Havana, July 6 (RHC)-- Thirty years ago, on the initiative of Fidel Castro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and following the call of the Brazilian Workers' Party -- in an adverse context to the Left in the world and when many believed that socialism was entering a dead-end crisis and gave in to the advances of neoliberalism and the right -- the Meeting of Political Parties and Movements of Latin America and the Caribbean, renamed the São Paulo Forum a year later, was held in São Paulo from July 2 to 4, 1990.
The founding spirit of the Comandante en Jefe advised, on each occasion he had, to create a block of forces and called on them to fight, not to give up in the midst of the greatest difficulties. This took placed at the 1993 session in Havana, when he spoke to the leaders of the Left, to the surviving progressive, popular, revolutionary movements of that time -- and called on them to prepare for the union of Latin America and the Caribbean.
"Let us place, without fear, the fundamental stone of South American, Latin American, Caribbean and world liberation," paraphrased Hugo Chávez to the Liberator Simón Bolívar, at the Forum held in Caracas in 2012. And by virtue of the progress of the progressive forces in the region, he stressed the need to move on to a new stage of concrete actions, in defense of the sovereignty of the peoples.
Then the winds changed, and the airs of neoliberal restoration began to blow hard on the nations, which demanded from the Council of São Paulo a resistance against all odds. It was still a battle front that should not be lost, with Venezuela as the decisive scenario.
In the 24th session, in 2018, President Nicolás Maduro intervened as part of the meeting held in Havana, exalting the role of Fidel and re-qualifies the space of agreement as "a wonderful idea founded by that visionary genius of humanity."
Meanwhile, a year later, in the meeting in the capital of Caracas, the Cuban Head of State Miguel Díaz-Canel, pointed out the main battlefield to which the progressive resistance integrated in the Sao Paulo Forum must go: "When it seems once again that the right wing, in the midst of a restoration offensive, is advancing uncontrollably on the continent, (...) Venezuela is today the first trench in the anti-imperialist struggle."
