"Nichts mehr davon, ich bitt euch. Zu essen gebt ihm, zu wohnen. Habt ihr die Blöße bedeckt, gibt sich die Würde von selbst." Friedrich Schiller
May 2008	FOOD for PEACE

Mexican Congressmen and Other Leaders Demand PLINHO Water Management Project Cong. Carlos Navarro Lopez, head of the Rural Development Committee of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, and fellow committee member Cong. Martin Ramos Castellanos, joined a well-attended press conference given yesterday in the Press Room of the federal Congress by four leaders of the "Pro-PLHINO of the 21 Century Committee," to insist the money allocated by Congress for technical feasibility studies of the North West Hydraulic Plan (PLHINO) be released, quickly, so that Mexico can secure its food self-sufficiency and avoid starvation, in this time of global food crisis. The PLHINO is the long-planned great engineering project joining 16 rivers in Mexico's three northwestern states of Nayarit, Sinoloa and Sonora, which would open up at least 800,000 new hectares of land for farming. American statesman Lyndon LaRouche has championed the PLHINO for decades, and LaRouche's associates in Sonora play a leading role in the Pro-PLHINO Committee, which was founded last year by more than 30 rural producer, labor and grass-roots groups from the area. The press conference was held in the midst of an intense debate in Congress over what Mexico should do about the food crisis. President Felipe Calderon's just announced emergency food measures -- an intensification of the very free trade policies which destroyed Mexican agriculture in the first place -- have met with a broadside of criticism, but few have any concrete proposals for how to rebuild the Mexican countryside. The Pro-PLHINO Committee, joined by the members of Congressional Rural Development Committee, detailed just how far the PLHINO will go in ending Mexico's dependence on foreign imports for food, including the possibilities of doubling wheat production and increasing corn production by 40%, nationally. Also, on May 25, the Agriculture Secretary of the state of Sonora, Alejandro Elias Calles had demanded that the federal government build the PHLINO-Project.