Nicaragua, 2007

I should like to begin by remembering the

millions of human beings who are the victims of the

policies of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Let us

remember the victims of the Holocaust. Let us

remember the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Let

us remember the victims of slavery and apartheid. Let

us remember the victims of the wars of occupation of

Viet Nam and Afghanistan, the Dominican Republic,

Grenada, Panama and Nicaragua. Let us remember the

heroic and noble Cuban people, who have suffered all

kinds of aggression and a brutal and inhumane

blockade. Let us remember the five heroes who are

prisoners of the empire because they were fighting

terrorism. Let us remember the victims of the terrorist

attacks on the World Trade Centre and the millions and

millions of men and women who have been and

continue to be victims of the genocide caused by global

capitalism. Let us remember the victims of

discrimination and apartheid at the hands of those who

refuse to admit into the developed countries, peoples

who, in Latin America, are attempting to come into the

United States, and people in Africa and Asia who are

trying to go to the European nations. Our thoughts, our

appreciation and our solidarity go to the victims of

natural disasters, who are at the same time victims of

global imperialist capitalism, which, through its

development-oriented policy continues to bring

destruction, death and poverty, becoming the greatest

aggressor of mother Earth, now destroyed by the

avarice of imperialist capitalism.

Let us remember the recent victims of natural

occurrences triggered by these spoliations resulting

from imperialist global capitalism: the victims of

Hurricane Katrina, the victims of the earthquake in

Peru, the victims of the floods in Africa, the victims

among the indigenous peoples the Miskito and

Mayan peoples of Hurricane Felix, in Central

America, Latin America and the Caribbean and the

land of Sandino and Rubén Darío. Our brothers and

sisters in the Miskito and Mayan peoples who achieved

autonomy in 1987 and who, today, are part of a process

whereby their full rights will be recognized, under the

Autonomy Act, have asked me to express their

appreciation to the United Nations because that battle

has been going on for more than 20 years and now we

are beginning to recognize the rights of indigenous

peoples. They have asked me to circulate here, in the

United Nations, a document signed by our brothers, the

leaders of the Miskito and Mayan peoples,

Afrodescendant peoples, victims of Hurricane Felix, so

that it may be seen by you all, our brothers and sisters

who represent the peoples of the world.

In the period from 1979 to 1989, I had the

opportunity to speak before the United Nations General

Assembly, and I remember well the speeches and

messages and positions from that time. Eighteen years

have gone by, and thanks to the unending struggle of

the Sandinist people, I am here again today to address

these words to the Assembly. This morning, when this

general debate began, I listened carefully to the words

of the second speaker, who spoke for exactly

20 minutes and I myself hope not to exceed

20 minutes and I cannot find any difference between

the thoughts, words and actions of those who, at the

time, were at the helm of that imperialist power, and

the speech that I heard this morning.

The presidents of the United States change, and

they may come to office with the best intentions and

may feel that they are doing good for humanity. But

they fail to understand that they are no more than the

instruments of yet another empire among the many

empires that have imposed themselves on our planet,

and they forget that the life of empires is ephemeral.

They rise, they grow arrogant and mighty and then

begin to dictate as if they were gods telling people

what is good and bad, determining how they provide

what they call assistance which is no more than

paying back the historical debt they owe to our

peoples. What they are doing is simply responding to

empire, to the politics of Empire and for that reason we

should not be surprised that not only are we hearing the

same speeches all over again, but also that we are

seeing the same conditions of oppression and violence

and terror being suffered by humanity. And today, we

are more threatened than we were 18 years ago when I

last had the opportunity to speak before the United

Nations.

Today, under the tyranny of global imperialist

capitalism, there is an international economic order, of

course there is, but who dictates that international

economic order? It is dictated by a minority of

dictators who impose their interests, the same old

interests. They are the ones who enslaved Africans and

enslaved and oppressed our indigenous forefathers.

They are the ones who wiped out the original peoples

of the United States. Then immigrants from Europe

came over here and unperturbedly by what right?

began to mix with those people, and to become in turn,

owners of what did not belong to them. They robbed

the original peoples of their rights and their cultures

and imposed their culture and the interests of the

colonizers. That is what gave rise to what we call today

the most exemplary democracy in the world, when

really, it is a tyranny the biggest, most

overwhelming dictatorship that has ever existed

throughout the history of humanity.

