The following resolution was developed and voted upon by African delegates from the continent and the diaspora at the World Conference Against Imperialism held in Caracas, Venezuela from January 22- 24, 2020
STRUCTURE
From Venezuela, a country on the anti-imperialist offensive and resistance to the multiple aggressions of U.S. imperialism, in accordance with the agreements of the 25th Sao Paulo Forum, held in July 2019, the International Afro-descendant Congress was held in November of the same year, as part of the 248th anniversary of the assassination of the Afro-Venezuelan Cimarron Guillermo Ribas, leader of the Cumbe de Ocoyta (1768-1771), a self-government that put the colonial power of the time in check.
This congress was attended by 147 leaders of left and progressive parties and movements from 50 countries and 200 national delegates of African descent from different states in Venezuela. A day of debate in 4 working groups resulted in a series of agreements approved by the constitutional president of the Republic Nicolas Maduro Moros, among which are the constitution of the Anti-Imperialist, Afrodescendant and African International Cumbe and the creation of the International Centre for Training and Research on Afrodescendant and African South-South, attached to the Cumbe International to promote political-ideological education.
The imperialist aggression organized and financed from the centers of power with all its technological and non-conventional war machinery needs an organized response from the peoples in resistance who are suffering the attacks caused by the injustices of the capitalist system. That is why in the different sectoral meetings of the Sao Paulo Forum (2019), each one of those instances has organized its response. It is up to the people of African descent to assume their own responsibility.
The unjust international order that was born at the end of the fifteenth century, characterized by an unequal economic-commercial system that had its epicenter in Western Europe, was built on the extermination, submission, and plundering of the original peoples of America and the African population. Undoubtedly, the history of humanity does not record in its annals a genocide of such dimensions. This was recognized by the “Third World Conference against Racism and Racial Discrimination” of 2001 held in Durban, South Africa.
Neoliberalism is part of a project of global domination that seeks to perpetuate the coloniality of power synthesized in American hegemony; through the cultural industry of capitalism, it perpetrates a memorial against the peoples of the world, which is aimed at “justifying” the plundering of the wealth of the peoples, the subjugation of women and the domination of the native people of Africa and its diaspora based on the alleged superiority of some over others. As Brother Malcolm X said: “There is no capitalism without racism.”
Racism is inherent in coups d’etat, political violence, unilateral coercive measures, economic and financial blockades, threats of military intervention, military bases and diplomatic pressure in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, leading to displacement of populations of African descent, racial extermination, increased xenophobia, intolerance, racialization of justice, trafficking in persons and hate crimes.
The organized action of people of African descent has led to the denunciation of the genocide committed by Europe, increased the struggle to overcome structural racism and, with the support of progressive governments, has brought to various multilateral bodies the just demand for reparations for people of African descent and Africans resulting from slavery and colonialism.
The Cumbe Internacional Antiimperialista Afrodescendiente y Africano, is part of this historical current of radical Pan-Africanism initiated in the 20th century, with the Bandung Conference (1955), the creation of the Organization of African States (OAU – 1963), and the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAAL), created in Cuba in (1966). These efforts of alliances and struggles against a common enemy, regained a geopolitical force, first of all by the resistance of the peoples of Africa, Asia and the Americas who maintained with dignity in time despite the blockade and wars, firmly maintaining their self-determination and internationalism in solidarity. The second was the current promoted by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez Frias, beginning with the creation of ALBA, Petrocaribe, Unasur, ASA, and Celac, without the intervention of old and new colonialists.
In Venezuela, birthplace of the Liberator Simon Bolivar and the maroonage against imperialism, the Cumbe Internacional Antiimperialista Afrodescendiente y Africano was born like President Chavez had foreseen, when he expressed the need to contribute to an anti-imperialist articulation between the afrodescendants of the Americas and the Caribbean, in the year 2005 in the International Congress for Afrodescendants and Revolutionary Transformation where he expressed the following: “Beyond Venezuela I am thinking about the integration of Latin America, of this Afro America that is scattered throughout all these lands, in all these waters, and with Cuba we have been making progress in this work also with Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean.”
