John Ross on Globalization in Southern Mexico

AN EVENING WITH REBEL AUTHOR, ACTIVIST, INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST, AND POET JOHN ROSS -Thursday, November 21, 7– 9 pm New College Theater 777 Valencia Street, San Francisco. Live Video Webcast: go to: click here for video Legendary journalist John Ross speaks on "The Geography of Globalization in Southern Mexico”, with an update on the Zapatista Dream... - Sponsored by Global Exchange and New College of California. $5 donation. John Ross will address the complex issues surrounding the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) and the potential effect it will have on the struggle for indigenous rights and autonomy in Southern Mexico. Ross, the author of three books on the Zapatista rebellion in Southern Mexico, will also offer an update on the health of that near-decade-long but still-very-pertinent social insurrection. Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) is a mega project which seeks to open up the southern half of Mexico and Central America to private foreign investment and establishing the foundation for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The plan depends upon multi-lateral development bank support and private investment to create infrastructure that will attract industry and expand natural resource extraction. With the Inter-American Development Bank as the head of the PPP's financial structure and major credit and technical assistance coming from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, among others, controversial projects have already begun. This is the first step in the latest push to globalize the Americas with the end goal of incorporating all of the Western Hemisphere (except Cuba) under the FTAA. Essentially the PPP will create development corridors from the 9 southern Mexican states of Puebla, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo, through the most southern Central American country of Panama. The PPP will create an elaborate infrastructure of ports, highways, airports, and railways aimed to connect the development of the petroleum, energy, maquiladora, and agricultural industries. While the PPP's proponents assert that its main objective is to improve the quality of life for area inhabitants, critics of the Plan see it as an attempt to exploit the abundant, cheap labor force and precious natural resources in order to attract foreign investment eager to reap the benefits of an area stricken with poverty and rich in biodiversity. John Ross, legendary journalist and a longtime Mexico City resident, is the author of six books - including “The War Against Oblivion” (2001), the eight year saga of the Mayan Indian rebellion in Chiapas, and “The Annexation of Mexico – From the Aztecs to the IMF” (1997). Ross is a winner of the American Book Award for the first of his three volumes on the Zapatista rebellion in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. A working correspondent (LA Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Texas Observer), Ross also publishes an on-line weekly newsletter “Mexico Barbaro.” Ross, now 65, is considered a younger beat generation poet and has eight chapbooks of poetry in and out of print. His newest book is soon-to-be-published - “Murdered by Capitalism,” a self-described memoir of 150 years of life and death on the American Left. Contact: Kien, Global Exchange, kien@globalexchange.org, 415-575-5545