"The eradication of poverty is a moral imperative
for our region and for the entire planet"
Speech by Rafael Correa Delgado, President of Ecuador, on the handing of the presidency pro tem to the Republic of Ecuador, at the closing of the Third Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC for its initials in Spanish), held in Costa Rica, January 29, 2015.
Translated by Charles McKelvey
Translator's note. CELAC is the culmination of the process of Latin American unity and integration (see blog posts on “The rise of ALBA” 3/11/2014, “Latin American unity and integration” 3/12/2014, and “The Declaration of Havana 2014” 3/14/2014). CELAC consists of the governments of the 33 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Founding Summit of CELAC was held in Venezuela in 2011. Its First Summit was in Chile in January, 2013, and its second summit was held in Havana, Cuba on January 29, 2014.
Mr. Guillermo Solís, President of the Republic of Costa Rica and departing President pro tem of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States;
Beloved chiefs of state and of government of the member countries of CELAC;
Special invited guests;
Cherished colleagues of the Costa Rican Department of Foreign Relations; security and support personnel; thank you very much for your excellent work; and above all, greetings to the sisters and brothers of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Thank you, thank you to the governments and brother peoples for the confidence and affection shown to my country and our people to exercise the Presidency pro tem of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. You can count on Ecuador to push with all our force, in spite of our limitations, and with all our affection and dedication, the much desired integration of the peoples of America.
With the creation of CELAC in 2010, we are making real the desires of liberators, the dreams of Toussaint L´Ouverture, Simón Bolivar, Manuelita Sáez, José de San Martín, José Artigas, Bernardo O´Higgins, Francisco de Morazán; but also Emiliano Zapata, Augusto César Sandino, Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, Néstor Kirchner, Hugo Chavez and so many other heroes, heroines and leaders that gave of themselves in order to see our regions free and united.
In reality, our community began centuries ago, with our indigenous people, with Eladio Ayala, the “land of vital blood,” as our ancestors called our America.
Our gratitude to Costa Rica and its president. Dear Guillermo, thank you for maintaining this dream of integration, and congratulations for the capacity and vision with which you have presided over our community during the last year.
We want to extend a greeting to another great friend, our President José “Pepe” Mujica. “Pepe” is one of those old revolutionaries that teach with every word, a true philosopher who challenges us to arrive at the most profound reflection from the simplest things. In a few weeks, he will leave the presidency of Uruguay, and we will all miss his authenticity, humility, humor, and profound political ethic. We congratulate our colleague Tabaré Vazquez, who on March 1 will assume the presidency of our beloved Uruguay.
Our congratulations a lot to Evo Morales and Dilma Rousseff, for their initiation of new presidential terms, with a full democratic legitimacy that consolidates even more our continental ties. The triumph of our colleagues is a testimony that the factitious are no longer stronger than the will of the peoples.
The visionary Simón Bolívar saw a liberated Latin America as the greatest nation of the continent, and he insisted that unity, and only unity, would make the region great in the eyes of the world. We have advanced, but we have to go faster. Our old fighter Eloy Alfaro reminds us that there is no time to lose, that there is danger in delay.
Beloved colleagues and citizens of the Great Nation: Development is not a technical problem, as they have wanted us to think; it is basically a political problem. The fundamental question is who directs the society: the elite or the great majority; capital or human beings; the market or society. History teaches us that the attainment of development requires working together; collective action; political will; and an adequate but important intervention of the state, a state that is nothing other than the institutionalized representation of all of us, the means through which the society realizes such collective action.
Our people expect of us common and concrete action, specific solutions to their problems, and clear and hope-inspiring visions. In order for the integrating spirit of our countries to be strengthened, our peoples have to feel the benefits of integration.
We would like to propose that, beyond the Plan of Action 2015 that we have just approved, that CELAC work as a bloc, not only this year bin in the coming years, on five central themes. These themes, mentioned in the letter to you from President Solís, would be: (1) the reduction of extreme poverty and inequality; (2) education, science, technology and innovation; (3) environment and climate change; (4) the financing of development, infrastructure, and connectivity; and (5) the development and empowerment of our role as a bloc.
