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.
