On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People's Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) The XXIV Summit of Heads of State and Government of this integrationist platform began this Saturday in the Venezuelan capital.
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00It is Raul Gonzalez. You have the floor.
00:03Thank you very much, my dear friend and comrade,
00:08President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and all colleagues
00:17present here today. I want to thank the government and people of Venezuela
00:23for their kind invitation to this 20th anniversary summit of ALBA
00:34and to say how much we appreciate all the arrangements that have been made for us.
00:43We have listened to
00:46excellent speeches from all the preceding speakers and I want to
00:57adopt everything that everyone has said thus far and to call what has been said my own.
01:08I shall therefore try not to repeat too much of what has been said,
01:17save and accept where it is necessary and desirable to do so, but hopefully to add value
01:27to this conversation. I want to wish everyone who is listening a wonderful Christmas.
01:40I know this perhaps would be the last time we are seeing each other face to face before Christmas
01:47and what I want for Christmas really is to see the results of this summit implemented.
01:58I begin by quoting a very important essay written by the Cuban
02:19patriot, anti-imperialist fighter and guide,
02:23national hero of Cuba, JosĂ© MartĂ, in his famous essay of 1891 entitled, Our America.
02:37And in it, among other things, José Martà discusses the importance of ideas
02:45of ideas and the manner in which ideas are made flesh,
02:57ideas which are shaped into something tangible to improve the lot of human beings.
03:07And this is what he said in 1891, which I want to embrace and apply to our current circumstances
03:17over a hundred years later. He says, these are not times for going to bed in a sleeping cap,
03:32in a sleeping cap, but rather like one, the Castellanos men with our weapons for a pillow,
03:43weapons of the mind which vanquish all others. Trenches of ideas are worth more than trenches
03:54of stone. A cloud of ideas is a thing no armored prow can smash through. A vital idea set ablaze
04:07before the world at the right moment can, like the mystic banner of the last judgment,
04:15stop a fleet of battleships, whom tongues that are still strangers to one another
04:23must hurry to become acquainted like men who are about to do battle together.
04:29Those who shake their fists at each other like jealous brothers quarreling over a piece of land
04:37or the owner of a small house who envies the man with a better one
04:42must join hands and interlace them until the two hands are one.
04:49That is what happened 20 years ago with Fidel and Chavez in bringing together the idea of ALBA.
05:02This is a unique and extraordinary organization in its conceptualization,
05:11conceptualization, in its evolution and in its delivery of results,
05:21delivery of outcomes beneficial to our people.
05:28There are 10 member states of ALBA
05:30approximating roughly to 60 million people.
05:42ALBA has nine countries washed by the Caribbean Sea
05:49and one, Bolivia, is landlocked. We are overwhelmingly
05:56an island or seaboard civilization organization.
06:05And we have been joined
06:09through the fever of history.
06:15It amazes me
06:19when people will ask
06:21why is it that you're engaged
06:25with Cuba and Latin America and Venezuela?
06:31Well, first of all, we are prisoners of geography.
06:40We are in the same area, there is geography.
06:46We are in the same area, there is geographical closeness
06:53and overwhelmingly, save and except for Bolivia, the Caribbean Sea is ours.
07:03These countries have all been shaped
07:10in their contemporary manifestations
07:17by a history of native genocide, the enslavement of African bodies,
07:27indentureship, colonialism and imperialism.
07:35We are together in geography, we are in history.
07:41And through the fever of that history,
07:45we have all become compromises.
07:55But it is not because history has compromised us in our evolution
08:02as a Caribbean and Latin American civilization.
08:06Does it mean that we are compromising in relation to fundamental principles
08:14of life, living and production?
08:21Our Caribbean and Latin American civilizations,
08:26and there is oneness and there are differences.
08:29And there is oneness and there are differences.
08:34But one thing for sure is that metaphorically,
08:41we are a veritable symphony.
