Porto Alegre is not exactly a Third World city. Located in
one of Brazil's more prosperous states, Rio Grande do Sul, and
populated by people mainly of European stock, this city of 1.2
million people is First World when it comes to infrastructure
and social services. In fact, it ranks near the very top in
terms of the country's "quality of life" index.
"Another world is possible"
Yet Porto Alegre, site of the World Social Forum (WSF) last
year and again this year, has become the byword for the spirit
of the burgeoning movement against corporate-driven globalization.
Galvanized by the slogan "Another world is possible,"
some 70,000 people are expected to flock to this coastal city
from January 30 to February 4. This figure is nearly six times
that for last year.
Fisherfolk from India, farmers from East Africa, trade unionists
from Thailand, indigenous people from Central America will be
among those making their way to Porto Alegre. But there will
also be a sizable contingent of people from the Northern countries.
And the place will be graced by personalities who have come
to exemplify the diversity of the movement against corporate-driven
globalization-among others, activist-thinker Noam Chomsky, Indian
physicist-feminist Vandana Shiva, Canadian people's advocate
Maude Barlow, and Egyptian intellectual Samir Amin.
counterpoint to Davos
The World Social Forum emerged as a counterpoint to the World
Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the global corporate
crowd in Davos, Switzerland. Proposed by a coalition of Brazilian
civil society organizations and the Workers Party that controls
both Porto Alegre and the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the idea
triggered strong international support from organization such
as the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique and Attac, an influential
Europe-wide organization supporting a tax on global financial
transactions, and received financial support from progressive
donors like Novib, the Netherlands Organization for International
Development Cooperation. Driven by this energy, the first WSF
was put together in a record time of eight months.
A televised trans-Atlantic debate between representatives of
the WSF and some luminaries attending the WEF was billed by
the Financial Times as a collision between two planets, that
of the global superrich and that of the vast marginalized masses.
The most memorable moment of that confrontation came when Hebe
de Bonafini, a representative of the Argentine human rights
organization Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, shouted at financier
George Soros across the Atlantic divide: "Mr. Soros, you
are a hypocrite. How many children's deaths are you responsible
for."
Since its first meeting the stock of the WSF has risen while
that of the WEF has fallen. Already put on the defensive as
a gathering to "discuss how to maintain hegemony over the
rest of us," as one of the debaters on the WSF side put
it, the WEF was asked by the Swiss government to leave Davos
on the grounds that it could no longer guarantee the security
of its corporate participants. Sealing off Davos from demonstrators
last year had already necessitated the biggest Swiss security
operation after World War II, and the authorities anticipated
a security and logistical nightmare in the wake of the September
11 events.
As a result, the WEF is holding its sessions in New York this
year, but many observers say that Davos high up in the Swiss
Alps was the key attraction for corporate executives, and without
this "ambience," the WEF is headed for oblivion.
The centerpiece of this year's gathering in Porto Alegre are
26 plenary sessions over four days structured around four theme:
"the production of wealth and social reproduction,"
"access to wealth and sustainable development," "civil
society and the public arena," and "political power
and ethics in the new society." Around this core will unfold
scores of seminars, a people's tribunal on debt sponsored by
Jubilee South, and about 5,000 workshops. Marches and demonstrations
of workers and peasants are also expected, led by the Brazilian
mass organizations CUT (Central Union of Workers) and MST (the
Movement of the Landless) that are among the key organizers
of the WSF.
Tumultuous year
The anti-establishment forces gather in Porto Alegre after
a tumultuous year. Perhaps the apogee of the anti-globalization
movement came during Group of Eight Meeting in Genoa in the
third week of July, when some 300,000 people marched in the
face of police tear-gas attacks. Shortly after the Genoa clashes,
in which one protester was killed by police, there was speculation
in the world press that elite gatherings in non-authoritarian
countries might no longer be possible in the future. And indeed,
Canada's offer to hold the next G-8 meeting in a resort high
up in the Canadian Rockies in the province of Alberta seemed
to confirm the fact that the global elite was on the run from
the democracy of the streets.
Then came September 11, which stopped a surging movement dead
in its tracks. The next big confrontation between the establishment
and its opponents was supposed to take place in late September
in Washington, DC, during the annual fall meetings of the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Unnerved by the prospect
of a week of massive protest that was expected to draw some
50,000 people, the Bretton Woods twins took advantage of the
September 11 shock to cancel their meeting. Without a target
and sensitive to the sea change in the national mood in the
US, organizers cancelled the protest and held a march for peace
instead.
The establishment followed up on the unexpected opportunity
to reverse the crisis of legitimacy that had been wracking it
prior to September 11 by pressing the developing countries to
approve a declaration launching a limited set of trade negotiations
during the Fourth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) in Doha, Qatar, in mid-November. Third World governments
were told that unless they agreed to talks leading to greater
liberalization, they would have to take responsibility for worsening
a global recession that had been accelerated by the World Trade
Center attack.
Taking no chances, the WTO secretariat and the Qatar monarchy
had worked to limit the number of legitimate NGO's attending
the meeting to about sixty. This ensured that the massive demonstrations
on the street that characterized Seattle, which had served as
a context for the famous developing country revolt at the Sheraton
Convention Center, were not present in Doha, and under these
circumstances, developing country opposition collapsed.
Reversal of fortune
Had the WSF meeting been held in late November of December,
the mood of people coming would have been different. The Bush
administration would have been riding high after its devastating
triumph in Afghanistan. However, in the last few weeks, history,
cunning as usual, has dealt Washington two massive body blows:
the
Enron debacle and Argentina's economic collapse.
Enron has become the sordid symbol of the volatile mixture
of deregulation and corruption that drove the US' "New
Economy" in the 1990's and helped lead it to what is possibly
the worst global recession since the 1930's.
Burdened with an unpayable $140 foreign debt, its industry
in chaos, and 2,000 of its citizens falling under the poverty
line daily, Argentina serves as a cautionary tale of the disaster
that awaits those countries that take seriously the neoliberal
advice to liberalize and globalize their economies.
As the WSF opens, these twin disasters have brought back with
a vengeance the crisis of legitimacy that the global elite and
its project of corporate-driven globalization were experiencing
prior to September 11. Porto Alegre provides the perfect site
and the perfect moment for the counter-offensive on the part
of the ovements that believe that "another world is possible."
Dr. Walden Bello is the executive director of the Bangkok-based
policy and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South and
professor of sociology and public administration at the University
of the Philippines.
Walden Bello