102. Madam President, it is with real satisfaction that I
take the floor in the general debate under your Presidency,
for you represent a friendly country, Liberia, and you
have been elected to your office by the international
community after years of devoted and effective work in the
United Nations. Your personal and intellectual abilities
have earned you the respect of all the States which have
concerted their activities through the United Nations and
you have upheld the tradition of Liberia as a standard-bearer
in this continuous search for new methods of
international co-operation and the reaffirmation of civilized
principles and rules of community life.
103. It is barely a year since we welcomed Mr. Emilio
Arenales, the Foreign Minister of Guatemala, as President
of the twenty-third session of the General Assembly. We
never thought then that his untimely death would plunge
this Assembly into mourning. We wish to place on record
once again our admiration for his outstanding accomplishments
in inter-American and world political affairs.
104. This year the General Assembly has a fairly heavy
agenda and will probably have difficulty in completing its
consideration in the period of barely three months that is
available. Some of the items have been included year after
year and the relevant arguments have been exhausted and
positions have crystallized; nothing will come of considering
them, for they no longer rouse any passion, since
charges and counter-charges have been repeated so often
that even the opposing parties are no longer moved by
them.
105. Other items, though of long standing, are of great
current interest and warrant the Assembly’s full attention,
such as the problem of the Middle East. Others are new and
affect the future of the Organization, which, in political
matters, is apparently developing into a forum for the
expression of opinion with little practical effect, while in
technological, scientific, social and legal matters, it is
moving into fields of potential benefit to all countries. This
development is to no one’s credit or discredit, for it is due
to the forces at work in recent years and primarily to the
way in which the Charter was conceived, its key provision
being the presumed agreement of five great Powers. Its
machinery, however, operates in such a way that agreement
among five great States is required for decisions in
important political matters to be effective, the effectiveness
of decisions depending on whether or not they meet this
requirement of agreement. We do not wish to discuss at this
point whether this structure is appropriate or inappropriate
for fulfilling the purposes of the Charter, but simply to
re-emphasize a decisive aspect of the Organization’s internal
machinery which accounts for its difficulties in every major
political issue.
106. United Nations activities with regard to outer space,
natural resources and in particular the exploration, exploitation
and use of the sea-bed and its natural resources for
peaceful purposes and for the benefit of mankind will place
the United Nations in the forefront of the promotion of
new broad programmes of international co-operation. The
representative of El Salvador served as Chairman of the
Legal Sub-Committee of the Committee on the Peaceful
Uses of the Sea-Bed and the Ocean Floor beyond the Limits
of National Jurisdiction, and El Salvador has done and is
prepared to do its utmost to ensure that the United Nations
establishes a régime for the sea-bed which truly reflects the
unanimously agreed aim, namely, that the resources of this
great reserve shall be used for peaceful purposes and for the
benefit of mankind. Formulation of the legal principles of
the regime for the sea-bed calls for an unlimited capacity
for negotiation and a genuine desire to reconcile interests.
This is a delicate matter and must be tackled with great
care, because if the technology of exploitation continues to
progress and the international community delays too long
in establishing the regime for this area, it may find itself
faced with many accomplished facts which will engender
interests likely to oppose a general agreement on the subject.
107. The year 1969 saw a significant advance in international
law with the culmination of eighteen years of work
by the International Law Commission in the negotiation
and signing of the Convention on the Law of Treaties at
Vienna. This Convention reflects the antagonistic and
competitive forces in the contemporary international community,
but it has succeeded in codifying general practice
and has achieved some important legal advances, since it has
opened up new and valuable paths in certain directions. At
the Vienna Conference El Salvador maintained that it was
essential to adopt a convention which provided for effective
means of ensuring compliance with international obligations
and preventing their evasion, because international
organizations move so slowly that they intervene only when
problems have become acute and beyond control, and they
are so heavily influenced by a militant policy that States
can cold-bloodedly calculate that a large measure of
non-compliance will have no consequences.
108. The international community must realize that the
prospect of violence increases in proportion to the lack of
rapid means for settling disputes and, as in earlier times,
when there is no place for reason, recourse is had to
blackmail, propaganda that distorts facts and figures and
the flouting of solemnly convenanted obligations. Such
practices are no longer consistent with what appears to be
the prevailing trend in contemporary society. The United
Nations and the regional systems cannot, without serious
risk, continue to be completely lax in the matter of
compliance with legally constituted obligations and of
respect for and protection of fundamental human rights.
