​Venezuela is not going to surrender!
 
Discourse pronounced by Nicolás Maduro Moros
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
In the political-cultural Act of Solidarity with Venezuela
Havana, Cuba
April 10, 2017
 
[Selections]
 
Translated and edited by Charles McKelvey
 
 

 
. . . .
 
Today we are commemorating the anniversary of the founding of the Cuban Revolutionary Party by José Martí in 1892. . . .  At that time, our peoples had known only colonial vassalage.  The domination of the imperial powers had been absolute over what today is known as Latin America and the Caribbean.  Until the nineteenth century, in all of the American lands of our hemisphere there only had been known colonialism, slavery, racism and exploitation.  Three centuries of domination, of colonialism, of extermination of the aboriginal population marked our history and our blood; three centuries of slavery, where they brought our African grandfathers, is one of the most horrific historic episodes that we ought not to forget nor permit future generations to forget.  More than fifty million men and women were kidnapped from African lands and were brought bound, worse than animals, converted into slaves throughout this continent, as we say, for the cultured of Europe; it was the educated and cultured of Europe that imposed slavery, racism, exclusion, and the plundering of entire continents.  So this struggle has not been short; this struggle will not be short.  And the youth above all, with its spirit of always searching, of creativity, of happiness, and of rebellion, ought to understand that the road of struggle and dignity of the foundational leaders of our native land [of Latin America] in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is the battle that we make today and tomorrow, with absolute responsibility, for our peoples and our America. 
 
     The twentieth century was, without doubt, a decisive time.  Yes, in the nineteenth century, there was Bolívar, Sucre, Ayacucho, Martí, and Morazán, who became legends for the peoples who aspired to freedom, independence, and equality in all of our territory, who dreamed of a republic, who repudiated all forms of submission, of the colonialism of Europe imposed on our lands, of plundering, of slavery.  It was a century marked by quest and combat, and also by treason, when the dreams of equality, democracy, and republic were postponed.  But the twentieth century was the century of the eruption of U.S. imperialism as the hegemonic power of our America and the world.  Our parents, grandparents and the generations that preceded us knew it.
 
      The twentieth century was full of events and interventions, of gunship diplomacy, of the policy of the carrot and the stick, more stick than carrot.  It was a century that saw corrupt oligarchies, in each one of our countries, tied to the interests of economic, political, and strategic domination of our region by the imperialist elite that has directed the destiny of the United States of America since its founding.
 
     The OAS, the Organization of American States, was born as a heritage of the Pan-American Conferences that José Martí denounced at the end of the nineteenth century, the Conference of 1889.  The Organization of American States at its birth expressed the hegemonic policy that the United States had developed toward our continent.  The Conference of Bogatá of 1948 was the founding conference for the organization that was going to serve the imperial elite of the United States as an instrument of legitimation of its political, economic and military domination over all of our Latin American and Caribbean region.
 
. . . . . . . . . .
 
 
      [In 1948 in Bogatá], there was Fidel, a young student who had gone to participate in the Latin American Congress of Students of America, with the idea of forming a confederation of all the organizations to oppose the founding of the OAS, with the Martían idea of opposing Pan-Americanism as the negation of Bolivarianism.  Whereas Pan-Americanism represented the Monroeist currents that emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Bolivarianism was the banner lifted up by Martí in the nineteenth century and reclaimed by Fidel in the twentieth century, el comandante Fidel Castro.
 
. . .  The Organization of American States was born of the confrontation between, on the one hand, the emerging and always renewing leaders and projects of Our America . . . and on the other hand, the alliance of the oligarchies, always subordinated to the imperial elites of the United States that, with all the force that they have attained throughout history, impose themselves by blackmail, coercion, or direct violence.
 
     Sixty-nine years have passed since the founding of the Organization of American States.  The sixty-nine years of history of the OAS is the most shameful story of the subordination of the local hierarchies of our countries to imperialist interests, in all situations and in all moments.  It would take us all night and even several days to review and evaluate this story.  Let us merely remember some symbolic moments.  Guatemala, 1954, the campaign against President Jacobo Arbenz and the democratic revolution of Guatemala.  The invasion resulted in 300,000 dead and fifty years of dictatorship.  After the passing of fifty years, the U.S. Department of States asked the pardon of the people of Guatemala, recognizing that the invasion was wrong, because fifty years later it was demonstrated that Jacobo Arbenz was no communist.
 
