WORLD SOCIAL FORUM:
Latin America's Poorest Activists Stay Home

By Diana Cariboni*


MONTEVIDEO, (IPS) - Tens of thousands of kilometres separate the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre and the Indian metropolis of Mumbai, a road too long and too expensive for thousands of Latin American activists, who will not participate in this year's fourth World Social Forum.

A relatively small delegation of several hundred Latin Americans -- including 250 Brazilians -- are making the trip that globalisation has not been able to make any shorter, from the region that hosted the first three WSF to the venue for the one that begins in India on Friday.

Many Brazilians will be in Mumbai to take part in the largest international gathering against neoliberal economic globalisation. They were lucky enough to find a travel agency offering flights to India for just 1,390 dollars. The normal price is around 3,000 dollars.

As hosts of the Forums held annually from 2001 to 2003, the Brazilians will maintain an important role at this year's WSF, organising some 90 activities. However, the vast majority of the 78,000 participants expected for the Mumbai Forum will be of Asian origins.

"The cost of sending representatives is extremely high," Edgardo Lander, of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Venezuela, told IPS. He is one of many activists from the region who are staying home this year.

Another is Julio Fermín, of the Venezuelan non-governmental organisation EFIP, a communications and information group. He participated in the WSF in Porto Alegre, but as for Mumbai, "the travel costs alone are more than 2,000 dollars."

"It is obvious that the Latin American presence will be less than in the past. But that is compensated by the Asian presence, which is also important," commented León Lew, representative of ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transfers for the Aid of Citizens).

He was the only one of the Venezuelans IPS consulted who was heading to India.

"Last year, an enormous number of Latin Americans attended the Forum in Porto Alegre. And next year it will be held again in Brazil," Lew noted.

Organisers decided on this year's move in a bid to correct the geographic and socio-cultural imbalances of the first three Forums, in which the Brazilians were the dominant force, representing 86 percent of the more than 100,000 people who participated in the events at Porto Alegre.

And the most numerous foreign delegations there were Latin American, particularly from neighbouring countries, says the Profile of Participants, a study conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE), published Jan. 8. The Asian participants in Porto Alegre numbered fewer than 200.

Myrian Luz Triana, president of the Colombian syndicate of the Red Cross, is heading to India as a delegate of the World Federation of Trade Unions.

This will be her first World Social Forum, because the Federation rotates its delegation by country, in the case of women. "We have few opportunities to participate in these events," Triana said.

Her airline ticket (which the Federation paid for) cost 4,100 dollars. It took her a month to obtain her visa and she knows many delegates who have had trouble finding lodging in Mumbai because it was necessary to make reservations six months in advance.

In Mumbai, Triana hopes to "strengthen the network of women workers in order to coordinate action with respect to the rights of women in the informal sector, where, in the case of Colombia, they represent 65 percent of workers."

Another example of some of the obstacles standing in the way of participation is that just days before the WSF 2004 was to get underway, the Association of Peasant Women of Colombia had not yet finalised the travel arrangements for even one delegate.

Language could be another limiting factor for Latin Americans at the Forum. The principal language at the Mumbai events is English, and although the official programme includes simultaneous translation of presentations, the language barrier is likely to stand in the way of building contacts with other delegations and in exchanging experiences.

Also travelling to India from Colombia are delegates from the General Confederation of Democratic Workers, the United Workers Central, the Federation of Educators, human rights groups, and community associations, among others.

The airline tickets for these participants, financed by each organisation, cost 2,234 dollars per person, in tourist class, says Pedro Santana, of the non-governmental Viva la Ciudadanía and member of the WSF International Council.

The entire Colombian delegation is 25 people, 70 percent fewer than the group that took part in the Porto Alegre forum, mostly because of costs, travel distance and language, he said.

"This was known when the International Council made the decision to move the venue to Mumbai," but it will not hurt the Latin American region's interests in the context of the WSF, whose essence of regional balance is ensured by the event's programme, Santana added.

The panel discussions, conferences and central debates are the product -- as never before -- of accumulated experience. That, and "the discussion with respect to the Forum's thematic axes prevents imbalance in the discourses that will circulate," said Santana.

Meanwhile, in a quick survey of Argentine NGOs, IPS found very few travellers to the WSF. "The poor can be found everywhere," was the most common response to questions about the relocation of the Forum to Mumbai.