08:45We are the songs of the indigenous people, the Amerindians,
08:52the Caribs, some people call them, but the Kalinago, the Garifuna.
08:58We are the rhythm of Africa.
09:01We are the melody of Europe.
09:04We are the chords of Asia.
09:07And we are the homegrown lyrics of the Caribbean and Latin America.
09:11Of course, through this evolution of our civilization,
09:19Latin American and Caribbean civilization,
09:23dissonances like in all symphonies do occur.
09:30But those dissonances are dealt with
09:37through the customs and traditions arising from the genius of our people
09:43or through our legitimate formal institutions.
09:46And as independent nation-states,
09:52equal in international law,
09:56we have decided voluntarily to come together
10:02for the betterment of our people.
10:06The principles
10:10of our civilization,
10:12the principles
10:17are on paper.
10:20And there's a document here before us,
10:24which reaffirms the principles, purposes and commitments of ALBA.
10:31And they're a good reminder.
10:35But more than the declaration of principles,
10:42and purposes of ALBA,
10:45ALBA has grown out from the genius of our peoples.
10:52And I want us to reflect on this.
10:55There are some people
10:58today wish to make America white again.
11:02And they speak to the genius of their people.
11:10But we, our people, possess a profound genius.
11:15Because if we did not have this genius,
11:22the manner in which
11:26the harshness of history
11:27and the exploitation which we have
11:31been subjected to, that we have nevertheless built ourselves
11:40functioning societies
11:45at a reasonable level of human development.
11:50We have done so by our own
11:54We have done so by our own selves, through our own institutions.
12:03And we have done so through our own image and likeness.
12:13Now,
12:18there is
12:19a general set of principles relating to democracy.
12:26Matters of choice,
12:29freedom, accountability, justice.
12:35But no one civilization
12:38possesses an absolute conception or practice of democracy.
12:49For instance,
12:52our English-speaking Caribbean have had
12:59a quote-unquote tutelage of Westminster democracy.
13:04But if the truth be told,
13:08the Westminster Whitehall model of the United Kingdom
13:12has not crossed the Atlantic very well.
13:15And to the extent
13:18that we have certain of its forms,
13:22it is true that many of its structures are very different
13:27and they're functioning and not precisely the same
13:32as in quote-unquote the mother country.
13:38So that
13:39when a country prunes itself
13:45in our hemisphere
13:47as the exemplar of democracy,
13:53I remind everyone
13:58that in 1951, in my country,
14:02all adult persons over the age of 21 could vote,
14:08whether you're white, brown, yellow, or black.
14:13But in the United States of America,
14:16black people could not vote in 1951,
14:20at least not overwhelmingly so.
14:22That is in my lifetime.
14:24I was born in 1951.
14:26I was born in 1951.
14:28I was born in 1951.
14:30That is in my lifetime.
14:31I was born in 1946.
14:39While we were struggling in our Caribbean
14:47for independence in 1962,
14:51Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago became independent.
14:54But Martin Luther King was demonstrating in Washington in 1963
15:03for the right of basic civil rights
15:07which were promised black people
15:08at the time of the Declaration of Independence
15:14in the late 18th century in the United States of America.
15:17I'm not dumbing down the United States of America.
15:20I'm only making the point
15:22that different societies have evolved in different ways
15:26and different pieces
15:28and shaped by a different set of circumstances.
15:33But all of a sudden,
15:36they have become extremely judgmental
15:43and that they possess a manifest destiny
15:47to rule.
15:53In the year 2000,
15:55there was a presidential election
15:59between George Bush,
16:02G.W. Bush Jr.
16:04and Albert Gore.
16:09The state of Florida determined the presidential elections.
16:17It went all the way up to the Supreme Court.
16:21You may recall,
16:23the first time I've heard about these things
16:25in all my studies of politics and elections
16:30about hanging chads and pregnant chads.
16:36In fact, it appeared as though you had to be a Hebrew prophet
16:41to be able to discern
16:43who voted for these different chads which were pregnant
16:48and those which were hanging.