      The Dominican Republic, 1966.  Juan Bosch, an extraordinary and brilliant leader, Latin Americanist, Martían, Bolivarian, lifted up by the people, the Dominican people, our beloved Dominican people, and the OAS served as the aircraft carrier for one of the massacres, one of the most horrific invasions of the 1960s.  Before the Dominican Republic, this had reached Cuba.
 
     We have been debating in Venezuela and from Venezuela with friendly governments, with social and popular movements of the entire continent and with our people over the character of this Organization of American States.
 
      The great majority of Cubans present here today were born after the 1960s, but as a result of the excellent educational system of Cuba, you know the story very well.  You know that the OAS from 1959 to 1962 was the setting for the preparation of aggression, intervention and occupation of Cuba.  You know the immense battle of Cuban men and women, with Fidel, Raúl and Che, swimming against a current formed by political and diplomatic initiatives, and with the support and solidarity of the peoples of the entire continent from Caracas to Montevideo, from Mexico City to Buenos Aires; but they were able to count on the criminal complicity of all the governments, the great majority of them dictatorships and the rest with the formality of representative bourgeois democracy, which had control of the votes of the OAS.
 
      Cuba had to launch an enormous battle.  There are sufficient declassified documents of that time, so the story is known.  The United States, with a great capacity for pressure and imposition, was directing behind the scenes the various meetings and conferences of the OAS.  In 1960 and 1961, the Organization of American States was used to move toward an aggression through resolutions.  The famous Democratic Charter did not exist them, but it did not matter, they did not need it.  They violated the Charter of the United Nations as often as they wanted, and they began a process of harassment and persecution against the revolution born in Cuba and against the desire for dignity and the efforts of an entire people, who recently had dawned a new historic period.
 
      Before 1961, they carried out a media, political and diplomatic campaign, and the OAS served as a mechanism for the accumulation of a combination of actions, condemnations, and harassment, such that Raúl Roa, the Cuban foreign minister, characterized the OAS as the colonial ministry of the United States. In colonial times, the form of governing overseas colonies was through the colonial ministries that were in charge of ruling, dominating and governing the overseas territories.  In the 1960s, the OAS, described well by Cuba as the colonial ministry, functioned as a mechanism for legitimating what the Cubans would experience in April 1961 [the Bay of Pigs invasion].
 
     Cuba was not expelled from the OAS before 1961, because the intention of the Bay of Pigs invasion was to establish a beachhead and to form a titular government that later would be established in some territory in our beloved Cuba, leaving all the governments and the OAS with the historic role of having to recognize a parallel titular government and later to justify the call to a massive military intervention of the United States against the Cuban people.   So Cuba was kept in the OAS, harassed by declarations, speeches and meetings.  In spite of the apparent solitude, the word of Cuba was the moral reference and voice and the force of rebellion that America needed, in order to know if imperialism could be confronted and defeated, and in order to know that there was a people with such force: the Cuban people and Fidel [Applause].
 
      The victory of the Cuban people in seventy-two hours [at the Bay of Pigs] was an extraordinary and magical experience.  It represented the first defeat of U.S. imperialism in American lands, a heroic victory that increased considerably the prestige of Fidel and of the Cuban Revolution before the peoples of the world, even as the imposition of a policy of isolation against Cuba began.  Thus began the pressures on the governments for the rupture of diplomatic relations, as part of a criminal campaign to separate and divide our peoples and to fill us with hate.  A chain of events began, with all the governments of the time breaking diplomatic relations and adding themselves to the blockade of Cuba, with the exception of Mexico (I am speaking of the Mexico of dignity, the Mexico of the spirit of Lázaro Cárdenas and the immortal spirit of Emiliano Zapata, and not the Mexico of betrayal).  And it was then, and only then, that came the famous meeting to expel Cuba from the Organization of American States.
 
     Today we are able to tell and remember the testimonies of that historic moment.  I cannot cease in feeling as a human being and as a revolutionary an enormous admiration for Fidel, for Raúl, and for that group of men and women that knew how to confront those historic times with dignity [applause], with wisdom, with firmness, with courage, and not to let fall under any circumstance the banner of dignity of revolutionary Cuba.  Heroic times were the source of the marvelous Cuban Revolution.  The Cuban Revolution in the twentieth century meant the initiation of a long era of revolutionary, progressive transformations in our continent.  The Cuban Revolution set the guidelines and the agenda, establishing what it was possible and necessary to do.  It signaled an historic time in which those countries formerly colonized and enslaved, always underestimated and rejected by the North, would find their own road, at times very difficult.  Nothing has been given to us; dignity never has been granted by those who have taken it away in previous historical periods. 
 