Among those staying home in Argentina are the members of the associations of unemployed, a force to be reckoned with, known for their protest method of blocking streets and highways to demand jobs and assistance.

Also giving the Mumbai Forum a pass are the delegates of the human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who rose to fame for their efforts to find their children who disappeared during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

But they do not feel excluded from the WSF. "We are present in this and in other encounters in which the problems of workers are discussed. The fact that it is being done in India shows that these realities are increasingly similar," said a spokesman of an association of unemployed workers.

The airfares from Argentina to India run as high as 5,000 dollars. Because of the WSF, several airlines offered promotional prices -- 1,600 to 1,900 dollars -- but those tickets sold out in December.

"We won't be going to India, because we are part of a poor unionist movement," a source at the CTA, one of Argentina's main labour groups, told IPS.

"We think its great that the Forum is moved to other regions, because it shows that it is not just about Latin America, that the Forum interests all countries," added the union activist.

The Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), based in Buenos Aires, sent just one delegate. And a handful are representing the 20 Argentine human rights, social and environmental organisations that make up Diálogo 2000, an umbrella group.

From Cuba, just 10 or 12 people are to participate in the Mumbai Forum, in stark contrast to the 200 who went to Porto Alegre for the 2003 WSF. This year's small group seeks to represent labour unions, women's groups, peasants, students and institutions like the governmental Centre for Psychological and Sociological Research.

Meanwhile, 15 people from Mexico are participating in the WSF, members of the Alianza Social Continental and the Mexican Free Trade Action Network (RMALC), activist leader Héctor de la Cueva told IPS. More than 200 Mexicans went to Porto Alegre. Nearly all of the 15 in Mumbai are bilingual in Spanish and English.

At first glance, it seems that only the organisations with most resources and strongest contacts are able to send delegates to the 2004 WSF. Does this mean that Latin American representation is limited to an elite group of activists?

"I don't think that the great distance from Latin America will turn the (Mumbai) Forum into a meeting of the elite. What we need to look at is the same as always: Who is participating? Who do they represent? What do they propose?" says the Argentine CTA labour activist.

Mexico's De la Cueva argues that the ones travelling to the Forum are not members of the elite because they adequately represent all civil society groups.

According to the Argentine activists, the social diversity of the WSF has always been a concern, not just now that it is being held in Mumbai.

The Profile of Participants states that 73.4 percent of the people who attended the WSF in 2003 studied at the university level (though not all were graduates) and 9.7 percent had done post-graduate work. Meanwhile, among the official delegates representing organisations at the WSF, 17.8 percent held post-graduate degrees.

"It is an elite group that goes to the Forum," says Brazilian sociologist Cândido Grzybowski, director of IBASE and member of the WSF International Council.

The poorest and most excluded sectors, such as the residents of 'favelas' or slums, peasants and Indians are left without representation at the Forum, he points out.

An example of this is the participation last year of Brazil's informal garbage collectors in the First Latin American Conference of Autonomous Peoples Organisations, which took place in parallel to and was linked with the WSF in Porto Alegre.

Joining in that encounter were labour unionists, members of the alternative communications media and peasant and indigenous groups.

"In Porto Alegre there was more than one forum. The one that everyone knows and talks about, the one with the famous people, the one with the tourists, the one with the non-governmental organisations, the one with the libertarians, ecologists, grassroots organisation and many more," stated the final declaration.

"We do not know if everyone fulfilled their purposes, but we who struggle every day in the streets, in the factories, in the fields, in the indigenous communities... and in the marginalised zones... we did advance," said the Autonomous Peoples Organisations.

But the Latin American garbage collectors are not going to Mumbai. The Second Conference of Latin American Autonomous Peoples Organisations is to take place Feb. 5-8 in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba.

It is "a regional alternative to the World Social Forum in India, which was taken over by social democratic parties and NGOs serving the capitalist system," says one of the groups taking part in the alternative conference, the Centre for Independent Media-Bolivia.

But for Colombian activist Santana, member of the WSF International Council, Mumbai represents a "very mature" phase in the path of the Forum, "for a new and solidary globalisation."

What impact will the regional delegates have in Mumbai? That remains to be seen. But keep in mind that the 530 million people of Latin America and the Caribbean are just half the population of India.

(* With reporting by Viviana Alonso/Argentina, Mario Osava/Brazil, María Isabel García/Colombia, Patricia Grogg/Cuba and Humberto Márquez/Venezuela.)