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"The multifaceted crisis of the world system: a critical-perspective of its impact in Our America"

by Katu Arkonada

This the name of the document produced following the international workshop that took place in Mexico City, on March 9 to 11 2015, with the participation of some twenty intellectuals born or residing in countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The meeting was organized to analyze the overlapping crises that characterize the globalized capitalist system. From this analysis, the workshop moved to identify and synthesize the more probable scenarios in which, within a relatively short future, the struggles of our peoples and nations will take place, as well as those of some Latin American and Caribbean governments.

Under these parameters, the document consists of two parts, plus some final conclusions. In the first part, on "The crisis of capitalism and the geopolitics of the multi-polar world”, there is an analysis of the foreseeable deepening of the financial, economic, energy, food, ecological, environmental, ethical, social, ideological and cultural crisis, that is unquestionably both political and civilizational, that has characterized the capitalist world system for several decades. In addition, it examines the prospects of the scenarios in which the different actors of the new multipolar world will perform: the BRICS group, with special attention to China and Russia, the European Union and the United States, and the development of the counterrevolutionary strategies of the government of the latter country against Our America.

In the second part, "Perspectives of popular movements and of post-neoliberal governments of Latin America and the Caribbean", it becomes clear that none of the scenarios synthesized in the first part of the document is pre-determined. While the battlefields among the different social and political actors, governmental or non-governmental, hemispheric or extra-hemispheric, are heterogeneous, and as these same actors struggle among themselves to defend their power quota or the ideology of their ideas or interests, in the same proportion, conservative reactions will grow, and in response, popular creativity and resistance will also grow, giving rise to new and very different scenarios. The commitment to building a post-capitalist society, in which the road to socialism is understood as a civilizing transition, requires serious debates about power, the conquest of the State, the model of development and a change in the production model of Latin American and Caribbean economies, as well as the need to be rid of the free trade deals that have been imposed since 1994 and to establish a new international financial architecture, alongside the struggle against climate change and the commitment to fight against capitalism in crisis: these are what José Martí called "the trenches of ideas".

Finally, the document underlines the internationalism and the Latin-Americanism of the founders of the idea of the great Latin American and Caribbean motherland, and their closest followers, the comandantes Fidel Castro Ruz and Hugo Chávez Frias. In addition it expresses a pledge to the unity of action of the great diversity of social, political and cultural forces, with their capacity to assume and deepen each transformative process and to launch new and original actions that contribute to the building of a Latin American and Caribbean Great Motherland, that is socially and politically liberated.

Notably, the reflections of the workshop were stimulated by the wave of rejection that resulted, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, from Barack Obama’s statement on the 9th of March, in which he declared that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela was an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”. Likewise, there was consideration of the repercussions that this affront had and will have on the negotiations now under way for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States. Also, there are the reactions to the agreements signed between Barack Obama and Ollanta Humala for the deployment on Peruvian territory of 3500 US military troops before September of this year. These, like other military pacts for "regional security" between the governments of the US ad Colombia, constitute a threat to other South American states, especially for the Plurinational State of Bolivia and the Republic of Ecuador.

As the workshop took place in Mexico, with the support of the Partido del Trabajo (PT – Workers’ Party), there was also a vein of reflections on the impunity surrounding the massive and systematic violations of elemental human rights in that country, including systematic use of torture and extrajudicial executions perpetrated by repressive organs of the State; in particular, the disappearance of thousands of people in different areas of the country. Procedures such as these – as was shown in the case of the 43 teacher training students of Ayotzinapa – constitute some of the numerous expressions of "preventive repression" against communities, native peoples and diverse social and political movements struggling in a decentralized and generally uncoordinated way against the terrible political and socio-economic, ecological-environmental and cultural consequences provoked by neo-liberal counter-reforms in Mexico and other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The following people took part in the workshop: Angel Guerra (Cuba), Arantxa Tirado (Spain), Dario Salinas (Chile), Esteban Rivero (Mexico), Fernando Sánchez Cuadros (Peru), Gilberto López y Rivas (Mexico), Héctor Díaz-Polanco (Mexico), John Saxe-Fernández (Mexico), Jorge Casals (Cuba), Jorge Veraza (Mexico), Josefina Morales (Mexico), Katu Arkonada (Basque Country), Lila Molinier (Paraguay), Luis Suárez (Cuba), Marco Gandásegui (Panama), Nayar López Castellanos (Mexico), Omar González (Cuba), Raúl García Linera (Bolivia), Silvina Romano (Argentina), Tamara Barra (Mexico).

The coordinating team – made up of Angel Guerra, Katu Arkonada, Luis Suárez Salazar and Omar González – took on the final drafting of this document, in a process that included contrasts made with various parties of the Latin American and Caribbean left, and written contributions from several countries.

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