Company's challenges to 200 years of the independence of Latin America and the Caribbean 
Declaration of Cochabamba made by Bishops, Businessmen, Priests, and Laity 

By: Department of Justice and Solidarity | Source: Cem.org.mx 

DECLARATION OF COCHABAMBA 
COMPANY'S CHALLENGES TO 200 REARS OF INDEPENDENCE IN LATIN  AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

A group of Bishops, Businessmen, Priests, and Laity-convened by the Justice and Solidarity Department of the CELAM and the Latin American UNIAPAC-have gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivia, on 17 and 18 June 2010. We proceeded from Mexico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. 

During these days we have prayed, reflected and discerned together in the climate of fraternity. Our coexistence has been simple, frank and cheerful; our dialogues were respectful and sincere. Our common search for pastors and entrepreneurs was to identify some of the company's challenges to 200 years of Independence in Latin America and the Caribbean. To carry out our search we have chosen as a guide and reference point the Encyclical Caritas in Veritate of Pope Benedict XVI. 

The Bicentennial of the Independence 
The signs of the times. Freedom, justice, truth, fraternity 

1. The celebration of Independence in our Latin American countries is an opportunity for us, from the memory we have of our past and the vision of its current political, religious and socioeconomic context, to discuss the challenges that We anticipate must face the company in the times ahead. 

2. During these 200 years, it has been passed by experiences such as the transition from an agrarian economy to an industrial one; the import substitution model. In the years 80 we suffered the external debt crisis; In the last decade, the opening of markets and international competition that goes beyond regional competition. In this walk, the entrepreneur had to train his people, invest in technology, increase productivity and efficiency, pay attention to corporate social responsibility [CSR]. Today we are concerned about how economies and businesses are destroyed in some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. 
Globalization 

3. We live in the context of a globalized society. It shows a growing interdependence which, in turn, implies the intradependence, that is, the interaction between the social actors towards a dignified sustainable life. 

4. This implies opening up markets and accessing them in fair conditions, with just regulations, against the prevailing protectionism of industrialized countries. 

5. We need a solidarity market economy that incorporates the whole person and all people. It is necessary to show and make clear how private wealth is, through its just contribution, in the common good, especially for the benefit of the most impoverished and excluded. 

6. Being a Christian entrepreneur in these times has a profound human meaning; it is a project of life that acquires its sense of faith, hope and charity. Commits to live authentically the baptismal priesthood. His convictions are, among others, that man will not be human if he is not a brother; That human capital is the first capital; that the company, is a society of capital and, above all, a society of people. 

7. Independence in Latin America and the Caribbean must be based on human dignity so that people are truly independent; let us be a region and a continent that manifest their independence in their free decision-making. We are convinced that, after 200 years, we have a great opportunity, a kairos, to refound our society and the business world, opting for the solidarity economy as a privileged and concrete way of business management. Countries must stop being isolated and political parties must assume their commitment to the common good. 
Challenges

8. To promote and develop in the company the ethical sense and social commitment, achieving a company closer to the workers and the community. The successful company is an opportunity for all, promotes fraternity in the way it orients its businesses, and practices values that go beyond the economic, being able to be an area of freedom and participation. 

9. To promote the encounter and the communion between entrepreneurs, with the state and the civil society. Consequently, they have more influence on public policies to promote and safeguard freedom, justice, solidarity and the common good, because these public policies favor or harm the development of our peoples. 

10. Promote spaces for plural dialogue to achieve agreements on the fundamentals. 

11. To work in favor of truth and transparency in enterprises, in States and non-governmental organizations. 

12. To achieve an economy in which it is evidence that the dimension of the gift and gratuity integrates and transcends the logic of the sale. This implies: to undertake with imagination and innovative disposition; press to the care of creation, of human beings and their communities and, finally, of future generations. 

13. To defend the fundamental rights of man, particularly the right to life, to health, to education and to work. Defend, also, the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation that belong to all men, including future generations. 

14. To confront and overcome with fortitude and strength the situations of injustice, assuring the life worthy of the communities, through healthy and solidarity economies, favoring an economy of charity and charity in the economy. 

15. To live the business from the baptismal consecration and its spirituality, managing the company-place where it lives its mission of disciple of Jesus-according to the evangelical values and its lay vocation.

16. Encourage-in the face of the epochal change we experience-training spaces and schools to understand the new paradigms with which the entrepreneur faces, and generate new leaderships. 

17. Pastorally accompany the entrepreneurs, workers and social leaders in their experience of the follow-up of Jesus. Promote the commitment of the laity, builders of a just society, fraternal, solidarity with dignified social relations and with nature. To promote, to achieve this, the knowledge and dissemination of the Social Doctrine of the Church. 
We ask the Lord to help us with the strength and light of the Holy Spirit to build his kingdom in the history of our peoples and, in particular, in the world of work and enterprise, where he has sent us. That St. Mary, the Virgin of Guadalupe, who maternally protects our peoples, continues to accompany them in the task of weaving their history. 

Cochabamba, June 18, 2010