I am referring to the tyranny of the United States

empire. If anyone has doubts, let us see how its

President spoke to us this morning. He spoke of Cuba

with a complete lack of respect while representing a

system that ordered the assassination of its President,

our dear brother Fidel Castro, whom we had for his

extraordinary solidarity, firmness and principled

consistency in his struggle for the cause of humankind.

They have maintained a brutal blockade against

Cuba, while for interests of State, they set aside their

so-called democratic principles when, for economic

reasons, they act together with other nations with

which they supposedly have ideological differences:

capital unites them and ideological differences

disappear.

On what authority and by what right does he

question the right of the peoples of Iran and the

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to nuclear

development for peaceful purposes? And even if they

wanted to use nuclear power for military purposes, on

whose authority and by what right does the only State

in history to have dropped atomic bombs on innocent

people, as it did on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, condemn

the people of Iran, who are working to develop nuclear

energy for peaceful purposes? They have decided that

this is not for peaceful purposes, but who gave them

that right? They gave it to themselves, and they are

imposing that on the General Assembly, and the

Assembly is simply a reflection of the realities of a

world where a capitalist and imperialist minority is

imposing global capitalism and establishing an order to

exploit, repress, impoverish, enslave and impose

apartheid against Latin American migrants and against

African migrants in Europe. Global capitalism has only

one head, but it has tentacles everywhere.

On what authority can the country that possesses

the greatest nuclear arsenal in the world, or any other

country possessing nuclear weapons, come here and

seek to question the rights of other countries to the

peaceful development of nuclear energy? What moral

authority do they have to question the right of any

people to develop nuclear energy for peaceful or even

for military purposes?

Objectively, this is not the best path for

humankind. The best path for humankind is for nuclear

weapons to disappear altogether. If the United States,

its people and its Presidents and I do not want to

single out any individual President or leader of an

empire; an empire is an empire, and it does not matter

who is heading the empire, whether they call

themselves Democrat or Republican really want to

demonstrate their commitment to putting an end to the

threat of nuclear energy being used for military

purposes, then they have to be the first to move

towards a policy of nuclear disarmament, a policy that

should encompass all those that possess nuclear

weapons. Then they would have the moral authority to

say that no people in the world should devote resources

to developing nuclear technology for military purposes.

Then, all nations would have the possibility and the

right to opt for nuclear energy for peaceful purposes

an option that they would seek to deny to developing

peoples.

Eighteen years ago, from this very rostrum, I

spoke of the Palestinian issue. The Palestinian people

endure an ongoing bloody conflict with a country that

possesses nuclear weapons and that is entrenched in

the historic territory of the Palestinian people.

Eighteen years ago we spoke of the people of

Puerto Rico, a nation which is still fighting for its

independence. The United States continues

unambiguously to pursue its neo-colonial policies,

combining the most advanced and modern forms of

domination with the most retrograde forms of

domination, such as its military base in Guantánamo.

Eighteen years ago we spoke of armament, and

nothing has changed. Eighteen years ago we spoke of

war, and today things look much worse because of the

brutal war imposed by the empire and by its economic

and oil interests. They thought it would be easy to

occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, but they have met with

resistance from those peoples. It was an invasion

launched on the basis of a campaign of lies: it was

uncertain that Iraq was in a position to produce nuclear

weapons.

So what can I conclude? I can conclude that the

enemy is still the same after these 18 years: here I am

again in the United Nations, and the enemy is still the

same.

The enemy is called global imperialist capitalism

and it is only we, the people, who can change things.

Peoples that have attained liberation were not given it

by those that enslaved them, but rather thanks to their

own struggle and the blood they shed, for example in

South Africa’s independence struggle. How many years

of disgrace, suffering, slavery and apartheid did they

endure in South Africa? That story is true for the whole

of the African continent. Those peoples achieved their

freedom despite modern colonialists consistently trying

to sustain these forms of occupation. To be sure, they

have adopted new forms of occupation and domination.

The liberation of our peoples is not guaranteed.

Our peoples must continue to give battle. The unity of

our peoples is the key: the unity of the Latin American

peoples, the Central American peoples and the

Caribbean peoples under the Bolivarian Alternative for

the Americas (ALBA). They are trying to repeat the

kind of action taken against Venezuela, when a

democratically elected president was faced with a

military coup. They are trying to repeat the history of

Salvador Allende, the history of Chile. But the United

Nations was not convened to say what barbarity had

taken place. Yet what had happened in Venezuela

needed to be condemned, because the Government had

been democratically elected. But no: in fact, the

imperialist Power moved immediately to recognize the

leaders of the coup. It was the Venezuelan people who

rose up to return the elected President to his place.

