The idea of a Trypanosoma cruzi Genome Project began to take form during several meetings in 1993 and 1994, especially the Annual Meeting for Basic Research in Chagas Disease in Caxambu, Brazil (5- 10 November 1993), the French-Latin American Meeting at INGEBI (picture of participants), Buenos Aires, Argentina (24-26 November 1993) and the Annual Meeting of the CYTED Biotechnology program at the University of Chile, and was finally crystalized at the WHO/TDR sponsered Parasite Genome Network Planning Meeting at Fiocruz (picture of participants), Rio de Janeiro, (14-15 April 1994) where a T. cruzi workgroup of about 15 researchers from different countries in the Americas decided to go ahead with the project in a concerted effort, choosing as starting point a Trypanosoma cruzi clone from CL strain, now called CL-BRENER.