Bolivia, 2025

The Assembly will now hear an address by His Excellency Luis Alberto Arce Catacora, Constitutional President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. I request protocol to escort His Excellency and invite him to address the Assembly. A very good morning to all of you. Allow me to express brotherly greetings to the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations, Annalena Baerbock, and through her to the entire Assembly. The 80th session isn't just any other date. It is a space for historic time which invites us to stop and to look back, to remember why this organisation was born and why it has seen the results that humanity was waiting for after the two world wars in which the fight for wealth and areas of influence left in its wake millions of dead, displaced and wounded. We are living with a wound that we are trying to overlook. Over eight decades, in the concert of nations, we have seen the development of narratives that using the skill of the great powers with long-standing experience in the international community have camouflaged deep wounds and the devastating memories of humanity. They have done so using smart normative texts that pretend to be the duty of the United Nations through audiovisuals and others that are not very effective in facing flagrant problems such as neocolonialism in all of its expressions, territorial occupation, economic, political and cultural interference, racism, discrimination, the arms race and violence which is implicit in all of this without taking into account other aspects such as hunger, climate change, the food crisis and the increasingly frequent economic crises. The effects of these realities are clear to all. Confrontations and discourse that promotes hatred and division between kindred states, inequality, exclusion, poverty and inequality and injustice still produced within institutions that were created to protect the rights of the weakest. And we're not even talking about economic, social and the cultural rights of people and even more if you look at the rights of indigenous peoples. A sincere assessment leads us to confirm that in 80 years we have not met the expected results. Consequently we are not in a good position. The world remains divided and confronted against itself more than 80 years ago. Today in the world there is greater inequality in the distribution of wealth than there was 80 years ago. The poverty figures, inequality and injustice rather than being curbed is on the increase. The risk that any remaining peace should disappear and the third world war would overtake the entire planet is very close if we don't react in time. The danger here is that the unstoppable force of capitalism with the misuse of artificial intelligence would increase the climate change, would liquidate the planet and would convert the immense majority of the population into unnecessary beings which is also something that we can't completely rule out. We're not in a good place. The UN was established on the basis of the foundations of the skeletons of the Holocaust and the not only physical but also moral ruins left by the fascist racism and also increasing neocolonialism with the use of two atomic bombs. One of the goals that gave rise to the United Nations was to not repeat the barbarity of war. Today we hear the echoes of the drums of war on all continents. We see the practice of genocide on the sole decision of two countries. We deny the right to be free and sovereign to a people. Sophisticated weapons are used against a sovereign country and increasing militarization is being promoted within a region with double standards in combating the war on drugs. And at the same time we maintain a criminal blockade against its people and the state for the sole crime of having claimed its own independence more than six decades ago. Wars are not the same as we had 80 years ago. Wars now are multidimensional. They use economic, financial, media, information, cyber, warfare without even taking into account military warfare which now encompasses biological warfare, war from space and other technologies that continue to be developed with impunity on the basis of technology of war. It would be nothing new to have climate wars that would have an impact on sovereignty and food security jeopardizing strategic resources such as water. We are putting at risk the very survival of the human race on Earth and of life itself on the planet. Just taking off the mask from all of these tragedies we can see that the cause of all of this is the wild capitalist system that places the greed of the few over the rights and lives of the majority on the planet. The cause of this is the current capitalist development which tries to resolve its own crisis and ends up returning to the original forms of accumulation and increasing rates of profit. Capitalism and its imperialist face is once again using the deployment of violence plundering natural resources from sovereign states with bloodletting to lead to the political and economic power and take that away from another. Added to that we have a third cause of the current wars which is more immediate. That is the obsessive zeal of the new Trump administration to give the United States back its position as a hegemonic power at the cost of the liberal system, free trade, globalization and to cause pain and death. Why? For what? To take ownership over natural resources, to take control over commodities for the benefit of an imperialist system and to subordinate the majority of countries for their insatiable thirst for privilege and wealth and to try to maintain a unipolar order at any cost. The recent publication of the U.S. strategic defense policy sets out a deployment of its troops around the world in its areas of influence, Canada, Central and South America among others. The recent history with our neighbors has made us realize this is nothing else but a new way of implementing Monroeism which was a doctrine which said that America is for the North Americans, generating conditions for a new era of neocolonialism. Madam President, distinguished heads of state and government, from the indigenous name from Latin America and the Caribbean we can say that we are a zone of peace and we did so at the second summit of CELAC in Havana in 2014. The nations in our region are complying with this mandate that we set ourselves still bearing in mind our political and ideological differences on various topics and with regard to border and territorial occupation based disputes that remain ongoing. We can say when we invert the equation of the Pentagon that it is peace rather than war that guides our international relations. In hearing this declaration statement in 2022 in this same place I came to appeal to the United Nations for a general assembly to declare to the world that it would be an entire territory of peace. Eleven years have passed since that historic declaration of CELAC and three years since I made that statement in this assembly. Not only have we not declared the world as a zone of peace, rather we are facing the harsh reality of seeing how death is becoming increasingly normalized in international relations. We also feel the threat of fascism in all of its variants to try to exploit and dominate peoples at the current time. The threat of death is covering Latin America and the Caribbean. We are seeing a bellicose potential which would even go so far as to use missiles, submarines, helicopters using the pretext that this maritime space is being used against the national security of the United States through the illegal introduction of cocaine through illegal gangs belonging to drug cartels. Beyond violations of international law, this provocative action of imperialism has two intentions. First, to intervene into our kindred Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela that since 1999 has been raising high the flags of the freedom of its people and the sovereignty of its state and which possesses considerable natural resources, particularly in oil, which the North wishes to appropriate and claim. Secondly, to try to reconquer Latin America and the Caribbean on the basis of its undermining liberal democracy to impose militarization and to use other colonialist practices