World Gathering of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity

CARACAS APPEAL

Gathered in Caracas, birthplace of Simon Bolivar, intellectuals and
artists from fifty-two countries and diverse cultures, all agreed to
build a wall of resistance against the project of global domination
that is being imposed on the world today.

We are living in an era in which United Nations decisions are not
respected, international laws have been broken, and the basic
principles of non-intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign
nations ­and the concept of sovereignty itself- has been lost.

The Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war and protection of civilians
have been violated; detainees are tortured and tormented; an illegal
jail has been constructed in the usurped territory of Guantanamo Bay.
The invasion and devastation of Iraq, threats against other nations of
the Middle East, the ongoing martyrdom of the Palestinian people, and
the interventions by Super Powers in Africa, reveal the intention to
impose through blood and fire, a world order based on force.

The objective of many of these aggressions is to appropriate the
natural reserves of hydrocarbons, minerals, water and other elements
of biodiversity of the least developed nations. We support the right
of the people to maintain control over these resources and to repel
expropriating interventions.

The crimes against the Iraqi people show the extreme complicity
between the mass media and governments, who meanwhile declare
themselves as defenders of human rights. The city of Falluja, now
being razed, will
remain
a symbol of heroic resistance in a tragic moment of history.

Part of this hegemonic project is the collection of an illegal foreign
debt and the attempt of economic annexation of Latin America and the
Caribbean, through the FTAA and other trade and financial accords,
damaging possibilities for independence and real development.
Meanwhile, there is increased danger of new forms of intervention and
aggression, in the face of growing social movements and the process of
positive change now taking place in the region.

The notions of "pre-emptive war" and "regime change", proclaimed as
official doctrine by the government of the United States, is used to
threaten all countries that do not submit to imperial interests, or
that have a specific strategic importance. One example is the recent
intervention in Haiti.

Today, as never before, it is necessary to mobilize solidarity with
Venezuela, Cuba, and all popular causes on the continent. We express
our solidarity with the people of Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and all
who resist imperial occupation and aggression.

A crucial component of global opposition to imperialist adventures,
together with those who in Europe, Latin America and other parts of
the world have stood against the war, is undoubtedly mobilizing the
most conscious sectors of the US people. We condemn terrorism and
oppose the political manipulation of the "war against terrorism," and
the fraudulent appropriation of values and concepts such as democracy,
freedom and human rights. We reject that the people’s resistance
struggles be defined as terrorism and the oppressor’s aggressions be
called "war against terror".

While incalculable financial resources are wasted in the military
industrial complex, a silent genocide takes place every day due to
hunger, extreme poverty, curable illnesses and epidemics. The daily
suffering of the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America and the
Caribbean, as a result of the policies promoted by the international
financial institutions, is ignored by those who intend to dominate the
world, and the global elites who benefit from neo-colonial plunder.

The absence of effective proposals for real solutions to these
problems is another sign of the dehumanization that characterizes our
era.

We join the struggles of workers, farmers and all those exploited of
excluded: the unemployed, the first indigenous people of original
cultures (first nation people), people of the African Diaspora,
immigrants, women, sexual minorities, and children without protection,
victims of sex trade.

We support and commit ourselves to the re-vindication of those who
defend their rights and their identity in the face of the totalitarian
and homogenizing intentions of neoliberal globalization.

Lacking basic access to food, medicine, electricity, housing and
potable water, an enormous part of humanity is sacrificed by a system
which exhausts natural resources and destroys the environment through
irrational, wasteful consumerism, and puts the survival of the species
itself at risk.

The vast majority have limited access to education, excluding them
from the benefits of new technologies in information and production of
medicines. The dominant economic system generates the
commercialization of intellectual production, privatizes it, and turns
it into an instrument to perpetuate the concentration of wealth and
the domestication of consciousness. We must stop the WTO, in it’s
obsession to transform the world into commodities by annihilating
cultural diversity.

The concentrated ownership of the mass media has made freedom of
information a fallacy. The power of media, at the service of a
hegemonic project, distorts the truth, manipulates history, foments
discrimination in all forms and promotes a resignation to the current
state of affairs, presenting it as the only possible option.

We need to take the offence through concrete actions. The first of
these, agreed upon at this summit, will be to creating a "network of
networks" of information for artistic action, solidarity, coordination
and mobilization, uniting intellectuals and artists with popular
struggles and Social Forums, guaranteeing the continuation of these
efforts and linking them in an international movement "in defence of
humanity".

It is also essential that we work to counteract the propaganda of the
hegemonic centres and to circulate emancipatory ideas through all
channels: radio and television, the internet, alternative press, film,
media and others, to broadcast coverage on projects of development,
participation and popular education, that they become references in
the reconstruction of the utopias that have made history.

The Venezuelan reality proves that popular mobilization is capable of
giving power to the people, promoting and defending massive
transformations in their interests. We express our gratitude to the
Bolivarian government, to the people of Venezuela and to President
Hugo Chavez for their commitment to the future of this international
movement.

At this hour of great danger, we reaffirm the conviction that another
world is not only possible, but necessary. We reaffirm our commitment
and make an open call to join the struggle for that world with more
solidarity, more unity and more determination. In defence of humanity,
we reaffirm our certainty that the people will have the last word.

Decembre, 2004