16:50Amazingly, it went all the way up to the Supreme Court.
16:54The verdict of 5-4 was returned.
16:59But the five persons who voted for the Republican George Bush
17:04to have won the election, the five justices,
17:07all five of them were nominated
17:10by Republican presidents.
17:14And the four
17:19who said that Al Gore was the winner
17:23were all nominated for approval by the U.S. Senate,
17:32by Democratic presidents.
17:35Well, no, they had their internal processes.
17:39That's their business.
17:40I'm not quarreling with them.
17:41I'm just only making an observation.
17:44Well, how can you now tell me
17:46when the internal authorities in Venezuela made a declaration,
17:52that declaration by the electoral authorities
17:57was interrogated by the Supreme Court of Venezuela.
18:03And you want to tell me
18:06that you can stay outside
18:08and judge that the process which has taken place in Venezuela
18:14is inferior to a process that you have.
18:18Who gave you the authority to be an arbiter?
18:29And then you tell me that you are possessed of right reason.
18:38Your right reason led you
18:41in the United States, in Western Europe,
18:48to say that a man not too long ago
18:52who was celebrated as the president of Venezuela,
18:55that is to say Juan Guaido.
18:57I understand he's probably seeking a job as a taxi man
19:01somewhere in Miami or someplace else in the United States.
19:04I don't know what is his current position.
19:08But, and I wish him well,
19:09and I hope he gets his job as a taxi driver
19:12or the operator in an elevator in a building
19:15in Miami or New York or wherever.
19:18I, it doesn't really matter to me.
19:19I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's his own.
19:27But they were going around saying
19:31that the international community
19:37the international community recognized Guaido.
19:4550 odd countries recognized Guaido.
19:49But you have 193 countries of the United Nations.
19:56How you become the international community
19:58when 53 or 55 recognized Guaido
20:02and the rest of them said that the duly elected president
20:06was Nicolas Maduro.
20:07And more than that, the world has 8 billion people
20:11and 7 billion in the 140 odd who recognize Maduro.
20:20And a golden billion somehow is more important
20:24than the rest of humanity.
20:33We are friends with the United States of America.
20:36And in many respects,
20:42we are all joined at the hip
20:44with the United States of America.
20:45It's the most powerful economy the world has ever seen.
20:50Even though Cuba has been striking out
20:53on its own independence,
20:57there's no Moses yet
20:59to part the narrow 90 mile waterway
21:06between Havana and Miami.
21:10So you are conjoined.
21:12The television stations show American films.
21:18I'm in the hotel, I turn on,
21:20I see CNN in the hotel,
21:23I see BBC, I see other stations too.
21:27There's a linkage in this multilateral world.
21:36What reason can there be?
21:41Because of the ideological requisites
21:47and the interests of monopoly capitalism
21:51and presidential politics of South Florida
21:54that you have to say that Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua
22:03are national security threats to the United States.
22:08It's laughable.
22:10And you pass a law and executive order on that.
22:13Of course, I have been trained to think
22:16that the law is right reason,
22:18but occasionally the law is an ass.
22:21I saw a declaration made that Nicaragua,
22:25a country of 6 million people,
22:28is a national security threat to the United States.
22:30It's all the way down in Central America.
22:35How could reasonable people make such absurd declarations?
22:42Because you don't like what Ortega is doing.
22:45That's a matter for the Nicaraguan people,
22:51as it is a matter for the Venezuelan people
22:53and the Cuban people.
22:58Then you proclaim and you tell me
23:02that the central contradiction in today's world
23:06is between the United States and Cuba.
23:09That the central contradiction in today's world
23:13is between democracy and autocracy.
23:19The central contradiction in today's world
23:23is who gets what, when, where and how.
23:32That has always been the central contradiction.
23:34Who gets the resources in the world?
23:38Who determines who to get the resources
23:42and how those resources are to be divided?
23:46That's where the central contradiction is.
