As part of the Forum, which was founded in 2001 in Brazil as a developing nation more-social-than-economic counterpoint to the World Economic Forum in Davos, president Dilma Rousseff, continuing a tradition of attending the event started by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (who did so even before becoming president), participated in a special session called Dialogue Between Civil Society and Governments.

The event, open to the public, took place last night (January 26) in a gymnasium. Dilma responded to concerns by social movements that the Rio+ 20 conference (UN Conference on Sustainable Development), was going to become a hollow exercise in futility without a firm commitment to making changes in present development patterns.

A majority of participants at the Social Forum are demanding effective results at Rio+ 20. A draft of a document that will be issued at Rio+ 20, entitled “The Future We Want,” is considered weak and vague by activists. 

Meanwhile, environmental activists also expressed deep concern with Brazil’s new Land Use Law, calling on president Dilma for changes in the text and insisting that if Congress does not make changes she should veto it.

Further discussions at the World Social Forum included calls to turn cities into facilitator spaces instead of a “pile of problems,” in the words of former presidential candidate and minister of Environment, Marina Silva.

Speaking before a packed audience at the Rio Grande do Sul Federal University Law School, Silva said the time for grand solutions had passed and that what had to be done now was to concentrate on local solutions.

Silva was joined at the conference by renowned members of Brazil’s Left, Leonardo Boff and Frei Betto, both Catholic thinkers, and the activist and father of the World Social Forum, Oded Grajew.

One concrete proposal was the “I vote sustainable,” idea that would make candidates for elective office take positions in favor of sustainable policies.

Danger

Emir Sader, a prominent sociologist with close links to the Brazilian government, speaking at the World Social Forum, expressed his opinion that the international economic crisis could overwhelm efforts to make the Rio+ 20 conference a success.

According to Sader, there were forces in developed nations that would not want to fulfill commitments made 20 years ago as it would mean reducing their competitiveness against a background of global recession. That attitude compromised chances of ecological improvements and sustainable development, said Sader.

For the sociologist, the most worrisome aspect of the crisis was unemployment. “There are 80 million people unemployed at the moment and the tendency is for that number to rise to 200 million. The brunt of the problem, of course, will fall on the poor, immigrant workers without a safety net in countries like the United States, France, Spain and England.”

Rich countries face a vicious circle, said Sader, as they fight recession with spending cuts that result in more recession.

According to Sader, Brazil and the rest of Latin America can make a positive contribution with their specific development model that consists of growth with income distribution and domestic market expansion through consumption. He added that South-South integration was essential, along with economic interchange.

“I believe the central theme of this World Social Forum is how to overcome the neo-liberal model, how to build a post neo-liberal society that is just, humane and based on solidarity,” concluded the sociologist.

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They will discuss the international financial crisis, public policy to combat poverty and guidelines for Brazil’s participation in the United Nations Sustainable Development Conference – Rio + 20 – which will take place in Rio de Janeiro in June.

The World Social Forum was created in 2001 as a kind of developing nation counterpart to the World Economic Forum in Davos with the idea of working toward “a better possible world.”

Although the Forum is apolitical, Brazilian government authorities have been a constant presence. Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attended all the Social Forums in Brazil, so Dilma is continuing this tradition.

In 2011, she did not attend but was represented by her top administrative aide, Gilberto Carvalho.

This year Dilma will be accompanied by minister Gilberto Carvalho and the ministers of Human Rights, Maria do Rosário; Environment, Izabella Teixeira; Social Development and Hunger Combat, Tereza Campello; Policies for Women, Iriny Lopes; Agriculture, Mendes Ribeiro; and Racial Equality, Luiza Helena de Bairros.

It is estimated that some 30,000 people will participate in the forum, which ends on Sunday, January 29.

This year Dilma Rousseff will not attend the World Economic Forum in Davos although Brazil is the focus of a number of events there. She will be represented by the Foreign Minister, Antonio Patriota, and the minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Fernando Pimentel.

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Leading the procession of an estimated 10,000 participants and supporters, a group representing African religions, followed by worker union members, reps of political parties, students, environmentalists, Negro movements, the gay (GLBTT) community, supporters of the Palestinian cause and some protesters calling for the impeachment of the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Yeda Crusius.