The international community and the regional communities
will have no moral authority whatever to complain in
specific cases unless they ensure the performance of
international obligations and the safeguarding of human
rights — the declared foundations of peaceful coexistence
and international co-operation.
109. Despite claims to the contrary in official statements,
the protection of human rights has not received the
substantive and resolute support of a solid majority of
national policies, and it must be borne in mind that it is the
conjunction of national policies that makes up the policy of
the international organizations. The protection of human
rights is still embryonic and contains a large element of
romantic intent, with a plentiful admixture of hypocrisy
and political expediency wrapped in the tinsel of fine
phrases. Unless the international community and the
inter-American community ensure respect for human rights,
solemnly proclaimed and guaranteed in specific cases, they
will devalue their political capital for the maintenance of
international peace and security. Article 1, paragraph 1, of
the Charter of the United Nations uses the following words:
“... to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity
with the principles of justice and international law,
adjustment or settlement of international disputes or
situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.“
Peace must be established and achieved as the result of a
definite policy of equitable coexistence. Anything else is
the mere language of international courtesy speeches which
toy with the convictions and rights of the people and
ultimately achieve nothing, because reality is not created by
talking, still less by thinking about it.
110. A definition of aggression is urgently needed, and
here the work done by the Special Committee set up by the
General Assembly under resolution 2330 (XXII) of 18
December 1967 is most important. The Committee’s
records show the deep differences which divide the international
community on this subject, but the conclusion
nevertheless can be drawn that, according to the dominant
view, aggression assumes the most varied forms and consists
both of armed aggression and aggression of other types
which may inflict irreparable economic and moral damage.
One form of aggression is the commission of acts of overt
hostility against the nationals of a particular country solely
by reason of their nationality. Such aggression is armed
aggression when the agents of the authorities or crowds
incited or tolerated by those authorities resort to violence
for the purposes of physical destruction or the creation of
an atmosphere of terror that drives the group subjected to
it to mass flight from territory where it had settled. Armed
incursion into a territory prompted by this form of
aggression and reasonably restricted to putting an end to
the aggression constitutes an exercise of the right of
self-defence that cannot be declined, waived or negotiated.
111. The principle of national sovereignty is not absolute
and cannot be used as a pretext for establishing enclaves in
which excesses against the nationals of a particular country
are a matter of daily occurrence. A State is entitled to
defend its nationals residing abroad, and any attack on
these nationals by reason of their nationality is an attack
on the rights of the State to which those nationals belong
and aggression against it.
112. International principles and rules of law are inter-
dependent and dovetail and interlock; their co-ordination is
the key to a flexible and harmonious international order
propitious to peace and co-operation. The principle of
national sovereignty does not preclude the performance
— and the demand for performance, if need be — of the
obligations of sovereign States, one of which is respect for
resident aliens.
113. Another case should be recalled in connexion with
aggression, a case famous in the annals of the League of
Nations, in which it was contended that frontier incidents
cannot be regarded as aggression. This contention has not
been generally accepted, and it needs elaboration and
qualification if it is to serve its purpose and to be correctly
applied. Occasional incidents, regrettable actions by frontier
guards do not constitute aggression, but they become
armed aggression when, owing to their frequency and scope
and the manifest absence of any desire to prevent them on
the part of the central authority, they are the expression of
an unlawful and deliberate harassment of a neighbour.
114. The definition of aggression will be a factor making
for security in international relations, and it will not only
make it easier for the competent organs of the United
Nations to determine in each case whether a breach of the
peace exists, but will also help to guide the conduct of the
regional organizations and of each State individually. As an
intelligence sharpened in the search for means of harassing
other States will find means of committing direct or
indirect aggression, this definition must be broad enough,
must be adapted to contemporary experience and must
make it clear that no territory may be a hortus conclusus in
which, on the pretext of sovereignty, the rights of other
States are breached and the fundamental rights of individuals
are violated. Rights are not absolute nor do they
exist in a void; all of them are interdependent, interlock
and make up a harmonious whole. A definition of the
concept of direct and indirect aggression followed by an
illustrative but not exhaustive list of the commonest cases
will provide valuable support for the accomplishment of the
purposes of the United Nations and the regional organizations.
