According to the organizers, Lula’s two-hour speech will be heard at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) Marielle Franco Acoustic Shell.
The Puebla Group was formed in July 2019 in the eponymous Mexican city during a period of political resistance, amid coups and the dissolution of regional union efforts.
The forum is made up of leaders of progressive parties from 16 Latin American countries and Spain, who during the two-day meeting in the UERJ will discuss vital issues such as equality, democracy, social justice, solidarity-based development and inequalities during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
During his speech yesterday, the former president of the Spanish government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, called on the left to rebuild a global political entity where equality is an indispensable value of democracy.
He spoke about the origins of inequality in the world and how, along with equality, it is one of the vertical themes of revolutions.
“Without freedom, we cannot think of equality,” and vice versa, said the politician, who saw both conditions as cornerstones of any democratic project.
He called for studying and engaging with the process of colonialism and slavery in order to understand history because “remembrance is part of truth”.
Former Colombian leader Ernesto Samper invited to change Latin America’s political, economic and social model after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He denounced that colonialism had devastated the developing world and “we were born unequal and need to think about how to overcome such a condition”.
This requires a different development model, not the neoliberal one that impoverishes and sacrifices the state.
Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff called for including the poor in the budget and social investments of Latin American nations to start tackling inequality.
“It is no secret to anyone that in the region there is an advance of neoliberalism and a retreat of democratic social movements and the absence of them in government offices,” he said.
He stressed the urgency for Latin America to rejoin efforts towards greater integration between the countries and making them less dependent on the export of raw materials.
He believes that Latin America’s potential for power must be strengthened and centralized “in whom,” he replied, “in our regional integration.”
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