and values of individualism and success, concepts alien to the traditional Mayan culture. Daily life was completely regimented, imposing a constant rupture with traditional indigenous values. The language used throughout the program was Spanish, education was given in the language of the powerful “ladino” sectors of Guatemala.<sup>(8)</sup>
A decade earlier in Vietnam, US military strategists declared:
The Strategic Hamlet Program was much broader than the construction of strategic hamlets per se. It envisioned sequential phases which, beginning with clearing the insurgents from an area and protecting the rural populace, progressed through the establishment of governmental infrastructure and thence to the provision of services which would lead the peasants to identify with their government. The strategic hamlet program was, in short, an attempt to translate the newly articulated theory of counter-insurgency into operational reality. The objective was political though the means to its realization were a mixture of military, social, psychological, economic and political measures.<sup>(9)</sup>
Rural Cities as an aspect of counterinsurgency
Wherever there are indigenous peoples and communities, men and women fighting for their rights, seeking the dignity and liberty of which they have been robbed, a concurrent, silent war exists to make them disappear, through different variations of counterinsurgency. In Chiapas, the Sabines government is specialised in counterinsurgency. Government programs that talk about the struggle against poverty and advocate development are in fact mechanisms for community disintegration, which include breaking ties of campesino and indigenous ways of life, to obtain total control over territories and natural resources.
The counterinsurgency plan of Juan Sabines is disguised as the “Chiapas Development and Solidarity Plan”, which is far from being “based on the value of solidarity, with respect for the natural resources of future generations” that it claims<sup>(10)</sup> Rather, it seeks to convert the state of Chiapas into an investors` paradise, through neoliberal economic integration. This brings pressure on the state to become even more immersed in globalisation. Programs such as Amanecer (Dawn), Banchiapas (Chiapas Bank), the Biofuels Project, the Agricultural Convention (CODECOA), and Rural Cities are all part of this “Chiapas Solidarity”, which fits in with the goals of counterinsurgency. Processes such as territorial rearrangement, privatisation of land, militarization of communities, infrastructure megaprojects and the development of tourist centers all fit into the same logic.
Concentrating the population in Rural Cities implies social control, which is fundamental to the plans of capital and the government. Basically, control of the population seeks to fragment and divide any attempt to build an alternative model or one that strays from the government path. The aim is to demobilize people by breaking up their cultures and campesino way of life, separating them from their land and impose the state and business model set up in the new residential centres. Miguel Ángel García from the Chiapas NGO Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste highlights the coincidence of interests, mainly those of cement works and construction firms, but also “there is a political interest in social control, to concentrate people to keep them under control and to have reserve labour, employed or semi-employed “⁽¹¹⁾.
Rural Cities and the Shock Doctrine
The first Rural Cities to be built by the state government will be in Central and Northern Chiapas. Their location is no accident. The torrential rains of October and November 2007 were especially heavy in that area, affecting about 1,200 families in 34 municipalities. In addition, the town of Juan de Grijalva was buried when a hill collapsed in Ostuacán municipality in the Northern zone. The affected families were housed in temporary shelters or with relatives. From January 2008, over 600 families in 33 communities in the official municipalities of Jitotol, Tecpatán, Pantepec, Coapilla, Copainalá and Ixhuatán were moved to so-called “solidarity camps”.

Model of the Rural Cities Project showing the work financed by each company. Months before the disaster, the Sabines government had announced the Rural Cities Program, but the rains provided the ideal opportunity to start. The Sabines government announced the discovery of the reason for so much poverty in the state and particularly in the countryside in Chiapas: “We concluded that dispersion is the origin and fundamental cause of extreme poverty” stated the governor in his Second “State of the State” Report.⁽¹²⁾
According to official figures, there are 19,386 localities in the state of Chiapas. In 14,346 (74%) of them, there are fewer than 100 inhabitants, which “makes the provision of services and infrastructure for development difficult, to the detriment of the population`s quality of life” according to the state government. Resolved to confront the “dispersion-poverty issue”, the Sabines government launched the ambitious Rural Cities program to concentrate the “dispersed” people.<sup>(13)</sup>
In this context, the government`s largest problem is one of public relations – how to convince country people not only to relocate and concentrate but also to break with their traditional way of life, and agree to give up their greatest heritage: the land where they live. The dilemma was huge, but using the adage that crises bring opportunities, the rains and mudslides offered the government a solution. The first Rural Cities would be built in the disaster zone to provide homes for the victims. Altogether eight Rural Cities were ¨[to be] built in 2008 out of a total of 25 during the term of office of governor Juan Sabines which ends in December 2012.(14)
The behaviour of the Chiapas government regarding the Rural Cities is an example of the so-called shock doctrine, about which the Canadian researcher and activist Naomi Klein has written in detail. Her recent book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, describes, with detailed examples, instances where governments in different countries intent on plundering their people have taken advantage of all kinds of disasters to push through measures which at other times would meet violent opposition. These disasters may be natural (earthquakes, hurricanes) or caused by human beings (wars, coups d`état), or a combination of both, like the torrential rains of 2007, which led to floods and landslides in Chiapas because of deforestation and historic floods in Tabasco due to improper release rates at various hydro-electric dams.
Klein explains:
That is how the shock doctrine works: the original disaster – the coup, the terrorist attack, the market meltdown, the war, the tsunami, the hurricane – puts the entire population into a state of collective shock. The falling bombs, the bursts of terror, the pounding winds serve to soften up whole societies much as the blaring music and blows in the torture cells soften up prisoners. Like the terrorized prisoner who gives up the names of comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect.(15)
Building housing for the rainstorm survivors in Chiapas would perhaps not deserve so much attention under different circumstances. The difference this time centers on the aims of the state government, using Rural Cities as part of state policy, coordinated among different levels of government, security forces, the private sector and other organisations, in order to concentrate the rural population, and in due course to deprive them of possession and control of the land where they now live.