In Our America and according to ECLAC data, we are approximately two hundred million people of African descent, who in the first decade of the 21st century, contributed to changing the geopolitical map. Chavez in his tricontinental vision, expressed in his last public geopolitical letter sent to the Africa-South America Summit that:
“The empires of the past, guilty of the kidnapping and murder of millions of daughters and sons of Mother Africa, in order to feed a system of slave exploitation in their colonies, sowed in Our America warrior and combative African blood, which burned with the fire that produces the desire for freedom. That sowing germinated, and our land gave birth to men of the highest caliber such as Toussaint Loverture, Alexander Petion, Juan Andres Lopez del Rosario, better known as Andresote, Jose Leonardo Chirino, Pedro Camejo, among many others, resulting in the birth of the Bicentennial of Independence in which a process of independence, unionism, anti-imperialism, and restoration in Latin America and the Caribbean began.”
Hugo Chavez
The International Anti-Imperialist, Afro-descendant and African Cumbe has the mission to link and articulate the Afro-descendant and African anti-imperialist organizations, in order to define collective purposes, to follow up the agreements of the World Meeting against Imperialism that we are celebrating, to promote peace, to fight against neoliberalism racism and against any kind of discrimination, The Cumbe is inspired by identity, solidarity, equality, respect, recognition of plurality, independence, dignity, and brotherhood among peoples.
International Centre for Training and Research on African Descent and South-South Africa
The creation of knowledge, as well as the dynamics of world geopolitics, especially of the imperialist countries and the proposals from the sovereign countries, today is one of the crucial points, whether for domination or for liberation. The planet is at a critical crossroads as never before. Imperialism currently invests billions of dollars in an incessant process of research for the control of human behavior, recolonization, alienation, territorial delocalization, artificial intelligence that has increased the loss of sovereignty of broad sectors of our peoples making them feel that the world is one and global under the slogan of the American Way of Life.
The creation of the International Centre for Training and Research on Afrodescendants and African South-South, has as one of its strategic purposes, apart from the critical history, identity and anti-hegemonic cultural diversity of peoples of African descent, Africans and diaspora in general, to analyze and systematize the various strategies of domination of the empire towards African peoples, Afrodescendants and the diaspora.
The Centre will have a training character, creating a community of afro-epistemological, technological and anti-neoliberal knowledge, both in Africa and in the Diaspora in the South-South perspective. As stated by Mwalimu (master) Julyus Nyerere “Development is a process that enables human beings to use their potential, acquire self-confidence and lead a life of dignity and self-fulfillment. It is a process that frees people from the fear of deprivation and exploitation.”
The International Centre for Training and Research on African Descent and South-South Africa will be based in Caracas and will be linked to research centres for the knowledge revolution for a new humanity under permanent construction with sister centres in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Africa, the African Diaspora in Europe, as well as throughout Our America (South America, Central America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Canada).
ACTION PLAN
- To formally install the world organizational structure of the Cumbe International Afrodescendant and African in the framework of the World Meeting against Imperialism.
- Advance in the articulation of the International Centre for Training and Research on African and African descent with the various institutes and centres part of the Cumbe International through a letter of intent.
- Meeting of international jurists on the theme of Reparations from 21st to 24th of March
- Signing of an agreement between the Cumbe Internacional and academic institutions: Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC), National Experimental University of the Arts (UNEARTE) and the Center for International Studies for Decolonization in the framework of the Closing of the International Seminar on Reparations, January 31, 2020.
- Creation of the Pan-Africanist Library in Venezuela, which will operate at the Cumbe headquarters, in cooperation with Cumbe organizations and the Wanafrica publishing house.
- To hold the first meeting of the Regional Undersecretaries, within the framework of the Pan-Africanist Congress planned for May 2020 in Venezuela
- Creation of a communication network of afro-descendants and Africans that allows us to articulate, to know, and to disseminate our realities, from the Cumbe platform (website, radio, and television), linked in turn with the network of communicators.