By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 21 2002 (IPS)

Representatives of the international movement of globalisation protesters will discuss this week the devastating effects of the economic model applied so rigorously in Argentina, during the first thematic meeting of the World Social Forum.

The Argentina Thematic Social Forum will draw delegates of more than 400 organisations from this country and abroad that are opposed to the globalisation process in its current form. The theme of the Thursday through Sunday gathering is “the crisis of the neo-liberal model in Argentina and the challenges for the global movement.”

The first World Social Forum was held in January 2001 in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, as a sort of counterpoint to the World Economic Forum in the Swiss alpine resort town of Davos. It has become the foremost expression of the international movement against the economic and political globalisation process.

“We want to call into question the idea that there is only one way of thinking, and to demonstrate the total failure of those ideas in Argentina,” sociologist Atilio Borón told IPS.

Borón, the executive secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, is a member of the committee that is organising this week’s gathering.

Argentina has been in the grip of recession for more than four years, and authorities predict that gross domestic product (GDP) will shrink 13.5 percent this year. The unemployment rate officially stands at 21.4 percent, and over half of the population of 36 million has sunk into poverty.

In the midst of the disintegration of what was once Latin America’s richest country – indeed, one of the richest countries in the world in the early 20th century – society has lost all faith in the political class, which it blames for the crisis.

In December, an explosive combination of economic collapse and a plunge in the credibility of corrupt or inept politicians toppled the government of then-president Fernando de la Rúa, and less than two weeks later, the caretaker administration of Adolfo Rodriguez Saá.

Interim President Eduardo Duhalde, appointed by Congress to complete de la Rúa’s term, has moved the elections forward to next March. But there are no obvious leaders, and opinion polls indicate that no candidate will take more than 30 percent of the vote.

To express civil society’s intention to build an alternative model, the forum will open Thursday with a march from the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the seat of government – the traditional meeting- ground for protesters – to the site where the World Social Forum events are to be held.

In more than 250 workshops, assemblies and debates, the causes and consequences of the crisis of the “neo-liberal model” will be discussed, as well as the situation in Argentina in the context of global capitalism, the crisis of democracy, and the “trampling of social rights” under capitalism.

Alternatives to the prevailing economic model and experiments in resisting it will also be studied.

Prominent Latin Americans like Argentine Nobel Peace Prize- winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel; Evo Morales, the indigenous leader of Bolivia’s coca farmers, who came in second in the Jun 30 presidential elections; Brazilian thinker Emir Sader; and Ana Ceceña, the director of the magazine Chiapas, will meet with representatives of the anti-globalisation movement from around the world.

The gathering will follow the usual World Social Forum blueprint, according to which each group can propose an activity, which is merely added to the programme.

On Sunday, a large assembly and cultural ceremony will close the meeting. After that, foreign delegates will make a tour to learn first-hand what social activists are doing in Argentina.

The gathering will be accompanied by around 100 artistic and cultural events. No conclusions or final documents will be adopted that diminish the diversity of activities and debates to take place during the four-day gathering.

“We have observed among the public that there is an increasingly critical view of the neo-liberal economic formulas,” said Borón, who expressed surprise at the keen interest shown by hundreds of varied organisations.

“The response by the people has been strong. But we are not building up false hopes, because we also know that the governments have been insensitive and stubborn, and have ignored the proposals that have emerged from different sectors of society in the past few years,” said the academic.

For example, an initiative set forth by the Congreso de Trabajadores Argentinos central trade union, aimed at reactivating the economy, increasing tax collection and providing a subsidy to the unemployed, was completely ignored by Argentine authorities.

The Grupo Fénix, made up of University of Buenos Aires economists, also drafted a proposal for a renegotiation of the foreign debt – on which Argentina defaulted in early January – a more just distribution of wealth, and solutions to help the country pull out of its current crisis.

“The association that groups small and medium-sized companies also put forth its own suggestions, but no political party has taken up those ideas,” said Borón. “That is why we will insist on demonstrating the failure of the neo-liberal model in Argentina, because we believe it is a very revealing experience.”

After all, Argentina was the “poster child” of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose prescriptions it followed to the letter.

The first World Social Forum, in January 2001 in Porto Alegre, drew human rights, student and women’s activists, trade unionists, environmentalists and farmers from all over the world, to protest the negative effects of the globalisation process.

Last February, during the second World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, the organising committee urged participants to hold thematic meetings in countries in the midst of crisis, to carry the debate to nations that are caught up in the breakdown of the neo-liberal model.

The suggestion for the first such meeting emerged among organisations in Argentina.

“In the past few years, the administrations that have governed our country implemented each and every one of the measures imposed by the IMF and the World Bank,” states a communique issued by the groups that convened this week’s meeting.

But those policies tipped Argentina “into the worst crisis in its history, with the subsequent unemployment and hunger, which today endanger the future of millions of people, once more revealing to the world the neo-liberal model’s inability to promote the development and well-being of nations,” the document adds.

Starting on Thursday, activists in Argentina will attempt to demonstrate the truth of the World Social Forum slogan, “Another World is Possible”.

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