Honduras, 2008

Mr. President, allow me to extend you the warmest and

most heartfelt greeting of the people and the

Government of Honduras. I would also extend this

greeting to all nations and peoples represented here. I

congratulate you, Sir, a distinguished representative of

the Republic of Nicaragua who today is leading the

Assembly. Your prestige as a man of peace and

harmony and as a builder of dreams and utopias has

been recognized throughout the world through the

numerous prizes you have received, which honour the

peoples of Central America.

Honduras currently holds the presidency pro

tempore of the Central American Integration System,

and I would like to recognize the work of the United

Nations and use this opportunity also to recognize the

determination of the Central American Presidents to

bring about a process of Central American integration.

As was recognized by the European Commission, the

region of the world that is unifying the most and

becoming the most integrated is Central America —

after Europe, of course. That is part of an important

process, because we are addressing on areas and

sectors that are important for our society.

Francisco Morazán was a martyr who gave his

life for the cause of Central American union and for

liberal policies, opposing the enemies of independence

and freedom. The peoples of Central America and of

Honduras continue to fight for these causes. We

continue to fight for unity as we seek to establish

economic independence. In recent years, Honduras has

achieved a sustainable growth rate of between 6 and

7 per cent, and we have been able to reduce poverty

and have recognized the international and national

importance of protecting the environment. Honduras

has become a tourist destination in Central America,

because of the beauty of its main Caribbean Bay

Islands, such as Guanaja, Utila and Roatán.

However, today, all of those advances in our

economy and in the fight against poverty are being put

in jeopardy by the crisis and the international scale of

the financial fraud that has been brought about by the

big multinationals in the world. The serious events that

today have dragged us into a food and energy crisis

with high fuel prices, and the collapse of the financial

systems, particularly here in the United States of

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America, have shown that what I and others Presidents

are saying today are historic and irrefutable truths.

For example, in our countries, particularly in

Honduras, poverty and inequality are continuing to

grow more marked in our societies. The State continues

to become weaker through privatizations and capital is

concentrated in a few firms and a few hands, lessening

capacity to produce and generate development for our

people. In recent years, the unequal distribution of

wealth and income has become ever more entrenched.

In Honduras, less than 1 per cent of the population

possesses 70 per cent of the national wealth. Barely

10 families with links to international capital control

the main economic activities of the country, naturally

impoverishing the rest of the population.

Over the last two centuries, our peoples and our

region have resisted with heroism, dignity and stoicism

the onslaught of the cruel system that governs us. Pope

John Paul II himself came to call that capitalistic

system savage, an immoral mercantile system that

exploits men and women and turns them into mere

commodities and numbers. The merciless and demonic

laws of the invincible market only satisfy the wealth

and power of the few, to the detriment of the great

majority of our societies. They believe themselves

infallible gods. They are like a sinister Proteus that

plays cat and mouse with people. They act like Saturn,

the Greek god who devoured his children out of fear

that they would dethrone him. However, today, with

that logic of the law of the market, his sons are

devouring their creator in the very cradle of capitalism,

in the great centre of Wall Street or the other hubs of

speculative capital in the world.

To give an example, the international trafficking

of drugs, arms and people are other scourges that

prevent us developing peoples from achieving the

economic freedom and independence to which our

nations aspire. The submission of our poor countries to

the economic choices of international capital is brutal

and surprising. We can say that capitalism is devouring

human beings in most parts of the world, and

paradoxically it is now also devouring the very creators

of that system. Here I shall mention two particularly

salient examples. In Honduras, over the last 20 years,

many small coffee producers have succeeded in

increasing their exports from $200 million to almost

$600 million. That involved 20 years of hard work.

However, in the last 12 months, in barely a year, with

the doubling of the prices of energy, oil, food, wheat

and the main staples that we consume, we are now

losing what we achieved in that period of hard work.

Another example is what has happened here to

the mandate of the United Nations. In 2000, this

Organization agreed that poverty should be reduced by

at least 50 per cent in 15 years, which we know is not

coming about. The goal of reducing poverty and the

contributions that the international community pledged

to the developing world are not being translated into

reality. In contrast, by way of giving an example, for

each dollar that the international community

contributes to cooperation, it allocates 10 dollars to the

arms race.