     Cuba signifies an era, and entire generations of men and women in Latin America were educated in the example of Cuba.  Cuba has to feel proud of the historic time in which it has lived, of the example that it has emanated, and of the spiritual, moral and political force that it has imparted to the peoples of the world and the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean in the times in which we are living.     
 
      After the Cuban Revolution, history changed. . . .
 
     We are a force with deep roots, and we are a force that represents the most marvelous spiritual energy that ever has been lifted up over this region.
 
     The force of ALBA [Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America], with the union of our Central American, Caribbean and South American peoples, with thirteen years in the practical realization of solidarity and complementarity; with thirteen years of demonstration of the difficulties and the possibilities of the concept of cooperation, the Bolivarian Alliance was born as an alternative to the model of FTAA and the new economic colonialism that they wanted to impose on us from the North.  The force of ALBA is the force of all.  ALBA, since its founding under the leadership of el comandante Fidel Castro and el comandante Hugo Chávez, has known how to create and walk its own road
 
     The OAS in sixty-nine years has been marked by pain, death, the blood of invasions, and coups d’état; by the spirit of the division of our America; and by subordination and enslavement.  But the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, in scarcely thirteen years, has been marked by the magnificent force of solidarity, practical union, and unity of action. 
 
     ABLA has demonstrated to the peoples of our region a concrete work in the field of education, going beyond the countries that belong to it. . . . 
 
     Under the force of ALBA, Petrocaribe was created. . . .  It protects eighteen Caribbean states. . . . .   According to the data of international organizations, the participants in Petrocaribe, with its programs of fuel supply and financing for development, are the countries with the highest indices of human development and economic stability in the region during the last ten years.  It is not by chance; it is the result of the formula created with wisdom and experience, and above all, with the love, generosity and solidarity of two geniuses of our America, Fidel Castro Ruz and Hugo Chavez [applause]. . . .
 
      The most important mission of the generation that today leads our countries and our revolutions is to approach sustained economic development with our own efforts and tied to an economic integration of Latin America and the Caribbean.  No one in this region will attain autonomous and independent economic development acting alone. . . .  Not even Brazil, with its technology and high productive capacity, can aspire to economic development acting alone, by itself.  For this reason, Brazil played an important role, under the leadership of presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, in the founding and the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.  .  .  .
 
      Since its founding, ALBA has been a collective creation, a reunion of a relation of respect, of solidarity, and of seeking. . . .  Today, thirteen years later, it is not by chance that ALBA is a fortress where all come to meet and to say to those who intend to dominate our continent through OAS, through threats and through aggression: with us you have not been able, and you will not be able.  Here is ALBA standing, united, tireless, and working for common development! [Applause]. . . .
 
      Tomorrow April 11 will commemorate fifteen years since the oligarchic and fascist coup d’état directed from Washington against el Comandante Chávez in 2002. . . .  As a result of the electoral system of bourgeois democracy that we inherited, by the year 2001, when the conspiracy to destabilize Venezuela began, el Comandante Chávez already had won eight consecutive elections, including the constituent popular process that gave birth to the most democratic Constitution, with greater popular character, in all the history of Venezuela.  This Constitution was built on the word, the spirit and the thought of the people of Venezuela for the first time in history, and it was approved by referendum with more than 76% of the popular vote.
 
      Elections are not important to the oligarchies and the empires, nor do legitimacy and democracy have importance to them.  What is important to them is power and the natural resources of the countries.  No one should be deceived!  Everywhere there is a cowardly Left who are afraid and whose legs shake when they receive a call in English from some ambassador, and they do not delay a second in joining a condemnation of Venezuela, with respect to unknown events, and to say: “Coup d’état in Venezuela” [a false story disseminated on April 6, implying that the government had suspended the Constitution – Ed.].  Yes, there was a coup d’état fifteen years ago against Comandante Chavez, and it was carried out by the oligarchy and the governments of the Right of that time.  We are confronting a coup de d’état in this moment, and we are defeating it in Venezuela!  Yes, of course, there is a coup in Venezuela, but it is being carried out by the right-wing oligarchy, subordinated to the interests of the United States.  [Applause].
 
     A miracle saved Comandante Chávez: in the hands of traitors full of hate, he was at the point of being assassinated; but our people, with miraculous force, achieved a civic-military insurrection that on the third day rescued Comandante Chávez, rescued the Constitution, and rescued democracy.
 
. . . .
 
