Sao Paulo forum debates Latin American Integration

The 24th Meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum is taking place today in Havana, where more than 430 delegates are debating the need for Latin American and Caribbean integration.

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16 de julio de 2018 - Taken from Prensa Latina

National

The 24th Meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum is taking place today in Havana, where more than 430 delegates are debating the need for Latin American and Caribbean integration.

In addition to speeches on that topic, on which the plenary session will focus, Monday's agenda will consist of meetings among youths, women and parliamentarians, who will share the experiences of Latin American left-wing parties and social movements attending the meeting.

On Sunday, at the first session, delegates favored solidarity for the leaders and governments of the region attacked by the right wing, including those in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia and the case of former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Among the shows of support was that from the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, who called to support those countries.

One day is Venezuela, another one is Brazil and later is Nicaragua. Let us always remember the coup d'état against the government of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in June 2009. Now Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is in prison but the people support him because they still see him as their leader, he pointed out.

For her part, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, a victim herself of a coup by the right wing, noted that her crime and Lula's was to defend the humble and sovereignty over natural resources.

We never accepted either the outrages or the giving in of the country's oil and resources to transnational companies; that is why, they persecuted us and staged the coup, she noted.

At Havana's Convention Center, where the meeting is taking place, the leader of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), Jose Ramon Balaguer, called on progressive sectors in the region to work together to counter the attacks by neoliberalism.

Building that unity was and is an essential condition. We invite all parties and groups present to work in that direction, said the head of the International Relations Department of the PCC Central Committee.

The executive secretary of the Sao Paulo Forum, Monica Valente, insisted on the urgent need for dialogue and consensus against actions that she described as brutal by the regional right wing and the government of the United States.

According to the Argentinean political scientist Atilio Boron, the return of the forum to Havana after the editions in 1993 and 2001 represents a timely opportunity to ratify the achievements and review the errors committed by Latin America's left wing.

It is fundamental that we do an exercise of self-criticism that will allow us to see what we have done well and what we have not done. If we achieve something like this, we could be absolutely satisfied, he told Prensa Latina.

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