In this context, a panel was held on Saturday to deal with intellectuality-related reflections and speeches by Colombian Culture Minister Patricia Ariza, her Senegalese counterpart Aliou Saw, and Cuban researcher Enrique Ubieta, director of Cuba Socialista magazine.

Minister Ariza referred to damage generated by stigmatization of peoples and ethnic groups, and how this phenomenon is the basis of segregation and war.

She stated Colombia has lived through decades of violence and society has been destroyed, hence the pressing need to work on reconstruction taking into account victims´ and survivors´ views.

In the Colombian context and with Gustavo Petro’s Government of Change, it is not only a matter of changing social conditions but it is crucial to achieve total peace, she said. Senegal’s Minister of Culture and Historical Heritage Aliou Saw, on the other hand, said it was pressing for the peoples of the South to get to know each other as nations, set dialogues and to be aware of their own history.

The same was expressed by researcher Ubieta, who also cited the Cuban internationalist medical brigades as an example of humanism in favor of the peoples, while claiming that knowledge must be complemented with social involvement, and it is necessary to demystify paradigms imposed by the consumer industry, and also to know that identity is always a process under construction.

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