“This march is a synthesis of the Forum. The core feeling is one of diversity, of sharing with other movements. This gives us fantastic energy to keep going throughout the year,” explained Calimério Junior, a student member of the Citizen Education Network, an NGO.

Among the many banners and posters, attacks on neo-liberalism, lists of worker grievances and calls for ensuring that national sovereignty is protected when extracting petroleum off the coast of Brazil. 

Carrying an enormous red banner, Laurence Gonçalves, announced that he was a representative of the Marijuana March, participating in favor of “public control of the use of drugs” and changes in legislation inside and outside Brazil.

“Control should be in the hands of the citizens, not like it is now, which is chaotic, people dying without medical assistance,” declared Gonçalves, who was surrounded by a noisy bunch of supporters.

It was hard not to notice a man covered with mud. He explained he was a member of an alternative community called the Peace Village and the mud was “An expression of our  love for Mother Earth.”

One of the marchers was the federal deputy (member of the House of Representatives – Chamber of Deputies – in Brasilia), Luciana Genro (P-Sol-RS). She seemed very pleased that the Forum had returned to Porto Alegre. The thing she most wanted the Forum to achieve, she said, was greater coordination among the many organizations and social movements who were present.

“It’s a great honor to have all these people who believe that another world is possible here in Porto Alegre,” she declared. “Social movements have to unite in their aims even though there are people from different parties involved. Our struggle is for the same goals.”

.The anti-Forum even had an anti-anti-Forum group, punk anarchists (that’s what they call themselves) who brought up the rear end of the march.

They were upset about the financing of – well, everything: social organizations, social movements and so on. Was it possible that  multinationals were paying for part of the Forum?

“The Forum has lost its combative character and independence. Another world is not possible if it is financed by foreign companies,” sentenced a school teacher, Daniela Dias.

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Even Alan Greenspan admitted his “shocked disbelief” that the free-market had failed to produce rational behavior. It was time to start building that other world. But how did the Left propose to organize the world’s economy?

The World Social Forum, first organized in Porto Alegre in 2001, had claimed to have the answer. Its biennial gathering was scheduled for January, 2009, just at the moment when the world was desperately seeking alternatives. Activists and leaders streamed into the Brazilian Amazon city of Belém and boldly proclaimed that “we are facing a global crisis which is a direct consequence of the capitalist system and therefore cannot find a solution within the system.”

So far, so good. But if there is no solution within the capitalist system, what is the non-capitalist solution? Faced with this question, the Forum dropped the ball, retreating into vague rhetoric that only thinly disguised the lack of specific, “shovel ready” ideas. The delegates resolved to “work towards the construction of a radical alternative that would do away with the capitalist system and patriarchal domination… a society that meets social needs and respects nature’s rights as well as supporting democratic participation in a context of full political freedom.”

Their only practical suggestion was to nationalize the banks without compensation to the owners. But several major banks in the United States had already gone broke, and the government was the de facto owner. There was nothing about what should be done with the banks after nationalization.

The use of the phrase “radical alternative” instead of “socialist” in this resolution was not accidental. To have called for socialism with full political freedom would have raised the issue of democracy in Cuba, not to mention North Korea. It would have raised the question of what kind of socialism, and how it would avoid repeating the errors of socialist efforts in the past.

The delegates knew they hadn’t solved the problem. They recognized that “in order to overcome the crisis we have to grapple with the root of the problem and progress as fast as possible towards the construction of a radical alternative.” But the World Social Forum has been working on this since it was founded in 2001, and many of the constituent groups have been working on it much longer than that. Why hasn’t more progress been made?

There is a hunger in the world for something to replace capitalist values and ethics. The WSF and other leftist groups have felt this hunger for a long time. Now it has spread to the liberal establishment that actually has the possibility of doing something about it. British Prime Minister Harold Brown recently commented that: “as we have discovered to our cost, the problem of unbridled free markets in an unsupervised marketplace is that they can reduce all relationships to transactions, all motivations to self-interest, all sense of value to consumer choice and all sense of worth to a price tag.”

But there is no way to talk about alternatives to capitalism without confronting the problem of socialism’s unhappy twentieth century history. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales speak of “twenty-first century socialism,” which implies that something different from the Soviet, Cuban or North Korean models is needed. But Chávez and Morales say precious little about what that would be. Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, perhaps the most important leader at the World Social Forum, refuses to use the socialist label, saying he doesn’t care what the new system is called.

