Former president Lula said Monday that the integration of South America will cause a “shock of inclusion” in the region and said that the principal barriers are bureaucracy and the lack of knowledge about the issue. Lula met with 36 intellectuals from South America on Monday, January 21, to discuss progressive pathways for the development and integration of the sub-continent. Participating in the meeting were leading intellectuals not only in the field of academics but also with experience in progressive governments in South America. Attending the meeting were ministers, senators and federal deputies.
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Following a suggestion of the former President, Luiz Dulci, the former minister and coordinator of the Latin American Initiative at the Lula Institute was enthusiastic about continuing the discussion of the University circuit in various countries. This was the second in a series of meetings that the Lulu Institute has sponsored on the issue. In August of last year, there was a meeting of representatives from social organizations. The next meeting will welcome business leaders from the region.
Various comments by the intellectuals stressed the importance of an emphasis on innovation, on technology and on industry to create higher value added. “Brazil and Argentina together sold two thirds of the proteins in the world but they do not add value to these goods,” said Argentine economist Bernardo Kosacoff, a former director of ECLA, who pointed out that the enormous internal market of the region needs to be better used and that the region needs to “raise its self-esteem”. Uruguayan Senator Alberto Curiel also stressed the need for an integrated production infrastructure and the need for more value added to the projects for the region. “We face various challenges that I am not sure how to solve. We need to talk to the business community, Lula is doing this, and we need to talk to workers, and Lula is doing this, and we need to talk to social movements, and Lula is already doing this …”
The questions about the integration of the production structure and the need for innovation and investment in industries with higher value-added was also raised by various participants in the meeting. Professor Ingrid Sarti, the chairman of the Mercosul University Forum (FoMerco), praised the contributions that the Lula Institute has made to the issue. “As a professor, I take part in the hard work of doing research, but many times this winds up being shelved. It is very important that the Lula Institute provides an engine for the articulation of this work and provides assistance in the formation of public policies.”
The desire to see this discussion become practice was not limited to Prof. Sarti alone. Marcio Pochmmann, the chairman of the Perseu Abramo Foundation, said that there are two speeds for integration, one for the multinational corporations and the other for governments. He pointed out that governments do not work at the same speed as multinationals, which act much more rapidly. Pablo Gentilli, executive secretary of the Latin American Social Sciences Council (Clacso), asked for integration in education, especially at the graduate level and pointed out the need for sharing the knowledge produced about integration of the continent on an open teaching network on the Internet.
The participant’s proposals are being combined in a Plan of Work that will be shared by the Lula Institute with the participants.
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Intellectuals stress the importance of the conference for the integration of Latin America