23:49You can fool other people,
23:51but you certainly can't fool me as a student of history
23:55as to what is the central contradiction.
24:03Was it a central contradiction
24:05between autocracy and democracy
24:09when the United States of America, the deep state,
24:12organized in 1973 the overthrow
24:15of a democratically elected government in Chile
24:18led by Allende?
24:25I think that with President Trump,
24:29who is entering the White House in January,
24:34I think we need to have an intelligent conversation
24:41with him, with his Secretary of State,
24:46to say, listen, we can live together
24:51peacefully as neighbors.
24:54We can, but we have to do so with respect for each other
25:01and without ideological preconditions.
25:07I am a person, and Alba is,
25:10and that's why he's in Vincent and Kennedy,
25:12is that we are, we are, we are members of Alba.
25:20This is a very special organization,
25:24and we have come together
25:29in, in love,
25:35in faith, with fresh hope,
25:41and in our region as a zone of peace.
25:43And I want to repeat those three virtues in addition to peace.
25:51Love, faith, and hope, and I say fresh hope,
25:59because there's some, there are new circumstances in the world
26:04that we have to deal with.
26:06And hope, and I say fresh hope,
26:10because there's some, there are new circumstances in the world
26:14where we have to have fresh hope in going forward.
26:19These are, these are virtues which are found
26:23in one of Paul's letters,
26:29Paul's servant of the Lord called to be an apostle,
26:31one of his letters in the book of Corinthians,
26:34first Corinthians,
26:37and the United States is a Christian community.
26:46Love is a never-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.
26:55Love, you know, but one of the things is this,
27:01I've lived long enough to know
27:04that the declaration of love in general
27:08is not the,
27:14is not that which is the true mark of love.
27:20You can always declare, you go on a platform, you say I love the people.
27:24You have to love in the particular,
27:27the homeless person, the unemployed person,
27:34the woman who is discriminated against because she's a woman,
27:41an ethnic minority discriminated against.
27:46You have to love in the particular,
27:48because it is that love which brings both joy and pain,
27:53because if you do not love in the particular, you do not have any pain,
27:58but the joy of loving in the particular is a beautiful human experience.
28:06And I say to my American friends that Alba is about love.
28:12And I say to my American friends that Alba is about love. It's about complementarity.
28:29And faith is embedded in it.
28:33The Pauline Virtue, it says that faith is the substance of things hoped for
28:40and the evidence of that which we have not yet seen. We are hoping for
28:51the fulfillment of the proposal of AgroAlba because we see that it has great potential.
29:01We have not yet seen the evidence,
29:04but we have faith that it will come about. And that is why it's defined as faith is the
29:11substance of things hoped for and the evidence of that which we have not yet seen.
29:23And hope naturally is an expectation and desire
29:28for a certain thing to happen. And fresh hope in this extraordinarily complicated and difficult
29:36world in which we have now found ourselves. And this extraordinarily difficult and complicated world,
29:49rather than persons who have recently been victorious,
29:53rather than persons who have recently been victorious
29:58in the United States of America, seeing this as an opportunity to engender peace
30:06and prosperity for all,
30:10that we live together. This is the 21st century.
30:15Instead, what do you get?
30:30You get an overwhelming sense that those who have been victorious
30:38think that they are omnipotent.
30:45And worse, they think that they are omniscient. They're all powerful and they're all knowing.
30:56Well, you know, not too long ago,
31:03when the Soviet Union collapsed,
31:07we were told that we have now reached the end of history,
31:15that we are in a unipolar world.
31:20Everybody has to worship at the altar of monopoly capitalism and a version of democracy
31:28as envisaged by the founding fathers in the United States of America.
31:33Well, unfortunately, for those who have those illusions,
31:37the world is a more complicated and messy place, and contradictions do arise.
31:44It is part and parcel of life, living, and production. And we have a situation now
31:52and we have a situation now
31:59where,
32:03though we do not yet have a multipolar world,
32:15the dangers are that we are in transition from a unipolar world
32:22the old order is dying and the new is not yet quite born.