115. In studying the definition of aggression, we must
bear in mind that the purpose of Article 51 of the Charter
of the United Nations is not to recognize the right of
self-defence, but to clarify decisions on collective self-
defence. The right of self-defence is inherent in the human
person and in the State, and its existence does not depend
on its recognition in an international instrument. Collective
self-defence needs to be proclaimed and recognized, but not
the individual self-defence of the State, which arises from
the mere fact of its existence. It is absurd to contend that
the aggressor must have discharged its defensive potential
against another State or that there is an obligation to fold
one’s arms before a deliberate assault on fundamental rights.
116. The technological and economic gap between
industrial countries and the countries which are
called developing — an obvious euphemism — is widening yearly
and no international policy so far has been able to
narrow it. The First United Nations Development Decade
and the regional and bilateral programmes, though meritorious,
have not been able to prevent the gap from growing.
Recent studies show that the gap is widening at the rate of
5 per cent yearly, and consequently in fourteen years the
distance between the two groups of countries will have
doubled. The developing countries’ economic and social
progress should not be discounted, but, even so, the
distance between the two groups of countries will have
doubled by 1984. This is the sober and objective prospect
that emerges from the analyses of recent years and from the
trends in world development. With this prospect before us,
we may well ask whether it may not be necessary to rethink.
all the relevant programmes from the ground up, because
the imbalance between the regions, with its attendant train
of tension, is increasing rather than diminishing. In planning
the Second United Nations Development Decade, which
will be one of the items on the agenda at its twenty-fourth
session, the General Assembly will have to evaluate the
successes and failures of the course so far followed and to
set itself the goal of narrowing the development gap
between the two major groups of countries.
117. Among the most recently tested instruments for
development are the integration programmes, which in
recent years have had care, study and commendation
lavished on them and have opened a way to be exploited by
technology through large-scale production, wider markets
and large geographical areas. Integration is making headway
in several regions. Central America is making an effort to
integrate, and the events of 1969 will make it possible to
reassess and redirect this process and to give it the
appropriate means of fulfilling its purpose, the means at
present available being of doubtful efficacy.
118. In contrast with European integration, Central
American integration has placed the emphasis on goods,
and the human element has been neglected. The underlying
assumption was that economic resources would spontaneously
generate conditions conducive to peaceful co-existence
and produce the necessary legal and political
institutions. Political factors were disregarded, at this stage
at least. The powers of the integration bodies are derived
from unanimous agreement among the Governments concerned
and these bodies have no rapid and effective means
of preventing arbitrary actions and distortions of the
process. The system is completely oriented towards the
Governments, because it has no organs vested with powers
of their own or any capacity to overrule members which
dissent from majority decisions.
119. To restrict the integration programme to goods and
some investment in the infrastructure is reasonable enough
as a first step, but disastrous if this first step becomes an
end in itself. The Central American Bank for Economic
Integration acts as a channel for external resources,
together with some local resources, but there are no
investment programmes using funds wholly derived from
the area on a Central American scale.
120. The economy also generates competition, and if
there are no channels for the speedy settlement of disputes
and if the area integrated is too small for a system of
internal compensation to operate, crises must inevitably
occur; and if there are no organs vested with sufficient
powers to bring the recalcitrant to heel, retaliation is the
only form of defence. Integration cannot be timorous and
hesitating, nor can it be governed by the obsolete spirit of
economic nationalism; it must be bold and total, though
carried through in stages.
121. Central American integration exemplifies a process
which has been much lauded, outside the area more than
within it. As a result of the self-satisfaction engendered by
this applause, criticisms of its weaknesses and forecasts of
crises have fallen on deaf ears. It is, however, a mirror in
which other similar processes should be viewed, and it
should be examined objectively and reconsidered, replanned
and reorganized in order to give it consistency,
depth and effectiveness.
122. El Salvador supports integration, but it does not
applaud the process in its present state, which permits
capricious management, the practice of bargaining, the
representation of private interests by Governments and
arbitrary action in restraint of trade. What El Salvador
desires and proposes to the parties concerned is a genuine
integration which would provide the opportunity to plan a
sound economy and which would not be managed in the
old parochial spirit. Integration calls for uniform labour,
social, monetary, economic and financial policies. Either it
is a total process or it is just one more of those inflated
fairytales to amuse the grown-up children of the technological
age. It must be carried through in sections and stages
and at a certain pace, but when the stages are unduly
protracted, when they become an end in themselves and
lose their significance as links in a long process, when there
is no authority to enforce decisions and retaliation therefore
becomes the ordinary method of bringing people to
reason, and when there are no rapid means of preventing
arbitrary action, the integration process is definitely suffering
from a chronic disease. Worse than the disease itself is
the lack of concern for the patient’s recovery.
