According to many observers, the first Social Forum of the Americas was a real success. Surely more than 5,000 persons, probably around 10,000, representing several hundred of institutions from forty countries, participated to the numerous debates and activities “for an other world” organized in Quito, Ecuador, July 25-30, 2004. The main event of this continental meeting was undoubtedly the huge demonstration of the 28th of July, wonderful of both joy and gravity, uniting in a multicoloured “marcha” associations of defence of indigenous peoples’ rights, peasant and workers organizations, trade-unions, young communists… under the applauses of the inhabitants of the Ecuadorian capital. Some moments of tension however, around the Embassy of the United States —the true presidential palace?—, when the police forces dispersed by gas lacrimógeno shots to demonstrators crying out to them: “¡cuida tu casa, cuida tu pais, cuida tu pueblo!”. Later, it was not in the local press but on the walls of the city that one could read the demonstrators’ claims: “¡transnacionales, fuera del pais!”, “¡Bush asesino!”, “¡ALCA, TLC, Plan Colombia = muerte!”, “¡la calle es nuestra!”, “¡Camilo, Guevara, el pueblo se prepara!”…
During these days of Social Forum, the most impressing was the massive presence of young people, Ecuadorians for sure, but also Colombians, Peruvians, Venezuelans, Brazilians… Their conscience of the dangers that the United states’ warring neo-liberalism imposes to humanity taken as a whole, their spirit of internationalist brotherhood, their generous and resolute militant commitment were lessons of hope for all of us. This magnificent mobilisation of the youth impedes us to be pessimist. As a matter of fact, if Latin-American young people are similar to those we saw in Quito, we really can believe that a better world not only is possible, but also is going to be built, thanks to our common struggles. The Forum of Quito proved the enormous progresses realized by the leftist forces for five years —since 1999 and the raise of the world protest against neo-liberalism. Behind the extreme heterogeneity of the social movements, of their interests and of their claims, it seems that some crucial points of convergence appeared in Quito.
The first point of convergence concerns the imperative urgency to fight against militarization and for peace. Numerous were the militants thinking that militarization is the prolongation of neo-liberalism —that is to say of the domination of finance, principally from the United States—, that war is now becoming the regulation factor of the capitalist world system, but also that no alternative of progress, of economic development, of social justice, of political democracy is thinkable as soon as the United States imposes a threat of war against all people affirming its will to promote a social, autonomous project. Unanimity was made without difficulties against the implementation of U.S. military bases all around the world —and particularly in Ecuador (Manta), converting this country into one of the strategic platforms of the U.S. army to control militarily South America. Unanimity was realized (or almost) to desmilitarize the planet, beginning by the dismantling of weapons of massive destruction of the greatest military powers. Unanimity was reached to condemn the occupation war by the United States in Iraq.
The second point of convergence seems to be the conscience of the need to articulate new social projects at the national, regional and international. To suppress misery, unemployment and explotation, to reduce as soon as possible social inequalities, to build up volontarist public systems of health, education, infrastructure, pensions…, to promote an egalitarian distribution of basic products, to abolish racial and sexist discriminations, to implement agrarian reforms, to allow the reappropriation by the state of means of production as well as of natural resources, strategic for the nation´s development… are without doubts some of the measures to be taken at the national level. To refuse recolonization of the Latin-american continent by FTAA, treaties of free trade and the Colombia Plan, and at the same time to promote new regionalizations adapted to the requirements of social progress in the South are indispensable at the regional level. Moreover, the reflexion should deal with the definition of a new world political orden implying, among other things, the democratization of the United Nations, international redistributions of incomes and the creation of a world tax policy, the renegociation of the access to markets and monetary and financial systems, the dramatic reduction of the external debt of the South, or (why not think about that seriously?) the suppression of IMF, the World Bank and WTO as they are functioning presently —this latter proposal being systematically received with enthusiasm by the militants, especially by the young generations.
The third point of convergence that seems to have appeared during this Forum is the imperative need to build new forms of organization of our struggles, to enlarge and to deepen the education and the conscience of popular classes, as well as the formation of permanent militants, by a work of memory, synthesis, analyse and diffusion of our ideas of progress, our experiences of resistance and our proposals of transformation discussed during the Forums. That implies the strengthening of our respective national civilian societies, combining the potential of transformation of the social movements with the experience of struggles of the leftist parties and workers or peasants’ trade-unions, but also the reconquest of national sovereignty by the states, in order to put the state power at the benefit of the peoples (and not against the public services), in order to serve social demands and hopes of democratization (and not violation of the rights of individuals and peoples). These utopias will turn to be realities only if our efforts converge and concentrate themselves to gather together the maximum of popular forces all around the world, to impose their logic of progress, against that of destruction and immediate profit of transnational firms and finance.
What we can not accept is to see criminalize our dreams, is to see us consider to be “terrorists” because we want to build a better world, simply human, because we want to give food, health and education to our children, because we want one day call us “comrades”. As a consequence, to take and to exercise the power by popular forces is still a priority. The world will change only at this condition. And we were several to speak about socialism again. Not about a socialism destroyed by the fall of the wall of Berlin, but about a socialism liberated by the fall of the wall of Berlin —liberated from dogmatism. About a socialism inseparable from democracy. Not from a formal democracy, a fiction of democracy, a pluripartism dissimulating the reality of a single party of capital, but from a real, social democracy, that is to say a popular power. Obviously, this task will be extraordinarilly difficult to reach. But it is a vital need for all of us. In front of the barbary of neo-liberal capitalism, to its world apartheid, to its silencious genocide of the poorest, the way of civilization is that of an integral, democratic control by the popular classes of their collective future. Here could be a new project of transition to socialism for the XXIst century, and one of the subjects we could discuss fruitfully during the next Social Forums —beginning by that of Porto Alegre, in January 2005.
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