32:32And in that transition, there are enormous difficulties and complications. And if
32:41all of us who in leadership positions in the world are not careful, and particularly those
32:47who possess nuclear weapons and who have the power to do real harm, if they do not recognize
32:55that there are contradictory forces at play with legitimacy and with authenticity,
33:02the demands of the Cuban people
33:08to develop themselves in accordance with how they see fit.
33:14Why don't you let them and work together with them? They may influence you, you may influence them.
33:24Similarly, you come to, you wage a war against them for 60 years, 60-odd years, relentless,
33:36many times to kill Fidel.
33:44You use terror
33:48because one of the worst forms of terror is to single out the leader of another country
33:53deliberately to go about to kill him.
33:58And yet you put Cuba on the list of state sponsor of terrorism.
34:06When in fact, in our Caribbean, certainly in my lifetime, the only act of terror
34:14was committed against a Cuban aircraft in October 1976, where 70-odd Cubans,
34:23Guyanese and North Koreans were killed. And the persons who did the bombing were linked to the CIA
34:32and none of them met justice for that particular act of terror.
34:41I am not saying anything, and I repeat,
34:47I love the American civilization. It has a vitality. It has a spirit.
34:56And a lot of our people from the Caribbean and Latin America like it too and go to it.
35:02But even those who go to it, go to it often with a heavy heart because it possesses dimensions
35:09which are insufficiently human.
35:16And a better world is possible. A better world is possible. And we must have that conversation
35:23among ourselves to have a better world for all our peoples.
35:35Now, a system has been established in global institutions after 1945.
35:46To the victors, the spoils.
35:54They set up the business so in the United Nations that they'll control things through
35:59the Security Council. They set it up in the IMF and the World Bank so that they can control things.
36:06Well, the world is a different place than it was then. It's changing. So we need substantive
36:12reforms. And we need a reform of the financial architecture.
36:20I am not saying that the World Bank has done no good. For me to say that would mean that I am not
36:27looking at the data. But the fact of the matter is this. It has not done anything near as good
36:35as it could reasonably have done if it had been shaped differently and if the reforms take place
36:43now and take into consideration the interests of developing countries.
36:50Climate change. Look, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is one of the most
36:56vulnerable countries in the world.
36:58I have been in office as Prime Minister since the general elections of March the 28th,
37:072001. So I've been Prime Minister for nearly 24 years. I've had to face periodic elections
37:19every five years.
37:21I have another election sometime before the end of next year.
37:25The last election was November 2025, 2020.
37:33We have free and fair elections.
37:37People decide that they vote us. Despite all the propaganda,
37:45but governing a small island-developing country like St. Vincent and the Grenadines
37:55is like going up a dung escalator, where the dung escalator is like going up a
38:08dung escalator, where the dung escalator is moving faster than the upward movement.
38:21And what causes real problems, among other things, is climate change.
38:30Our contribution to global warming is non-existent, de minimis.
38:40In the 24 years, taking out the volcanic eruptions of April 2021 and COVID in the year 2020,
38:59we have had 12 serious natural disasters connected to climate change.
39:08The last one, July the 1st, Hurricane Meryl.
39:15The economic damage was one-third of our gross domestic product.
39:21The economic loss is in excess of that.
39:25I have to rebuild 6,000 houses.
39:37Those who are responsible for global warming and the increase in global temperature to above 1.5
39:47degrees Celsius, above pre-industrial levels,
39:53they're not making any contribution to your rebuilding.
40:03But why I say the genius of our people, despite all those natural disasters,
40:08we have been able, in real terms, to more than double
40:16the average per capita income in our country, and to lift our country from a medium level
40:22of human development to a high level of human development.
