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).