     From each situation, we not only have learned great lessons, not only have the consciousness, the knowledge, the attitude, the commitment, the morality of the people been elevated, but also, from each situation we have been able to build new forces, new moral, political, military and institutional forces.
 
      I believe that of all of the coups that we have contained, withstood, and overcome, the hardest of all was the death and loss of our Comandante Hugo Chavez.  It is not easy to lose the leader, inspirer, chief and father of a revolution, and so young.  Recently, we came to sow this eternal rock [the tomb of Fidel – Ed.] in Santiago de Cuba, the father of the Cuban Revolution, the father of Latin American revolutionaries, but already with a work, with a people, with a party, with an armed force, with a Raúl, and after various decades of so many battles and so many thing being done.  But we lost very young our Comandante, and without doubt, the place of Comandante Hugo Chávez in the history of our Venezuela of the twenty-first century, leading the Revolution and constructing a new America, was of decisive, determining and moving importance.  There are those who did not understand what we lost when we lost him, but the North American empire indeed did understand it.
 
     There are those who doubt still that the North American empire exists, and they believe that it is merely a rhetorical resource or rhetoric for revolutionary discourse and to seek applause.  An empire does exist, with powerful institutions, with a project of world domination, with a Pentagon, with a Department of States, with a CIA, with a NSA, with a crazy, crazy, crazy idea of domination of the world.  Crazy for us, right?, because we aspire to a world of free, equal, happy and modest men and women.  The empire indeed understood that with the loss of Comandante Chávez, there was departed one of the most important and greatest leaders, unifier of a new Latin American spirit from Bolivar, who knew to unite its force to that of Cuba.  From the first day, he knew to look toward Cuba, to Fidel, and from the first day, he received also the look and the extended hand of that chief of revolutionaries, Comandante Fidel Castro.  [Applause].  And he knew how to construct this new phase of the road, he knew how to bring together and to close wounds, he knew to lift up a Latin Americanist and Caribbean doctrine, breaking all blockades of truth, which we call spiritual blockades.  It was the greatest blow that we have received, not only Venezuelans, but all of us; it is our greatest test.
 
     On April 14, it will be four years since the Venezuelan people, in the exercise of its political sovereignty, made me President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, as the first Chavist president in history, following the loss of our Comandante Hugo Chávez, four years since that heroic victory.  [Applause]. 
 
. . . .
 
      They have underestimated us.  How could they not underestimate us, if the base of imperial domination is the underestimation of the peoples?  What is the other base?  Racism has ideological roots, the dominant classes of the world see us as inferior, and they only accept us as slaves, as their servants, as their subordinates.
 
     Four years have passed, and I can say that in four years we have passed through several situations.  In the international field, we have had the constant support of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.  We have had also the determined backing of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America, with revolutionary Cuba and the Cuban people always at the front.  [Applause].  And we have overcome difficulties, strengthening the Civic Military Union.
 
      One of the last orders that Comandante Chávez gave to me was at the end of the electoral campaign of 2012, when I accompanied him here for treatments, and Barack Obama had been elected for a second term in November 2012.  I was minister of foreign relations, and he said to me, “Nicolás, explore if we would be able to improve relations.”  And we tried, but regrettably, the vision of the Department of State with respect to Venezuela, and of the elite that governs the United States of North America and its imperial policy toward the world and Latin America, was to apply all pressure to reverse the revolutionary process, to overthrow the revolutionary government, and to reconquer Venezuela.  The model of soft diplomacy was followed, as it is called, with a smile, right?, the smile of Obama, the diplomacy, while we confronted refusal to recognize our elections, as well as street violence.  In tens and hundreds of points in the country, we confronted political, military, and diplomatic conspiracies.  And lamentably, on March 9, 2015, Barack Obama took a step that marked him for the rest of history, or for the rest of our history.  He signed the infamous decree declaring Venezuela an unusual and extraordinary threat to the security of the United States, opening the doors to an interventionist adventure of the imperialist elite against our country at any moment.  We saw him in Panama a month later, on April 11, 2015, and facing the unanimous concert of voices of Latin American governments rejecting that decree, he said that Venezuela was not a threat; but he left the decree intact.
 
     Barack Obama went away, and the political methods of Barack Obama . . . went with him.  And in the United States in this moment, there is a new situation, very risky and dangerous, more threatening to the peace of the peoples of the world, a situation of a reconfiguration of power.  The principal decision-making organs of the political-industrial-military apparatus of the United States are in this moment in the hands of extremists.  The recent decision to bomb our sister Syrian Arab Republic, ignoring international law and the UN Security Council, and with disastrous results, which in military terms only has benefitted terrorist groups that were being defeated by the Syrian army, shows the kinds of decisions being taken by U.S. power in this moment, which ought to call us to reflection and alert.
 