(1) With respect to the reduction of extreme poverty and inequalities, in the Second Summit of CELAC, we declared our regions as a zone of peace. Often we believe that peace is the absence of war, when it ought to be, above all, the presence of justice, of liberty, of living well, of the sumak kawsay of our Andean peoples. However, we still have 68 million Latin Americans and persons of the Caribbean living in misery. Of what liberty are we speaking? Of what peace are we speaking?
The insulting opulence of a few in our region alongside the most intolerable poverty are daily attacks on human dignity. The eradication of poverty is a moral imperative for our region and for the entire planet, because as I said yesterday: for the first time in the history of humanity, poverty is not due to the lack of human resources but is the fruit of inequality, and this is a consequence of perverse relations of power, where few have everything, and many have nothing.
Our proposal is that CELAC make the commitment to eradicate extreme poverty and misery in the region in the next five years.
(2) In relation to education, science, technology and innovation, one of the great asymmetries that still remains in our region is reflected in the different levels of access to education.
Education, as a right and as a generator of human talent, is the most important component of development. We intend that all of the children of our region ought to finish a least a full cycle of basic education of ten years.
The hegemonic countries have converted knowledge into the motor of their development; in contrast, our region has not decidedly committed itself to the generation of science, technology, and innovation. Presently, our region invests 0.78% of its Gross Domestic Product in research and development. We ought to double this investment in the next five years, attaining at least 1.5% of the regional GDP in the next five years.
Presently there is no Latin American or Caribbean university among the 100 best of the world, as we said yesterday. In the next years, we ought to have at least twelve universities of the region among the 200 best of the planet, and to attain it, we have to elevate the budget for higher education to at least 1.7% of the regional GDP in the next five years.
Recent research has demonstrated in a convincing manner that what guarantees equity is neither the freedom of the market nor the intervention of the state per se, but the diffusion of knowledge and skills. Knowledge, as a public good with free and mass access, and investment in human talent will make us not only more prosperous but also more just.
In addition, with the incredible generation of knowledge in the world, we countries that do not produce knowledge will be increasingly more ignorant in relative terms and increasingly more dependent on what others produce. Thus, the generation of knowledge also will make us more free.
(3) In relation to environment and climate change, CELAC ought to take a strong common position in the struggle against climate change. We ought to raise our voices and demand the commitment of the global contaminators to reduce their emissions. We are all vulnerable, but some members of our community, in particular our Caribbean nations could confront catastrophes as a result of climate change. We have the moral authority to lift our voice. The countries of this community are the principal generators in the world of environmental credits that others freely consume. Sometimes it is believed that the generation of environmental credits does not have cost, but the reality is that it can be very costly, not so much in direct costs but in what economists call opportunity costs, and this is a significant cost. Today many demand, without any moral authority, that petroleum in the Amazon not be exploited; but this implies an immense cost, for the income not received and for each passing day of a child without a school, a community without drinkable water, or people dying from preventable diseases, true pathologies of misery.
In this area, concretely, we propose to increase in the next five years by 5% the lands and sea coasts under of program of conservation or environmental management, with the goal of obtaining a significant reduction in the loss of biodiversity.
(4) The theme of financing for development, infrastructure, and connectivity. Colleagues, brothers and sisters of the great nation, united we will be capable of influencing, if not modifying, a world order that not only is unjust but immoral, where all is in service not of human beings but of capital and hegemonic powers, whose citizens also are dominated by said capital. For example, together we would be able to create our own regional financial architecture, in order that our savings remain in the region and do not go to finance the richest countries, as when our central banks, frequently autonomous and without democratic controls, send hundreds of billions of our reserves to other countries, not only financing but also transferring wealth to the richest counties, for we receive through these reserves very poor performance, while they lend us the same money at rates ten times superior. This is a complete absurdity that we could never justify neither technically nor ethically.