But the Brazilian Workers Party, of which Lula is the most prominent leader, recently reasserted its commitment to “reconstruct a socialist alternative with liberty.” Its platform defines “socialism” as a system with competitive multiparty elections, full respect for human rights, and a mixture of private, cooperative and state ownership of property.

Latin America is at the forefront of democratic socialist theory and practice today because the Latin Americans have a long history of coping with capitalist crises. Although the Brazilian government, following Lula’s lead, chooses not to use the word “socialist,” much of its success in weathering the current fiscal crisis are due to practices that many think of as socialist. There is much that North Americans and Europeans can learn from Latin American thinking about socialist alternatives in the twenty-first century.

Heinz Dieterich’s Hi-Tech Socialism

Perhaps the most eccentric new socialist thinker is Heinz Dieterich, a German scholar who has lived mostly in Mexico since 1970 and who has been active in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez seems to have picked up the phrase “twenty-first century socialism” from him, and Dieterich hopes to persuade Chávez to implement his ideas.

Dieterich argues this is the time to implement utopian socialist ideas that were first developed in the nineteenth century. In his vision of socialism, the market will be abolished. Goods and services will be exchanged according to the number of labor hours it takes to produce them, not according to supply and demand. Dieterich believes that socialism failed in Eastern Europe because its leaders lacked the technological resources to realize these ideals.

Why does Dieterich believe we can achieve true socialism today? Because today we have computers! Dieterich adopts the arguments of European thinkers Arno Peters, Konrad Zuse, Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell that modern digital computers make it possible to efficiently manage a planned economy without market mechanisms. These ideas are at the fringe of European socialist thought where critics argue that the scheme is impossible without establishing a market in “labor coupons” which would have the same defects as financial markets using dollars, pounds or euros.

In such a system, there would be no material incentives to increase productivity or to respond to consumer demand because everyone would receive the same hourly wage no matter how much they produced or how much demand there was for their products. There would have to be a cultural revolution to produce new men and women who would work for the common good instead of maximizing their personal incomes. Community planning processes would be needed to make decisions about new products or investments in new technology. This would certainly get away from the money-grubbing capitalist values so many are finding increasingly distasteful.

Venezuelan Defense Minister Raúl Isaías Baduel was one of Hugo Chávez’s most important allies in resisting the right-wing coup d’état in 2002. He wrote a prolog to Dieterich’s book urging Venezuelan intellectuals to take up President Chávez’s challenge to “invent the socialism of the twenty-first century.” He asked “where are the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mathematicians, statisticians, economists, systems engineers, programmers, and information systems experts, committed to socialist ideology and to the change to a system different from capitalism, who will form the central planning team that will have the formidable and enormous mission of replacing nothing more and nothing less than the market and the businessmen?”

Baduel soon became disillusioned because Chávez did not seem to be seriously implementing Dieterich’s ideas. He became concerned that “twenty-first century socialism” was a smoke screen for setting Chávez up as a dictator like Fidel Castro. In his July 2007 retirement speech as Defense Minister, Baduel said he opposed “state capitalism” which he believed is what failed in Eastern Europe and called for a socialism that respected “bourgeois” concepts such as the division of power. Within a few months, he broke with Chávez and with the concept of socialism altogether, concluding that a socialist state is contrary to the Christian view of society because “it grants the state absolute control over the people it governs.”

Dieterich has little to say about the politics of twenty-first century socialism, although at some points he refers to it as a form of “participatory democracy.” Hugo Chávez talks about “participatory and protagonistic” democracy, which seems to mean rule by social movements and activist organizations instead of by formally elected politicians. His primary thrust has been to increase both his personal power and the power of social movements loyal to him.

Paul Singer and Economic Solidarity

Paul Singer is a retired University of São Paulo economist and Workers Party leader and author of several important works on socialism which are available only in Portuguese. Singer advocates a vision of socialism as worker self-management with worker-owned firms competing in a democratic marketplace. He strongly opposes the Soviet model of socialism as a state monopoly of the means of production because it led to a monstrous concentration of power, the exact opposite of the withering away of the state that Marx and Engels had anticipated.
Singer’s is a libertarian socialism. The same model is often referred to as the cooperative or employee ownership. The term used most in Brazil is “economic solidarity.” Philosophically, this has its roots more in the solidarity theories of French economist Charles Gide than in Marxist theory. Singer insists that every citizen has the right to organize his or her economic activities as he or she chooses, with only slavery and indentured servitude prohibited.

