Sao Paulo Forum VI in San Salvador
In this era of neoliberalism, the
mainstream press tends to
ridicule and misrepresent
attempts by the left to rethink its
objectives and methods. The New
York Times did no less in its July 29
story, headlined “A Chastened
Latin Left Puts Its Hope In
Ballots,” in reference to the recent
meeting of the Sdo Paulo Forum.
Apparently unaware that the Sdo
Paulo Forum was founded in 1990
by 48 left-wing parties from all over
the continent, Times reporter Larry
Rohter described it as a “Brazilian-
sponsored regional organization.”
“A decade ago, such a conference
might have taken place in Havana,”
continued Rohter, “and been
accompanied by ringing declara-
tions of the inevitability of the tri-
umph of socialism.” The San
Salvador session was, in fact, the
sixth meeting of the Forum (the
fourth, indeed, was held in the
beleaguered Havana of the “special
period” in 1993). Nor did it take the
left until now, as the Times implies,
to acknowledge the radical changes
that have occurred since the fall of
the Berlin wall, and to initiate
regional efforts to redefine its pro-
ject.
According to Rohter, the left’s
decision to hold the San Salvador
meeting was prompted by accusa-
tions of inflexibility and irrele-
vance-such as those found in a
recent book authored by the son of
conservative Peruvian novelist
Mario Vargas Llosa. The book,
which Rohter describes as a “300-
page jeremiad,” slams the left for
blaming the World Bank, the IMF,
the CIA and transnational corpora-
tions for Latin America’s ills, rather
than examining its own doctrines
and past failures. Rohter’s “criti-
cal” review suggests that the left’s
only redeeming quality is that
finally, its “30-year obsession with
armed struggle as a means to revo-
lution has come to an end,” and that
“in place of bullets, leaders of left-
ist parties expressed a commitment
to reaching power through the bal-
lot box.”
This caricature of the left bears
little resemblance to reality. Six
years ago, in the Forum’s first dec-
laration, the left acknowledged
both the end of the era of armed
struggle and its own need to be
competitive in multiparty elections.
From its inception, the Sdo Paulo
Forum was a deliberate and con-
scious attempt by the left to con-
front momentous changes in the
global economy and geopolitics
marked by the then-imminent col-
lapse of the socialist bloc, the 1990
electoral defeat of the Sandinistas,
and the proclamation of a unipolar, capitalist “new world order.”
Today, the Forum has 112 mem-
ber parties. Over the last two years, these parties have garnered around
29 million votes, representing about
30% of the Latin American elec-
torate. The left increasingly holds
public office, with 300 members of
congress, over 60 senators and hun-
dreds of mayors and city-council
members. While the left has had lit-
tle luck winning national-level elec-
tions, it has rebuilt grassroots sup-
port by challenging free-market
orthodoxy and promoting local-
level, small-scale initiatives to miti-
gate some of neoliberalism’s worst
effects.
The preparatory declaration for
the sixth meeting, like previ-
ous Forum documents,
offered compelling analyses and cri-
tiques of neoliberalism. It deplored
policies that have generated poverty
and inequality, destroyed national
industries and devastated the envi-
ronment, as well as the multilateral
financial institutions that promote
these policies and have undermined
national sovereignty. It also criti-
cized the region’s pseudo-democra-
cies, marked by flawed elections,
elite corruption and ongoing human
rights violations.
Mindful of the fact that previous
Forums produced little more than
stirring rhetoric, the FMLN orga-
nizers of the sixth meeting hoped to
break the impasse by making the
meeting’s strategic objective the
formulation of concrete democratic
alternatives to the neoliberal model
of state and society. Unfortunately,
in the end, the San Salvador meet-
ing failed to produce much in terms
of concrete policy proposals.
The Forum did, however,
improve notably in other respects
compared to previous sessions. For
the first time, preparatory work-
shops for the Forum generated
detailed resolutions for discussion
in corresponding roundtables. The
final roundtable proposals were pre-
sented to the plenary for delibera-
tion and then became part of the
central document. Nongovernmental
organizations from around the
world were much more in evidence
than at previous meetings. More
than a hundred delegates partici-
pated from the United States alone,
representing a plethora of grass-
roots and solidarity groups.
Not surprisingly, the Salvadoran
right, in the form of a brand new
death squad, threatened to blow up
the meeting. The threat underlined
the basis for the left’s previous
“obsession with armed struggle.” It
also served as a reminder that even
as it struggles to redefine itself, the
left has not fallen into the dustbin
of history, as its critics predicted.
After all, irrelevant and moribund
institutions are not the objects of
threats and attacks. Stay tuned for
the seventh forum in Brazil.
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