It is unacceptable that while Latin American has deposited a billion dollars, a trillion in English terminology, of our resources in the First World, we continue depending on foreign loans and foreign investments, or on dressed up gifts of cooperation without any structural impact. We ought to learn to utilize our savings and direct them toward investment in our own region. For this CELAC ought to push for a new regional financial architecture. In addition, we ought to have mechanisms of compensation that minimize the use of extra-regional currencies, which increase our vulnerability and transfer wealth to the issuer of said money. CELAC can push for the consolidation of such mechanisms of compensation not only in our region but as part of a South-South financial architecture, through for example, the Bank of BRICS. This will avoid, among other things, the completely unethical speculative capital that seeks to ransack our peoples, as is the case with Argentina and its struggle against vulture funds. How can the decision of a judge in a foreign country place in check and make bankrupt an entire people and an entire country? This happens because they manage the international system of payments. We have the capacity, above all with a South-South alliance, with BRICS for example, to create systems of alternative payments and to free ourselves from submitting to external decisions.
At the same time, the region ought to invest annually until 2020, according to the estimates of the Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL), 6.2% of the regional GDP, nearly 320 billion dollars, in the construction of infrastructure. At present, we are investing scarcely 2.7%.
We propose to mobilize the political will for large projects of infrastructure that guarantee our integration, our connectivity. CELAC ought to lay out concrete plans for transportation, energy, and telecommunications megaprojects, in order to empower our complementarity.
(5) In relation to our role as a bloc, dear friends, I am sure that CELAC is called a play a fundamental role in the change of epoch in which we live. Latin America and the Caribbean are not living in an epoch of change, but in a true change of epoch. We are doing unprecedented things.
In the end, CELAC ought to replace institutions in full decadence and whose time has passed.
How can the present irrationality be maintained, in which the headquarters of the Organization of American States is in a country that carries out a criminal blockade against Cuba? The blockade openly violates the UN Charter, and it has been condemned no less than twenty-two times by the United Nations. The last condemnation was in October 2014, with the backing of 188 of the 193 countries that are members of the UN. The blockade of Cuba constitutes, without doubt, the greatest violation of International Law, Inter-American law and human rights on our continent.
We are pleased with the promise of the full reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States. This victory of the Cuban people is a true lesson in dignity, resistance, and sovereignty that Cuba transmits to the world. However, that hopeful horizon ought not cause us to forget that Cuba continues being the victims of a series of inadmissible measures and attacks against its sovereignty and international law.
Similarly, we condemn any kind of interference against our countries and against our democratic processes. We reject any aggression against the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
These facts demonstrate the need for our own revitalized and credible authority that would be an authentic guarantee of the interests of the countries of the Latin American and Caribbean region.
Why do we have to discuss our problems in Washington? This is one of the glaring contradictions that reflects the significant remnants of neocolonialism in our region and that many do not dare to say openly.
Only seven countries, including Ecuador and Costa Rica, of the thirty-five countries of the continent have subscribed fully to all of the Inter-American instruments of human rights. The United States has not ratified any. Not one! However, it is the home of the headquarters of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is totally dominated by hegemonic countries and by the most childish ¨NGOism¨ that believes, among other things, that the only power that can infringe on human rights is the state; and it is dominated by the capital behind the mercantilist media of communication, with an impressive lobby in defense of a supposed freedom of expression.
It is not by change that the Intern-American Commission of Human Rights has eight sections, but distinct from the other seven, the section on freedom of expression is the only one that has its own report and financing, financing principally from the United States, which has not ratified the Pact of San José, and from the European Union, that is, counties that are not part of the Inter-American System. Does this independent report and separate financing imply the supremacy of the freedom of expression over other rights, such as, let us say, the rights of differently able persons? It deceives us, thus showing the supremacy of the capital behind the corporations of communications.
In addition, as I have said, the Commission, besides the Section, is financed nearly in its entirely by the United States, which has not ratified the Pact of San José, sustenance of the system; and by Extra-Regional Observing States, which are not part of America. This means, let us speak clearly: They pay to control others.
All this has only one name: neocolonialism, which ought to be intolerable in Latin America and the Caribbean in the twenty-first century.
It is possible to ask ourselves also: Of what use is OAS if it does not even make declarations concerning problems as crucial as the Malvinas Islands, a British colony of off the Latin American coast and more than 11,000 kilometers from London?
