In May 2010, the Presidents and Heads of State of the European Union (EU),
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) will meet in Madrid under the
Spanish Presidency of the EU. The “Old Continent”, restructured today as the
Europe of capital and war, will seek, at this Summit, to push policies and
mechanisms favoring finance capital and the big transnational corporations,
the plundering of natural resources and the privatization of public services
disguised as promises of development. This Summit will take place under the
shadow of a financial, economic, environmental and social crisis that is
causing increasing unemployment and precarity in Europe and poverty and
social exclusion in Latin America.
In Europe, social movements and organizations witness a continuing advance
of the Right, and an increasingly powerful and aggressive attack on the
labour, economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental rights that have
been won in the past. The recent approval of the Lisbon Treaty — in an anti
democratic way which denied the direct participation of the people — will
favor the interests of transnational corporations through free trade
agreements and the liberalization of investments, to the detriment of the rights
of the peoples and the environment. This Fortress Europe, militarized,
xenophobic and inhumane, with less public services and more privatizations
is not our Europe. To the Europe of capital, war and crisis, we counterpose
solidarity among peoples.
In LAC countries the resistances of the social movements continue to
develop. Alongside some Latin American governments, they struggle to
defend their sovereignty and, despite difficulties and contradictions, undertake
new political projects for social change. These efforts are attacked by criminal
actions such as the coup d’etat in Honduras, which poses a serious threat for
the entire continent. The election of US President Barack Obama has not led
to a change in US policy in the region — as demonstrated by the installation
of US military bases in Colombia. In a similar way, two hundred years after
independence, the EU attacks the processes of regional integration, using the
Spanish government and transnational corporations as its flagship. Disguised
as cooperation and development aid, the new galleons of the reconquest
seek to consolidate their domination of the region through free trade
agreements.
The biregional EuropeLatin America and Caribbean network, Enlazando
Alternativas, together with other networks, is mobilizing for the fourth time to
create a biregional political space, as we did in Guadalajara, Mexico (2004),
Vienna, Austria (2006) and Lima, Peru (2008). The Peoples’ Alternative
Summit, Enlazando Alternativas 4, scheduled to take place from 14th to 18th
May 2010, aims to strengthen emerging popular resistances and new
convergences and solidarities between our peoples. Despite the
criminalization of social movements, it will aim to build a biregional political
space for mobilization.
We are calling on all the social networks and organisations, trades unions,
political forces and civil society movements to join the preparation process
and participate in Madrid in the Peoples’ Alternative Summit, Enlazando
Alternativas 4 in defense of peoples’ sovereignty, human rights, participatory
democracy, labour rights, the rights of women and indigenous peoples, social
justice, the defense of the environment in the face of climate change, and the
establishment of peace.
We have shown that we are not invisible. Gandhi once said: “First they ignore
us, then they mock us, then they fight us, then we win”.
Now they are fighting us.