Foro de São Paulo

Foro de São Paulo (FSP, São Paulo Forum) is a conference of left-wing and nationalist political parties and social movements in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Forum was created by the Workers' Party (PT) of Brazil.

According to FSP's founders, Forum of São Paulo was constituted in 1990 when the Brazilian Workers' Party approached other parties and social movements of Latin America and the Caribbean with the objective of debating the new international scenario after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the consequences of the implementation of neoliberal policies by governments in the region.

FSP leaders say that the conference's main objective is to argue for a popular and democratic alternative to neoliberalism.

The first meeting was in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, in July, 1990, in which 48 parties and social organizations from Latin American and the Caribbean participated. In 1991, in Mexico City (Mexico), the meeting was named Foro de São Paulo, in reference to the location of the first meeting. The next meetings were held in Managua (1992), Havana (1993), Montevideo (1995), San Salvador (1996), Porto Alegre (1997), Mexico (1998), Managua (2000), Havana (2001), Antigua Guatemala (2002), Quito (2003), São Paulo (2005), and San Salvador (2007).

Political stands

According to FSP, more than 100 parties and political organizations participate in its conferences today. Their political positions vary across a wide spectrum, which includes: social-democratic parties, left-wing grass-roots labor and social movements inspired by the Catholic Church, ethnic and environmentalist groups, anti-imperialist and nationalist organizations, communist parties, and armed guerrilla forces.

These groups differ on a range of topics which go from the use of armed force in revolutions to the support of representative democracy. The Cuban Communist Party, for example, has adopted a single-party system for decades, while Brazil's Workers' Party (PT) supports and participates in a multiparty system. These differences grant special relevance to FSP's final declarations, released at the end of each conference, which state the collective position of its members.

Ever since FSP's first meeting (1990), the Declaration which was approved expressed the participants' "willingness to renew leftist and socialist thought, to reaffirm its emancipating character, to correct mistaken conceptions, and to overcome all expressions of bureaucratism and all absence of true social and massive democracy."

The first Declaration manifests "an active compromise with the validity of human rights, of democracy and of popular sovereignty as strategic values, which place the constant challenge of leftist, socialist and progressive forces renewing their thoughts and actions."

At the second conference (Mexico, 1991), FSP expanded its objectives to add the proposal of working toward Latin American integration, an interchange of experiences, the discussion of the political left's differences and searching for consensus in action. The following conferences reinstate the participants' willingness to exchange experiences and develop a dialogue, while at the regional and continental level FSP's influence grows, with some of its members achieving electoral success and their candidates reaching the presidency of many countries.

Criticism

According to Brazilian philosopher and conservative political pundit Olavo de Carvalho, the activities of the FSP amount to a continent-wide conspiracy to override national sovereignty, destroy democracy, and implement communism all over Latin America. Carvalho and the other writers of his online newspaper, [http://www.midiasemmascara.com.br/editoria.php?id=8 "Mídia Sem Máscara"] (English: "Unmasked Media") frequently stress the fact that certain members of the FSP, most notably the FARC, are, as the site's writers put it, "drug traffickers, terrorists, kidnappers".

Partial list of participants

* Argentina - Communist Party of Argentina
* Barbados - Clement Payne Movement
* Bolivia - Communist Party of Bolivia
* Brazil - Workers' Party, Communist Party of Brazil
* Chile - Communist Party of Chile, Socialist Party of Chile
* Colombia - Colombian Communist Party, National Liberation Army, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
* Costa Rica - Costa Rican Peoples Party
* Cuba - Communist Party of Cuba
* Dominica - Dominica Labour Party
* Dominican Republic - Dominican Liberation Party
* El Salvador - Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front
* Guatemala - Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity
* Guyana - Working People's Alliance
* Mexico - Party of the Democratic Revolution, Labor Party, Popular Socialist Party
* Nicaragua - Sandinista National Liberation Front
* Paraguay - Paraguayan Communist Party, Free Homeland Party
* Peru - Peruvian Communist Party, Socialist Party of Peru
* Puerto Rico - Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, Socialist Front [http://www.internationalist.org/prstrike.html] , Hostosian National Independence Movement, University Pro-Independence Federation of Puerto Rico [http://www.prdentro1.tripod.com/id19.htm]
* Uruguay - Broad Front, Communist Party of Uruguay, Socialist Party of Uruguay, Tupamaros
* Venezuela - Communist Party of Venezuela, Fifth Republic Movement

External links

* [http://www.forosaopaulo.org Foro de São Paulo]
* [http://www.pt.org.br/ Workers' Party - PT]
* [http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2001/12/17/nacional/articulo16.html DECLARACIÓN FINAL DEL X ENCUENTRO DEL FORO DE SAO PAULO]
* [http://www.fpa.org.br/sala_leitura/forosp_cuba.htm Luis Inacio Lula da Silva speech at the opening of Foro de São Paulo in Havana (Fundação Perseu Abrano website)]
* [http://www.pt.org.br/site/secretarias_def/secretarias_int_box.asp?cod=234&cat=10&cod_sis=9 Declaração da reunião do Grupo de Trabalho do FSP(Declaration of the Foro de São Paulo Meeting),Workers' Party-PT website]
* [http://www.pt.org.br/site/secretarias_def/secretarias_int.asp?cod=2817&cod_sis=9&cat=8 PT message to the Equatorian parties of the Foro de São Paulo, Workers' Party-PT website ]
* [http://www.lahora.com.gt/02/12/06/paginas/economico.htm#n1 XI Encuentro Foro de Sao Paulo realizado en la Antigua]
* [http://www.vermelho.org.br/english/text/forum.asp São Paulo Forum - the convergence point of the Latin-American and Caribbean left] , Communist Party of Brazil, November 20 2002
* [http://www.vermelho.org.br/english/text/forum2.asp Echoes of the São Paulo Forum Part 2] , Communist Party of Brazil, December 19 2002
* [http://www.vermelho.org.br/english/text/forum3.asp Echoes of the São Paulo Forum Part 3] , Communist Party of Brazil, December 26 2002
* [http://granmai.cubaweb.com/miami5/espanol/0003.html Participantes en 10° Encuentro del Foro de Sao Paulo piden liberación de cubanos presos en Miami] , "Granma," 7 de Diciembre de 2001.