In recent years, four countries (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador) have denounced the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR for its initials in Spanish), a document that only serves to justify US military interventions in Guatemala, in 1954; Cuba, in 1962; Panama, in 1964; and the Dominican Republic, in 1965 and 1966; but that does not prevent, as supposedly was its purpose, aggressions from outside the region, as in the case of the Malvinas in 1982, a case that completely ruined the much celebrated TIAR. It is an anachronism that hangs over us and that deserves to be discussed in the heart of CELAC.
CELAC ought to play a leading role in supporting the process of decolonization in the Latin American and Caribbean region. In general, CELAC ought to be the actor of reference in the resolution of conflicts and the depository of data of concern to the countries of the region.
In this respect, I want to applaud the Nicaraguan and Venezuelan proposal to integrate Puerto Rico into the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, as a demonstration that America is a territory free of colonialism.
CELAC also ought to lend its unconditional support to the historic process of peace in Colombia. President Juan Manuel Santo had to return to Colombia, and the Chancellor Maria Angela Holguin, our dear friend, is found present among us. Maria Angela and the Colombian people have the full support of the Presidency pro tem of CELAC. I believe that I speak in the name of all the member countries and of all the peoples of our community, in expressing support for your valiant search for definitive peace for our beloved sister Colombia (Applause).
The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have endured for decades the abuses of the transnationals of the north.
The case of Chevron-Texaco in Ecuador, a company recently declared as the most irresponsible of the world, the most irresponsible of the world!, is testimony of this. The bilateral treaties of investment obligate us to surrender our sovereignty to arbitrary courts in the North. Our harsh experiences is that these tribunals have been constituted as the ultimate decision-making authority, violating national jurisdiction at their discretion and imposing compliance with unjust arrangements, not subject to appeal.
Latin America and the Caribbean needs foreign investment, but we ought to take on the task of creating a more just and balanced framework of relations between States and transnationals, which would make possible mutual benefit and respect for human rights and the rights of nature.
Another of our principal proposals is the creations of centers of arbitration in our region and for our region, in order to protect ourselves from threats to the sovereignty of our nations constituted by the bilateral investment treaties that are now in force.
Acting separately, beloved colleagues, brothers and sisters of the great nation, it will be capital that imposes its conditions on us. Acting together, it will be we who impose conditions on capital, in accordance with the well-being of our peoples.
The world of the future will be a world of blocs. CELAC is a great opportunity and hope for our own space for the addressing of regional conflicts and for a dialogue as equals between the Latin American and Caribbean countries and North America. As a bloc, we also ought to seek and maintain relations with key extra-regional partners. Among these relations, we ought to comply with the Plan of Cooperation 2015-19 between CELAC and China; to define priorities and interests with the European Union with respect to objectives and specific goals; to intensify ties with other extra-regional partners; and to strengthen South-South cooperation.
Finally, we consider that, to the extent possible, we ought to act with common positions in order that our voice can be heard. Separated, they do not hear us: united, we are a shout that covers the entire planet. We ought to act with common positions and to make addresses in the United Nations in a joint manner. Doing so would strengthen CELAC in the international context as the interlocutor for the region, thus strengthening our negotiating position in a structural manner.
Friends, colleagues, sisters and brothers of the great nation: The twenty-first century ought to consolidate the supremacy of the human being over capital. The human being is not one means more of production, but the end itself of production.
Events in Greece, where the Greek people have been victims of the “austericide”—it is a neologism that they are not going to know how to translate—perpetuated by the agents of the crisis, reminds us of the dogmatic form in which the neoliberal recipes were applied thirty years ago in our America. We salute the democratic expression of the Greek people, who after so much suffering has decided, as we did confronting the illegitimate and immoral debt, to take their destiny into their own hands.
We are conscious of the fact that Latin America and the Caribbean has become the international standard of this recuperation of human dignity, through the application of public policies in the interests of the great majority.
We do not fear the role that history has assigned to us. We have faith. Today more than ever resounds the prophetic voice of Salvador Allende, who foretold that someday America will have a voice of the continent, a voice of the people united, a voice that will be respected and heard, because it will be the voice of peoples who are the owners of their own destiny.
