São Paulo Forum is a conference of left-wing political parties and organizations from the Americas, primarily Latin America and the Caribbean. It was launched by the Workers' Party (Portuguese: Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT) of Brazil in 1990 in the city of São Paulo.
The Forum of São Paulo was constituted in 1990, when the Brazilian Workers' Party approached other parties of Latin America and the Caribbean to debate the new international scenario after the fall of the Berlin Wall and rising adoption of some economic liberalization policies implemented at the time by right-leaning governments in the region. The stated main objective of the conference was to argue for alternatives to neoliberalism.
The first meeting held in São Paulo in July 1990 was attended by members of 48 parties and organizations from Latin American and the Caribbean. The original name given to the meeting was Meeting of Left and Anti-imperialist Parties and Organizations of Latin America (Portuguese: Encontro de Partidos e Organizações de Esquerda e Anti-imperialistas da América Latina). Since the 1991 meeting in Mexico City, it started being alternately called Foro de São Paulo in reference to the location of the first meeting. Subsequent meetings have been hosted by many of the parties throughout the region.
Contents
Political stance
According to FSP, more than 100 parties and political organizations participate in its conferences today. Their political positions vary across a wide spectrum, which includes: social-democratic parties, left-wing grassroots labor and social movements inspired by the Catholic Church, ethnic and environmentalist groups, anti-imperialist and nationalist organizations, communist parties, and armed guerrilla forces. The latter, however, is true only so far as one is willing to think of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia as an actual member of the FSP, when actually the FARC, although never formally banned from the Forum, have been barred from participating in its meetings as early as 2005, when they were refused admittance to that year's meeting of the FSP in São Paulo.
These groups differ on a range of topics which go from the use of armed force in revolutions to the support of representative democracy. The Communist Party of Cuba, for example, has adopted a single-party system for decades, while Brazil's Workers' Party (PT) supports and participates in a multi-party system of representative democracy. Some parties such as Chile's Social Convergence advocate for radical democracy, participatory democracy, and workplace democracy instead of representative democracy as a primary value. These differences grant special relevance to FSP's final declarations, released at the end of each conference, which state the collective position of its members.
Ever since FSP's first meeting (1990), the Declaration which was approved expressed the participants' "willingness to renew leftist and socialist thought, to reaffirm its emancipating character, to correct mistaken conceptions, and to overcome all expressions of bureaucratism and all absence of true social and massive democracy."
The first Declaration manifests "an active compromise with the validity of human rights, of democracy and of popular sovereignty as strategic values, which place the constant challenge of leftist, socialist and progressive forces renewing their thoughts and actions."
At the second conference (Mexico, 1991), FSP expanded its objectives to add the proposal of working toward Latin American integration, an interchange of experiences, the discussion of the political left's differences and searching for consensus in action. The following conferences reinstate the participants' willingness to exchange experiences and develop a dialogue, while at the regional and continental level FSP's influence grows, with some of its members achieving electoral success and their candidates reaching the presidency of many countries.
Participants
In government
The following countries are currently being governed by leaders and member parties of the Foro de São Paulo:
Brazil – Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers' Party/Brazil of Hope) (2023–present)
Cuba – Miguel Díaz-Canel (Communist Party of Cuba) (2021–present)
Dominican Republic – Luis Abinader (Modern Revolutionary Party) (2020–present)
Mexico – Claudia Sheinbaum (Morena) (2024–present)
Nicaragua – Daniel Ortega/Rosario Murillo (Sandinista National Liberation Front) (2007/2025–present)
Saint Lucia – Philip J. Pierre (Saint Lucia Labour Party) (2021–present)
Uruguay – Yamandú Orsi (Movement of Popular Participation/Broad Front) (2025–present)
Venezuela – Delcy Rodríguez (United Socialist Party of Venezuela/Great Patriotic Pole) (2026–present)
As part of a ruling coalition
Guatemala – Winaq (2024–present)
Meetings and organization
Meetings were held in São Paulo (1990), Mexico City (1991), Managua (1992), Havana (1993), Montevideo (1995), San Salvador (1996), Porto Alegre (1997), Mexico City (1998), Managua (2000), Havana (2001), Antigua Guatemala (2002), Quito (2003), São Paulo (2005), San Salvador (2007), Montevideo (2008), Mexico City (2009), Buenos Aires (2010), Managua (2011), Caracas (2012), São Paulo (2013), La Paz (2014), Mexico City (2015), San Salvador (2016), Managua (2017), Havana (2018), Caracas (2019) and Brasília (2023).
The Foro's chief authority is its meeting itself. Between meetings, the Foro is represented by an Executive Group (Grupo de Trabalho) composed of a sample of its overall membership that usually meets thrice a year as well as by an Executive Secretariat (Secretariado Executivo).