that we should call out. Imperialism is said to be used to combat drugs trafficking. This is a fallacy because if this were true, it would actually be taking effect within their own country where the demand for this type of drugs is high and in its origins where we see different types of organized crime. What the United States is trying to do is to give our region the role of holding back the edification of a multipolar world and to submit it to its own interests. Added to these military actions, the images of which have been seen around the world, we see other types of devastating actions such as those aimed at strengthening the economic blockade against Cuba. Billions of dollars are owed by the United States to the Cuban state due to these unilateral coercive measures which are explained on the basis of rejecting the first communist revolution, which will never be destroyed. The threat of death is also afflicting the Middle East. In the Middle East, the pain of millions of families and the death of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians finds no consolation. All of this history has the unconditional support of the United States, which wants to speed up the displacement of the Palestinian people as quickly as possible. Peace will be an empty world while the Palestinian people continues to face practices of genocide and does not have its own land and full sovereignty with East Jerusalem as its capital. But in this region, that's not the only thing that's happening. The fragile political and geopolitical stability is threatened by preventive attacks against the Islamic Republic of Iran and against the small nation of Yemen. Very similarly to what was done by ex-president George Bush, the threat of death is also clear in Eurasia. In Eurasia, despite the intermittent attempts to achieve a political outcome, the expansionist ambitions of NATO, which is nothing else than the military arm of concentrated capital, is trying to protract the military conflict by using Ukraine as a launch pad against the Russian Federation. The threat of death also hangs over Asia. The East China Sea, which is an area of great geostrategic and economic importance, is facing two problems that could have an impact not only on the region but also the entire world. The overcoming of the sovereignty of Taiwan by the People's Republic of China is another example of explicit neocolonialism that is encouraged by the United States, as well as the dispute on the Senkaku Islands, the sovereignty of which is disputed between Japan, Taiwan and China. It appears that these islands are home to important hydrocarbon resources. Furthermore, the constant tension between North Korea and South Korea could not only become a problem that affects these two countries, but also the entire security of the world. Heads of state and government, I've been referring to this entire world to say that in this new imperialist intervention we should call it what it is, neocolonialism. And what should we do? I'm asking this because this led to one of the most outstanding strategies of the fight for the emancipation of labour over capital. This is also the fight of life over death. I wish to propose that we firstly establish a commission for reparations following slavery, apartheid, genocide and colonialism in the countries of the Global South. To do so, the United Nations should find a way to ensure that those designing war and death pay their billions of dollars into a reparations fund. I hope that this rostrum, the highest on the international stage, will also serve to be able to launch an appeal and recognise that colonialism and neocolonialism was and is an historic mistake that brings and continues to bring a social wound over the population that it victimises. It also does this with indigenous societies that it affects in particular. Today, on behalf of the construction of a fair future, we have to condemn the devastating impact of colonialism in the past and the present. I appeal to the heads of state of CELAC and the African Union to join forces and to oppose the adverse consequences of colonialism. This commission that I've mentioned should set up effective mechanisms to restore historic justice in the following spheres. Reparations, land rights, recovery of the environment destroyed through the action of the colonisers and transnational corporations, apologies for the colonial past through the restitution of cultural goods of the indigenous peoples that were taken by the colonisers during the period of expansion and genocide, the prevention of neocolonial practices, programmes for the development of indigenous peoples and the preservation of their cultural identity. We should also provide compensation to people who have resisted the military occupation of their territories and those that are suffering under unilateral sanctions and economic blockades. Secondly, we should convert the UN General Assembly into a body with binding power so that it can be an effective voice for all peoples and not a space where we simply realise the will of the most powerful. We need this forum to be an ethical nucleus, a political heart and the living spirit of a new era guided by the culture of life. We need the resolutions adopted within the UN General Assembly to not be vetoed by any superpower and to be truly complied with. This means ensuring that multilateralism is truly valid and not just a formality. We should declare the world as a zone of peace and promote demilitarisation as far as possible. The immense majority of the population in the world refuses to accept that the revitalisation or overcoming the cyclical crises of capital should be done on the basis of investment in billions of dollars to manufacture all types of conventional and unconventional weapons. Just one third of military expenditure would give us better and greater education, health and housing guaranteed for everyone. The UN has to become a pact for peace and for life as the shared destiny of everyone who believes in living together. We need to undertake a profound reform of the Security Council that would prevent one of two countries holding up global stability. We need to ensure this reform and ensure the reform that the countries of the Global South have been insisting on for several years. Democratising the Security Council would be giving effect to the principle of the legal equality of states and democratising the future. It would be to ensure that the voices of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the historically marginalised peoples would also count. We should move towards the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Bolivia, together with the Amazonian peoples, speaks up to recall the urgent need for international cooperation to strengthen the conservation of the Amazon. We should do so through strengthening the sovereignty of Amazonian countries over this strategic biome for the world. Defending the Amazon means defending life. We must reject all forms of commercial war and work to reduce economic and social divides between the countries of central capitalism and the countries on the periphery. Trade wars not only affect companies but also the immense world of work. It also lessens to alarming levels the possibility for lower classes to access acceptable food. The hegemonic and capitalist interests don't have any right to overtake rights of trade and reduce the right to employment, food and education for the working classes. Dear guests here at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, I'm very grateful that on this occasion of the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations, having listened to the analysis and the outlook of the plurinational state of Bolivia over critical problems facing us today, and as we look ahead to working together for peace, development and collective human rights, the Bolivian people, to whom we have guaranteed a democratic transit that we have not seen in 28 years in our country, is looking forward to seeing the changes that we must see within the United Nations in order to guarantee global peace. Thank you very much. Gracias. On behalf of the Assembly, I wish to thank the Constitutional President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.