FSFLA (Free Software Foundation Latin America) was created in 2005 and on July 14/20 they had their first meeting during the 5th Free Software National Congress in Caracas, Venezuela. This meeting brought together the board members, Adres Castelblanco (Colombia), Octavio Rossell (Venezuela), Alexandre Oliva (Brasil), Quiliro Ordóñez (Ecuador) and Oscar Valenzuela (chile), as well as the president of FSF Richard Stallman and the observers Esteban Saavedra (Bolivia) and Daniel Yucra(Perú).

During the meeting each member presented an update about the progress of Free Software(FS) in their country, considering activies in the governments, in the industry, in companies and in the society as well as events related to FS.

At the end of the meeting FSFLA released the Caracas Declaration. An historic document and very important for the progress of free software in the region. Is an open letter calling for international and community cooperation between the Latin America countries to promote Free Software in the region through the education and respect for the rights and freedoms to use, study, modify and distribute FS.

Some quotes:

On local communities and Free Software:

We invite Latin American communities and their members to disseminate all their activities and overall their success cases, for knowledge of all local achievements at an international level will serve to exemplify with facts the benefits of Freedom, encouraging other communities to imitate them.

On Free Software and Latin American States

All that states produce in terms of Software is citizens’ property and thus a public good, that must be vailable to the people, respecting the essential Freedoms of Free Software. Furthermore, these public goods must keep their function of serving citizens and must be published under terms that promote the interests of the nations and of society. We summon governments to publish software they develop and use, under licenses that not only respect, but also defend and promote the appropriate values for all its users, that is, Free Software and Copyleft licenses, that make the freedoms inseparable from the software.

Governments of Latin America: promote a culture of respect for Software Freedom, breaking the social inertia that induces governments and people to give up their freedoms, enabling them to generate a society that is freer, more equitable and just.

On Education and Free Software:

We issue a call for the promotion, among students, of values towards society, fomenting in them the cooperation and the will to share with their neighbor through the use of Free Software, since the use of Proprietary Software turns sharing and collaboration into a crime, and restricts the Freedom to learn by not permitting access to the knowledge about how the Software is built.

Mercosur is the South American largest trad bloc, the full members are Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay (Venezuela application for full membership is still under process) with the associate members: Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The 37th summit of Mercosur took place in Paraguay during July 23/24.

This was the ‘governments summit’ where the leaders from each country met to discuss trades and resolve conflicts while focusing on the welfare and development of the continent. An article from Buenos Aires Heraldsuch points out some high marks from the summit such as an unified stand in defense of democratic institutions, as a result of the condemnation of the military coup in Honduras and the demand for Zelaya to be put back in his position. Also, Brazil and Paraguay finally came to an agreement about Itaipu’s power plant, increasing Paraguay’s profits which was more than fair since they were selling power way below the market price to Brazil for decades. A deal that was made during Paraguay and Brazill’s dictatorships.

A couple of days before the Mercosur’s summit, took place the Mercosur Social and Solidarity Program Summit. Where NGO’s and social movements could meet and debate a common agenda of actions to be taken by each group in their respective countries. The topics where divided by tables of discussion, where the Table 6 debated about “New IT’s, Digital Inclusion and Education”, each country presented the results of their work and all of them had projects using free software.

The final resolution recommend the governments members of Mercosur to support the Law Project presented to PARLASUR (Mercosur Parliament) which proposes the adoption of Free Software with emphasis on education to achieve social inclusion throughout the region. They propose to the governments of the region to choose policies that use free and open technologies such as free softwares to guarantee the digital inclusion and sovereignty of the countries. To move forward against the current monopoly of the media and this way guarantee the participation of the community media specially those with education programs. You can read their full resolution here(spanish only).