Eulalia Flor, director of CEPSI

The meeting of alternative movements in Latin America, organised by CEPSI, a non-profit-making organisation, which has been supporting the Alliance local group Ecuador since 1996 and publishes Claves, the newsletter of the Alliance for all Spanish speaking countries, drew great interest in Ecuador (200 people attended over the 3 days).

The participants were very experienced social and political delegates, ensuring a high level of debate and this is apparent in the final declaration, large extracts of which are published below. It shows the nature and strength of current social struggles in Latin America. The participants wished to incorporate parts of the actions they observed and discussed, as a basis for the the 2001 Assembly of the Alliance.

The meeting was sponsored by the Foundation Charles Leopold Mayer, and the Latin American Institute for Social Research (ILDIS). The event took place at Nadine Simón Bolivar University.

Contact: CEPSI, Foch 635 y Reina Victoria, Edif Johnson, officina 3b, Quito, Ecuador. Fax: 593-2-557.849, E-mail: cepsi@ecuanex.net.ec

The voices of the victims of liberal capitalist society in Latin America, who struggle together for peace and justice in the basic ethical and social feelings of our countries, have met in Quito on 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th December, 1999, to discuss and exchange experiences and create Utopias. After three days of intense activity in the form of general meetings and workshops, finally declare:

1. The destructive rationalisation of neo-liberalism, that has pushed the planet and humanity towards the abyss of a crisis as never seen before, towards a real crisis for civilisation, is the obscene expression of the crisis in the economic limits of poverty, social inequality, human desperation, ecological instability, and the very future of our planet. A crisis caused by the thoughts and life style of the western world, which has supported irrational supremacy and unethical capitalism, to inculcate a form of destructive domination over all forms of life, all cultures, annihilating any diversity, and the natural ecosystems.

2. Our defiant and militant opposition to the principals of the neo-liberal model sustained by the magic and blind omnipresence of the market, in the prevalence of mutilating economic and instrumental vision, blindness of the irrational, which generates the fragmentation of reality and the world, the lack of solidarity of thoughtless individualism, the subordination of popular beliefs to a homogeneous conception that destroys diversity and ignores the historical past of ethnic cultures.

3. The fraudulence of a ruling totalitarianism has crumbled in the face of the new beliefs of humanity and a world that struggles for emancipation, fortified by the ethical dialogue of knowledgeable, and fraternal currents, creativity of human solidarity, and respectful relations between societies, nature, and knowledge.

4. Peace is the environment of a free society. Violence and war are the forms of dominance imposed by politics and the State. The irrevocable and obstinate search for peace, is the fertile ground where the temple of human dignity flourishes, fecundating in the plurality of identities, and in the current of all spiritual beliefs.

5. One form of violence and oppression are the chains put on our societies by external debt, which accentuates the poverty of our countries and threatens our security. This congress backs all forms of action towards breaking the noose of external debt, and from society we can begin to form new methods of security in all the areas of economy, education, and health.

6. The diversity of the Latin American culture is the social wealth of our countries. It is an inheritance that survives all experience, wisdom and ancient knowledge, expressed in different languages, ways of life, in dress, food, art and music, and the way in which we cultivate the land. Diversity is the only form in which all our worlds can exist.

7. The world is not just to support the production and accumulation of wealth, but the common ground in which all humanity, without exception, should realise their irrevocable dreams and their destiny, their struggle for justice, and their search for well being and happiness. The world is not owned by anyone and is for everyone. It is the right of our countries. To fight for our land and for our natural resources is to fight for justice, our culture and our life.

8. All the participants vigorously revoke the proposal of neo-liberalism to make the labour market more flexible, a labour market that serves only to displace and leaves millions of Latin American workers in economic misery. We condemn the displacement and privatisation of public services which particularly affects the poorest people in the countries of our continent. [...]

9. Education must be converted into the foundation for new beliefs, and opposition to the western model of knowledge, science and technology, fragmentary and reductive, incapable of understanding the complex reality of life, temperament and culture of the human being. We petition the need to advance a new educational project, based on ethical reason, a collective building of knowledge through dialogue and a pedagogy which democratically mobilises social acts for the reconstruction and proportioning of the world.

10-15. The only way to obtain justice and reach peace is to struggle. This congress supports the international social struggle against neo-liberalism and the World Trade Organisation [...]; the liberating struggles that are expanding in Latin America from the Lacandona jungle to the territories of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay; the struggle of the Ecuadorian social movements; the indigenous population of the Amazon, to procure for this region consideration as a natural patriminoy and of the culture that is indispensable to the people of the region [...]. The participants of the congress condemn the genocidal politics of low intensity war and paramilitary activities, especially in Columbia and Mexico [...]. We strongly condemn the economic blockade by the United States of America against Cuba which is one of the most degrading symbols of the domination of the continent by the U.S.A. We categorically reject the foreign military intervention in Colombian territory [...].

• Create an international front for the struggle, to co-ordinate all the alliances and actions of social movements in the continent [...].

• Create a web of movements, social, indigenous and rural workers, unions, ecologists, women etc. [...], and committees that have experienced co-operative economies in the continent.

• Organise the first Intercultural Congress of all Indigenous People in the Amazon, to debate cultural diversity, to take place in Ecuador (agenda 2001).

• Support the actions of the Coordinadora de Comunidades Mapuches Arauco-Mayeco (Co-ordinating Committee for the Mapuches and Arauco- Mayeco Communities) and arrange a meeting of the social movements in Chile (Agenda 2001).

• Actively support the first Strike in the continent (Agenda 2001).

• Support the actions of the Carpa Blanca and the Ecuadorian movement in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.

• Support the March against external debt, stopping in the city of Belén, at the Second American Congress for Humanity and against Neo-liberalism.

• Support and broadcast all the actions of the Zapatista movement in Mexico.

• Support actions of the Brazilian movement. 500 years of black and popular indigenous resistance, and help to give them a continental dimension and move towards a permanent rejection of the colonial legacy.

• Support all actions being carried out in all parts of the world against neo-liberalism and globalisation, as well as all actions taken by the Alliance for a responsible & united world.

We have decided to put an end to barbarian acts wherever they are present, and to this end we propose to weave a web of struggle and resistance, towards the construction of a world where everybody has a place, a world where peace, justice and dignity permit all present and future human beings, the right to a minimum level of well-being and happiness. More and more people will take up weapons against these acts, to depose the tyranny and oppression to which they are currently subjected.

Quito, 17th December, 1999.

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