Here we are, and such we are, beloved compatriots.
Thank you very much (Applause).
Translated by Charles McKelvey
Translator's note. CELAC is the culmination of the process of Latin American unity and integration (see blog posts on “The rise of ALBA” 3/11/2014, “Latin American unity and integration” 3/12/2014, and “The Declaration of Havana 2014” 3/14/2014). CELAC consists of the governments of the 33 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Founding Summit of CELAC was held in Venezuela in 2011. Its First Summit was in Chile in January, 2013, and its second summit was held in Havana, Cuba on January 29, 2014.
Mr. Guillermo Solís, President of the Republic of Costa Rica and departing President pro tem of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States;
Beloved chiefs of state and of government of the member countries of CELAC;
Special invited guests;
Cherished colleagues of the Costa Rican Department of Foreign Relations; security and support personnel; thank you very much for your excellent work; and above all, greetings to the sisters and brothers of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Thank you, thank you to the governments and brother peoples for the confidence and affection shown to my country and our people to exercise the Presidency pro tem of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. You can count on Ecuador to push with all our force, in spite of our limitations, and with all our affection and dedication, the much desired integration of the peoples of America.
With the creation of CELAC in 2010, we are making real the desires of liberators, the dreams of Toussaint L´Ouverture, Simón Bolivar, Manuelita Sáez, José de San Martín, José Artigas, Bernardo O´Higgins, Francisco de Morazán; but also Emiliano Zapata, Augusto César Sandino, Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, Néstor Kirchner, Hugo Chavez and so many other heroes, heroines and leaders that gave of themselves in order to see our regions free and united.
In reality, our community began centuries ago, with our indigenous people, with Eladio Ayala, the “land of vital blood,” as our ancestors called our America.
Our gratitude to Costa Rica and its president. Dear Guillermo, thank you for maintaining this dream of integration, and congratulations for the capacity and vision with which you have presided over our community during the last year.
We want to extend a greeting to another great friend, our President José “Pepe” Mujica. “Pepe” is one of those old revolutionaries that teach with every word, a true philosopher who challenges us to arrive at the most profound reflection from the simplest things. In a few weeks, he will leave the presidency of Uruguay, and we will all miss his authenticity, humility, humor, and profound political ethic. We congratulate our colleague Tabaré Vazquez, who on March 1 will assume the presidency of our beloved Uruguay.
Our congratulations a lot to Evo Morales and Dilma Rousseff, for their initiation of new presidential terms, with a full democratic legitimacy that consolidates even more our continental ties. The triumph of our colleagues is a testimony that the factitious are no longer stronger than the will of the peoples.
The visionary Simón Bolívar saw a liberated Latin America as the greatest nation of the continent, and he insisted that unity, and only unity, would make the region great in the eyes of the world. We have advanced, but we have to go faster. Our old fighter Eloy Alfaro reminds us that there is no time to lose, that there is danger in delay.
Beloved colleagues and citizens of the Great Nation: Development is not a technical problem, as they have wanted us to think; it is basically a political problem. The fundamental question is who directs the society: the elite or the great majority; capital or human beings; the market or society. History teaches us that the attainment of development requires working together; collective action; political will; and an adequate but important intervention of the state, a state that is nothing other than the institutionalized representation of all of us, the means through which the society realizes such collective action.
Our people expect of us common and concrete action, specific solutions to their problems, and clear and hope-inspiring visions. In order for the integrating spirit of our countries to be strengthened, our peoples have to feel the benefits of integration.
We would like to propose that, beyond the Plan of Action 2015 that we have just approved, that CELAC work as a bloc, not only this year bin in the coming years, on five central themes. These themes, mentioned in the letter to you from President Solís, would be: (1) the reduction of extreme poverty and inequality; (2) education, science, technology and innovation; (3) environment and climate change; (4) the financing of development, infrastructure, and connectivity; and (5) the development and empowerment of our role as a bloc.
