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As world leaders arrive in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to participate in the Group of 20 Summit, social movements, and popular sectors continue to organize a counter-summit under the banner "No to the G20, Out with the IMF."
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"Today there is no Latin American agenda in the G20. There is no common agenda for Argentina, Brazil, or Mexico," Cecilia Nahon, former Argentine ambassador to the United States and participant in the counter-summit told the No G20 Assembly.
"In a previous stage Brazil and Argentina worked together in the G20 and represented a position that questioned and sought to transform the unfair rules of the international financial system, of the system of international commerce, and sought to generate more convenient and strategic rules for our peoples, to promote policies of inclusion and development, and the struggle against fiscal paradises," Nahon said.
Latin American integration has sustained several blows, most recently the attacks on the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), which was the only South American integration body with no U.S. presence.
According to her when President Mauricio Macri launched the G20 last year he had said it had a "Latin American character and would represent the entire region but that is totally false." She argues the decision to hold the summit on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 reveals the lack of a regional perspective. "It is the same day when, in Mexico, the outgoing President (Enrique) Peña Nieto will transfer power to the new president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador."
"Today what we have is a region that accepts in a passive, divided and submissive way an agenda that is the agenda of the great powers that are fighting amongst themselves, a financialization agenda, an agenda of deregulation, and of liberalization (of markets) because (U.S. President Donald)Trump has protectionist policies but only for him, for the rest of the world he wants open markets," Nahon stressed.
Social movements and organizations have organized a national day of demonstrations to reject the G20, the deal President Macri signed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the payment of Argentina's foreign debt, Trump's presence and state repression.
As part of the events that have been organized in the framework of the "No to the G20, Out with the IMF" on Tuesday there is a forum on feminist economics and resistance against financial capitalism and corporate power, and a working group on the right to food and nutrition.
Daniel Menendez, of Somos-Barrios de Pie (We Are Standing Neighborhoods), explained the No G20 group is "space for popular movements to stand up against what the G20 represents but it is also a space for the opposition at a local level."
Several unions, including the Confederation of Workers in the Popular Economy (CTEP) and Argentina's General Confederation of Workers (CGT) are taking part in the counter-summit.
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