Uruguay, 2013

I come from

the South. At the conjunction of the Atlantic and the

River Plate, my country is a gentle, temperate plain

where livestock graze. Its history is one of ports, leather,

salted beef, wool and meat. There were dark decades of

lances and horses until finally, with the outset of the

twentieth century, we were at the forefront of social,

education and governmental affairs. I would say that

social democracy was invented in Uruguay.

For nearly 50 years, the world saw us as a kind of

Switzerland, but in reality in economic matters we were

the bastard children of the British Empire. When the

empire ended, we experienced the bitter and terrible

terms of trade and we yearned for the past for almost

50 years, remembering Maracaná. Today, we have

re-emerged in a globalized world, having learned from

our pain.

My personal story is that of a boy — because I

once was a boy — who like others wanted to change his

times and his world and dreamed of a free and classless

society. My mistakes were in part the results of my era.

Obviously I take responsibility for them, but sometimes

I cry: “If only I had the strength that I had when we

enjoyed such utopia!”

However, I do not look towards the past because

what we have today was created from the fertile ashes

of yesterday. On the contrary, I am not on this planet

to settle scores or to reminisce. I am greatly anguished

by the future that I will not see, and to which I have

committed myself. Yes, it is possible to have a world

with more humanity, but perhaps today the main task

is to save life.

I am from the South and I have come from the

South to this Assembly. I share with the thousands of

poor compatriots in cities, in the jungles, in the plains,

in the pampas and the canyons of Latin America the

common fatherland that we are creating. I bear upon

my shoulders the indigenous cultures, the remains

of colonialism in the Malvinas, and the futile and

regrettable blockades of Cuba under the Caribbean

sun. I also bear the consequences of the electronic

surveillance, which does nothing but create the distrust

that poisons us needlessly. I also come with a huge

social debt and with the need to defend the Amazon, the

seas, and our great rivers of America. I also have the

duty to fight for all on behalf of my fatherland and so

that Colombia can finally regain peace. I have the duty

to fight for tolerance for those who are different and

with whom we have differences and disagreements. We

do not need tolerance for those with whom we agree.

Tolerance is the foundation of peaceful coexistence,

understanding that we are all different in this world.

I fight against the illicit economy, drug trafficking,

theft, fraud, corruption — the contemporary scourges

unleashed by an opposite set of values and by those

who maintain that we are happier when we are richer,

no matter by what means. We have sacrificed the old,

immaterial gods and we are now occupying the temple

of the Market God. This god organizes our economy, our

politics, our habits and our lives, and even provides us

with rates and credit cards and the illusion of happiness.

It seems that we have been born only to consume, and

when we can no longer consume we are overcome by

frustration, poverty and self-loathing.

It is true that today, in order to spend and to bury

our garbage in what science calls the carbon footprint,

if in this world we aspired to consume like the average

American, we would need three planets in order to be

able to live. In other words, our civilization has mounted

a deceitful challenge, and as we go on it is not possible

for everyone to achieve that goal. Indeed, our culture is

increasinglt driven by accumulation and market forces.

We are promised a life of spending and squandering;

in fact, it is a countdown against nature and against

future humankind. It is a civilization against simplicity,

against sobriety, against all natural cycles; worse yet, it

is a civilization against freedom, which requires time to

experience human relationships and the most important

things: love, friendship, adventure, solidarity and

family. It is a civilization against free time that does

not pay, that cannot be bought and that allows us to

contemplate the beauty of nature.

We have destroyed the real jungles and sown

anonymous cement jungles. We have tackled a

sedentary lifestyle with walking, insomnia with pills,

solitude with electronics. Can we be happy when we

are so far from the human essence? We have to ask

ourselves this question. Stupefied, we have rejected our

own biological imperative, which defends life for life’s

sake as a superior cause, and we have replaced it by

functional consumerism and accumulation.