40:25And I want to put on record that one of the integration movements to which we belong,
40:32integration movements to which we belong, which has made a significant contribution
40:40to the lifting and the development of St. Vincent and the Grenadines is ALBA,
40:44through the ALBA Bank, through Petrocarib, and through practical cooperation between ALBA members,
40:51especially Cuba and Venezuela.
40:55I don't have to quote chapter and verse.
40:58The evidence is there for anybody who wants to see that.
41:08When I said to the United States, my friends, and I hope they're listening to me,
41:17and I'm taking a little time on it because this broadcast, I think, goes worldwide.
41:29On the Petrocarib, every single year during the Petrocarib agreement,
41:36and I want the people of Venezuela to know this, we didn't get the fuel
41:46at a price cheaper than the world market price.
41:50We got it at the same price as Venezuela as a good member in standing in OPEC,
41:57at level.
42:00Where we got the advantage is that the financing arrangement
42:07assisted us because rather than paying cash upfront, it came as a loan at a very low rate
42:16of interest and Fidel and Chavez worked this out as part of the ALBA arrangements.
42:26And the business continued.
42:32And every year, therefore, rather than going to borrow money expensively,
42:41there was a pot of money to be had here on this financial arrangement, which I was able to take,
42:48to put to housing, to put to education, and to deal with poverty in my country.
42:54By carrying out against Venezuela a vengeful policy of sanctions with no objective
43:04basis other than vengeance and punishment, punitive.
43:12You weaponize the U.S. dollar.
43:14You kill Petro-Caribbean. The Americans, by sanctioning Venezuela,
43:25had collateral damage to countries which they call their friends
43:30in the Eastern Caribbean, which are member states of ALBA.
43:36The same way that the sanctions have contributed to
43:41financial and material hardship in Cuba, and as the rapporteur in 2021,
43:47the U.N. rapporteur said about Venezuela, that the sanctions cause
43:54persons in Venezuela, ordinary working people to go into poverty.
44:04I want the American people and the American leaders to understand this.
44:11Now we are at a complicated moment in history.
44:18Men and women make history, but only to the extent that the circumstances of history
44:25permit them so to make. We do not make history in circumstances chosen by ourselves.
44:34We make history in circumstances inherited from the past,
44:40and what has arisen in contemporary circumstances.
44:47Part of the problem, of course, is that some of what is inherited from the past
44:52are ideas in the heads of men and women, which oftentimes weigh like a nightmare on their brain.
45:00And you have to free yourself from those ideas, which weigh like a nightmare on your brain,
45:09if you have to emancipate yourself to go to a higher level of life,
45:14living and production in the interest of the peoples of all the world.
45:20Now, I don't want to say anything here today about the conflict in the Ukraine,
45:35except to call for peace. But I have to say something about Gaza. I wrote a letter recently
45:45to President Biden, President Putin, President Zelensky, and the Secretary
45:53General of the United Nations about peace in Ukraine. Gaza. There's a resolution here,
46:02a declaration here on Palestine, which I support 100%. And Palestine,
46:27you know, I'll tell a little story.
46:33Big powers, those in quest of hegemony,
46:41tend to ignore that other peoples have histories.
46:48All of us have histories. And to understand how the thing run, we have to ask our grandparents
46:55and our parents, and we have to ask our daughters and our sons.
46:58And to understand the compromises that history has made all of us, and
47:09the purpose of asking our whole daughter, asking our parents and grandparents and our daughters
47:16and our sons, the purpose of doing that is to make a whole daughter and a whole son out of
47:23daughter and a whole son out of the compromises that the fever of history has made us.
47:29And to do so, we have to come home to ourselves.
47:34I went in the year 2009 to Iran, when President Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was president.
47:53And as a consequence of that visit, I went to the Vatican, I went to Portugal,
47:58I went to the Vatican. I saw Pope Benedict. He even gave me a mission to take to Iran.
48:09But a large contingent of persons came from the State Department after I returned from Iran
48:14to talk to me as to why did you go to Iran.
48:20So I told them, I said, I didn't understand. I don't understand the question.