Another quite fantastic example to give today is

what is happening with the bankruptcy of the big

investment banks. Now people are racing to provide

funds to those big banks. Logically, if we were to

provide them with what is being proposed today to

save those banking institutions that have created that

speculative capital — a sum of $700 billion — with

just a third of that amount we could reduce and

immediately put an end to poverty in Africa, Asia or

Latin America. That system is the true present-day

King Midas, who tried to convert everything into gold

and profit for one particular sector. We shall never be

free under that system, and we know that we must not

accept that condition of neo-slavery and

neocolonialism through which, by its domination, it

bends us to its purposes.

The question for us all is can that difficult

situation being experienced today, particularly by the

less developed countries, be saved. The answer is yes,

we can save ourselves from that crisis. We can respond.

First, the State must act, the State must operate again in

terms of social commitment. Capital must be used so

that it serves to build a genuinely fair society. The aim

should not be to destroy the market but simply to

construct a social market economy. Capital should

exist, but with limits. Defining the limits of capitalism

is important to put an end to its primitive laws of the

jungle. The aim is not to eliminate entrepreneurship

and the free market, but to check and regulate the

abuses and to humanize and sensitize those who are in

the driving seat.

We must support a genuine democratic system,

not only in international bodies but also internally

within our countries. We must reform false democracy,

which uses different political means to legitimize that

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system of exploitation and injustice. It is a false

democracy, in which men and women are seen merely

as voters, as useful instruments employed only to

distribute power, whose consciences are manipulated

by the highest bidder in a political comedy in which

those who possess wealth impose their mercantile

irrationality on the larger group of those who are

excluded from and marginalized by the system. We

must reform that system, improve it and strengthen it

so as to convert it into a genuine democracy. It is by

the logic of political democracies that Governments are

controlled and States manipulated, basic services are

privatized and the whole of society is indoctrinated

with an ideology of gain, egoism and individualism.

Imperialism as a system of domination of

countries and of trade must disappear from the face of

the Earth. The twenty-first century, and the peoples of

the twenty-first century, should not have to pay for the

excesses and brutality of the twentieth century.

We agree that property must exist, as it has a

social function. Since the beginning of social

organization in the world, property has always been

granted within the framework of collective ownership.

There must be the authority to intervene in speculative

markets, as is happening now in the United States.

Traders and their spokespeople do not have the right to

direct society. The strategic areas of the economy must

be at the service of the State and under its control to

ensure that society never finds itself without food or

medicine and that consumers are not robbed. Profits

produced by work, wealth and capital should be better

distributed in our societies among the real owners —

workers, producers, capitalists, consumers and the

State — in order to attain a common good.

The major transnational companies that produce

medicines and chemical products should make

available to developing countries the patents for

technological discoveries that can improve living

conditions for our citizens. This is a time for human

solidarity.

We should end unfair competition in markets by

eliminating subsidies in industrialized countries and

removing tariff and non-tariff barriers. That would be a

good message of the international community, a good

intention at this time of crisis, for those peoples that

were once their colonies, a message that we are no

longer looked upon as mere game reserves but as

brothers in humanity.

I am sure that the peoples of the world are able to

come together to provide alternatives to a crude system

that kills and destroys everything that does not adapt to

its unmerciful laws.

Developed countries have a responsibility

towards the peoples. Members know that very well.

This afternoon we want to say, from this United

Nations rostrum, that we are very grateful to the

developed world, the industrialized world, for their

cooperation with us at certain times. However, our

peoples and our countries do not want donations. We

have not come here to beg.

What we want is to be treated with equality and

respect, and the right to opportunities and to

participate. We do not want to be affected by the

asymmetries in the economies and differences in

developed countries. We do not want to have models

imposed on us, models that only impoverish our

nations. We do not want to be given lessons about how

to manage our economies. We want to be given

examples of solidarity and responsibility in the face of

the major problems of nations, examples of how to

distinguish between matters of importance to human

beings and matters that are simply material. To

developed countries we say that if they offer us aid, do

not attach conditions to our acceptance of it. Do not

insist that we accept a neoliberal model that is

suffocating and exploiting our communities.

We cannot continue to measure development of

countries by the profits of large companies. We must

measure development by the access of young people to

education and jobs, of children to food, of mothers to

hospitals, of those who are ill to treatment, and of the

undernourished to food.