Politics, the eternal mother of all human

endeavours, has remained shackled to the economy

and to the marketplace.Going from one adventure to

another, politics achieves little more than perpetuating

itself, and as such it delegates its power and spends its

time bewildered, fighting for the Government. Out of

control, human history marches forward, buying and

selling everything and innovating in order to negotiate

what is, in a way, non-negotiable. Marketing exists for

everything: cemeteries and funeral services, maternity

wards, fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles,

secretaries, cars and vacations. Everything is business.

Marketing campaigns deliberately target children and

psychologically influence older children to reserve

safe territory for the future. Abundant evidence exists

of such abominable uses of technology that sometimes

induce mass frustration.

The average city dweller wanders between financial

institutions and tedious office routines, sometimes

moderated by air conditioning. He often dreams about

vacations and freedom. He dreams about having the

ability to pay his bills until one day his heart stops and

he is gone. Other such soldiers will fall prey to the jaws

of the marketplace, sharing in material accumulation.

The crisis really rests in the powerlessness of

politics, which is incapable of understanding that

humankind cannot and will not escape nationalism,

which is practically etched into our DNA. Today, it is

time to fight to prepare a world without borders.

The globalized economy has no other driving force

except that of the private interests of the very few,

and each nation State seeks only to maintain its own

stability. Today, the great task for our peoples and our

humble way of seeing things becomes the be-all and

end-all. As if that were not enough, truly productive

capitalism is a prisoner of the banks, which are at the

summit of global power. More clearly, the world is

clamouring for global regulations that respect scientific

achievements, which abound, but it is not science that

governs the world.

Today, we need a lengthy agenda of definitions. We

must define working hours throughout the world. We

need to have convergence among currencies. We need

to finance the global struggle for water and against

desertification. We have to figure out how to recycle

more and how to counter global warming. What are the

limits of each human task?

We must achieve a broad planetary consensus to

unleash solidarity among the most oppressed and to

punish and tax waste and speculation by mobilizing the

large economies not to produce disposable goods, but

rather useful goods without planned obsolescence or

excess, which would help the world’s poorest peoples.

Useful goods could stand against world poverty. Turning

to a useful neo-Keynesianism on a global scale in order

to abolish the world’s most flagrant embarrassments

would be a thousand times more profitable than making

war.

Perhaps our world needs fewer global organizations,

organized forums and conferences, which serve only

to aid hotel chains and airlines; perhaps no one really

benefits from their decisions anyway. We must return

to what is old and eternal in human life, along with

science that strives to serve humankind, and not only

the rich. With scientists, the counsellors of humankind,

we can create agreements for the entire world. Neither

the large nation States nor transnational companies, not

to mention the financial system, ought to govern the

world of humanity. Yes, lofty politics combined with

scientific wisdom — it must come from science, which

is not attracted by material gain but looks towards the

future and tells us about things we may not foresee.

How many years ago did they tell us in Kyoto about

certain facts linked to climate change?

We have finally learned that intelligence must be

at the helm, guiding the ship to port. Actions of this

nature and others that we cannot name, yet which we

believe to be crucial, require life and not acquired

wealth. Obviously, we are not so naïve; these and other

things like that will not come to pass. Many pointless

sacrifices still lie ahead of us. We still must deal with

the consequences and not tackle the causes. Today, the

world is incapable of establishing global regulations for

the planet, due to the failure of lofty global politics,

which meddles with everything.

For a time, we were protected by more or less

regional agreements, established to create a deceitful

so-called free trade that in the end constructed

protectionist, supranational barriers in some regions

of the globe. In turn, important branches of industry

and services dedicated to saving and improving the

environment will arise. We will be comforted by that

for a while. We will be distracted.

But of course, the accumulation will continue

unabated, to the delight of the financial system. Wars

and fanaticism will continue until nature calls us to

account and makes our civilization non-viable. Perhaps

our vision is too crude, not compassionate enough,

and we view man as a unique creature, the only one on

Earth capable of acting against his own species.