48:24They said, well, it's okay. We don't mean that you don't have the sovereign right to go. I said,
48:30listen, among friends, I wouldn't raise the fig leaf of sovereignty,
48:35but I don't understand the question. So I'm going to answer your question, which I don't understand,
48:42with a question to you. Would you please tell me, where in the Hebrew Bible
48:50or indeed the New Testament, do I meet the United States of America?
48:56They said they didn't understand. I said, well, you know, in the book of Daniel,
49:01in the Old Testament, there's the Persian Empire. Iran is the successor to the Persian Empire.
49:09I said, Daniel was a Jewish prophet, a Hebrew prophet.
49:15I said, every people have their history. The Palestinian people have their own history
49:21and they have their land. There is a Palestinian civilization. The Palestinians are not
49:32temporary occupants of the land. They have their own history and they have their own land.
49:39The Palestinians are not
49:44temporary occupants of any land.
49:48They are in permanent residence of that land, which they're claiming from time immemorial.
49:54And they're also in that area, all persons, the Hebrew people who have lived there.
50:14And the Hebrews and the Palestinians used to live together.
50:24And then a doctrine
50:29of Zionism arose. And if you speak to this, people may say that you're anti-Semitic.
50:38Well, I have grown up in a manner, in a way, where I have absolutely no prejudice in relation
50:45to anything or any person. I don't have any of those bones in my body.
50:59Netanyahu is not the reincarnation of Moses.
51:06Netanyahu wants to wipe out the Palestinian civilization, wipe them out completely.
51:16And what he's doing, everybody knows, everybody who has the slightest conscience, whether you,
51:25whether your conscience is derived from, with no belief in any divine being,
51:32whether you're a Hindu, a Christian, a believer in Judaism, you're a Buddhist, whatever,
51:44you know that what is being done is wrong and it is sinful.
51:51But because of power arrangements, the United States of America has prevented
51:58a ceasefire. Never mind the talking about a ceasefire, because there are many occasions
52:06before the United Nations Security Council, the question of the ceasefire came about and the
52:11entire world said yes, except the United States of America. That is a blot on the conscience and the
52:21civilization of those who represent that civilization in the United States of America.
52:34It's a complicated question,
52:38but I want us, as we have done here, to make a call, as the United Nations has done, the General
52:48Assembly and 14 members of the Security Council, said we must have a ceasefire. Let's have
52:59a conversation and let's bring about peace in the
53:09Middle East. Now there are three paths,
53:13P-A-T-H-S, where we can go forward.
53:20One, we can roll over and play dead
53:28to imperialism and hegemony,
53:34or we can strategically accommodate ourselves to imperialism,
53:39which means leave it to do what it wants. Thirdly, we can take the path
53:51of creative resistance and reconstruction.
53:59ALBA is about creative resistance and reconstruction.
54:09I want to let everybody who is listening to me know, I have a grandson just born.
54:25He was born in the United States of America. His father is Haitian American.
54:31His grandfather, his mother is Vincentian, so he's entitled in law, at the moment,
54:41to American citizenship, to Haitian citizenship, and to Vincentian citizenship.
54:50I want to see my grandson, who takes his first name from Hugo Chavez,
54:58from Hugo Chavez,
55:02to be
55:07in an America of peace, of love, of faith, and of fresh hope. I want him to be innocent
55:18Vincent and the Grenadines with those same values, and also in the great Republic of Haiti,
55:30those same values.
55:36I do not, in any way at all, have anything other than huge admiration for the American civilization.
55:49Warts and all, because
55:57I don't expect purity anywhere.
56:01Nicholas Guyen taught me that. In the poem, I declare myself an impure man.
56:07But we must be, on this earthly city, the best we can, in peace,
56:20in love, in faith, and in fresh hope. That is why Saint Vincent
56:34and the Grenadines
56:39is a long-standing member of ALBA, and ALBA is a force for good. Thank you very much.