Quito, Sep 28 (Prensa Latina) The 2nd Latin American Progressive Meeting (ELAP, in Spanish), which according to the ruling PAIS Alliance, will strengthen regional integration from a partisan and militant perspective, begins today in Ecuador with the presence of 70 leftist organizations.
The group of speakers and panelists who will speak for three days in the scheduled 13 round tables, include the Argentine sociologist Atilio Borón, the President of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, and the director of International Relations of the Communist Party of Cub, José Ramón Balaguer.

The vice-president of Bolivia, Alvaro García Linera, will also deliver a conference on the political process taking place in his country since the coming to power of President Evo Morales in 2006.

The president of the International Relations Committee of PAIS Alliance Guillaume Long, considered the ELAP 2015, which will be also attended by representatives of leftist parties from Europe and Asia, is an act of integration that comes from the militancy of the movement founded by President Rafael Correa.

Among the guests are also the Cuban Five, who served long prison sentences in the United States, and Colonel Orlando Cardoso Villavicencio, who was imprisoned in Somalia for almost 11 years, after participating in the war in Ethiopia as an internationalist fighter.

The event will be closed by Correa on September 30, when five years of the coup attempt against the Ecuadorian president are marked, who says local and international right has launched a conservative restoration to try to destabilize and seize power from the progressive governments of Latin America.

In this regard, the president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP, in Spanish), Kenia Serrano, who will participate in a panel on Latin American solidarity with the people in conflict, stressed the desirability of opening these discussion spaces on the ways to face the counteroffensive of the international right.