QUITO,
November 13 (PL).—Student leaders from some 20
nations are today discussing here the problems and
challenges of youth in the 15th Latin American and
Caribbean Congress of Students (LACCS).
The close to 3,000 delegates are to
meet in commissions to look at current issues such
as regional unity, the anti-imperialist struggle,
rejecting U.S. militarist policies and the making of
new human beings.
Under the slogan "United, Latin
America will win," the Congress includes an anti-imperialist
tribunal, which will hear testimonies of human
rights violations and of the unjust incarceration of
five Cubans for combating terrorism.
Irma González, the daughter of René
González, one of the five anti-terrorist fighters,
affirmed that she is to describe how her father and
the four other comrades were sentenced to terms of
up to double life in a rigged trial full of
arbitrariness.
At last night’s opening of the
conference, Sebastián Cevallos, president of the
Ecuadorian Federation of University Students (FEUE),
highlighted the need for young people to move into
the vanguard of the regional integration process.
He noted that crises, poverty and
destitution more than ever link the peoples of Latin
America and that this 15th Congress must pose the
challenges for youth in the current circumstances.
Cevallos called on youth to take the
route of change, of the transformation of the
peoples to attain a free and sovereign region.
Organized by the Continental
Organization of Latin American and Caribbean
Students (OCLAE), the meeting brings together
students from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru,
Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti,
Cuba, the United States, Mexico, Panama and Ecuador.
Founded in 1966, the OCLAE is
presided over by the Cuban Federation of University
Students, and groups together 38 organizations.
