FINAL DECLARATION – PEOPLE’S SUMMIT 2019
Between 2-7 December 2019, hundreds of organizations, women, men, Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, migrant communities, farmers, peasants, workers, young people and children – from Chile, Latin America and the world – were part of the Peoples Summit held at the University of Santiago de Chile.
Amid a country in a state of rebellion, mobilised against an unjust and predatory neoliberal system, and in the face of a violent and abusive state, the public University, fully fulfilling its role, opened the doors for us to debate about the planetary crisis and its multiple expressions – social and environmental, national and territorial; to share our struggles, our denunciations and demands; and to imagine together the possibility of another world.
More than 40 activities – panels, workshops, councils, conversations and other formats – self-organised by participating organizations, two permanent spaces – the Women’s Tent and the Village of Peace – artistic-cultural activities as well as the panels and plenaries of the Peoples’ Summit welcomed the active participation of around 1,500 accredited compañeros and compañeras (comrades).
From the fraternal experience lived and shared during these 5 days, the organizations of the People’s Summit declare the following:
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We reiterate our commitment to the peoples of Chile and other Latin American countries that have risen against structural injustices, the usurpation and privatization of common goods, social precariousness, structural violence against women, systemic racism, and the violation of rights of the neoliberal system; and we demand justice in cases of deaths and human rights violations with which states have responded to these mobilizations.
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We support the demands of social movements and territorial assemblies demanding a true Constituent Assembly in Chile, made up entirely of citizens, and without privileges for political parties, which considers gender parity and significant quotas for indigenous peoples.
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We do not conceive of a constitutional process that answers to the rules of a political-electoral system that has been one of the pillars of the Chilean neoliberal model, and whose political class has shown a new demonstration of subordination to business interests through the actions of the Chamber of Deputies and the creation of the so-called “anti-looting” law, which includes articles that openly criminalize the legitimate social protest.
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We support the aspirations of organizations and communities in Chile to establish a political constitution endowed with the principles of plurinationality, feminism, and the recognition of the rights of nature.
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In the framework of the climate negotiations at the COP25 climate talks in Madrid:
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We condemn the fact that the COP25 presidency was retained by the Government of Sebastian Piñera, responsible for assassinations, torture, rapes, mutilations, injuries, humiliation, arbitrary detentions and other human rights violations committed by State agents.
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We reject the promotion of false solutions to climate change which deepen the crisis and strengthen the model that created it – such as carbon markets, hydroelectricity and other corporate-based energies, carbon sinks based on tree monocultures and agrofuels, industrial energy from forest biomass, incineration, geoengineering and hydraulic fracturing or fracking.
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We demand that effective measures be taken to avoid the corporate capture of the negotiations, as well as for large corporations and the most polluting countries to radically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and pay their fair share for the damages caused, predominantly in the most vulnerable territories.
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We call for greater visibility to climate migration and for the promotion of migration policies through a human rights approach.
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We call for the implementation of a real just transition and truly sustainable solutions, outside of market mechanisms and extractivism, and based on territorial sovereignty, local practices, cultures and economies, on decent working and living conditions, as well as on continuous exchange and solidarity between towns and communities.
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We reject the imposition and expansion of extractivism by governments and international organizations, in collusion with corporate power, which conceive all territories as potential areas of sacrifice, destroys ecosystems, displaces communities, affecting their lifestyles and local economies. This includes the promotion of, and subsidies for, metallic or non-metallic mining, forest plantations, agribusiness and conventional livestock, which also carries a high dose of cruelty towards animals.
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We echo and elevate the demands and claims of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, for the demilitarization of their territories – particularly the Wallmapu; the return of their ancestral lands and the full exercise of their political, social and cultural rights.
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Citing the statement of the Women’s Tent, “we claim the feminist economy as a strategy of resistance and transformation for the lives of women and their communities, as a way of recognizing and valuing the knowledge, domestic work and care that sustains life but which, in this capitalist system, falls on women.”
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We celebrate the strength and active participation of young people and children in the Summit spaces, and recognize the leading role they have played in denouncing the crisis and promoting structural changes.
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We demand the deprivatization of water in Chile, the effective and integral protection of glaciers, the recovery of land for peasants and the promotion agroecological models in territories, and through public policies; free of GMOs and chemical pesticides, based on food sovereignty and the recovery and exchange of products and seeds, as well as prioritizing conservation, regeneration and ecosystem restoration.
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We demand policies and promote community initiatives aimed at generating fairer and friendlier cities, harmonizing the city-countryside relationship, deprivatizing basic services, promoting broad and participatory territorial planning, implementing zero-waste models and sustainable urban mobility systems.
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We demand the radical transformation of energy models to ones based on sovereignty, sufficiency and solidarity; in order to construct clean, decentralized and distributive energy-generation systems through diverse community-based sources.
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We reject the signing of free trade and investment treaties that benefit corporations, violate social rights and undermine local economies and food sovereignty. We demand the final and definitive withdrawal of Trans Pacific Partnership 11 from the Chilean parliament.
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We call for the construction of Latin American and international movements and articulations, integrating ecological and climatic justice organizations, feminists, Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, migrants, workers, peasants, young people, children, in order to stop the model privatising the commons and to raise alternative paradigms like buen vivir and others that flourish from the comsovisions of the peoples.
- Finally, citing the declaration of the Village of Peace, “we invite ourselves to collective co-create ways to relate to nature, and a conscious and loving way to relate to each other. […] We understood the need to incorporate the rights of nature and of all living beings that sustain the planetary fabric, as constituents of our lives and the laws of the peoples.”
Santiago, December 7, 2019
“SAVE THE EARTH, CHANGE THE SYSTEM”
Um dos casos mais tristes da história da Saúde Global é relatado por Ricardo Seitenfus, grande conhecedor do Haiti, que há anos abraçou a causa das vítimas da epidemia de cólera causada por uma desafortunada operação das Nações Unidas. O livro que conta esta história será lançado em São Paulo no dia 17 de dezembro. Trata-se de uma versão atualizada e ampliada da edição francesa. Transcrevo abaixo os textos de contracapa e orelhas da obra que estará na bibliografia dos meus cursos daqui para a frente, por seu caráter fundamental.