(1) With respect to the reduction of extreme poverty and inequalities, in the Second Summit of CELAC, we declared our regions as a zone of peace. Often we believe that peace is the absence of war, when it ought to be, above all, the presence of justice, of liberty, of living well, of the sumak kawsay of our Andean peoples. However, we still have 68 million Latin Americans and persons of the Caribbean living in misery. Of what liberty are we speaking? Of what peace are we speaking?
The insulting opulence of a few in our region alongside the most intolerable poverty are daily attacks on human dignity. The eradication of poverty is a moral imperative for our region and for the entire planet, because as I said yesterday: for the first time in the history of humanity, poverty is not due to the lack of human resources but is the fruit of inequality, and this is a consequence of perverse relations of power, where few have everything, and many have nothing.
Our proposal is that CELAC make the commitment to eradicate extreme poverty and misery in the region in the next five years.
(2) In relation to education, science, technology and innovation, one of the great asymmetries that still remains in our region is reflected in the different levels of access to education.
Education, as a right and as a generator of human talent, is the most important component of development. We intend that all of the children of our region ought to finish a least a full cycle of basic education of ten years.
The hegemonic countries have converted knowledge into the motor of their development; in contrast, our region has not decidedly committed itself to the generation of science, technology, and innovation. Presently, our region invests 0.78% of its Gross Domestic Product in research and development. We ought to double this investment in the next five years, attaining at least 1.5% of the regional GDP in the next five years.
Presently there is no Latin American or Caribbean university among the 100 best of the world, as we said yesterday. In the next years, we ought to have at least twelve universities of the region among the 200 best of the planet, and to attain it, we have to elevate the budget for higher education to at least 1.7% of the regional GDP in the next five years.
Recent research has demonstrated in a convincing manner that what guarantees equity is neither the freedom of the market nor the intervention of the state per se, but the diffusion of knowledge and skills. Knowledge, as a public good with free and mass access, and investment in human talent will make us not only more prosperous but also more just.
In addition, with the incredible generation of knowledge in the world, we countries that do not produce knowledge will be increasingly more ignorant in relative terms and increasingly more dependent on what others produce. Thus, the generation of knowledge also will make us more free.
(3) In relation to environment and climate change, CELAC ought to take a strong common position in the struggle against climate change. We ought to raise our voices and demand the commitment of the global contaminators to reduce their emissions. We are all vulnerable, but some members of our community, in particular our Caribbean nations could confront catastrophes as a result of climate change. We have the moral authority to lift our voice. The countries of this community are the principal generators in the world of environmental credits that others freely consume. Sometimes it is believed that the generation of environmental credits does not have cost, but the reality is that it can be very costly, not so much in direct costs but in what economists call opportunity costs, and this is a significant cost. Today many demand, without any moral authority, that petroleum in the Amazon not be exploited; but this implies an immense cost, for the income not received and for each passing day of a child without a school, a community without drinkable water, or people dying from preventable diseases, true pathologies of misery.
In this area, concretely, we propose to increase in the next five years by 5% the lands and sea coasts under of program of conservation or environmental management, with the goal of obtaining a significant reduction in the loss of biodiversity.
(4) The theme of financing for development, infrastructure, and connectivity. Colleagues, brothers and sisters of the great nation, united we will be capable of influencing, if not modifying, a world order that not only is unjust but immoral, where all is in service not of human beings but of capital and hegemonic powers, whose citizens also are dominated by said capital. For example, together we would be able to create our own regional financial architecture, in order that our savings remain in the region and do not go to finance the richest countries, as when our central banks, frequently autonomous and without democratic controls, send hundreds of billions of our reserves to other countries, not only financing but also transferring wealth to the richest counties, for we receive through these reserves very poor performance, while they lend us the same money at rates ten times superior. This is a complete absurdity that we could never justify neither technically nor ethically.
