The fact that the recently concluded Porto Alegre Social Forum has taken on examples like the real integration of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) is an indication on the region´s new course that is gaining growing recognition in the world.

The world´s social movements met in the Brazilian city to demonstrate their willingness to defend the “construction of another type of integration; solidarity and strengthening the processes of UNASUR and ALBA”.

They have resisted the criteria of the alarming economic situation in Europe and the US, responsible for reducing social programs resulting in increasing poverty, employment, lack of health care and education seriously compromising the future of millions of citizens.

According to the participants of the Forum, this situation is the result of the capitalist system.

We must recall that ALBA and UNASUR are two alternatives that did not emerge at the hands of regimes that support neoliberal positions and much less the hemisphere’s imperial power.

On the contrary, as the case of many other institutions, they include progressive governments created in recent years opposing US intervention in its internal affairs, while the Cuban revolutionary experiences, despite continued pressures from abroad have contributed to the region the determination of not giving in to foreign intervention and fight for unity.

Both ALBA and UNASUR have become spaces where reality, mutual respect, new ideas, no intervention in the affairs of others and eradicating dogmas and narrow mindedness are securing the basis for the new era.

While the peoples participating in Porto Alegre were discussing issues related to the advancement for the present and the future, in Davos, Switzerland site of the meeting with the world’s industrialized economies, many suspiciously referred to Latin America as “oasis with stability, growth and opportunities” while they live times of anguish.

According to the mass media, representatives from this part of the hemisphere carried out long meetings and talks before the insistence of people wanting to quickly establish ties and business with this part of the world rich in natural and human resources.

If no one can deprive themselves at this point of exchanges and transactions with other parts of the world, we cannot forget history and ignore the regrettable times experienced by our nations due to the dependency it had with powerful nations.

Ingenuity can be costly as is manipulation, immobility, the lack of honesty and absence of analysis and honest and internal and external actions.

We must congratulate our region that a world movement like the one held in Brazil has given the green light to the integration of popular and progressive essence linked to the thinking of out most valid and illustrious regional forefathers. By Néstor Núñez