Venezuela proposes creation of critical research network at ALBA-TCP Meeting with Research Institutes of the Global South

Minister of People’s Power for Foreign Affairs Jorge Arreaza proposed on Monday the creation of a critical research network to being forward proposals and documents for the decision-making of governments and popular movements at a meeting of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) with Research Institutes of the Global South.

The Venezuelan foreign minister explained that research done by this network would be handed to presidents of governments or groups that get organized for social protest in bother countries or that have the possibility of achieving political power, and stressed that this research must be aimed at decision-making.

“It’s not enough to think and reflect. We have to take actions,” he said.

The head of the Bolivarian diplomacy said that governments and peoples expect thinkers to be really structured and help them get organized to draw up, plan and execute these policies.

Arreaza highlighted that “we need critical human beings, capable of observing and transforming their reality,” and said that the battle of ideas is the preferable scenario of the struggle waged in the world, because thanks to them, it is possible for “our projects to win by the people’s will.”

Foreign Minister Arreaza, a researcher at the Samuel Robinson Institute, pointed out it is important to think as a whole, in a coordinated fashion, and visualize a post-capitalist world where values such as humanity, the Mother Earth, solidarity, equality and social justice prevail.

He said that an insurgent, rebel theory is necessary to make decisions different from the logic of the hegemonic model. He remarked classic theories such as Marxism and historical dialectic materialism are also necessary, but they are not enough as an original, popular thought becomes necessary.

“We need to create a network, and not only achieve great reflections and analysis, but to propose paths, concrete routes of actions to move forward with the utopia or magical illusion that a better world is possible,” he said.

Finally, Foreign Minister Arreaza urged the 47 intellectuals from 19 research institutes from America, Africa and Europe to take into consideration that the organizer of this meeting, ALBA-TCP, is an insurgent alliance within the unifying mechanisms of the peoples that goes beyond the population of its nine member states, that goes beyond Latin America and the Caribbean, and that embraces all the peoples of the Global South and summons them for life and social justice.