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XIII FORO DE SAO PAULO; SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE IN EL SALVADOR.

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The XIII Foro de Sao Paulo (FSP) convened in San Salvador Jan. 12-14, bringing together leftist organizations from 33 countries, the majority from Latin America. It was an upbeat and celebratory forum, a departure from the years when the left met to bemoan its losses. This year, the talk turned to predictions of further advances for socialism and an end to neoliberal policies on the continent.

"Now we are in a different moment," said Medardo Gonzalez, host of the event. "We are in position to move to the defeat of neoliberalism and not only to defeat it but to go beyond it and construct a new alternative model in Latin America and the Caribbean." Gonzalez is coordinator general of El Salvador's leftist party Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN).

Gonzalez recalled the first FSP, 15 years ago, when "we were in a position of resistance against imperial arrogance after what happened in the so-called socialist camp [Eastern Europe], and I recall that there were many bad-intentioned, and even well-intentioned, voices that announced that Cuba wouldn't survive. They were naive."

The agenda for this year was divided into five principal themes: deepening democracy, broadening public social policy, fundamental structural reforms, creating an alternative economic model, and self-determination.

"It is not just that socialism is an alternative for Latin America," said Caracas' Mayor Fredy Bernal. "It is the only alternative, because the other one is poverty." Bernal said socialism is a historical necessity, observing that this forum is happening "when there is a change in Latin America, an upset toward the left, a rebirth of hope among people who never tired of struggle."

If the celebratory mood at the meetings produced some breathless rhetoric, it might be said that it was a long time in coming. The FSP was constituted in 1990 when the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), now the governing party of Brazil,...

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