BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND FRANCISCO PICADO
MEXICO CITY - Representatives of political parties from
around Latin America and the Caribbean gathered here October
29-November 1 for the eighth meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum.
The first such meeting was held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at the
initiative of the Workers Party (PT) in that country. The
seventh gathering was also held in Sao Paulo in August 1997.
Nearly 210 delegates and observers took part in this year's conference. They included delegations from 44 parties that are members of the forum in 19 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Observers came from another three countries in the region. The largest delegations outside Mexico came from Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. Many delegates were elected officials in local, state, or national government posts. About 160 of the participants came from Latin America and the Caribbean. Attendance from the English-speaking Caribbean nations was very sparse.
Among the 51 observers from 31 organizations in various other parts of the world were a number from political parties in western Europe (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden), the Communist Party of Japan, as well as from the governing parties in China, Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea, Laos, Libya, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia. Representatives of the Irish Republican party Sinn Fein, the Basque nationalist party Herri Batasuna, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Polisario Front of Western Sahara also attended. The only organization present from the United States was the Socialist Workers Party. No one came from Canada.
Diverging political courses
The spreading of the "Asian crisis" to Russia, and the
possibility of its explosion in Latin America, as well as the
threat of an international collapse of capitalism's banking
system was the backdrop to what the organizers referred to as
the struggle against "neoliberalism." The term refers to
capitalist government policies that remove protectionist
measures and open up semicolonial economies to freer
penetration by imperialist capital.
The gathering was titled "The left faces the new millennium." As with previous conferences, two political courses clearly at variance were presented in the discussion -one oriented towards reforming the capitalist system through bourgeois electoral politics, and the other a revolutionary socialist perspective. Those arguing for the latter were in the minority.
The forces of the bourgeois left were led by the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD), which hosted the meeting, with the help of three other organizations in Mexico: the Party of Labor (PT), Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), and Popular Socialist Party (PPS).
At the inaugural event at the Siquieros Cultural Polyforum facilities, PRD leader Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, who is now mayor of Mexico City, said that the voices calling for reform of economic development policies are gaining momentum. He celebrated "the recent changes of government in France, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, and other countries in the European Union." Social democratic parties or coalitions now rule 13 the 15 European Union member countries.
Cárdenas and other PRD leaders lamented that the same winds that brought social democracy in power in western Europe "are not blowing as strong in Latin America." He made no reference to the upturn in working-class resistance to the belt- tightening policies of the employing classes in the last few years that's underneath the shift to the left in bourgeois politics reflected in Europe and other imperialist countries.
During the first plenary session of the conference, Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez of the PRD, head of the Office of the Secretary of the Environment in Mexico City, pointed to rising social problems in the country's capital with 22 million people, including unemployment that he said exceeds 8 percent. Under the slogan "a city for all," Encinas said the PRD is above all trying to fight crime by increasing the number of police in the streets and to "restore the public's confidence in public institutions."
Similar perspectives were presented by Marco Aurelio García of Brazil's PT and Nidia Díaz of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) of El Salvador. Díaz, now a deputy in that country's parliament, said the electoral gains of the FMLN in winning 54 mayorships and other elected posts are steps "toward a democratic revolution."
The socialist road
The most forceful and clear voice for a revolutionary
perspective was presented by the delegation of the Communist
Party of Cuba, which was headed by José Ramón Balaguer, a
member of the party's Political Bureau.
"Today, part of the world is already suffering from the lashes of the financial crisis of capitalism," Balaguer said in his speech at the inaugural event of the gathering. "The crisis has already broken some of the links in the chain and is extending to others," he stated, referring to the economic and social turmoil in Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia. "It threatens to become a globalized crisis, the course of which depends to a large degree on what happens here in Latin America in the coming months."
Balaguer was making these comments as Washington and other imperialist powers were cobbling together, through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), more than $40 billion in new loans to Brazil to "rescue" that country from the "Asian flu" and increase its domination by imperialism in the process. Implementation of the IMF package will mean new levels of austerity against working people there.
"Those who toy with the illusion that they have enough money to buy a luxury cabin in Noah's ark to spare themselves, and themselves alone, from the universal flood are wrong," Balaguer said.
Even the main imperialist powers are not immune to the crisis. The capitalist monopolies, Balaguer noted, "cut employment and wages to maintain their profits and all they accomplish is to undercut the very market their existence depends on. And as they accumulate irrational quantities of fictitious capital they do nothing more than create the conditions for an economic catastrophe of unprecedented proportions."
Given this reality, the Cuban leader pointed out, progressive forces need to struggle for an alternative world order, not try to improve the existing capitalist world order.
Balaguer addressed the conference a second time, during the plenary session on "Latin America and its integration in the world."
"The left can and must have a decisive role in any collaborative or unity process among all the forces in the region that are willing to work to strengthen integration, sovereignty, and independence," Balaguer stated. "But the conditions for such alliances cannot be laid by abandoning our banner for socialism and the profound social transformations that are needed." This process is not acceptable if it is to be done "by submitting to the projects of those who who propose supposed `new roads,' return to variants of capitalism with a facelift or to models already surpassed by life, which can only benefit the interests of the existing system."
"Why struggle to adapt ourselves to the world instead of fighting for a new world?" the Cuban leader asked. "What is needed is a new world order that places human beings at the center of its concerns, that universalizes solidarity and social justice... that is capable of replacing the anarchy of the market and of leading society to direct the world according to the interests of humanity."
Debate on final declaration
A few other delegates raised similar points during the
debate on the draft of the final declaration presented by the
forum's Working Group. The draft had few references to anti-
imperialist struggles and the word socialism did not appear in
it once.
One of the delegates who objected to its content was Julio Muriente Pérez, representing the New Independence Movement of Puerto Rico (formerly the Puerto Rican Socialist Party). "The declaration presents parliamentarianism as a strategy, not a tactic," Muriente said. As if all we had to do is get elected to governmental posts in Latin America. "Let's not forget the experience in Chile," he stated, referring to the overthrow of the Salvador Allende government in Chile in 1973. Allende's Socialist Party had won parliamentary elections. A military coup headed by Augusto Pinochet and backed by Washington toppled Allende, who had not heeded calls by the revolutionary government in Cuba to arm working people to defend themselves against the coming rightist onslaught.
The delegates could not reach agreement on a common document by the end of the meeting. The draft declaration was referred to the Working Group for further elaboration. The time and place of the next meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum was also left open.