Declaration of the III Mesoamerican Forum

The Mesoamerican Movement for Popular Integration Against the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP)

Between the 16th and 18th of July in the city of Managua, Nicaragua more than 1000 delegates from over 350 organizations in Mesoamerica and others met and analyzed the effects of the megaplans of the PPP, FTAA, and other free-trade agreements. The Forum also explored the results of neoliberal-corporate-globalization and structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Financial Institutions led by the World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

The primary challenge facing popular organizations in their work to propose and formulate alternatives is the domination of the capitalist system in its political, economic, social and cultural forms. As such, we totally reject it, including the payment of the external debt.

In response to the increase in militarization of all of Latin America by the United States, we demand the immediate departure of U.S. troops from our lands.

We concluded with a total rejection of the Plan Puebla Panama, the FTAA, and all free-trade agreements, since they have nothing to do with the sustainable development of our peoples, compromise biodiversity, deepen poverty, and generate greater debt. We state that the PPP is not negotiable and promote non-participation.

Among the most important political agreements the following are highlights:

• Food security is an urgent need for our peoples, as such so is the intense struggle to stop the advancement of transgenic seeds to safeguard our biological resources.
• Local and popular development, the strengthening of regional and municipal autonomy, and the rights of indigenous peoples to their territorial lands.
• Neoliberalism has denied our fundamental human rights, especially in the case of women exploited by maquilas.
• An alternative economic model based on the popular economy and on the experience of campesinos, indigenous and Garifuna peoples, workers, and cooperatives.
• Popular organized resistance to put an end to the privatization of basic services.
• Mobilizations on October 12 to demonstrate our rejection of the PPP and the FTAA to coincide with distinct forms of struggle on this day of Mesoamerican resistance.
• We reiterate our readiness to resist using all forms of social mobilization within our reach.
  -Managua, Nicaragua July 18, 2002