Work goes ahead in Nuevo Juan de Grijalva.
This two-fold aim of concentration and plunder would be fiercely opposed by the population were it not for the disaster. Homeless, in shock because they have lost relatives, houses and personal possessions, forced by events to relocate to places far from their lands, the affected population undergo what Klein calls a “collective trauma.” They are the perfect target for a government policy of coercion with the least possible resistance. Roberto Sánchez, representative of the community of Juan de Grijalva commented shortly after the tragedy, “People are scared and do not want to return where death and destruction struck.”⁽¹⁶⁾) In these circumstances, the relocation of thousands of families to Rural Cities, with promises of access to all services – housing, schools, clinics, leisure centres, even internet – become much easier.
Obviously, not all the 25 Rural Cities planned by the Sabines government in Chiapas will be built after a disaster. However, the first do have this characteristic and were selected with the desire to be accepted by the population and built with the least possible resistance. From now on, their main function is the “demonstration effect”, e.g., to set an example to the people whom the government intends to move to the other Rural Cities.
[To be continued]
Our grateful thanks to Deborah Cobbett for the English translation and to Sarah Beckhart and Miguel Pickard for their editorial support. 

Notes

“Relanzan Plan Puebla Panamá como Proyecto Mesoamérica”, La Jornada, 28 de junio de 2008

“Plan Puebla-Panamá Documento Base, Capítulo México Informe Ejecutivo”, Lic. Francisco Abarca Escamilla.

World Bank, World Development Report 2009 “Reshaping Economic Geography” Overview, page 7 [online]
siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDR2009/Resources/4231006-1225840759068/WDR09_01_Overviewweb.pdf

Japhy Wilson, “The New Phase of the Plan Puebla Panama in Chiapas”, Chiapas Today bulletins, CIEPAC www.ciepac.org/boletines/chiapas_en.php?id=560.

This includes the SPP and the Mérida Initiative. The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (ASPAN in Spanish) means the militarisation and loss of sovereignty of the whole of Mexico, or as pointed out by Carlos Fazio, ASPAN is bullet-proofing NAFTA. The SPP is a militarised NAFTA”. In turn, the Merida Initiative is becoming the promoter and gendarme of this militarisation and the control and plunder of natural resources which projects like the PPP intend for Mexico and Central America.

“Presidentes y Jefes de Estado lanzan Proyecto de Integración y Desarrollo de Mesoamérica”, Newsletter del Proyecto Mesoamérica, número 1, noviembre de 2008, http://www.Proyectomesoamerica.org

“Ciudades Rurales para vivir mejor: Felipe Calderón”, El Heraldo de Chiapas, 8 de abril de 2008.

Luis Menéndez, “Guatemala: la persistencia del terror”, Herramienta, http://www.herramienta.com.ar/print.php?sid=283.

Pentágono, The Pentagon Papers, Vol. 2, Capítulo 2, “El programa de aldeas estratégicas, 1961 – 1963″, Beacon Press, 1971.(online summary at www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/pent4.htm)

“Plan de Desarrollo Chiapas Solidario 2007012″, en http://academia.unach.mx/planeacion.

Interview with Miguel Angel García de Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste AC, 30 de junio de 2008.

http://www.cocoso.chiapas.gob.mx/documento.php?id=20081202050200

“Programa: Ciudades Rurales de Chiapas”, Gobierno del Estado y Fundación Azteca, http://ia311226.us.archive.org/0/items/CiudadesRurales/CiudadesRurales.pdf

It is worth mentioning that since the tragedy in October 2007, the surviving families have been living in crowded temporary camps built by the State government. On a plot called after General Emiliano Zapata (or Santa Ana according to the state authorities), in Tecpatán, displaced people are living in small huts 3.5 metres by 5, built almost touching one another, with 5 to 8 people to a hut. (see Carlos Herrera, “Presentan Casa Modelo”, Cuarto Poder, 22/12/08,
http://noticias.cuarto-poder.com.mx/4p_apps/periodico/pag.php?NTExMDc%3D).

Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Metropolitan Books, Nueva York, 2007, p.17.

Elio Henríquez, “Pobladores de San Juan Grijalva aceptan ser reubicados”, La Jornada, http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/11/13/index.php?section=sociedad&article=040n2soc.

 To read this bulletin (#571) check out ciepac.org

Detroit garden nurtures inmates near end of prison sentences

Michigan prison inmates finishing their sentences at the Gateway
halfway house on East Jefferson Avenue at Lillibridge Street have
created a small but vibrant example of an inner-city garden. Using a
vacant lot and recycled debris from a demolished house nearby, the
inmates are growing corn, tomatoes, peppers, watermelons, lettuce and
squash.
The men give away the fruits and vegetables to needy people and
appreciate purposeful work to fill their final days of incarceration.
For James (Bear) Fuller, 51, who spent 34 years in prison for
homicide, the garden is a metaphor for the changes he and other
prisoners have tried to make in themselves.
“I look at vegetables and fruits like people,” Fuller said last week.
“They need to be nurtured, tended to. A garden needs to be weeded just
like a person’s spirit.”

To read full article from the Detroit Free Press click here