I reiterate that what some call our planet’s ecological

crisis is the result of the overwhelming triumph of

human ambition. This is our triumph and our defeat,

given our political impotence to fit into the new era that

we have helped to build without realizing it.

Why do I say this? The numbers tell the story.

The truth is that the global population quadrupled and

gross domestic product grew by a factor of at least

20 over the past century. World trade has doubled

approximately every six years since 1990. We could

continue to list numbers that clearly establish the

march of globalization. What is happening to us?

We are entering a new era, and rapidly, but with our

political bodies, cultural accessories, parties and young

people all reduced to old age before the horrific and

accelerating changes that we cannot even grasp. We

cannot manage globalization because we do not think

globally. We do not know if this is a cultural limitation

or we are reaching biological limits.

The portents of revolution are present in our age

as in no other in the history of humankind, yet our age

does not have a conscious direction or even a basic

instinctive direction, and still less organized political

direction, because we do not have even the beginnings

of a philosophy with which to face the speed of

oncoming changes.

The greed that has been such a negative force and

such a driver of history has also pushed forward the

material, scientific and technical progress that has

made our era and our time what it is and has enabled a

phenomenal leap forward on many different fronts. At

the same time, this very tool — the greed that pushed us

to domesticate science and transform technology — is

paradoxically pushing us over the edge into a shadowy

abyss, towards an unknown fate, an era without history,

and we are left without eyes to see or the collective

intelligence to continue to colonize and transform

ourselves.

If there is one thing that defines this tiny little

human creature, it is that it is an anthropocentric

conqueror. It seems that things come alive and submit

to men. Glimpses of these things abound everywhere,

glimmers that should allow us to discern these things,

or at least make out the direction in which things are

headed, but it is clearly impossible to make collective,

global decisions about the big picture. Individual greed

easily triumphs over our species’ greed. Let us be clear.

What is the big picture of which we speak? It is the

system of global life on Earth, including human life,

with all the fragile balances that make it impossible for

us to continue as we are.

On the other hand — and this is less contentious and

more obvious — in the West in particular, because we

are indeed from the West, though we are also from the

South, the republics arose to make the claim that men

are equal, that no one is better than anyone else, and

that Governments should represent the common good,

justice and equity. Often, these republics become warped

and fall into the habit of ignoring ordinary people, the

man on the street, the common people. Republics were

not created to outgrow their constituents, but instead

are historical phenomena designed to function for their

own people. They must therefore answer to majority

and must fight for its interests.

As for the traces of feudalism that persist in

our societies, or the domineering classicism, or the

consumer culture that surrounds us all, in the course

of their existence republics often adopt a way of daily

life that excludes and holds at arm’s length the common

man. In fact, that common man should be the central

cause of the republic’s political struggle. Republican

Governments should increasingly look like their

respective peoples in the way they live and the way they

deal with life.

The fact is that we tend to cultivate feudal

anachronisms, spoiled affectations and hierarchical

distinctions that undermine the best feature of

republics — the fact that no one is better than anyone

else. The interaction of those factors and others keeps

us living in prehistory, and today it is impossible to

renounce war when politics fails. Thus, economies are

strangled and resources wasted. Every minute in the life

of our planet, we spend $2 million on military budgets

around the world — $2 million a minute. Medical

research on all manner of diseases, which has made

huge advances and is a blessing that promises longer

life, receives barely a fifth of what is budgeted for the

military. That process, from which we cannot escape,

perpetuates hatred, fanaticism and distrust, fuels new

wars and wastes fortunes.

I know that it is very easy politically to criticize

ourselves at the national level, and I think it naive

in this world to propose that resources that could be

saved and spent on other, useful things. Again, that

would be possible if we were capable of making global

agreements and working on global prevention and

world policies aimed at ensuring peace and offering

the weakest among us guarantees that do not exist.

Enormous resources would have to be cut to address

the most shameful things on Earth, but one question

suffices. Where can humankind as it is today go

without those guarantees? Thus, each wields arms

commensurate with his size.