This means that socialism must emerge gradually from within capitalist societies by winning voluntary converts. In his view, true socialism cannot be imposed by a revolutionary party with a monopoly of state power. This means that “the socialist economy will probably suffer (for how long no one knows) competition with other modes of production. It will be permanently challenged to demonstrate its superiority in terms of self-realization of products and satisfaction of consumers. This leads to the conclusion that the struggle for socialism will never cease. If this is the price which socialists must pay to be democrats, I venture to say that it is not too much.”

Singer has been a close friend of Lula da Silva for many years, and Lula has recruited him to implement Economic Solidarity programs for the Brazilian government. As of 2007, there were 21,859 employee owned enterprises in Brazil. The largest number, 9,498, were in the impoverished northeastern region of the country. These enterprises had 1,687,496 employees, including 645,504 in the Northeast.

The Brazilian economic solidarity movement has focused on the underprivileged sector of the population including the approximately 45% of Brazilian workers who are in the “informal” sector without the protection of the country’s extensive labor legislation. Economic solidarity enterprises help these workers integrate into the formal structure of society.

Economic solidarity also works with individuals released from mental hospitals and prisons. Funding is raised through federal and community banks, credit cooperatives and rotating funds. More than 30 Brazilian universities maintain incubators for popular cooperatives, providing technical assistance and support.

Many of these employee-owned firms are small and economically vulnerable. Only 14% are formally organized as cooperatives, 55% are more loosely organized associations, and 27% are just informal groups. In some cases, small businesses reorganize as cooperatives to get a break from Brazil’s restrictive tax and labor legislation.

In other cases, the workers take over an enterprise that the original owners have abandoned. The emphasis of Paul Singer’s secretariat has been on working with poor and impoverished populations that have few alternatives, not on competing with viable private enterprises in more lucrative segments of the economy.

The economic solidarity movement comes out of a democratic socialist tradition but the word is not used by the Lula government, perhaps because it has too many other meanings. It is market socialism; the enterprises compete in the marketplace and the workers decide on pay scales and incentives. They may choose to pay more for managerial expertise. Economic solidarity is not a frontal assault on capitalism, it is an alternative for those who have not found inclusion in the capitalist economy or who prefer working in a cooperative environment. If it ever replaces capitalism, it will be by building a better world one enterprise at a time.

Brazilian Social Democracy. The third interesting Latin American model is perhaps best illustrated by the Lula de Silva government in Brazil, although there are similar developments in many other Latin American countries. Lula has no interest in theoretical speculation; he is building his model by example. It continues a great many initiatives from his predecessor, the sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

The Brazilian model combines market friendly economic policies with a strongly regulated financial sector. In addition to very large private banks, there are huge federal banks that bring stability and allow the government to target investments. The largest bank in the country, the Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social, lends money to projects that are deemed important for the development of the country.

It loaned out approximately US$ 28 billion in 2007. This included funding many cooperatives and micro-businesses. In the past it had helped to fund privatization efforts; its priorities depend on the government in power. The Caixa Econômica Federal, entirely controlled by the federal government, finances construction and infrastructure projects.

The Banco do Brasil, the largest bank by assets, is partly privatized and its shares trade on the stock market, but it is government controlled. The Banco Central is the national monetary authority and regulates the money supply in much the same way as the American Federal Reserve bank.

Due to strict regulations imposed after bank failures in the 1990s, Brazilian banks lend out only approximately 10 times their capital, while American commercial banks lend out approximately 20 times their capital and American investment banks 50 times their capital (at least prior to the crisis of 2008). Brazilian banks do not generally make the risky, sub-prime loans that brought down so much of the American financial sector in 2008.

The national development bank invested heavily in energy and transportation projects, including highways, railroads and marine shipping. Brazil relies heavily on hydroelectric power and there have been blackouts during periods of drought. There was concern that rapid economic development would increase electricity demand beyond the capacity of the grid to supply.

