| New and Important Social Struggles on the Horizon Manuel Menéndez Díaz. Editor-in-chief of
Cuba Socialista Magazine
The World Social Forum as the space for the struggle of all
the movements that oppose neoliberal globalization and the subjugation of the peoples by
imperialism to build a better world is organizing strategies and alternative plans against
the hegemonic power.
In our hemisphere, the organizations have been fighting on
many social fronts, and today their priority is to deal with different issues such as: the
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Free Trade
Agreements (FTA), the militarization of the region and the foreign debt, among others.
With the failure of the neoliberal policies to provide a
solution to the serious problems afflicting the peoples of the region, the struggles have
expanded during the last few years and huge forces have joined them. This clearly shows
that the action of the peoples has been occupying the most varied kind of spaces.
It is evident that such a recovery also has some
contradictions which, in my opinion, lie mainly in the wide variety of the ideological and
political composition of thousands upon thousands of organizations that gather in the
social movements of the Forum on our continent and on the world scale. At the same time,
that wide diversity constitutes one of its main attributes. On the other hand, there has
been an attempt to pit the social movements to the political parties, relying on the
experience of the past when social movements generally had a structural dependence on a
political party. Similarly, there is an attempt to present gender, ethnic, environmental,
human rights and other struggles as separate to the political struggles, in which what
constitutes a political struggle is that which fights for a structural change of the
contemporary capitalist society.
One of the main impediments of this movement is, on the one
hand, its inability to achieve a real unity in terms of the essential objectives of the
struggle and, on the other, the fact that the actions of the revolutionary left parties
have not always been able to align themselves with the movements -a responsibility usually
taken up by the parties- due to a lack of understanding of the importance of joining
forces with these social actors.
Nevertheless, it is basically the ideological influence of
social democracy that has repeatedly hindered the union of all forces to achieve the
objectives all of us pursue to build a new world and defeat the hegemony of capital and
neoliberal globalization.
In the coming months, the Cuban social movement is
preparing to cooperate with important social struggles which are part of the agenda of the
social movements on the continent and in the world. They are an integral part of the
movements already mentioned and of many other particular campaigns.
During this month, the first important international action
will be the "Forum of the Peoples for an Alternative Against the WTO".
This will be an active mobilization against the WTO summit which will be held in
Cancún, México, from September 7-14, to express once again opposition to neoliberal
globalization and to exchange views concerning the social alternatives to the trade
agreements such as NAFTA, the FTAA, the Plan Puebla-Panamá, the WTO and other such deals.
During its summit, the WTO will seek to advance trade liberalization for the benefit of
big capital, without taking into account measures which are fair to the economies of the
underdeveloped countries so that they do not suffer more damage as a result of the
decrease of the preferential tariffs imposed as a result of that liberalization. Big
subsidies given to the producers of the USA-EU-Japan power alliance distort the world
market and impede the progress of the underdeveloped countries.
During the "Demonstrations against the Summit of
Trade Ministers of the Americas", a meeting that will be held in Miami from
November 17-21, important protests will take place against the FTAA and the attempts to
legitimize the negotiations of the FTAA by means of a forum that the government of the
United States is trying to organize for purposes of creating confusion by alleging the
participation of social movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Already the
Miami authorities are taking measures to prevent the access to the city and are planning
to keep the protest demonstrations at a distance. In this vein, they have declared that
they will not allow Miami to be another Seattle.
The "IV World Social Forum" will be held
in Mumbai, India, from January 16-21, 2004. As a result of the agreements made during the
last forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the fourth forum is slated as a time to engage in
maximum exchanges amongst the world social movements to evaluate results, exchange
experiences and outline strategies for the coming periods.
Next, the "I Social Forum of the Americas"
will be held in Quito, Ecuador, from March 8-13, as part of the World Forum process. This
will be a space of great significance for the movements of the region to update their
experiences based on the development of the new realities which exist as a result of the
different processes that are taking place in Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and other
countries of the region. Important and successful mass demonstrations such as the
opposition to health privatization in El Salvador; the annulment of amnesty laws that
ended the trials of dictators in Argentina, the result of 17 years of struggle of the
extended social movement in that country; the achievements in Bolivia and Ecuador
concerning their claims of a more just society for indigenous peoples; and the
demonstrations and strikes of the workers of Chile and Uruguay for fair compensations, are
only some examples of the wide variety of struggles taking place in our region.
The "III Hemispheric Gathering of Struggle Against
the FTAA" will be held in Havana next January, which will analyze the state of
the campaign to oppose the FTAA, the experiences and the role played by the organizations
and networks involved. This will be followed in February by the "VI International
Meeting on Globalization and Development Problems" which will also be held in
Havana. This gathering will be an important moment for the work on the creation of
alternatives against neoliberal globalization.
The Cuban social movement is actively working for the
advancement of all the objectives that this important movement forged during these years
of hard struggle. We are aware that popular actions and social unrest, which have clearly
won support after a decade since the collapse of socialism, have to be bound to political
struggles so as to find a way out of the framework of today's society in which most human
beings live so that humanity can realize its aspiration to build the new world to which it
aspires.
October/2003
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