We say to the countries of the Group of Eight

(G8), with all due respect, that that very important

organization should expand its membership to include

countries that represent the five continents, to include

countries of the Americas, such as Mexico, Brazil,

Bolivia or Cuba, or, from other areas, India. The G8

should increase its capacity for dialogue with, for

example, Central America or the South American

Common Market (MERCOSUR), where there are so

many societies that could contribute with ideas, for

ideas are sometimes worth more than money.

The countries that cooperate should respect

national systems and not impose their own aid

reception mechanisms on us. They should respect the

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national priorities and systems that each country has

developed in its programmes, the planning of

Governments legitimately elected by the people.

Likewise, with all due respect to the European

countries and to the United States of America, we wish

to ask them to consider — as a gesture of goodwill and

in light of the problems that we ourselves are suffering

as a result of the financial imbalances that those

countries caused — the rights of immigrants who are

already on their territories. I would also like to recall

that the peoples living in the lands of America and

Europe were themselves once immigrants in those

lands.

What does it cost to reunite migrant families and

to begin to deal with their documentation, instead of

deporting them? To immigrate is a human right, not a

crime, and we should consider it in the context of

respect for society. All of us want peace and harmony,

and this is the best means of obtaining them.

The world is also concerned with the enlargement

of the Security Council. Like other presidents who

have spoken about this matter from this podium over

the decades, we believe that there should be

democratization at the very top of the United Nations,

and the example should begin at home. That way we

could discuss the real problems of humanity and find

solutions.

We therefore need to establish a new pedagogy, a

new way of education of our peoples, our children and

future generations. We must cultivate, as is logical,

genuine freedom for our nations, freedom of the press,

freedom of movement, an honest freedom that gives

the people the opportunity to know the truth about their

problems without lies and manipulation.

The new manner of teaching that we are

proposing to the General Assembly today could be

promoted through the development programmes of the

United Nations. We must begin to teach the value of

solidarity among human beings, among countries and

among the various organizations represented here. That

teaching should demonstrate in a practical way that the

centre of the world is not material possessions or

money; the centre of the world should always be the

human being — men and women, young people,

children, the elderly, those beings with a soul and who

are made in the image of the Creator of the universe.

In conclusion, I wish to take a moment to read a

poem entitled, “Gold”, by the Honduran poet and

writer Alfonso Guillén Zelaya, who described well

through poetry the events we have addressed in the

Assembly.

“Gold killed in men the native communion;

It divided the Earth and corrupted affection.

Before that, hunger did not exist.

Fruit grew in all places freely before this,

Waters, hunting, the plains were free.

As there were no owners, there were never thieves.

Life was one of peace, of love and of gentleness.

People were good, like blessings.

But, Lord of the gifts,

Your gifts are gone.

We are now condemned to live without fortune,

Everything that we have made,

Our own clothing, with the gold of the stars and the

silver of the moon.”

This is the Christian moral; it is the moral of the

message today, tomorrow and forever, that we must

accept the fact that this world is extremely materialistic

and not very spiritual. It was the message offered when

a tycoon approached the Master of Galilee and asked,

Lord, how do I save myself? He replied: leave your

possessions and follow me.

I would like to end with those thoughts on liberty,

which is what our societies most need today. Let us

ensure that the liberty advocated by our forefathers —

Martí, Bolívar and Morazán — transforms the destiny

of globalization so that we convert it into a

globalization of solidarity, of justice and of harmony

among the peoples. We must regain trust in the

collective so that we can return to trusting in reason

and say to the minority that they cannot be the reason

for the State simply because of what they own. That

alienating argument is unsustainable for the peoples of

the world.

I fervently appeal this afternoon for us to secure

votes for the freedom and peace of all peoples and

nations of the Earth, for the principles expressed and

ratified today in the sixty-third session of the General

Assembly, because I firmly believe that a new world,

another world, a better world is still possible. We have

united to defend important matters of other countries.

We have united to defend the positions of President

Evo Morales in Bolivia so that a real social democracy

can be established, as he has advocated. Based on those

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principles, we have signed the Bolivarian Alternative

for the Americas — ALBA — and, based on those

principles, we hope that the international community

will also provide the international solidarity needed by

Taiwan, which is asking for that solidarity.

We ask that God’s blessing for you all and for

your families and your nations become a reality today,

tomorrow and forevermore.