It is unacceptable that while Latin American has deposited a billion dollars, a trillion in English terminology, of our resources in the First World, we continue depending on foreign loans and foreign investments, or on dressed up gifts of cooperation without any structural impact. We ought to learn to utilize our savings and direct them toward investment in our own region. For this CELAC ought to push for a new regional financial architecture. In addition, we ought to have mechanisms of compensation that minimize the use of extra-regional currencies, which increase our vulnerability and transfer wealth to the issuer of said money. CELAC can push for the consolidation of such mechanisms of compensation not only in our region but as part of a South-South financial architecture, through for example, the Bank of BRICS. This will avoid, among other things, the completely unethical speculative capital that seeks to ransack our peoples, as is the case with Argentina and its struggle against vulture funds. How can the decision of a judge in a foreign country place in check and make bankrupt an entire people and an entire country? This happens because they manage the international system of payments. We have the capacity, above all with a South-South alliance, with BRICS for example, to create systems of alternative payments and to free ourselves from submitting to external decisions.
At the same time, the region ought to invest annually until 2020, according to the estimates of the Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL), 6.2% of the regional GDP, nearly 320 billion dollars, in the construction of infrastructure. At present, we are investing scarcely 2.7%.
We propose to mobilize the political will for large projects of infrastructure that guarantee our integration, our connectivity. CELAC ought to lay out concrete plans for transportation, energy, and telecommunications megaprojects, in order to empower our complementarity.
(5) In relation to our role as a bloc, dear friends, I am sure that CELAC is called a play a fundamental role in the change of epoch in which we live. Latin America and the Caribbean are not living in an epoch of change, but in a true change of epoch. We are doing unprecedented things.
In the end, CELAC ought to replace institutions in full decadence and whose time has passed.
How can the present irrationality be maintained, in which the headquarters of the Organization of American States is in a country that carries out a criminal blockade against Cuba? The blockade openly violates the UN Charter, and it has been condemned no less than twenty-two times by the United Nations. The last condemnation was in October 2014, with the backing of 188 of the 193 countries that are members of the UN. The blockade of Cuba constitutes, without doubt, the greatest violation of International Law, Inter-American law and human rights on our continent.
We are pleased with the promise of the full reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States. This victory of the Cuban people is a true lesson in dignity, resistance, and sovereignty that Cuba transmits to the world. However, that hopeful horizon ought not cause us to forget that Cuba continues being the victims of a series of inadmissible measures and attacks against its sovereignty and international law.
Similarly, we condemn any kind of interference against our countries and against our democratic processes. We reject any aggression against the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
These facts demonstrate the need for our own revitalized and credible authority that would be an authentic guarantee of the interests of the countries of the Latin American and Caribbean region.
Why do we have to discuss our problems in Washington? This is one of the glaring contradictions that reflects the significant remnants of neocolonialism in our region and that many do not dare to say openly.
Only seven countries, including Ecuador and Costa Rica, of the thirty-five countries of the continent have subscribed fully to all of the Inter-American instruments of human rights. The United States has not ratified any. Not one! However, it is the home of the headquarters of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is totally dominated by hegemonic countries and by the most childish ¨NGOism¨ that believes, among other things, that the only power that can infringe on human rights is the state; and it is dominated by the capital behind the mercantilist media of communication, with an impressive lobby in defense of a supposed freedom of expression.
It is not by change that the Intern-American Commission of Human Rights has eight sections, but distinct from the other seven, the section on freedom of expression is the only one that has its own report and financing, financing principally from the United States, which has not ratified the Pact of San José, and from the European Union, that is, counties that are not part of the Inter-American System. Does this independent report and separate financing imply the supremacy of the freedom of expression over other rights, such as, let us say, the rights of differently able persons? It deceives us, thus showing the supremacy of the capital behind the corporations of communications.
In addition, as I have said, the Commission, besides the Section, is financed nearly in its entirely by the United States, which has not ratified the Pact of San José, sustenance of the system; and by Extra-Regional Observing States, which are not part of America. This means, let us speak clearly: They pay to control others.
All this has only one name: neocolonialism, which ought to be intolerable in Latin America and the Caribbean in the twenty-first century.
It is possible to ask ourselves also: Of what use is OAS if it does not even make declarations concerning problems as crucial as the Malvinas Islands, a British colony of off the Latin American coast and more than 11,000 kilometers from London?
