Local: 40.503
January 25th 2003
08:30 -12:00

Convocants

Alianza frente al BID - Redbancos - Censat - Cealp - Sobrevivencia - Equipo Pueblo - Ilsa - BIC - ISP - AFL CIO

Justification

One of the major crisis in the Latin-American modern society is the lack of legitimacy of the State and international institutions before the citizens. The credibility that they can generate in the governed seems less and less. The growing number of demonstrations and resistance movements make this evident before processes, which origins are located in the international and national ambits. National and international established orders are in trouble to remain as they have been until now.

The speech of international and national institutions that lead globalisation processes are more and more obsolete and less trustable. In fact, these institutions are not concerned about finding mechanisms that strengthen their speech, since the figures show the almost total defeat of their "efforts" to get socio-economical and environmental standards for most of the population. Decisions are not appropriated by the citizens and still most of their actions are planed and decided in the middle of vague and technocratic instances, for which a ritual has been adopted and mostly followed: some time they are part of the governments, some other period part of the multilateral banking. >From there they come back to validate what has been decided in those instances. That makes them a privileged group in information matters and guaranties their permanence in both positions, generating a ping pong game with always the same players.

The IADB in Latin-American

Many development theorists emerge from these positions that propose models based on failed previous attempts, without either evaluation or search of the responsible for the accumulated failures. Even so, development does not find its multiple identity, it keeps its eternal character of myth. The defeated politics of import substitution and State interventionism have been replaced by politics of structural adjustment (recipe of the Bretton Woods institutions for developing countries) two decades ago in order to lighten the uneasiness that the first caused. At first with the intention of assuring the debt payment and then with the supposed economical forced growing, the same politics have retaken the principles of the basic needs theory. This intends to take into account the survival needs as well as communitarian participation.

In this context, some regional actors, in particular the IADB, has played an important roll in the opening to private capital in some key-economical sectors as well as in the promotion of politics of social development and enforcement of individual capabilities. All this in order to bring about favourable conditions for the foreign private investment.

These social development politics, promoted by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, are in agreement with the structural adjustment politics of the second generation. They have the characteristic that promote focalisation, include gender prospective and human rights. The truth is, in fact, they try to alleviate the effects of the economical politics and leave some useful survivors.

The IADB has carried out its agenda through several documents and mechanisms. Different Politics and Strategies have been designed and applied in the same way in all countries without paying attention to the particular needs. This process is accomplished in close cooperation between representatives of the multilateral bank and national technocrats in secrecy, leaving aside important political actors such as the parliaments. These burocratic procedures make part of a "lying myth" on participation and response to either the needs of the poor or unprotected population thanks to the same politics.

Objective

To encourage the discussion about the ways of operation of these politics and their consequences for the social sectors in Latin-American. To impulse a critical reading of the regional strategies and politics that have been already designed or are to be imposed to our governments.

To cope with that the following myths have been selected: