Enlazando Alternativas

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Finally, the Enlazando Alternativas Peoples' Summit is over! With about 15 or 20 Friends of the Earth people from Latin America and Europe, we spent an absolutely crazy week in Lima, between Tribunal, self-organized activites, plenaries, and all the other side-activities (such as drinking Pisco Sour over a heated disussion on neoliberalism and Europe's historical debt)

Enlazando Alternativas

Parallel to the EU-Latin American heads of State meeting in Lima, a large network of social movements, NGOs, indigenous communities, activists, development groups....from both continents held the alternative peoples' summit "Enlazando Alternativas" in Lima. While the heads of States were trying to advance on association and trade agreements, we discussed alternatives with less disastrous impacts on people and environment.
After weeks of thinking that we would have to hold the peoples' summit on the streets of Lima because the peruvian government considered all of us terrorists or at least criminals and prevented us from finding a location, we were finally allowed to hold our activities in the University of Engineering. (I guess the peruvian government finally thought that we WOULD actually hold the summit on the street).
I have never seen so much police presence near a University - we were even checked at the gate. But - thankfully - everything stayed peaceful - or at least I haven't seen any violence. Even the march on the final day - which never received any official permission as far as I know - went without incidents. Peruvian riot police looks pretty intimidating, and they were blocking many many streets on the Plaza 2 de Mayo, where the final act took place. As "special guests", many of the international participants were corralled into a tiny space directly in front of the stage - had a riot broken out, we would have been in big big trouble - no escape routes. But the way it was, it wasn't more scary than the G8 in Rostock.

Tribunal

The Tribunal against european companies in Latin America was the star of the alternative summit, and the part that received most media attention. I should know, for some reason and without it being really intended from my side, I ended up as one of the press coordinators of the whole thing. This basically meant that we (together with Carlos and the Radio Mundo Real team from REDES) had all the effort of preparing a press dossier in spanish and english, with summaries of all the 20 cases presented (that would not be that difficult if people would send their case documentation in time. And complete. They didn't), that we were the first people called by journalist for interviews (also not that bad, if the 10 jury members and the about 30 witnesses for the cases would have had phones, or would at least have stayed in one place. They didn't. As it were, I spent much time running around trying to organize interview between press and people I hadn't seen in the last 17 hours, or hadn't seen at all yet.), that I also gave many spontaneous interviews myself without having time to get nervous about them beforehand (was I ever afraid of TV interviews? Did I ever say I couldn't do interviews in spanish? Who cares! And I didn't even prepare soundbites....), and that in between we tried to send information out to journalists and other lists (and that is a challenge, with no computer, and an unstable internet connection, meaning no internet connection for half of the time that I actually managed to lay my hands on somebody else's computer....).
In summary: it was a lot of crazy work; I have no idea how much press coverage we actually got since I haven't had the chance to do a media search yet - all I can say is that there was a lot of press there - including european press; and I learned a lot. And fortunately I didn't do it alone (three big cheers and applause for Carlos and the rest of the great Radio Mundo Real team - check coverage at the english site www.realworldradio.fm - don't forget to check out the second, 3rd and further pages for info and audio coverage of all the cases presented at the Tribunal)

Agrofuels

Ha, but that wasn´t all, was it? I also made my apparition as Friends of the Earth Europe's agrofuel expert in a workshop organized mainly by Carlos and me (another big cheers to Carlos! A todo esto, no tengo tu celular de Urugay conmigo, me mandas un text?), but with attendance and presentatins of about 17000 other organizations. With all the carzy Tribunal stuff, I didn't even have time to prepare my presentation, which makes passing as a expert even more difficult. But with some late night preparation with some stuff which thankfully, FoEEs real agrofuel expert Adrian had sent me, plus our newest pulication on the issue, it went quite well. I even think nobody noticed that I don't really have a clue on the subject. Maybe it was also because people didn't understand my spanish and just though I was saying clever things (I tried to put on a clever face together with the presentation). So overall, I think the workshop went quite well. And I do know a lot of things about agrofuels now....
(By yhe way, I was better prepared for my presentation than Mario from FoE Guatemala - he said he didn't even know he had to give one, even though we had contacted him ages ago....luckily he passed by the workshop just in time, and since he did have enough background knowledge on agrofuels and a latino-style capacity for giving unprepared speeches, that also went quite well)

People

Looking back, I still can't say if I am compltely satisfied with the summit and the Tribunal or if there were things that could have been better - I need some more vacation to think about it - but I can definitely say that the best thing about Lima was meeting all the people. From the Friends of the Earth network, from other networks, people I had met before and was happy seeing again, people I hadn't met before and am very happy having met now, people I just had discussions and drinks with, people I developed new work ideas with, many many wonderful people! I'll definitely come home completely inspired....if I manage to keep all the great new ideas in my head. Maybe I should write them down.

Lima

And a word or two about Lima. Although in my view, it doesn't deserve many words, unless it is to describe it's ugliness. Ugly, huge, dirty, full of smog, dangerous - what more do you want? Admittedly, I didn't have much time to really look around and find some more beautiful areas, and once the summit was over, I didn't feel like staying on. Anyway, Lima is not a plae I would want to return to.

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