I bring the General Assembly greetings from the land of volcanoes, surfing, coffee, Bitcoin and freedom. Anyone who has been to El Salvador can easily confirm everything I have just mentioned. Our country is home to the world’s best surfing beaches, volcanoes are everywhere, we have incredible coffee, and anyone can walk around peacefully and safely in any corner of our country. Most of all, we are a united people who is fighting for its freedom. And freedom is precisely what I have come to the General Assembly to speak about from this rostrum.
I speak of the freedom for which my people and all the peoples of the world yearn. Talking about freedom is easy, but achieving it requires struggle, perseverance and much sacrifice. I speak of the freedom to choose where we are going and how we want to get there — the freedom to define our own path as human beings. But freedom, like much of what defines us, depends on how others see us and, most of all, on how we see ourselves. The people’s choice of freedom and the respect of the powerful for that freedom are therefore both essential requirements in that regard.
I come from a people who for a long time saw themselves as less than others, who never had the courage to make their own decisions, and whose destiny was always controlled by others. The land of my people is the smallest country on the American continent, yet even countries with far more territory, money and power than us do not respect our dominion over that
little piece of land. They are the rightful masters of their own countries, but they are incorrect to think that they are also the masters of ours. The fact is that there is a group of powerful countries that not only have much more than everyone else, but also believe they are entitled to the little that we, the countries without power, have.
We can compare that scenario to someone living in a very small and humble house, but who has a very wealthy neighbour, whose house is a beautiful and gigantic palace, with vast expanses of land and unimaginable treasures. The person living in the little house respects and admires her neighbour and does not mind that he is immensely richer than she. She is happy in her little house but decides to make improvements to it, paint it, fix it up and give it better furnishings — quite an undertaking, no doubt, but she is sure it will be worth it.
Everything is going well, until the rich neighbour decides that his poor neighbour does not have the right to fix her house, buy new furniture or paint the walls. The rich neighbour decides that in addition to owning his own palace, he can also order around the person in the little house. He orders, without her permission, that everything in the house remain lousy as it was before.
On the surface, the poor neighbour has no reason to despise or envy her rich neighbour or to aspire to what he has. She has no reason to plan to go to his palace and order him around or demand that he change his marble floors. But the poor neighbour should at least have the right to clean her own house, repair and paint her own walls, change her own furniture, plant flowers in her own garden and redo her own roof so it is free of leaks and protects her from the rain. That should not bother the rich neighbour. He should not be ordering her to put her old furniture back, cut her flowers, strip the walls, remove the new roof, which is functioning fine, and put back the old roof — which is all the more aggravating because the leaky roof never worked in the first place.
The rich neighbour has no authority to order his poor neighbour to return to the past, first, because he has no claim to be in charge of another person’s house; secondly, because the poor neighbour had tried previously to follow her rich neighbour’s orders and the consequences could not have been worse; and thirdly, because the improvements she made in the first place were actually working. Why should her neighbour force her to go back to the way she was before? For what purpose? To what end? Should he not be happy that his poor neighbour is a little better off than before?
That is why I say that freedom is something we are still fighting for in El Salvador. Because although we are free, sovereign and independent on paper, we will not be truly so until the powerful understand that we want to be their friends, that we admire and respect them and that our doors are wide open to trade and tourism so that we can build the best possible relations. But what they cannot do is to come and boss us around — not only because the land is ours, but also because it would not make sense to undo what we are achieving.
In a very short time, El Salvador has gone from being virtually the most dangerous country in the world — literally, the most dangerous country in the world — to being on its way to being the safest country in America. We went from being a country that was unknown to many — while the few who knew it, knew it for its gangs, deaths, violence and war — to being a country known for its beaches, surfing, volcanoes, financial freedom and good governance and for having put an end to organized crime. Those achievements, which we have only just begun and have been obtained in a very short time, are immense for us. And we have the right to continue on the path of our development.
That is why I initially said that freedom is something we are still fighting for — because our rights to freedom and genuine independence still need to be recognized. I wanted to say these words from the rostrum today because maybe they will resonate not only in my country, El Salvador, but also for the other peoples of the world who, like mine, want the freedom to build their own path.
Some will be able to do it sooner and others later. For some it will be easier and for others more difficult. But it will happen much quicker if the powerful countries help us. And if they do not want to help us, they should at least stay out of the way. All peoples should find their own path, and in doing so they will find friends. To those countries, I humbly offer the friendship of my small country, the smallest on the American continent, the country of surfing, volcanoes and pupusas — a country that is still fighting for its freedom but is about to secure it.
Three years ago, I spoke here at the United Nations from this very this rostrum (see A/74/PV.7). At that time, I said that this format was already obsolete. Now, three years later, we can see that it has become even more so, but perhaps it still serves a purpose. Perhaps it will serve, among many other things, for me, the
representative of that small country — the smallest on the American continent — to humbly recall that the United Nations was not established to divide, destroy or subdue us, but so that we could relate to one another, work together, build a better community of countries and seek solutions to the problems of the world — but with absolute respect for the sovereignty and self- determination of every country and in the manner set out in the Charter of the United Nations itself, the first principle of which states that the Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members. One of the main founding purposes of the United Nations is to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.
Perhaps the transition from a unipolar world system to a multipolar one, a frequent topic of discussion, would be smoother if instead of moving from one super-Power to several super-Powers, we transitioned to a world in which all peoples were truly free to build their own path and our community of nations — all of us, big and small — would contribute our own experience and capabilities to solving humankind’s problems. No one could be against that, but as with freedom, it is easier said than done.
I came all the way here to speak from this rostrum in a format I no longer believe in, to say something that most likely will not change the way powerful countries see others anyway. But perhaps it will change the way that we, as developing countries, see ourselves. If after these short words I have achieved that, at least with a handful of individuals who will go on to see themselves with respect and understand that they are capable of building their own path, then it was worth coming all this way to speak in this obsolete format. And who knows what will happen? Perhaps, in time, other nations — other peoples — will emerge who also decide to fight for their freedom. Then the United Nations will have become relevant again, at least for a humble servant like me. May God bless all the nations of the world.