The plan covers some 63 million people and almost 390,000 square miles of the narrow Central American isthmus from southern Mexico to Panama. The territory includes oil, mineral, and forest wealth as well as sites with potential for profitable tourism ventures.

Promoted by Mexican president Vicente Fox, the Puebla-Panama Plan proposal was also signed by the heads of state of Belize, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. It has also received the endorsement of U.S. president George Bush. The total funds involved, estimated to range from $13 billion to $25 billion, are to come directly from government coffers or from loans by institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank, whose headquarters is in Washington; the World Bank; and the European Union.

Among the construction projects are two major highways. One will run from the Texas-Mexico border to the Yucatán Peninsula, with branches into Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. The other will follow the Pacific coast stretching to Panama.

Some 25 hydroelectric dams are due for construction, including 18 in Mexico. The plan will also link the energy grids of Mexico and Central America, a project slated to cost more than $400 million, one-tenth of which will be put up by the Spanish company ENDESA. A fiber-optic network telecommunications network is also under development.

Other potential investors in the Puebla-Panama Plan include Applied Energy Services of Virginia, Harking Energy Corporation, the Santa Fe Corporation, the Illinois Railroad, Union Pacific-Southern, and CSX.

In two of the most expensive and ambitious of the plan’s blueprints, the ports of Coatzacoalcos in the Gulf of Mexico, and Salina Cruz in the Pacific, located on either side of the southern Mexican isthmus of Tehuantepec, will be linked by water canals. In the meantime, "dry canals" or "land bridges"--commercial-standard highways between the two coasts--are being developed as supplements and alternatives to the Panama Canal. Similar projects are proposed for Nicaragua and Honduras.  
 
Southern states of Mexico
The southern states of Mexico that are listed under the plan include Guerrero, Puebla, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo. In many respects, these areas, among the poorest in Mexico, have more in common with much of Central America than with the more industrialized center and north of the country.

Driven by competition from other export platforms, particularly in China and elsewhere in Asia, in recent years a number of capitalists have moved their operations from the "maquiladora" region along the U.S.-Mexican border further south into Mexico. They hope to take advantage of the lower cost of labor power in these impoverished regions, following the success of many workers in the north in winning modest improvements in wages.

In addition to promoting trade and investment in the broader region, the Fox government would like to open the country’s energy industry to foreign and local investment. At present private companies are responsible for only 25 percent of energy production in the southern Mexican states.

In August Fox introduced legislation to open the way for the privatization of the electrical industry. The proposal met strong resistance from the 130,000 workers employed in the industry, who are organized in the Mexican Electrical Workers union. Workers’ leaders accused the president of trampling on the country’s constitution.

"Where in the government are we going to get the money to make these investments?" said president Fox last August to a group of textile bosses, as he sought to justify the legislation. The president claims that some $500 billion will be needed in the next 10 years for the energy sector.

Working people in Mexico mobilized in the late 1930s to force the nationalization of the country’s oil industry and other important economic sectors, and popular attitudes to the national patrimony still bears the imprint of those advances.  
 
 
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