Photo: Reproduction / Rádio Gaúcha 06/29/2023
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
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This Sunday (2) ended the 26th session of the São Paulo Forum. The meeting in Brasília, attended by 270 representatives of 57 social organizations, began last Thursday with the participation of President Lula.
Established in 1990 through an invitation by the Workers’ Party (PT) to parties in Latin America and the Caribbean to discuss the international situation after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany, the military dictatorships in the world and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The forum has more symbolic impact than concrete actions. However, the summit is used by conservatives and farright militants to spread conspiracy theories.
The forum arose out of a political alliance between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Cuba’s then leader, Fidel Castro. The name “Foro de São Paulo” was given after the first meeting in São Paulo.
Goals of the forum
According to the first text of the summit from the 1990s, the goals of the São Paulo Forum are to “promote proposals for a consensual unity of action in the antiimperialist and popular struggle” and “promote professional exchange”. economic problems, political, social and cultural” of the region.
In a 2017 document, the Forum updated its values and principles, using the following aspects as guidance:
democracy and selfdetermination
Antiimperialist and antineoliberal
Regional integration and sovereignty
unity and solidarity
According to Leandro Consentino, political scientist and professor at the Teaching and Research Institute (Insper), “The São Paulo Forum is much more a space for dialogue than for action, but it is seen as a bogeyman by the current opposition, as if he had the power to organize any communist or radical measure of the left.”
Lula at the Sao Paulo Forum
During the 26th summit last week, Lula said that between 2002 and 2010, when only leftwing politicians were in power, South America had its best moment in 500 years. The CEO also said that the label “communist” and “socialist” is often a reason to be “proud”.
“It was the victory in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador. It was even the victory of more progressive people in other countries who were on our side. In addition to the victory of our companion [Hugo] Chavez in Venezuela. “We live in a time of great expansion, social conquest and political participation on our continent,” Lula said.
“I don’t think there has been another historical moment in which South American and Latin American society has achieved so many successes and so many social inclusion measures as in the period from 2000 to 2010, from 2012 to 2015, when they were indicted became Dilma,” added the President.
According to Leandro Consentino, by attending the event and making such a statement, Lula supported the opposition’s discourse that said this organization can indeed be powerful and that it would have the ability to impose a communist dictatorship.
“Lula’s making these statements is a confirmation and strengthens the opposition, even if the organization does not pursue this goal,” Consentino added to iG.
Participant
In Brazil, the parties that are part of the forum are: the Labor Party; the Democratic Labor Party (PDT); the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB); and the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB).
In South and Latin America they are: the Communist Party of Cuba, to which President Miguel DíazCanel belongs; the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega; the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which includes President Nicolás Maduro; and Bolivian President Luis Arce’s socialism movement.
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