     The situation that is taking shape in the government of the new administration of Donald Trump is very dangerous and threatening.  There has not passed eight weeks, and already there has been seen all that had been predicted with respect to this man, who is not a political leader, nor does he represent the political currents of any of the groups of the Republican Party, yet he is President of the United States.  Therefore, this meeting of ALBA is very important.
 
     The recent diplomatic attack, the recent lineup of a group of failed neoliberal governments of the Right against Venezuela; the recent internal attack of the Venezuelan Right that has taken the road of violence, of the coup d’état, of the assault on power, represent the new extremist currents that direct, govern and make decisions in the United States.  Today we can say, we have experienced it, that there is an extremist radicalization of the positions of the Venezuelan Right, on the basis of new orders issued by the Department of State and those who govern in the United States.  We have to be clear about this.  The pressures that have been applied to dignified governments of our America do not have comparison in the last sixteen years, neither in the eight years of Bush, nor in the eight years of Obama.  Personal threats and threats to the countries, and in spite of the threats, and in spite of the shameful conduct, Venezuela can say today that after all these pressures we have emerged victorious from the Organization of American States, defending our truth.  [Applause].  We have defeated the coalition of countries and governments of the Right that have tried to impose an open aggression against our country.  [Applause]
 
. . . .
 
     I have called for dialogue, and I continue calling for dialogue.  There is no other way to attain peace.  The only form of attaining peace is through the word, dialogue, sincere debate, the search for reasons, and the quest for common points.
 
     Now, I have to say today, I continue maintaining my call to dialogue.  I continue thanking Pope Francis for his support and his blessing.  I continue to thank the presidents Rodríguez Zapatero, Leonel Fernández, and Martín Torrijos for their support.  But the truth really is that the order has been given from Washington of zero dialogue in Venezuela and to split our country for a foreign intervention.  Absolutely unfeasible; absolutely irrelevant; it does not have historic relevance.  And I can tell you also that we have come out saved thanks also to the role of that young Venezuelan woman, our foreign minister, Delcy Eloina Rodríguez Gómez (Applause), who has been at the front of this battle with dignity, with intelligence, with courage.  Delcy Eloina Rodríguez Gómez, the shame of Luis Almagro [Secretary General of OAS].  Luis Almagro trembles on seeing her little legs (laughter), when he sees Delcy entering the Simón Bolívar hall of the OAS: the terror of Luis Almagro (laughter).
 
     In these days we are speaking of a traitor of traitors and garbage of garbage.  And so they pass to history.  Who remembers the name of a foreign minister or a president of a government that expelled Cuba from the OAS in that era?  Who remembers?  And who remembers the name of Fidel Castro Ruz and revolutionary Cuba?  The entire world (prolonged applause).  That is our history; that is our greatness.  Time will pass, and Luis Almagro will pass to the garbage dump of history, and the spirit of our giants and our peoples will attain transcendence.
    
      In the same manner that we have obtained victories, we have to continue advancing.  I am saying that this guide that they are applying to us, with violent groups, terrorists, multiplying through social networks and the international media of communication, . . . represents death, treason, hate, evil, blood, perversion, the negation of human good.  But in the same manner that we have obtained international victories through truth, morality and force, be assured that we are going to defeat these violent group with the Civic-Military Union.  The Bolivarian Revolution is going to continue in Venezuela, and we are going to continue triumphing for peace, for independence, for the honor of a people (Applause).  It is a battle of everyday. . . .  We have to keep our eyes open and to concentrate on the principal tasks. . . .  In this attack on our region, some are found on their knees, but we must stand and not detour from the principal course, the principal task of our region of attaining the economic and social development of our countries.
 
     No one thinks that economic and social development is going to be attained alone.  We have to thank the peoples of the continent for the first steps that we have taken during these thirteen years.  We have to thank the Cuban collaborators, the Cuban mission in Venezuela, the more than 60,000 doctors who have come to Venezuela to give health, to give life, to save lives, to give love to our people and to train thousands of doctors in community integral medicine.  More than 23,000 doctors have graduated from the Community Integral Medical School of Cuba, and we will be graduating 30,000 more in the next years.  Thank you, Cuba! (Applause)
 
      Literacy, education, culture and sport, only to name some of the areas where we have to say thank you. . . .  As says Evo [Morales, President of Bolivia], Cuba is the world champion of solidarity in our America and in the world.
 
