50 Years After The Coup In Chile.
The Latin America and Caribbean Dilemmas of Humanity conference will take place in the Chilean capital from September 2-4. The conference seeks to provoke debate and discussion about building socialism and finding solutions to address the major crises generated by capitalism
Movement leaders and intellectuals from across Latin America and the Caribbean will meet in Santiago, Chile, from September 2-4 for the Regional Dilemmas of Humanity Conference. The conference seeks to provoke debate and discussion about building socialism and finding solutions to address the major crises generated by capitalism.
The conference, organized by the regional social movement platform ALBA Movimientos and the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA), will be held in the Open University of Recoleta. It will take place alongside a series of historical commemorations to be held in the Chilean capital to mark the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état against the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende and the 53rd anniversary of the victory of Popular Unity.
Leading intellectuals and members of people’s movements, trade unions, and left parties from the region will participate, such as Daniel Jadué, former Chilean presidential candidate and the mayor of Recoleta, Blanca Eekhout, member of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Barbara Flores Casamayor, from Cuba’s Fidel Castro Center, Atilio Borón, Argentine intellectual, Vijay Prashad, Indian historian and director of the Tricontinental Institute, and Hector Bejar, Peruvian intellectual.
Laura Capote of the ALBA Movimientos Secretariat told Peoples Dispatch, “From Latin America and the Caribbean, we are promoting the Regional Conference of Dilemmas of Humanity as part of the global process, understanding that the voice and the analysis from our continent about the mechanisms and tools to overcome the civilizational crisis with an emancipatory horizon are fundamental. We understand that the world looks at Latin America and the Caribbean and their revolutionary processes. We know that in any corner of the world, the Cuban Revolution is an important symbol, the Venezuelan revolution is a symbol.”
“And the fact is that we have revolutionary processes of a socialist character that are alive and have resisted the onslaught of imperialism in economic, political, commercial, military terms,” she emphasized, adding “imperialism has still not been able to defeat our revolutions. On the contrary, our revolutions continue to drive and inspire the other countries of our continent.”
During the three days, participants will engage in discussions on the current political context in the region today; socialism as a response to the key dilemmas in the region; the challenges and experiences of building socialism; sovereignty and continental unity to confront imperialist domination; the dilemmas and challenges in organizing the working class for the struggle of socialism; the cultural battle and the battle of ideas for the construction of our socialist project; the defense of the common goods of life and new forms of relating to the earth; and the construction of people-centered democracy to establish socialism.
Capote highlighted, “It is also a moment to link this to our analysis of the context at the continental level. We have given perhaps too much place and too much press to the conciliatory discourse, to the centrist discourse, to the discourse that does not apply pressure, believing that with these, we can accumulate forces. But history shows us the opposite. We are living in a moment in which neofascism and the new rights are radicalizing, so we must be willing to radicalize our project, our humanist project, our project of transformation that overcomes the civilizational crisis.”
The conference in Chile is one of various regional processes taking place ahead of the III International Conference of Dilemmas of Humanity in Johannesburg, South Africa from October 14-19. Regional conferences have also been organized in Bela Bela, South Africa, Atlanta, US, and Tunis, Tunisia. The debates and deliberations of these regional spaces will be systematized and integrated into the discussions in Johannesburg.