I
feel very honoured to be the emissary of the Honduran
people, who send to all at this General Assembly
brotherly, warm and effusive greetings on the occasion
of the sixty-first session of the Assembly.
We come here today before the representatives of
the nations of the world to merge the larger part of our
dreams and hopes in order, together, to achieve the
greatest goals for world peace. Our high aspirations,
along with the worthiness of the members of the
Assembly, are part of humanity’s common purpose of
attaining international law and justice.
But we also have to recognize that there are
things that are difficult to understand in an
environment that is supposed to be conducive to peace
and development: the contrast we see among different
latitudes of the Earth; the immense needs of peoples;
the contrast of poverty; drums of war that resound
everywhere; nuclear threats; cruel situations for nations
and peoples.
Rather than narrowing, social divides have grown
wider in recent decades. Morality is not being
combined with economy or science. Morality is
moving away from the principles and values of a just
and true God. That is why our presence in this
important Assembly is needed to focus clearly on the
fact that humanity needs to seek its objectives
according to healthy principles that will dignify our
peoples.
When the last half of the twentieth century came
to an end, we sincerely believed that we had put an end
to political, ideological and religious tyrannies. But
today we see them cropping up again, together with the
tyrannies of trade, which are often more cruel than the
others. Today, they want to sell us a free-market policy,
but ultimately that is a ruthless, insensitive economic
policy that is protectionist for many sectors. Instead of
opening the door to a social approach to the market,
where freedom is for people, we only have freedom for
investment, and we forget about individuals and
citizens and the rights of women and children, the most
vulnerable groups who, although lacking in power,
yearn for a better life.
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Certainly, we need to have protection, but not just
protection for investments and big capital. We also
need protection for the vulnerable of the world: for
children and young people, for farmers who sow their
small plots; for those businesspeople who cannot get a
foothold on the ladder of international trade; for the
owners of microenterprises who are reaching out in
search for the well-being and dignity they deserve.
All of us, of course, want a free market, but an
ethical one. We want to live in a globalized world —
but one in which respect for identity, patriotism and the
dignity and sovereignty of peoples are also global. So
we are here to denounce hypocrisy, double-talk and
moral double standards on the part of those who
proclaim and promote a solution to our problems
through democracy and free trade, but who seize and
hold hostage the concepts of internal and external
spaces and promote a system of privileges, oligopolies
and monopolies, half-truths and flawed markets that
they hold captive. They are insensitive to the demands
of the majority, very often tortured by hunger,
unemployment, indifference and exclusion.
We have come to this Assembly to wish everyone
the best, but also to point the finger at those who
preach false free trade that only deepens poverty and
seek to seduce us with the erratic mirage of remittances
that we so easily accept but which in fact are the fruit
of a labour force that we have exported; the result of
the cruel fate of our emigrants; the inexorable and evil
tragedy of people caught between freedom,
marginalization and slavery.
My Government and the people of Honduras
condemn the monopolistic controls, the privileges and
the absurd exceptions that prevent us from building
true freedom with democracy and market access, the
paradigm that we all want to move towards without the
protectionism we all condemn.
The Governments of the world must be led by
men and women who long for peace and not by
multinational corporations that promote war. Here,
civil society organizations could play a major role in
correcting this situation and denouncing it.
I represent Honduras, a country of the Isthmus of
Central America, and, like our Central American
brothers and sisters, we continue to face the
innumerable paradoxes that arise between civilization
and barbarism. We have been the historical theatre of
absurd wars, ambitions and sterile battles, very often
exported, and the horrors of death and pillage. Yet the
peoples of Central America are in the vanguard of
those looking for joint solutions. We have the creative
capacity that keeps us from losing faith or hope in a
better world.
America has been inspired throughout history by
great men and women of renown. Here in North
America, Lincoln was a splendid guide for democracy.
In the South, it was Sucre, San Martín and Bolívar;
José Martí in the Caribbean; Villa and Zapata in
Mexico. And in Central America, we have Jerez, Mora,
Valle, Darío, Turcios, Omar Torrijos and the pro-union
martyr Francisco Morazán, among others. The Chilean
poet, Pablo Neruda, Nobel laureate for literature, said
it well:
“Deep in the night Morazán is watchful.
Is it today? Yesterday? Tomorrow? You know the
answer,
Central ribbon, slender America,
...
Raised up on emerald sea-feathers:
Territory, unity, slim goddess
Born in the water-foam battle.
They destroy your sons, and worms
Spread their pestilence over you.
...
Now comes the axe-brandishing tiger.
They come to devour your entrails.
They come, fragrant little America,
To nail you to the cross, to flay you,
To cast down the metal blazoned on your banner.
Invaders fill your dwelling-place
And toss you aside like lifeless fruit,
...
And others plunder your ports ...
Is it today? Yesterday? Tomorrow? You know the
answer.
Brothers, awaken. And Morazán is watchful.”
We, the Central American peoples, stand tall,
ready to take the opportunities offered by development
and genuine free trade, seeking our common destiny,
seeking it today — which is not the end of history, but
the beginning of a new era for humanity, if we shoulder
our responsibility and commitment. We have not lost
our desire for liberty or our longing for hope. We
continue to fight for food security, for energy
independence, for the social morality that we all
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deserve and for an economy that is at the service of
markets, yes, but also at the service of people. We form
a common front against poverty and against the
corruption which today is invading our culture at many
levels. Unless we overcome this, we cannot win
genuine sovereignty.
Central America opens itself to the world so that
the world can open itself to Central America. We are
prepared for investment in tourism and in various areas
of our economy and society. We are ready in Central
America — El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa
Rica, Panama, Belize and now the Dominican
Republic. We represent this central waistband of
America, this bridge of trade and markets — a bridge
to a free world, a better world.
Time limitations prevent me from addressing all
the other important topics. Allow me to conclude this
brief statement by expressing wishes for true peace and
opportunity for everyone, in the conviction that the
peoples of the world can exist only when in the heart of
man there is fear of the wisdom of God.
Let us all say yes to the loving God, to that God
that considers man a brother to man and not an enemy
of man — to that God of non-violence. That is the God
we hymn and glorify, and we in Central America and
Honduras join together in a song of hope:
“Is it today? Yesterday? Tomorrow? You know
the answer.
Brothers, awaken. And Morazán is watchful.”