Social leaders belonging to the Hemispheric Social Alliance gathered in Quito to discuss the implications of the current global financial crisis and the actions that the peoples of the continent should take.

Social leaders belonging to the Hemispheric Social Alliance from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile gathered in Quito – coinciding with the G20 meeting in Washington - to discuss the implications of the current global financial crisis and the actions that the peoples of the continent should take.

Among the attendants were: the Minister of Coordination of Economic Policies of Ecuador, Pedro Paez; the Senator of the Alternative Democratic Pole of Colombia, Jorge Enrique Robledo; and the Bolivian Ambassador in Ecuador, Juan Javier Zárate. All of them presented their views on the topic.

The participants stressed that the space to look for solutions to the crisis is not the G20, but all countries in the world, in consultation with their peoples. They discussed broadly on the importance of the crisis to poor countries, the causes that led to the current situation, who is responsible for the crisis and the need to find an alternative solution to the one the big superpowers are developing, in which the impoverished countries of the South are the ones to ‘pay for the broken dishes’.

The view of the social and political leaders is that the current problems of the financial system are the result of a crisis of the global economic model. To the evident ideological failure of neoliberalism must follow a political struggle in those countries where their governments insist with their implementation, despite the indisputable negative results that they have had for the people, they concluded.

In this sense, the importance of the processes of external debt auditing and the right of countries not to pay the debt that is illegitimate was pointed out.

Moving forward with a proposal, they worked in a plan to be discussed with the organizations of the HSA across Latin America, with the aim of submitting it first to the heads of state of Latin America that will meet in Bahia, Brazil in December. Moreover, they agreed to take action and mobilize against the causes of the crisis as well as to enlighten social movements on the concrete implications for them of the crisis.

Translated into Spanish by IFIs Latin American Monitor