Thus, it is the people who decide their own fate.

Hence, we can all be full of the best intentions

about changing the United Nations. I do not doubt that

even representatives of countries that espouse global

capitalism and imperialism come here with the best of

intentions some of them. But they lose sight of the

fact that they are continuing their handout proposals

and approaches for these are indeed handouts. When

they talk about aid, they are insulting us. They have to

understand that once and for all. They have profited

from the privatization carried out in developing

countries by the huge multinational corporations. They

say that they come to help us. What businessman

comes to help? When a businessman invests, he invests

in order to make the biggest profit he can: not to invest

in the country, but rather to take away, because we

developing countries are considered to be insecure. In

short, we are the victims of a ransacking.

Compare the volume of the wealth that the

capitalist and developed countries are currently

extracting from our countries, the developing

countries, through their big companies and

multinational corporations with what Latin American

immigrants send back to their families from the United

States or what Asian and African immigrants in Europe

send back to their families: the latter really is a

miserable amount compared to the volume of wealth

that is being plundered on a daily basis by these

institutionalized forms of oppression.

However, immigrants working in the United

States or in Europe work harder than anyone else. They

are doing jobs that neither Europeans nor Americans

want to do, and for miserable wages. So who is doing

whom a favour? Indeed, nobody is doing any favours

for the Latin Americans who find work in the United

States and who manage to put aside a bit of money so

they can send $100 or $200 back to their families,

compared to the plundering by big businesses, which

go to developing countries not only to reap enormous

profits, but also to take advantage of cheap labour and

the conditionalities imposed by free trade agreements.

Human beings, societies and nations are all clashing

with free trade, and it remains to be seen who is the

strongest. Logically, it will be the strongest who

prevail. Free trade is the law of the jungle.

What the world needs is fair trade. What the

world demands is genuine change in the capitalist,

globalized, imperialist countries. They have to change

their concept of a free market; they have to exchange

the concept of free trade for that of fair trade and a fair

international market. Solving this problem is not a

question of reducing subsidies because plainly the

disparities are so enormous that that is impossible. This

problem will never be resolved piecemeal but through

profoundly radical change leading to the

democratization of the minority on planet Earth who

own the wealth, own the nuclear weapons, impose their

policies on the Assembly and go over the heads of the

Security Council. They impose their own laws, which

are now solidly entrenched, and they have no respect

for humanity. It is only by changing the policy within

those peoples, within those nations, within those

Governments that we can really obtain the fair world

that we are all talking about. For we all talk about a

just world. We all talk about a peaceful world. We all

talk about a world of brotherly love and solidarity. But

there is a wide gap between words and deeds.

Dear brothers and sisters, please accept the

greetings of the people of Nicaragua, a fighting people,

a people that has suffered interference from the empire

since 1856 before the triumph of the October

Revolution, the great Lenin revolution. Before the

East-West conflict had begun, Nicaragua was already

suffering from the expansionist policies of empire;

already we had to take arms to defend ourselves

against those who wanted to trample upon us and

impose Yankee presidents.

Dear brothers and sisters, we ask you to pass on

to your peoples our belief our certainty that

today, more than ever, there exist conditions for unity

among the Latin American and Caribbean peoples. We

are seeing growing unity among the African peoples.

The unity of the Asian peoples must grow as well, but

free from global capitalism. What good is speaking

about socialism if what we are actually building is

capitalism and if we are just creating a holy alliance

with global capitalism and imperialism? We have to

build this great unity in Africa, in Asia and in Latin

America, where we are marching with the same

strength, the same vigour and the same living

principles that were those of the African fighters like

Lumumba and Sekou Touré; the principles of the Latin

American fighters; the principles of the North

American fighters, the United States fighters; the

principles of the European fighters; the principles of

the Latin America of Bolívar, of Martí, of Sandino, of

Tupac Katari, of Tupac Amaru. Those principles still

live and will live as long as these forms of oppression

persist.

I have faith in God and the certainty that, just as

peoples, despite so much oppression and destruction,

have not surrendered or sold out, today, more than ever

before, peoples should rise up with pride and firmness

and dignity. They are not going to sell out and they are

not going to surrender to the global capitalist empire.