''It's totally appropriate and necessary that there be both," said Alejandro Urruzmendi, 25, grinning. ''If you can't enjoy life now, what's the point of fighting for a better world?"
According to forum figures, more than 150,000 people from 135 countries arrived in Porto Alegre in January for the conference of global activists. Of those, 35,000 mostly youthful participants pitched tents along the riverbanks, spending a week in what organizers described as a ''practical laboratory that permanently challenges its participants to take part in the day-to-day questions of social and political life of this space and to take responsibility in sustaining and constructing this experience."
In practice, that meant a sprawling labyrinth of tents, ropes, and clotheslines, communal showers and, despite the ubiquity of leftist rhetoric, an atmosphere more akin to a summer music festival than a protest.
Some cultural happenings in the camp were homegrown: ''favela," or shantytown, rap; 11-year-olds writhing in ''capoeira," a Brazilian art form that combines martial arts with music and dance; and street-side samba. Others were more idiosyncratic. One multi-ethnic Jews for Jesus-like sect circle-danced. Clad in shapeless natural fiber outfits, they sang about Jerusalem in Portuguese. Meanwhile, the Cuban tent drew salsa revelers. Acoustic guitars were a constant.
For many young lodgers, the camp was an opportunity to integrate the social and political goals of the forum with daily life.
Justino Rodriguez, 23, said that during the forum, he collected 200 e-mail addresses of like-minded peers. A history major at City College of New York, he stayed at the camp for a night.
''It's a dialogue all the time," Rodriguez said of the camp. ''You're debating stuff at 4:30 in the morning around the fire, you're debating it when you wake up and take a shower."
Said Daniela Broitman, 34, a Brazilian filmmaker and journalist, ''In the camp, you don't know how rich or how poor a person is. You all sleep on the same floor in a tent."
