Networking in the Latin American Left
EL FISGÓN
Janette Habel* discusses the 6th Sao Paulo Forum, the major annual meeting of the Latin American left Janette Habel: Parties influenced by social democratic ideas, including the leadership of Brazil's Workers Party (PT), Mexico's Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and a sector of the Salvadorian FMLN, proposed "the construction of democratic, modern state," based on an economy dominated by the market and private property, with the state playing a strong role, and imposing a minimum level of social justice, and ensuring "durable development." Given the economic and social crisis in Latin America, this strategy has obvious difficulties.
The Cuban Communist Party, and Salvadorian Communist leader Shafik Handal, preferred to talk of a new "socialist mode; represented, according to them, by China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and Cuba.
The debate provoked by the contradictions between these two orientations was not resolved during the Forum, which has a federal, consensual nature. The final document of the Forum reflects the Latin American left's lack of strategy. The brutality of the neo-liberal offensive, North American hegemony and the absence of socialist reference-points (since the fall of the USSR) has disarmed the Latino left. A number of delegations, including the Salvadorian current led by Mario Mijango, tried to develop a some kind of third orientation in the workshop discussions, but the open plenary debate was confined to these two major orientations.
We also saw new initiatives on immigration, environment, culture and women. This is making the Forum an important, continental framework for those who want to develop broad campaigns. The Sao Paulo Forum is an instrument of unity and mobilisation which is well worth preserving. • It must be difficult for the Forum to function in a federalist way
The working group said that the lack of a permanent mechanism made it difficult to act between annual meetings. Delegates resolved to create an experimental (two year) secretariat in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The location is no accident: Brazil remains the centre of gravity of the continent. This move towards structure is a good thing. But the political
Block-aid FREE YURSELVES FROM THE OPPRESSIVE REGIME differences among Forum participants do not permit any political centralisation. • Are the Zapatistas a reference-point for the Latin American left?
It is worrying that the Zapatistas weren't mentioned at all during the Forum. Not at the opening and closing meetings, not even in the various interventions by the Mexican PRD Only after the closing ceremony did Shafik Handal announce that a delegation from the Forum would travel to Chiapas to participate in the Zapatistas' meeting.
The organisations present at this Forum are quite critical of the Zapatistas. Some leaders of armed movements are implicitly critical of the Zapatista strategy. "We don't understand," one Guatemala guerrilla leader told me. "When you have arms, you use them." • The Forum clashed with the EZLN's Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity
The Zapatistas knew that these were the Forum dates. It is obviously a problem that they decided to hold their own event at the same time. The two meetings were only a few hundred kilometres apart, but security problems made it impossible to attend both. • What about Cuba?
There was no special resolution on Cuba. But the central document, the final declaration, and all the sectoral statements condemned the Helms-Burton law [which strengthens the US embargo] and stressed support for Cuba, including support for the current economic reforms. As far as I could see, there was no public disagreement on these questions at the Forum. *
Sao Paulo Forum *
2 nemow
•Invitation only?
IN 1997 THE FORUM WILL HOLD joint meetings with the North
American and European left. The
2nd meeting is an initiative from the old continent, reflecting the deepening relationship between the
European Union (EU) and Latin
America, links between the EU and the Mercosur free trade bloc, EU opposition to the Helms-Burton law, and growing EU interest in Mexico.
Several European parliamentary left parties spent most of the planning meeting arguing the necessity of excluding the non-parliamentary left from this meeting
The "solution" was a compromise: a preparatory commission including the Forum co-ordination group and the European parties will meet in the first half of 1997 in Brussels, and will then issue invitations, on the basis of "a broad spirit." J.H.] *
•Who, what, where...
THERE WERE 187 DELEGATES,
REPRESENTING 52 of the Forum's member organisations. A further 144 invited organisations sent a total of
289 participants, and 44 organisations from outside the region were present with observer status.
In the preparatory phase, parliamentarians met in Havana, Cuba, a workshop on migration was organised in Mexico City, and a seminar on Caribbean integration was held in Guadeloupe.
There was a cultural meeting dedicated to the Salvadorian poet
Roque Dalton (executed for ideological reasons on the orders of
FMLN Comandante Villalobos) and a meeting on environmental questions dedicated to Chico
Mendes, an Amazonian Indian leader, and member of Brazil's
Workers Party (PT) who was assassinated in the early 1990s.
Notes
* Janette Habel attended the Forum as an observer, representing the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR, French section of the
Fourth International).
1. Mexico's Popular Revolutionary Army
(EPR) participated as an observer, via its newspaper El Machete (IV#281, Oct. 1996)
November 1996 #282 27