Participants stressed the importance of the role of the Lula Institute in the creation of plans to promote the integration and development of Latin America through the “Meeting of South American Intellectuals”, held on Monday, January 21, in São Paulo. “This is one of the opportunities that we have hoped for,” said Christian Adel Mirza, the Executive Director of the Mercosul Social Institute. He pointed out that “integration means more than just joining together, it is also means achieving harmony and equilibrium in which the large protect the small.” Only in this way will it be possible to realize the dream of “the Great Homeland, a united Latin America,” said Mirza. He said further that there is a gap in the strategic and political thinking that reflects the need to generate new ideals. Monday’s meeting was the first step in this direction.
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Ricardo Carneiro, Executive Director of the Interamerican Development Bank pointed out that after the discussions are over there needs to be created an agenda for priorities and a schedule of work. He believes that the participation of former president Lula will help to speed the process of integration that is being carried out. Ricardo Carneiro also said that the IADB is very interested in the issue of integration.
Gustavo Codas, the former president of Itaipu Binacional, believes that the time for this discussion is now. “I believe that we are participating in a very important event because it brings together a series of totally new elements. First, we now have more than a decade of progressive governments in the region. This is the first time that such a large number of countries have governments of the left, progressives with a common sense of integration.” He believes that this is the time to take stock of these experiences and think about the next steps.
Marilena Chauí, a professor at the University of São Paulo, agreed that this evaluation is necessary and suggested that: “the arsenal of ideas available to us is no longer sufficient to deal with current conditions. We need to think about the present if we wish to intervene in the future,” she said. She believes that among the crucial points to be considered for the next step are the question of de-industrialization and the risk of creating a Metropole-Colony relationship with China. To this must be added the need to think about the political actors that lead the integration movement and how to deal with the so-called “information society” which, she says, is not capable of generating new political subjects because it works with highly fragmented notions of time and space.
Click here to listen to part of the speech by the former-president during the Meeting (in Portuguese):
