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IBERO-AMERICA: Diversity Descends on Uruguay

Raúl Pierri

MONTEVIDEO, Nov 1 2006 (IPS) - Indigenous and black activists, municipal authorities opposed to racism, Ibero-American heads of state and government, children for peace, members of the international business community and representatives of civil society are all flocking to Uruguay these days.

This small South American country has become the centre for international gatherings of all kinds in the run-up to the 16th Ibero-American Summit, to be held in Montevideo Nov. 3-5. Migration and development – the central themes of the Summit -, racism, poverty, memory and identity are on the agenda for debate.

High-level delegations will be arriving from the 22 Ibero-American countries: Andorra, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela. Visiting dignitaries will include King Juan Carlos of Spain and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

More than 1,000 national and foreign journalists are accredited for the event, which will take place amidst a series of concerts and cultural activities.

Ahead of the Summit, Uruguay hosted a meeting of Ibero-American members of parliament in September, and a conference of ministers responsible for children and youth affairs in early October.

A Peace Camp in the Uruguayan capital, bringing together some 100 boys and girls around 14-years-old from a number of countries, was a fitting symbol of the diversity that has taken Montevideo by storm in the last few weeks.

This is the third Camp to arise from an idea that emerged at the Universal Forum of Cultures, held for the first time in Barcelona in 2004.

Youngsters from Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, India, Mexico, Mozambique, Spain and Uruguay are attending the camp from Oct. 22 to Nov. 2.

The participants are selected in each country by representatives of the Universal Forum of Cultures Foundation, taking into consideration their leadership qualities and their commitment to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, the director of the Montevideo city government’s Secretariat for Children, Gonzalo Reboledo, told IPS.

The children, who include youngsters orphaned by the war of secession that tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and members of the lowest castes in India, wrote a declaration opposing the wall the United States is building along its border with Mexico. They will make their statement public when they get home, and hand over copies to international organisations.

“We heard about the wall when we came here, and we decided to write a protest letter, because that kind of thing doesn’t contribute to peace,” Whitney Merlin, a 15-year-old Chilean who promoted the initiative, told IPS while showing off the wrist bands she had been given by other participants, in the colours of the various nations represented.

The teenagers were visited by municipal authorities who were taking part in the 1st Ibero-American forum of local governments on Oct. 26-27.

The forum was attended by mayors of cities in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The theme of the meeting was the role of local governments in the management of migration flows and the effects they have at places of departure and reception.

The meeting of municipal authorities ended with a declaration, an action plan on migration which will be presented to the Summit, and an agreement to create a Coalition of Latin American and Caribbean Cities against Racism, Discrimination and Xenophobia.

“It’s impossible to fight inequality without understanding that discrimination must be tackled, too,” the Montevideo city government’s director of Social Development, Félix González, said at the forum.

In their final statement, the Ibero-American municipal authorities expressed their opposition to the law approved by the U.S. Congress to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

The signatories stated that the phenomenon of migration, far from being dealt with from a security perspective, should be approached in a comprehensive manner, based on international cooperation and attention to the economic, social and cultural causes of migration flows.

On Monday a debate on “The hidden face of migration: Twenty-first century slavery?” was held in Montevideo, organised by the Uruguayan government and the International Organisation for Migration, in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund and the European Union.

On Wednesday and Thursday, an Ibero-American business forum will take place in the tourist resort of Punta del Este. The executives will draft their own document to be presented to the heads of state and government at the Summit.

In Piriápolis, another resort city in the east of the country, the 2nd Ibero-American civil society meeting will draw representatives of 70 non-governmental organisations on Thursday and Friday.

This gathering, under the theme “Down with the walls: Migration for the development of all people”, has been convened by the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry and the Ibero-American General Secretariat.

The issue of migration also took centre stage at the 3rd Latin American forum on “memory and identity”, held in Montevideo Oct. 26-29, which was attended by representatives of indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants’ organisations, academics, leaders of social movements and cultural institutions.

“We must remember that every minute, one Latin American leaves his or her country,” psychologist Néstor Ganduglia, academic director of the Signo Interdisciplinary Centre which organised the forum, told IPS. Very often, “when these people arrive at their destination, not only do they not find what they were expecting, that is, the well-being that their own country failed to provide for them, but they also find that they have been uprooted. They lose social recognition in terms of citizenship, or worse still, they suffer from a situation of illegality in which they have to avoid being caught by the authorities,” he added.