The Chiapas business bounty

>> Can Canadian corporations stop human rights violations in Mexico? If so, would they bother?

by DOMINIQUE RITTER

Last week's expulsion of two Quebec women from Chiapas has placed a Mexican hot potato in the laps of Canada's foreign policy bureaucrats. The Canadian government, which has actively been encouraging trade with Mexico for years, is now being forced to step back and reconsider its responsibility to promote human rights standards.

"Canada's privileged relationship should be used to force Mexico to improve its human rights conditions," said Madeleine Desnoyers of the Montreal-based International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (ICHRDD), one of a number of groups that met with Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy last Friday to demand why Canada has failed to sanction Mexico for its human rights violations.

This "privileged relationship" is a result of important trade ties that have developed with Mexico since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Among the Canadian businesses seeking to develop ties with Mexico are Quebec corporate giants Bombardier, SNC-Lavalin, Air Canada, and Hydro-Québec International.

"I understand that people want to do business with Mexico," Julie Marquette, one of the two women forced to leave Chiapas for allegedly leading a revolt against local authorities, told the Mirror. "But right now, they are doing it without taking care of what's going on with human rights, and it's not working. And the worst of it is that those people who are doing business over there, they have the power to ask for respect of human rights." Thus far, they have not.

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Ironically, it was NAFTA that gave Canadian businesses the ability to pressure the Mexican government, yet NAFTA was the very reason the people of Chiapas rose up in the first place. To pave the way for the deal, Mexico changed its constitution in order to remove land rights guarantees for its native peoples.

On Jan. 1, 1994, to coincide with the implementation of NAFTA, armed native Indian groups seized control of four municipalities in Chiapas. Calling themselves the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), the rebels issued demands for economic and social change, and protested against segregative government policies--especially NAFTA--which are deemed to compromise the indigenous peoples.

"For the Maya, living on the earth is the only way of living," said Marquette. "For them NAFTA is like death."

The years since have been marked by political stalemate and armed conflict. At present, a fragile ceasefire is in effect and at least 40,000 troops, nearly one-third of the Mexican military, are stationed in Chiapas, in addition to paramilitary groups.

"This is a war of low intensity and everybody knows about it," said Marquette. She describes a three-point plan being perpetrated by the Mexican government under which natives peoples are being forced from their homes, communities are being divided and foreign observers are being expelled.

In January, despite local and international protests against the December massacre of 45 indigenous people in Chiapas, Canada nonetheless sent a trade mission to Mexico.

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The Mexican government's military muscle-flexing in Chiapas has much to do with the region's bounty of natural resources. The southernmost state has valuable oil and uranium reserves as well as a tremendous potential for hydroelectric power development.

"Chiapas is a very, very rich state," said Marquette. "The contrast with its people that are so poor really shows. They don't care about the people. They only care about the soil and the air."

Seduced by Chiapas' flowing rivers, Hydro-Québec International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hydro-Québec, has been investigating the possibility of selling hydroelectric technology to state-controlled energy producers.

"We do know that they have ventured [to Chiapas]. They have made some investigations as to the possibility of developing and or selling their technology," said a Mexican government official who requested anonymity.

Microturbines Technologies Inc. is a Hydro-Québec partner and one of the Quebec businesses involved in Mexico. The company's vice-president, Robert Lévesque, maintains that his company deals exclusively with hydroelectric developments in the northern region of the country, but that he would like to stake a claim in Chiapas--provided that its residents would support it.

Lévesque assured the Mirror that he understands native issues, and he's certain that the natives in Chiapas "want to participate in white people things."

Although Hydro-Québec International denied that it was involved in any hydroelectric developments in Chiapas, its partners and subsidiaries have been doing business in Mexico. In recent years, both Gaz Métropolitain and Microturbines have sold some of their Canadian energy expertise to Mexico.

But as Canadian companies continue to do business in Chiapas, observers are calling for urgent action to put an end to the human rights violations.

"The military is looking to accelerate things towards civil war," said Marquette, adding that all players, "must unite to do something and fast, because we are heading straight towards a genocide."