Caracas, Jan 29 (EFE).- The 6th World Social Forum concluded Sunday in this capital with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez – the host of the conclave – failing to appear to deliver a scheduled final speech to the participants.
The organizational chaos surrounding the six-day meeting was heightened still further on its final day because the announced Sunday agenda had included “at three in the afternoon, a dialogue with President Hugo Chavez” at the Teresa Carreño theater, but nobody at that site or among the official media could confirm whether or not he would be there.
An hour after the scheduled start of the event, the Venezuelan leader was still giving his weekly radio and television show “Alo Presidente,” while the press and thousands of Forum participants milled around the theater asking each other where he was and whether he was going to be there.
On the TV and radio show, Chavez received U.S. peace activist Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, and Elma Beatriz Rosado, the wife of fugitive Puerto Rican nationalist Filiberto Ojeda Rios, who was killed in a shootout with the FBI in September.
Social Forum officials told EFE that Chavez at last received a small group of organizers of the World Assembly of Social Movements at the presidential palace, but he met with them in private without the press.
Disorganization appeared to be one of the hallmarks of this year’s meeting, and a countless number of scheduled seminars, conferences and other events that were cancelled or held in other locations during the six-day gathering.
Brazilian Forum organizer Oded Grajew told journalists at the Hotel Caracas Hilton, the headquarters for the meeting, that “this is not the Social Forum.”
He said that the national organizing committee in this South American country was responsible for the myriad of schedule and site changes and that even he had been subjected to the assorted inconveniences.
Apart from the organizational turmoil, however, the thousands of social activists meeting here did conclude their deliberations and issued a final document publicizing the “protest calendar” for 2006.
Among the demonstrations scheduled around the world were a series of coordinated international protests on March 18 against the U.S. “occupation of Iraq,” a conference against U.S. hegemony and presence in Iraq in Cairo on March 24-27, a protest against the World Trade Organization talks in Geneva in May, and an anti-G8 demonstration in St. Petersburg, Russia, in July.
The final major anti-globalization protest of the year was announced for September against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Also surfacing at the Caracas meeting – the sixth and most “politicized” annual convention of an international movement marked by diversity, anti-globalization, pacifism and openness to the idea that “another world is possible” – were serious debates about the relationship of the Forum with governments and political parties, entities that have to date been excluded from the conclave.
The Chavez government involved itself directly in the organization of the meeting this year, as well as in the discussions about the direction of the Bolivarian Revolution – which takes many of its elements from the leftist movements of the 1960s and ’70s – and its applicability for Latin America as a whole.
This year’s conclave was also different in terms of its participants, the overwhelming majority of whom were Bolivarian militants who marked each of the Forum’s meetings, mini-forums and other events with their “combative” enthusiasm.
However, this year’s gathering had the smallest overall turnout since 2002. The first three meetings were held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, with 20,000 activists from around the world on hand in 2001, but four times that number attending the next annual Forum and 120,000 present in 2003.
In 2004, when the Forum held its meeting in Mumbay (or Bombay), India, it again drew an estimated 120,000 participants, as did the Porto Alegre meeting last year.
Curiosity about Venezuela’s “revolution” does not seem to have motivated a similar turnout this year, however, with only 70,000 activists showing up in Caracas, of whom a mere 10,000 came from abroad, according to organizers.
The explanation for the significantly lower participation given by members of the International Committee that directs the Forum is that this year the conclave has been divided into three separate meetings, convening not only in the Venezuelan capital, but also in Bamako, Mali, last week and in Karachi, Pakistan, in March.
However, veteran participants at some of the Forum’s five other yearly meetings recalled that the presence of Asians and Africans also was quite low at the Porto Alegre gatherings, and so it seems apparent that there has been a substantial drop-off in attendance among Latin Americans and others, too, this year.
Chavez’s “socialism or death” proclamation on Friday before an overwhelmingly Venezuelan crowd also sowed controversy among the diverse group of the Forum’s founders.
“If we’re talking about socialism, we should look to the countries of Northern Europe, which are an example of modern socialism,” one of the Forum’s leaders, Oded Grajew, told EFE on Sunday.
Also emerging from the discussions was the proposal of some of the Forum’s intellectuals – the group with which Chavez aligned himself – who want to convert the movement into a type of “global party” that has “taking power” as its objective.
Chavez said that the World Social Forum will be a “waste” if it does not adopt more concrete political positions and overcome what many feel is the current “hippie-social” phase of the movement.
The Venezuelan leader also said in a critical tone that the Caracas meeting could transform itself into a “folkloric and tourist get-together” having little to do with “world revolution, … (and) the struggle against imperialism” if it fails to radicalize itself.
Many observers do not agree with this assessment. Brazil’s Marco Aurelio Garcia, an advisor on international matters to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, told EFE that “it’s not realistic to think about a monolithic worldwide left.”
Garcia said that “there are many lefts in the world and that is a positive thing. The experiences give birth to different processes and the importance of the Social Forum is that, with its broadness, those lefts find a common denominator … (amid) their differences.”
After the “tri-partite” meeting experience this year, the Social Forum will in 2007 convene in Nairobi, Kenya, on a still-to-be-determined date, although it is virtually certain to coincide with the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