In recent years, four countries (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador) have denounced the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR for its initials in Spanish), a document that only serves to justify US military interventions in Guatemala, in 1954; Cuba, in 1962; Panama, in 1964; and the Dominican Republic, in 1965 and 1966; but that does not prevent, as supposedly was its purpose, aggressions from outside the region, as in the case of the Malvinas in 1982, a case that completely ruined the much celebrated TIAR. It is an anachronism that hangs over us and that deserves to be discussed in the heart of CELAC.
CELAC ought to play a leading role in supporting the process of decolonization in the Latin American and Caribbean region. In general, CELAC ought to be the actor of reference in the resolution of conflicts and the depository of data of concern to the countries of the region.
In this respect, I want to applaud the Nicaraguan and Venezuelan proposal to integrate Puerto Rico into the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, as a demonstration that America is a territory free of colonialism.
CELAC also ought to lend its unconditional support to the historic process of peace in Colombia. President Juan Manuel Santo had to return to Colombia, and the Chancellor Maria Angela Holguin, our dear friend, is found present among us. Maria Angela and the Colombian people have the full support of the Presidency pro tem of CELAC. I believe that I speak in the name of all the member countries and of all the peoples of our community, in expressing support for your valiant search for definitive peace for our beloved sister Colombia (Applause).
The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have endured for decades the abuses of the transnationals of the north.
The case of Chevron-Texaco in Ecuador, a company recently declared as the most irresponsible of the world, the most irresponsible of the world!, is testimony of this. The bilateral treaties of investment obligate us to surrender our sovereignty to arbitrary courts in the North. Our harsh experiences is that these tribunals have been constituted as the ultimate decision-making authority, violating national jurisdiction at their discretion and imposing compliance with unjust arrangements, not subject to appeal.
Latin America and the Caribbean needs foreign investment, but we ought to take on the task of creating a more just and balanced framework of relations between States and transnationals, which would make possible mutual benefit and respect for human rights and the rights of nature.
Another of our principal proposals is the creations of centers of arbitration in our region and for our region, in order to protect ourselves from threats to the sovereignty of our nations constituted by the bilateral investment treaties that are now in force.
Acting separately, beloved colleagues, brothers and sisters of the great nation, it will be capital that imposes its conditions on us. Acting together, it will be we who impose conditions on capital, in accordance with the well-being of our peoples.
The world of the future will be a world of blocs. CELAC is a great opportunity and hope for our own space for the addressing of regional conflicts and for a dialogue as equals between the Latin American and Caribbean countries and North America. As a bloc, we also ought to seek and maintain relations with key extra-regional partners. Among these relations, we ought to comply with the Plan of Cooperation 2015-19 between CELAC and China; to define priorities and interests with the European Union with respect to objectives and specific goals; to intensify ties with other extra-regional partners; and to strengthen South-South cooperation.
Finally, we consider that, to the extent possible, we ought to act with common positions in order that our voice can be heard. Separated, they do not hear us: united, we are a shout that covers the entire planet. We ought to act with common positions and to make addresses in the United Nations in a joint manner. Doing so would strengthen CELAC in the international context as the interlocutor for the region, thus strengthening our negotiating position in a structural manner.
Friends, colleagues, sisters and brothers of the great nation: The twenty-first century ought to consolidate the supremacy of the human being over capital. The human being is not one means more of production, but the end itself of production.
Events in Greece, where the Greek people have been victims of the “austericide”—it is a neologism that they are not going to know how to translate—perpetuated by the agents of the crisis, reminds us of the dogmatic form in which the neoliberal recipes were applied thirty years ago in our America. We salute the democratic expression of the Greek people, who after so much suffering has decided, as we did confronting the illegitimate and immoral debt, to take their destiny into their own hands.
We are conscious of the fact that Latin America and the Caribbean has become the international standard of this recuperation of human dignity, through the application of public policies in the interests of the great majority.
We do not fear the role that history has assigned to us. We have faith. Today more than ever resounds the prophetic voice of Salvador Allende, who foretold that someday America will have a voice of the continent, a voice of the people united, a voice that will be respected and heard, because it will be the voice of peoples who are the owners of their own destiny.
Here we are, and such we are, beloved compatriots.
Thank you very much (Applause).