The government banks also invested significantly in technology development, indeed Lula highlighted technology as the first item in his annual report to Congress. The Lula government also took specific measures to facilitate entrepreneurialism, including simplifying regulations and taxes for small businesses, and cutting down on the bureaucracy that makes it difficult to start a business. Lula’s annual report to Congress boasts that as of 2007, the average time spent on registering a new business had been cut to 20.3 days.

Socialist Alternatives for the Current Crisis

These Latin American models do provide ideas for responding to the current crisis, alternatives that would focus the economy more on social needs. The United States government has already spent hundreds of billions of dollars to “bail out” major banks, insurance and investment companies. The next step would be to take them over and run them as National Banks for Economic and Social Development.

Instead of just giving money to bankers in the hope that they will lend it out constructively, the banks could actually start lending out money according to social priorities. National development banks don’t have to replace private banks that are solvent and well managed; they can function along side the private sector.

Similarly, instead of just giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the auto companies, why not set them up as employee owned corporations? General Motors might no longer be the largest auto company in the world, but it could be the largest worker-owned auto company. Of course, national development banks could finance cooperatives and worker owned enterprises in every sector, not just when a huge corporation goes broke.

Alternative financial systems based on barter or labor coupons are also possible on a small scale in local communities. There were quite a few of these in Argentina after the national currency collapsed in 2001, although most of them have gone back to using pesos. There are precedents in the United States, such as Ithaca Hours, a local currency in Ithaca, New York.

Cooperative and worker-owned companies might choose to set up arrangements such as these to share their products. The value of these arrangements is not primarily economic; their main point is to help to develop a sense of community, to develop more humanistic values.

All of these measures are perfectly feasible within the framework of multi-party electoral democracy. All would be voluntary. All would exist along side a capitalist economy. A worker-owned General Motors would have to compete with Toyota and Honda.

Neighborhood cooperatives would have to compete with chain stores and supermarkets, as well as with small businesses owned by private entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs could borrow from private banks instead of from national development banks. It wouldn’t matter whether the system that evolved was called socialism or something else. It would certainly be a radical alternative.

Ted Goertzel, Ph.D. is Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. He is the author of a biography of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, available in English and in Portuguese. He can be contacted at goertzel@camden.rutgers.edu and his WEB page can be found at http://goertzel.org/ted.

The forum's founder Francisco Whitaker said participants would discuss ideas to create "a new civilization, based on other values."

First organized in 2001, in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, WSF developed as a counter balance to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

"The forum is an open university, where all ideas are legitimate. The event's proposal is in itself to stimulate plurality," said forum organizer Cândido Grzybowski.

About 120,000 people from 150 countries were set to take part in the forum's 2,600 activities.

On Thursday, they will be joined by presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

At a press conference Tuesday, Italy's Rafaela Bolini – a representative from the European Social Forum – recalled that the event has for years denounced "neo-liberal globalization and the capitalist market," for which activists faced criticism and "even political repression."

"The denunciation of the dangers for humanity, for the planet and for nature was true. And now we are here because that reality needs to become visible. The solution to this crisis will not be real if it comes from the same people who created the crisis," Bolini said.

Brazilian businessman Oded Grajew, another forum founder, said the steps taken to combat the ongoing economic crisis were not aimed at a lasting solution, but were merely being enacted to save the very system that caused the current problems.

"They used to say that resources were limited. Now, in the face of the crisis, trillions of dollars suddenly showed up to save carmakers, banks and bankrupt firms – funds that would have been more than enough to combat poverty and to improve health and education," he said.

After its launch in 2001, the WSF was held in Porto Alegre again in 2002, 2003 and 2005. India hosted it in 2004, while Venezuela did so in 2006 and Kenya in 2007. In 2008 there was no one single site, but the forum was held simultaneously in 82 different countries

Mercopress

The first stage, in Africa, took place last week in Mali; an Asian stage will take place in Pakistan in March.

The keynote at all the World Social Forums is diversity. This year most of the marchers expressed their opposition to the war in Iraq and imperialism.

But there were also feminists, defenders of the Palestinian cause, environmentalists, representatives from the Basque country and many more.

Venezuelan officials did not release an official estimate of the number of participants, but it was smaller than in other forums.

There was a large Brazilian presence. Brazil has proposed more activities for this forum than the Venezuelans, or any other country for that matter.

