Caracas, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez, reveling in his role as leftist icon, is bringing together tens of thousands of activists from across the world on Tuesday to promote Latin America’s fast-growing anti-globalization movement.
Leftist leaders are increasingly popular across Latin America, while Chavez’s own “revolution” for the poor has become an inspiration for like-minded activists everywhere.
More than 60,000 had signed up for this week’s World Social Forum in Caracas as of Monday and tens of thousands more were expected, organizers said. They include campaigners against U.S.-style free trade, environmentalists, Indian leaders and human rights activists.
About half were expected to come from outside Venezuela.
Their views span a wide spectrum, but most participants appear united by strong opposition to the U.S. government and the war in Iraq. The forum will begin with an “anti-imperialist” march Tuesday through the streets of Caracas, with protesters likely to aim their chants against President Bush.
“Venezuela has become an epicenter of change on the world level,” Chavez said Friday, referring to the event in a speech.
“That’s why (U.S.) imperialism wants to sweep us away, of course … because they say we are a bad example. But they haven’t swept us away and they won’t.” The Venezuelan leader is expected to address activists on the sidelines of the gathering, soaking up the spotlight as a leading radical voice of the Latin American left.
Chavez has repeatedly accused U.S. officials of plotting to overthrow his “revolutionary” government and warned that Venezuela, the world’s fifth-largest petroleum exporter, would cut off oil shipments to the United States if it ever invades his country.
Chavez has used a windfall in oil profits to funnel millions of dollars into programs for the poor while raising Venezuela’s profile internationally by extending preferential oil deals to countries from China to Argentina in an effort to line up alternative trade partners to the United States, the No. 1 buyer of Venezuelan oil.
The World Social Forum was first held in Brazil in 2001 and coincides each year with the market-friendly World Economic Forum of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland.
Those at the social forum, in contrast, traditionally criticize free trade and denounce the evils of capitalism – stances that closely mirror Chavez’s socialist views.
“The U.S. government, especially under the Bush administration, has been trying to force its own economic polices on developing countries, and I think all of us here agree that must stop,” said Jeff Monahan, a 32-year-old organic farmer from Battle Creek, Mich.
“I’m sure there will be plenty of Bush-bashing when this gets under way,” said Monahan, who arrived early and was helping put up canopies in a city park where thousands will camp out in tents.
Some 2,000 events – including seminars, speeches, concerts and craft fairs – will be held across Caracas during this week’s forum.
Forum participants and curious locals flocked on Monday to a street fair in downtown Caracas, where they listened to South American folk music, took in exhibits praising achievements of Chavez’s administration and purchased T-shirts embossed with images of Chavez and socialist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
“We have plenty of work to do, but we can make a difference in the world by doing it,” Joshua Kabir, a 22-year-old student from Poissy, France, said as he shuffled his feet to a lively salsa beat.
Others expected to attend include Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel and U.S. anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq in 2004 and who set up a protest camp near Bush’s Texas ranch last year.
It was not clear whether other leftist leaders from Latin America would come. Some activists said they hoped to see Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia or Fidel Castro of Cuba. Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva initially was expected, but then said he would not come.
The recent rise of left-leaning governments in Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile makes the event a timely forum to exchange ideas, said Miguel Tinker Salas, a Latin American studies professor at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.
“It’s an opportune moment, given what’s happening in Latin America and the fact that it brings together these various political forces on the left,” Tinker Salas said in a telephone interview.
This year’s social forum is being held in three spots around the world, including one ending Monday in Bamako, Mali, and another two months from now in Karachi, Pakistan. The Venezuela forum is the main event and the smaller forums are meant to make it more accessible to people in other regions.