      We have to make a greater effort, we are able to do it and we are required to do it, to develop all aspects of the economic and financial development of our countries, industrial production, agriculture production, scientific and technological development, the development of new technologies and robotics. 
 
      For this reason we have the Bank of ALBA, which has arrived to assume an important role.  But it needs to grow, not little but little, but grow at an accelerated rate in projects and investments.  We have to advance in the development of a shared economic and commercial zone, with high levels of commerce, transportation, and financing.  We have to take charge of the integral development of our region, our countries ourselves.  I believe that it is the principal task.
 
     We are going to continue to wage other battles, but the central idea that ought to move us is the task of economic development, of the creation of financial, material and physical wealth; it is the idea of the integral social development of our countries, the idea of shared well-being and happiness of which Bolívar spoke 200 years ago.  We have the experience, we have the knowledge, we have the honesty, and we want to do it.  There is only one space for doing it, created by the two giants that give us strength [Fidel and Chávez].  The space for attaining development is not OAS; it is the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America; it is Petrocaribe; it is the Caribbean; it is Central America; it is South America.  That is our road, that is our space, we do not have doubt of it.  [Applause].  Here is where we see each other as brothers and sisters, and we respect each other and treat each other as brothers and sisters.  Here there is neither great nor small; here no one wants to dominate the other or to look for gain by looting or robbing.  To the contrary, here what we are looking for is how we can help, how I can help you and how you can help me.  This is the road designed and proven, its success demonstrated.  At times we have to shake ourselves a little and move, to awaken ourselves even more, in order that the projects of economic development are at the front of our daily attention. . . .
 
    We were dependent on the petroleum faucet for 100 years. . . .  That is over. . . .  We were hounded by the empire, and petroleum fell to twenty [dollars per barrel].  Good, thank God.  Now what we want and what we can do are tested more.  Now, no longer in the era of petroleum, we are constructing for the first time a diversified economy, that generates our own wealth and power in Venezuela. 
 
     We have defined . . . fifteen motors of development, of new investments, of a new economy and new commerce.  This effort, scarcely beginning in this post-petroleum era, is a shared effort, not only a diversified internal economy, but also integrated in the region with all the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, a regional network of investments, commerce and technological development.  This is the principal task, this is the space, there is no other.
 
      Is the Organization of American States going to resolve the problems of our countries?  Is Luis Almagro going to come with a magic wand to give happiness and wellbeing to our peoples?  That has not happened in sixty-nine years, and it is not going to happen.  Subordinated, we will never attain a dignified development.  I can say that our peoples will attain no development subordinated to the base interests of an empire that looks upon us with disdain.
 
      Venezuela has the greatest petroleum wealth of the world.  Many say that it is for this reason that they want to recolonize us.  I do not doubt that this is so, because indeed they have destroyed Iraq and Libya in order to take their petroleum wealth.  But I believe that with us, in this historic moment, and I thank the Cuban people and all the peoples of ALBA for their solidarity, besides the petroleum there is a wealth even greater that they want to make disappear from the face of the earth, and that is the Bolivarian moral wealth that has lived its historic resurrection in the historic project that Comandante Chávez left us: the Simón Bolívar national project of the Bolivarian Revolution.  This is what they want to remove at its roots, to end, to destroy; the glowing example of a people that has refused to surrender.   
 
     This past week I went to four states in Venezuela. . . .  And yesterday I was at the monument of the Divina Pastora, a miraculous virgin in the western part of the country, in the state of Lara, in Barquisimeto, and the people were in the streets, on the street corners, in the avenues, and when I arrived, they shouted to me, a single shout, which I bring to you here in order to say thank you for so much love, so much solidarity, so much support, so much courage, brothers and sisters of the Caribbean and Central America.  The people say to me: “Maduro, do not surrender; we are not going to surrender.”
 
      Venezuela is not going to surrender!  Venezuela is going to continue the course of a revolution founded by a giant, Hugo Chávez, and that course will follow its road in spite of the threats and the aggressions!  (Prolonged applause).   OAS and the pro-imperialist right will not deter the victorious course of a revolution born in history and that has been called by history to a single destiny: victory, victory, victory!  (Applause)
 
     Thank you, Cuba.  (Applause)
 
     Thank you, ALBA.  (Applause)
 
     Long live the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of our America!  (Applause and exclamations of “Viva”)