Latin America Moves Left and Forward
July 18, 2012
Foro de Sao Paulo
Latin America Moves Left and Forward
by CARMELO RUIZ-MARRERO
The Foro de Sao Paulo (FSP), a forum that brings together most of the Latin American left, had its 18th meeting in the Venezuelan city of Caracas on July 4-6. In attendance were representatives of practically all of the Foro’s member organizations, including El Salvador’s FMLN, Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, Guatemala’s URNG (all three of them former guerrilla groups), the Cuban Communist Party, Ecuador’s Alianza PAIS, Uruguay’s Frente Amplio, Bolivia’s Movement Toward Socialism and the Puerto Rico Socialist Front, as well as leftist and socialist political parties from countries like Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Barbados and Argentina.
The host country’s left pulled out all stops in helping to organize the event. Countless youth volunteers of the ruling party- president Hugo Chavez’s PSUV- looked after every detail of logistics and protocol, and the local communist party, the PCV, was also out in force. There was also a substantial number of observers and dignitaries from other parts of the world, including Russia, China, Vietnam, Saharaui, Lebanon, Palestine, France, Spain and Greece. VIP’s included Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú from Guatemala, and writers Ignacio Ramonet and Atilio Boron, who sat in places of honor near president Chavez at the closing activity.
Brazil’s delegation, which included the ruling Workers’ Party (PT) and the Communist Party (PcdoB, now celebrating its 90 years), had a commanding presence in Caracas. The PT was indeed the main driving force behind the FSP’s founding, and the meeting’s proceedings were presided over by the extremely capable Brazilian political strategist Valter Pomar, who is not only the Foro’s executive secretary but also a member of the PT’s top leadership.
Currently one of the world’s leading economies, Brazil has a gross domestic product dozens of times the size of any of its neighbors’. The country’s political and economic shadow looms over all South America. The PT has won the last three presidential elections- in the first two of these the winning candidate was former factory worker and labor organizer Luiz Inacio “Lula” Da Silva, and the current president is the former guerrilla and political prisoner Dilma Roussef. It must be regarded as the most important political institution of the Latin American left and one of the single most important political parties in the hemisphere. Lula fully intended to come to Caracas but could not do so due to health problems. He did, however, send a video greeting in which he expressed support for president Chavez’s reelection bid.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/18/latin-america-moves-left-and-forward/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Puerto Rico's Carmelo Ruiz Marrero covers a lot of ground in this article. of necessity. The forum itself includes the entirety of Latin America--participants and issues--including delegations from all the electorally successful leftist political parties, as enumerated in the first paragraph. These are delegations of political parties whose leaders are now presidents of their countries--something no distant observer could have predicted a decade ago, especially given the disgusting disinformation and "black holing" of information in the U.S.-dominated, corpo-fascist world press.
What has happened in Latin America is an enormous and, to the disinformed, seemingly miraculous, triumph of the left, in countries that only a decade ago were wallowing in misery--vast, endemic and seemingly hopeless poverty, transglobal corporate looting of every kind (of resources, of finances, of public works, of workers) and fake democracy--rule by the rich supported by the U.S. It seems hardly possible that Latin Americans have reversed all of these negatives so substantially over so short a time, but that is what they have done--as all indicators show. Latin Americans have voted themselves a "New Deal" and have put we victims of transglobal corporate monstrosities and war profiteers, here in the north, to shame, as to our fraud-ridden election system, in which it is simply not possible, any more, to elect an "FDR"-type president and a "New Deal" congress.
Not possible. That is the lamentable condition of our once great democracy. And what the rich and the corporate are doing in our so-called election system, on the financial side--outright buying elections--in collusion with the corpo-fascist media, is not the half of it, by any means. The vote counting system itself has been monumentally comprised, and is now run largely (70%) by one, private, far-rightwing connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--using 'TRADE SECRET' code--code that the public is forbidden to review--in all the voting machines in the U.S., with virtually no audit-recount controls.
Election of an "FDR" today, in the U.S.--a da Silva, a Rousseff, a Chavez, a Morales--is NOT POSSIBLE. Reform has been thoroughly blockaded. And, until, we, the people of the U.S., address that monumental problem--the loss of vote counting in the PUBLIC VENUE--in all our local jurisdictions (where the initial fraud occurs--the purchase of these voting machines, laws against public review, "privatization" of the whole voting process), we will continue to see government "of, by and for" the 1%, no matter which party is in power. The awful silence of our own party leaders on this FUNDAMENTAL democratic issue--public vote counting--tells us all we need to know about their fear of, or collusion with, 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting.
Carmelo Ruiz Marrero points out that there were almost no U.S. delegates to this forum.
