By Riccardo and Diana

Wind power has been praised internationally as a possible solution to the world's energy problems. Renewable so long as the wind blows and purportedly a cleaner, less damaging source of energy, wind power has companies jumping on the bandwagon to invest in such "green technology".

However, just as in any matter where money and power are concerned, careful attention must be paid to the power relations involved.

In the windy isthmus of Oaxaca, the Spanish Company Iberdrola, together with the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), is mid-way through a massive construction project of thousands of windmills on the lands of poor peasants. The company is clearly not only taking advantage of the winds of the region, but also of the poverty, lack of organization and the stronghold control of the PRI in that area.

Unemployment in Oaxaca is extremely high, such that the cities can no longer absorb the migration of peasants who leave their lands in search of jobs. The farmers whose lands are being siphoned off depend on those lands for their very survival.

In La Venta and surrounding communities, the CFE is renting land for 30 years at 3,000 pesos (less than 300 USD) per year, which, divided by 360 days a year, comes no where close to the state’s already unconscionably low minimum wage of 45 pesos per day. Campesinos have complained that their lands- even lands not being rented but that are in the vicinity of the windmills- have become drier and less productive and that plagues normally not a problem in the region have appeared due to the windmills’ killing of migratory birds.

And who gets the power generated? Industry- or future industries dreamed up by NAFTA and the PPP will suck up all the electricity. There will also be lines to carry electricity all the way to Mexico City and even as far as the United States.

On March 6, 2007, three hundred police were sent in to throw out protesting farmers who were gathered to prevent the expropriation of their lands through the quickly advancing windmill construction project.

In response, on March 17, 2007 in the community of La Venta the "Front of the Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and in Resistance against Plan Puebla Panama (PPP)" was formed. Community leaders of La Venta, La Ventosa, La Mata, San Dionisio, Santo Domingo, members of the APPO (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca) and UCIZONI (Union de las Comunidades Indigenas de la Zona Norte del Istmo) came together to organize a united front against the massive windmill construction project on their lands.

Recognizing that the wind power mega-project on the Isthmus of Tehantepec has been little more than a systematic expropriation of communal and ejidal lands, the group has organized in resistance to this and other PPP mega-projects and in defense of their communal and ejidal lands.

Plan Puebla Panamá

The implementation of Plan Puebla Panama was announced officially on March 12, 2001 by the former president Vicente Fox, with the pretext of generating "development" in an "underdeveloped south" through Mesoamerica's regional integration. The official version states that PPP is an investment program aimed at promoting the economic development of south-eastern Mexico in order to achieve integration into the international market. The donors and investors include the Federal Government, national and international private companies as well as USAID and the World Bank.