SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – It has been a jittery few months for countries in South America. There have been protests and demonstrations in cities in Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay. According to Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, many of these protests are the work of the Foro de São Paulo (Sao Paulo Forum), a group of leftist political parties from Latin America.
“São Paulo Forum, with the PT, and the FARC and leftist parties in Latin America and the Caribbean as its front, aims to seize power in all countries of the region. It’s more alive than ever!” said the Brazilian leader in his social media accounts.
The statement was accompanied by a video in which Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says the organization’s plan ‘is being fulfilled’.
“We are not free from these dictators who insist, via acts of vandalism and terrorism, to regain what they lost at the polls,” the president said last week in Japan while on an official visit.
According to Bolsonaro, the conflicts taking place in South America are motivated by the ‘left trying to obtain and regain power’.
Over the weekend, it was Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the President sons, who made a jab at the group, stating that “the São Paulo Forum continues with its plan to bring instability to all of Latin America”.
Bolsonaro’s guru, philosophizer Olavo de Carvalho, also warned the Brazilian president of the dangers of the group, “Either the president acts NOW to close the parties belonging to the São Paulo Forum and make them pay for the unpunished crimes committed by this organization, or they will overthrow him in six months,” he wrote on his social media.
Rodrigo Gallo, professor of International Relations at the Mauá Institute of Technology, however, does not believe that it is possible to make a direct association between the demonstrations that took place in several Latin American countries and the São Paulo Forum.
“We can go as far as to say that a part of the protesters may be linked with the Forum’s member parties, but it would be an exaggeration to credit such large, multi-state protests to a single group” he was quoted as saying by daily Gazeta do Povo.
“It is a fact that some parties linked to the São Paulo Forum supported the demonstrations. However, if we look at the protests, we see that they include various sectors of civil society in their respective countries – which speak out against various government decisions. So, I believe a myth has been created about this organization, which does not correspond with its real scope,” added Gallo.
The São Paulo Forum was created in 1990 by, among other leaders, former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
The group has as members several popular and left-wing parties and social movements from Latin America and the Caribbean.
According to its members, the Forum discusses “alternatives to the neoliberal view of economics and politics”, exchanging experiences and knowledge about social policies.
Since its creation, the Forum has been severely criticized by right wing groups. The criticism has surged in the last few months, with the deterioration of the political and economic crisis in Venezuela and the recent bloody protests in Chile.
In Brazil, federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro announced in June that he had signed a request for the creation of a Congressional Inquiry Committee (CPI) to investigate the São Paulo Forum. Days later, Guru Carvalho said that a CPI focusing onthe group was ‘a most urgent and important thing’.
In July, the Forum held its 25th meeting in Caracas Venezuela where in its final declaration it promised, among other things, to support Argentina’s then-presidential candidate Alberto Fernandez and his vice-president, Cristina Kirchner, in this year’s elections. Fernandez and Kirchner have been declared winners in this past weekend’s presidential race.
“The defeat of Macri and neoliberalism in Argentina would be a triumph of our American integration and would again encourage struggles and resistance in the rest of the countries,” read the statement issued by the Forum in July.
But among right-wing supporters there is growing concern about another left-wing entity: The Puebla Group. The group, say critics, is the successor of the São Paulo Forum and has the same objective: to implement socialism and communism in the continent.
Created days before the Forum Conference in July in the city of Puebla, Mexico, the group has, among its founders, socialist politicians from Latin America, including former presidents from Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, Ecuador’s ex-president, Rafael Correa, former Paraguayan leader, Fernando Lugo, as well as newly elected Argentinian president, Alberto Fernandez. Also among its leaders is former Spanish President Jose Luis Zapatero.
The most visible difference between the Puebla Group and the São Paulo Forum is the absence of Cuba and Venezuela among its members.