The leaders of five South American countries, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela attended the meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil with 100,000 activists and indigenous people.
As the self appointed global elites met in Davos, South American leadership chose to participate at the World Social Forum
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a moderate leftist, has previously attended Davos but this year shunned it for Belem and brought with him a dozen cabinet ministers.
His government would invest in industry to create jobs rather than throw public money at banks as Europe and the US had done, he said. "I believe the crisis is much more severe. We don't know how deep it will go."
Latin America still winces at the painful humiliation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund ordering austerity measures in the 1980s and 90s. "Now, I expect the IMF to go to [the US president, Barack] Obama and tell him how to fix the economy," said Lula.
Read More