Among the Brazilian groups present in the opening march were: Socialist Youth Union (União da Juventude Socialista), a student branch of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCdoB), High School Student Union (União Brasileira dos Estudantes Secundaristas) (Ubes) and Brazil’s largest labor union (Central íšnica dos Trabalhadores) (CUT).

They joined representatives of other South American social movements on the streets of Caracas.

Agência Brasil

This is the second time since its inception in 2000 that the forum is being held outside of Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil. The first time was in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, two years ago.

This year’s version is the first divided into regional venues: Bamako, Mali, and Karachi, Pakistan, in addition to Caracas. The forum in Caracas expects to receive around 100 thousand people, most of them from Latin America.

According to the organizers of the event, there are already 50 thousand people enrolled, representing 2,177 social organizations and governments from all around the world.

For six days the Caracas forum, which is organized according to thematic pillars, will discuss the following topics: Power, politics, and social emancipation struggles; Imperial strategies and popular resistance; Resources and the right to life, alternatives to the predatory model of civilization; Diversities, identities, and shifting cosmovisions; Work, exploitation, and the reproduction of life; Communication, culture and education, dynamics and democratizing alternatives.

Brazil will participate in discussions with representatives of governmental and civil society organizations. The minister of Agrarian Development, Miguel Rossetto, is leaving today for Venezuela, where his presence has been confirmed at a conference on agrarian reform on Thursday, January 26, together with government officials from Venezuela, Chile, Nicaragua, and Spain.

The head of the presidential staff office, minister Luiz Dulci, the minister of Environment, Marina Silva, and the head of the special secretariat of human rights, Paulo Vannuchi, will also attend the forum, where they will participate in debates on issues related to development, participatory democracy, and human rights.

The Caracas session of the 6th World Social Forum ends on Sunday, January 29.

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The American edition of the 6th World Social Forum will take place between Monday, January 23, and Sunday, January 29 in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.

One of the main topics the UNE intends to debate at the forum is student involvement in the campaign against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

According to Stumpf, the matter will be discussed with representatives of the various countries that make up the Latin American and Caribbean Continental Organization of Students.

Another item prominent on the agenda will be the attempt to "revitalize" the International Students’ Union.

The UNE director also informed that representatives of various youth movements, such as the Brazilian Hip Hop Nation, the Union of Socialist Youth, and groups linked to feminist issues, have been invited to participate in all of the debates.

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At the opening of the Forum, Ribeiro will participate in the panel, "The Struggle of Women from the South: Ethics, Politics, and Decolonization of Thinking."

She is expected to address the situation of black women in South America and the Caribbean and highlight Brazilian policies concerning gender and race.

The Minister also plans to meet with African officials to discuss the Conference of Intellectuals from Africa and the African Diaspora, which will take place in Brazil from May 8-10.

Unlike the previous five editions, this year’s World Social Forum will be decentralized and held in three cities, rather than one.

The African edition of the 6th WSF will run through January 23. The American edition will take place in Caracas, Venezuela, from January 24-29. An Asian edition is expected to be held in Karachi, Pakistan, at a date yet to be determined.

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This information comes from the head of Brazil’s presidential office staff, minister Luiz Dulci. Some observers believe Lula will be pressed to explain why he didn’t deliver on several promises and why he seems to favor big capital and forget social issues.

The Minister affirmed that President Lula took part in the four editions of the Forum held in Brazil.

"The President was unable to attend the one in India, but, since this one is in Venezuela, which is closer to home, I believe he will go," Dulci observed.

In the Minister’s opinion, Lula’s presence is important, because the president is "very popular with social movements in Latin America."

One of the members of the Forum’s Organizing Committee, Gustavo Codas, of Paraguay, said that Lula is expected to appear in Caracas.

"President Lula, prior to becoming president, played an important role in the creation of the World Social Forum," Codas affirmed.

Dulci said that he will attend the Forum to participate in some of the debates, together with other ministers, including the Minister of Environment, Marina Silva, the Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, and the Minister of the Special Secretariat of Policies to Promote Racial Equality (Seppir), Matilde Ribeiro.

The World Social Forum is an event organized by civil society. The Brazilian government representatives were invited to debate programs developed in Brazil.

Agência Brasil