Official Jury Minutes of the International Competition “Thinking Against the Mainstream”, 2005

From the 6th to the 9th of June, 2005, the Jury of the Second International Essay Competition “Thinking Against the Mainstream” met in Havana; its members were James Cockcroft (U.S.A.), Maria Ciavatta Franco (Brazil), Francois Hourtart (Belgium), Roberto Fernandez Retamar (Cuba) and Atilio Boron (Argentina) who acted in his capacity of Jury President. The submissions to the Competition, which had arrived by closing date of April 30th, were examined. In total, 185 texts were received, coming from 24 countries, most of them written in Spanish but with several entries in Portuguese, English and French.

At the outset, the Jury would like to congratulate the competition organizers, the Ministry of Culture of Cuba, the Cuban Book Institute and its Social Sciences Press for the incredible number of participants, for the variety of countries represented and for the excellent conditions afforded to the jury for carrying out their task, with no restrictions to impede their deliberations. At the same time, the Jury would like to express its satisfaction with the superb quality of the submissions; this required an extraordinary effort on the jury’s part to make its final selection of prize winners. The excellence of contributions and the variety of subject matter, dealing with the most diverse aspects of contemporary reality, are eloquent testimony to the fact that we have arrived at a point of inflection and that critical thinking is taking a sure path through this silent battle of ideas which we have taken upon ourselves and which will play an important role for the future of humanity. Finally, as a consequence of the preceding, the Jury members encourage the organizers to continue with their efforts of promoting critical thinking through this event and by other initiatives leading to the same goal, and that they engage all collaborative efforts in guaranteeing that this goal is indeed met.
Bearing in mind all this, the Jury unanimously agreed to award:

Honourable Mention, out of competition, to works by two internationally acclaimed social scientists – James Petras of the U.S.A. for Imperial State, Imperialism and Empire and Luis Suarez Salazar of Cuba for Towards a new Paradigm for multi-national integration in Latin America and the Caribbean: focusing from a critical and participatory perspective.

The Jury also decided to award the three Competition prizes, in the following manner:

First prize to: Mario A. Solano of Costa Rica for his work entitled “Capitalism and Violence”.
Second Prize to: Santi Dunaiturria Zumarraga of the Basque Region (Spain) for his work entitled “The counter-virus of Technological-Hegemonic Reason: The Sovereignty of Stateless Nations”.
Third Prize to: Gehan Gunasekara of New Zealand for his work entitled “True Globalization”.

The Jury resolved, moreover, to recommend the following works for publication:

• Alejandro Soba, Argentina: “The relationship between science and domination. A critical analysis of the speech by Marcelino Cereijido”.
• Marco Antonio Perruso, Brazil: Marxism, Social Movements and Phenomenology”.
• Mariano Zukerfeld, Argentina: “Informational Goods and Capitalism”.
• Eugenio Martinez Enriquez, Cuba: Neo-liberal Globalization and liberty of movement: conceptual and practical paradoxes”.
• Maria de los Angeles Castaneda, Mexico: “Where is the southern border of the U.S.?”
• Joaquin G. Santana, Cuba: “The Dust which brought this mud”.
• Julio Salesses, Argentina: “Latin American unity as a Response to globalization”.
• Alfredo Falero, Uruguay: “Ten Mistaken Theses about Regional Integration in Latin America. Elements from the social sciences for an alternative perspective”.
• Ana Maria Gonzalez, Argentina: “Utopia, that classic idea”.
• Andres Eduardo Ruggeri, Argentina: “The workers take control: political implications of self-administrated corporations in Argentina”.
• Silvio Rafael Jova Argota, Cuba: “Myths and legends of contemporary economy”.
• Miguel Mirra, Argentina: “The Challenge of the Documentalists”.

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