And that is where we are today, because we can

barely reason as individuals, let alone as a species.

Global institutions, especially today, languish in the

shadow of the dissenting great nations. Clearly, such

nations wish to hold on to power. They block action

by the United Nations, which was created in the hope

and with a dream of peace for humankind. But what

is even worse is that they have cut it off from global

democracy. We are not all equal. We cannot be equal

in a world where some are strong and others weak. As

a result, our world democracy is wounded, and we face

the historical impossibility of reaching a global peace

agreement. We patch up diseases when an outbreak

occurs as one or other of the great Powers wishes, while

we look on from afar.

It would be difficult to invent a force that is worse

than the chauvinistic nationalism of the great Powers.

Nationalism, a force that liberates the weak through

the process of decolonization, has become a tool of

oppression in the hands of the strong. The past two

centuries are full of examples. The United Nations is

languishing and becoming increasingly bureaucratic

from lack of power and autonomy, above all of

recognition of democracy for the weak of the world,

who are the majority.

By way of a very small example, our little country

is in absolute terms the largest Latin American

contributor of soldiers to peacebuilding missions,

and we go wherever we are asked to go. But we are

small and weak, and in the places where resources are

distributed and decisions made, we cannot go even to

serve coffee. In our heart of hearts we long to help

humankind emerge from prehistory — and people who

live with war are still living in prehistory, despite the

many artifacts they can build — but as long as we do

not emerge from prehistory and retire war as a resort

when politics fails, that is the long march and challenge

we have ahead of us. We say that in full awareness; we

are familiar with the loneliness of war.

Such dreams, however, require us to fight for an

agenda of world agreements that can begin to steer our

history and overcome life’s threats, step by step. Our

species should have a Government for all humankind

that supersedes individualism and creates political

leaders who follow the path of science and not merely the

immediate interests of those governing and suffocating

us. At the same time, we must understand that the

world’s poor are not from Africa or Latin America;

they are all part of humankind, and that means that we

must help them to develop so they can lead decent lives.

The necessary resources exist. They can be found in the

waste of our predatory civilization.

A few days ago a tribute was delivered in a fire

station in California. An electric bulb had been turned

on for 100 years. It had been on for 100 years! How many

millions of dollars have they taken from our pockets

deliberately creating junk so that people will buy and

buy and buy? But globalization means a brutal cultural

change for our planet and for our life. That is what

history demands from us. The entire material basis has

changed and it has changed man. In our culture, we act

as if nothing had happened. Instead of us controlling

globalization, it controls us.

Almost 20 years ago, we discussed the humble

Tobin tax, which could not be applied at a global level.

All of the banks with financial power rose up against it.

Their private property and who knows how many other

things would be harmed. However, that is the paradox.

With talent and collective work, with science, step by

step humankind can make deserts green; humankind

can bring agriculture to the seas; humankind can

develop agriculture that lives with salt water.

If the power of humankind is focused on what is

essential, it is infinite. Here we see the greatest sources

of energy. What do we know about photosynthesis?

Almost nothing. There is a great deal of energy in

the world, if we work together to use it properly. It

is possible to eliminate poverty from the planet. It is

possible to create stability. It will be possible for future

generations, if they begin to reason as a species and

not just as individuals, to bring life to the galaxies and

pursue this dream of conquest that we, human beings,

have in our genes.

But if those dreams are to come true, we will have to

control ourselves or we will die. We will die because we

are not capable of being at the level of the civilization

that we have been developing with our efforts. That

is our dilemma. We should not spend our time merely

correcting the consequences. Let us consider the deep-

rooted causes, the civilization of waste, the present

civilization that is stealing time from human life and

wasting it on pointless matters.

Let us remember that human life is a miracle.

Consider that human life is a miracle, that we are

alive as a result of a miracle, and that nothing is more

important than life. Our biological duty is, above all, to

respect life, promote it, take care of it, reproduce it and

understand that the species is our being.