GREENWASHING AND THE MESOAMERICAN BIOLOGICAL CORRIDO


Mesoamerica Resiste is a collaboratively–made, highly detailed, allegorical illustration that exposes on-the-ground impacts of an industrial development plan and trade corridor spanning Mexico, Central America and Colombia. Formerly known as Plan Puebla Panamá, Plan Mesoamerica includes a range of energy, transportation, and extraction projects from hydroelectric dams and super-highways to biofuels plantations and private conservation parks. The graphic looks at industrial development and its colonial history in the region, and documents widespread opposition to these plans.


species in the region, which need larger areas for healthy breeding, e.g. jaguars. In some ‘reserves’, multinationals enjoy access for activities such as oil prospecting and extracting genetic material, and where civilians are prohibited, military equipment goes.


T 14 iAM Big-business-backing of protected areas gives the false impression


that business is taking care of nature. This market-based model of conservation is not designed to allow for consultation or participation of local communities. On the ground, the biosphere reserves function as another way to displace people because entry is prohibited even for local people who are often stewards of the land. The five-hundred year birthday candle is a reference to the history


of colonization in the Americas: a package of infrastructure loans called the Fifth Century Fund, launched by the IDB and Spanish government in 1992 to commemorate five hundred years of colonization of the Americas.


// The Beehive Design Collective is a cooperative of artists, educators and


social movement activists who work to create and distribute anti-copyright images as tools for educating and organizing. The Beehive’s mission is to cross pollinate the grassroots by building connections between activists that use words, and those that speak in pictures, to create more accessible, powerful campaigns for the important issues of our times. www.beehivecollective.org


he Mesoamerican Biological Corridor encompasses a corridor of protected natural areas based on a problematic ‘zoo approach’ to conservation. Creation of small pockets or ‘biosphere reserves’ fails to provide continuous habitat for threatened


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