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"I must have been the only delegate in Caracas that noticed the total absence of Americans, which says plenty about the provincialism of most American leftists and progressives. But on the other hand, it was also evident that the Americans were not missed at all, nobody bemoaned their absence. Latin America is increasingly looking south. Only the right wing and ruling classes are looking north for answers and help in these changing times." --from the OP
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i'm not sure if I agree with his analysis as to why there were so few U.S. delegates ("the provincialism of most American leftists and progressives"). i would need more information. There have been substantial U.S. delegations to other kinds of leftist forums in LatAm. And the individuals and groups (labor, environmental, religious, etc.) who came together in the U.S., in Seattle '99, for instance, and for subsequent large protests against "neoliberal" policies and institutions--including huge protests against U.S. wars, and recent protests against "Wall Street"--can hardly be described as "provincial." Indeed, keen awareness of global issues is characteristic of these groups.
One of my guesses about this would be that U.S. leftist groups have the enormous problem of U.S. wars and war profiteers--an evil that may be evident in LatAm (most notably in the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs"
but that is largely not generated BY LatAm. U.S. wars and war profiteering are a uniquely U.S. evil, established in its current monstrous form by the Bush Junta, and largely supported by the current Democratic Party establishment. The LatAm left has to deal with it in theory--opposing U.S. wars as a policy statement--and as to the impacts of U.S. militarism on LatAm but U.S. leftists have to deal with being at the very heart of the Empire, where all this murder, mayhem, oppression and grief is generated. The continuation of these U.S. policies under Obama--and in addition the continuation of policies of environmental plundering, corporate rule of medical care, banksterism, looting of "the commons" and more--may be preoccupying the left here and consuming all of its time and resources.
I can't imagine that such groups are not interested in the LatAm left and in leftist solidarity. It is simply not true. LatAm issues were and are at the heart of the U.S. peace and justice movement. And I certainly do not share the writer's casual and even contemptuous dismissal of the U.S. left as "not being missed" at this forum. The writer instead should have inquired into WHY. Did the forum's organizers share this contemptuous attitude and not make efforts to include U.S. delegations? Did the writer ask anybody--among the forum participants or its organizers--what THEIR view was, as to U.S. participants? Were they deliberately excluded? Did the U.S. government place obstacles in their way? What was going on with this (and how true was it--just as to numbers)?
The writer uses this sally against the U.S. left to make the point that the LatAm left is now "looking south" (as opposed to the right, which looks "north" . That is an important point and should not be used divisively as to the common causes and solidarity of the left, south and north.
I also don't like its bullying tone. Bullies pick on the weak. The U.S. left is weak, for sure, but the U.S. population has also been the target of unprecedented forms of manipulation and control. To spit on the left here as "provincial" is unfair, as well as untrue. It's like kicking a schoolyard victim when she's down. Why not instead offer sympathy and help (say, boxing lessons!)?
Fortunately, that is a rare low point in the article. It is otherwise well worth reading. Our people are almost universally denied this kind of information about the left in LatAm, except for those willing to hunt for alternatives to the corpo-fascist press.
As the article points out, this socialist forum--the Foro de Sao Paulo (FSP)--is well aware that Latin America's "New Deal" is not complete and faces grave threats from U.S. opposition to both social justice and democracy in LatAm--from fraudulent elections (Mexico, Haiti, Honduras), fake "constitutional crises" used to mount rightwing coups (Honduras, Paraguay) and outright murder and mayhem supported by U.S. tax dollars (Colombia, Honduras, Mexico)--among the tactics being used by the U.S. in collusion with rightwing elites to serve transglobal corporate monsters and war profiteers.
LatAm's left also has some fundamental conflicts--the biggest one being economic development vs. Mother Earth--that we can be sure the CIA is looking at (if not actively involved in) for "divide and conquer" purposes. The forum acknowledges this conflict. It is, at first glance, insoluble. How do you create prosperity for all without further ravaging Mother Earth? NO modern society has solved this problem and it may be that it IS insoluble and that the human race is heading toward its own demise (at breakneck speed, it seems). I am very glad to see the forum's comments on this conflict. If it has solutions, I think they will come from LatAm (where I know they are being worked on), precisely because of the rise of leftist democracy there and its expansion of free speech and civil rights. That discussion--development vs Mother Earth--has been squashed here, and environmental advances in Europe are under assault. I don't know much of what is going on in Africa and Asia, as to environmental progress--what little I know looks very bad, indeed (especially China). So, Latin America seems to be the only place of hope, as to ideas and action on saving Mother Earth, and its awesome leftist democracy movement is WHY I have such hope. Only where there is serious, immediate potential for casting off Corporate Rule is there serious potential for saving the planet. In Latin America, casting off Corporate Rule is not only potential; it is in progress.
