3000 Voices from Latin America:
The “Latin American Statement for Education for All”[1]

 Rosa-María Torres [2]

Since April 2000 and until the end of 2001, nearly three thousand people have signed the “Latin American Statement for Education for All”, a six-page document that was presented at, and prepared on the occasion of, the World Education Forum (Dakar, 26-28 April, 2000). Several elements make this an innovative, valuable and promising experience:

The initiative: This is an endogenous initiative, born from Latin American concerns, perceptions and needs, drafted, organized and mobilized by Latin Americans -- although support from other regions has been stimulated and welcome. The Statement was drafted and initially circulated in Spanish, and later translated into Portuguese (for internal dissemination in Brazil) and into English (for wider international dissemination). The process has been conducted on a voluntary basis, without any financial support. All the following – intellectual ownership, professional and financial independence, use of our own communication languages – are important claims in a region that has started to reject the homogeneous education reform “recipe” and to show the need to recuperate our own rich educational tradition and our own capacities to think, decide and solve our own problems.  

The signers: This is not – as many may think – an NGO initiative. Signers come from a wide spectrum of sectors and institutions: government, political parties, academic centers, public and private schools, NGOs, teacher unions, student associations, grassroots and indigenous organizations, mass media, churches, private enterprise, and international agencies. Names are organized by countries and in alphabetical order within each country. Someone who is not familiar with this region may see here nothing else but a list of names. However, the list includes an unusual concentration of some of the most important (and often conflictive) national and regional actors in the educational arena. Signers include Minister and ex-Ministers of Education, politicians, rectors of public and private universities, university professors, specialists and researchers, students, government officials, writers, artists, school headmasters and supervisors, community leaders and promoters, journalists and communicators, classroom teachers, and ordinary citizens.

The content: Signers agree to sign a document that is both critical and propositional. It reflects a growing dissatisfaction in the region not only with the state of the art of education systems but of education reform and of international co-operation for this purpose. Despite perennial school reform efforts, accentuated over the 1990s in the framework of growing technical and financial presence from international agencies – and from the banks, in particular—the expected improved quality and equity in education are not tangible.

On the other hand, there is the “Cuban case”. Cuba is the only country in the region that does not have a loan from the World Bank and that has not followed current mainstream recommendations for education reform, and yet it has got the best achievement results in a comparative regional study that measured language and mathematical skills among primary school students. This should make us re-consider some of the accepted assumptions behind the contemporary education reform model. 

At the turn of the century, this region is crossed by three supranational educational projects, initiated at different moments and with different deadlines, run in a rather parallel and uncoordinated manner, and competing for time, resources and visibility:

(a)     the Major Project for Education (1979-2000), a regional project co-ordinated by UNESCO, which came to a close in 2000, and will be reactivated for another 15 years (2001-2016), as agreed during the PROMEDLAC VII Ministerial Meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia (March 2001);

(b)    the Education for All global initiative (1990-2000), now ratified in Dakar (April 2000) and its goals postponed until 2015; and

(c)     the Plan of Universal Access to Education (1994-2010), part of an ongoing hemispheric initiative organized and led by the United States, and launched at the First Summit of the Americas (Miami, 1994).

The process: The experience with the LAC Statement is a good example of the use of modern information and communication technologies for public awareness, democracy and consensus building, in this case around education. The entire process has been conducted on-line, through a special e-mail account operating from Argentina and two web sites operating in co-ordination from both Argentina and Mexico. Follow up has included regular updates of signatures and periodic electronic feedback to the list of signers and information sharing on EFA follow up and other relevant documents (nearly 200 communications have been sent so far). Along the way, other web sites and many printed publications in the various countries have contributed to disseminate the document and the experience, thus reaching many of those who do not have access to e-mail or the internet. Increasingly, teachers have joined in; many of them explain that they have decided to open an e-mail account and learned to use it in order to get access to the Latin American Statement.

On February 26, 2001, an “Open letter to Ministers of Education” was sent by e-mail to all Ministries of Education in the region, with the text and signatures of the Latin American Statement attached. This was the week prior to the PROMEDLAC VII meeting in Cochabamba (March, 2001), where the evaluation of the Major Project and a new regional education plan fore the next 15 years would be discussed. In many countries, Statement signers reported that they made sure the documents reached their Ministers and official delegations going to Cochabamba. The initiative had an important impact. During the meeting, there were various references to the LAC Statement. Moreover, in one of the private Ministerial sessions, where Ministers were discussing the final Declaration, a Vice-Minister of Education read some paragraphs – those referred to international aid and to the need for inter-agency collaboration – and proposed to adopt them in the final Declaration.

At the end of Octuber 2001 we held our First Face-to-Face Encounter of Signers of the Latin-American Statement, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, during the World Education Forum (Porto Alegre, 24-27 October, 2001). We agreed there that the very development and expansion of this virtual community made it neccesary to move to a new, decentralized phase. We are currently structuring the network and organizing national networks and coordination responsibilities.

What now, what next?

A virtual community? A network? A movement? It started as a document and it became a process. It was meant to be signed by a group of 40-50 selected and ‘notorious’ Latin Americans, and the very process showed the possibility of expanding it into a wider and more democratic platform. It started as a six-page text and it is now a 70-page text, enriched with comments  that are sent by my many of the people who sign.

Although it emerged within the EFA framework and with the opportunity of the EFA final decade assessment, the Statement and the 2000 people who have signed it so far (many more if we consider that many sign in representation of their organizations or institutions) are concerned not only with basic education but with education and learning in a broad sense, and in the context of the overall economic, social and political situation and prospects of our countries and region.

Whether this initial stage is the preamble to something more organic and/or institutionalized - a network, a movement-  will depend very much on ourselves but also on our conditions. The possibilities and the limitations of internet connectivity as well as of voluntary work and financial independence are part of those conditions. One thing is clear, however: the diversity of our realities and of this very group will not admit single routes that are applicable to all.  In any case, wherever we move from here, this initial period and process have shown all of us a lesson of great importance for the future: each of us knows that we are many; that critical voices, professional competencies and committed enthusiasm for change abound in this region and are everywhere, in academic, governmental and non-governmental, public and private, national and international institutions; and that, despite our many differences, we can agree on some key, foundational issues and objectives on which to build together a better common future for our countries and region. 

Buenos Aires, December 12, 2001