123. Examples about to prove what I have just said. The
most recent — but not the only — example of the arbitrary
violation of the Central American treaties and inter-American
agreements is the Honduran decree closing the
Pan American Highway to the passage of Salvadorian goods
and vehicles bound for Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.
This is the Pan American Highway, planned many decades
ago aS a continental undertaking and financed by a
co-operative effort. The closing of this highway is yet
another abuse of sovereignty and constitutes deliberate
aggression. Here you have an example how the Central
American Common Market operates, despite the existing
legal instruments.
124. This is, I repeat, the Pan American Highway, which
was conceived and planned to serve all the countries on the
continent and was in fact financed internationally. One of
its links cannot legitimately be cut to a country’s detriment.
Early in this century the American countries planned
a Pan American railway, which was later replaced by the
Pan American Highway. The construction of the Highway
was the subject of a Convention? signed at Buenos Aires on
23 December 1936.
125. Article 1 of the Convention on the Regulation of
Inter-American Automotive Traffic, in force among all the
Central American countries, recognizes “that each State has
exclusive jurisdiction over the use of its own highways, but
agrees to the international use as specified in this Convention”;
article 4 lays down that “the Contracting States shall
not allow customs measures to be put into effect that will
hinder international travel“; and article 7 states that
“... Evidence of compliance with the conditions of this
Convention shall entitle motor vehicles and motor vehicle
operators to circulate on the highways of any of the
Contracting States”.
126. Moreover, article XV of the General Treaty of
Central American Economic Integration states that ”each
of the Contracting States shall maintain full freedom of
transit through its territory for goods proceeding to or from
any of the other signatory States, as well as for the vehicles
transporting the said goods”.
127. The Charter of the Organization of American States
states categorically that “no State may use or encourage the
use of coercive measures of an economic or political
character in order to force the sovereign will of another
State and obtain from it advantages of any kind.” The
economic aggression by Honduras flagrantly violates this
provision of that Charter and therefore calls for immediate
collective action by the American States. This aggression is,
in accordance with article 5 (f) of the same Charter, an act
of aggression against all the other American States.
128. In conformity with existing inter-American instruments,
the Organization of American States adopted
resolutions to the effect that El Salvador and Honduras
must revert in toto to the situation prior to the conflict of
June and July 1969. This reversion to the status quo ante
entails the maintenance of free transit through the territory
of the two countries. The return to the previous situation
and to normal thus decreed by the Organization of
American States is not compatible with the Honduran
contention that no contractual obligation of any sort exists
between the two countries. This return to normal is not
compatible with the economic aggression involved in the
closing of the Pan American Highway to Salvadorian
vehicles, goods and nations, nor is it compatible with the
measures of pacification adopted by the Organization of
American States, because it violates them and renders them
null and void. Other Central American integration agreements
provide for road vehicle traffic, such as the Regional
Agreement for the Temporary Importation of Road Vehicles,
signed at San Salvador on 8 November 1956 and the
Central American Agreement on Road Traffic of 10 June
1968.
129. The Declaration of the Presidents of America at
Punta del Este on 14 April 1967 refers to the need to
eliminate or reduce to a minimum restrictions on international
travel.
130. Economic aggression, though mainly taking the form
of the closing of the Pan American Highway, is also evident
in the freezing of ail Salvadorian bank accounts and in the
pressure which the Honduran authorities and national
banks have brought to bear on Salvadorian undertakings to
sell their interests on terms so onerous as to be tantamount
to confiscation.
131. Though Central American integration has neglected
the human element, some of its legal instruments, signed,
ratified and in force, deal with migration. I mention this
point because the myth has been created that the Central
American conflict in 1969 was due to the population
explosion. The Treaty of Economic Association between
the Republics of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador
signed on 5 February 1960 and ratified by these three
Central American States, provides for the free movement of
persons between the Parties, for article II states that “the
nationals of each signatory State shall enjoy the right to
enter and leave the territory of the other contracting Parties
with no restrictions other than those established for
nationals of such Contracting Parties,” and, further on, that
“the nationals of any contracting Party shall enjoy national
treatment in the territory of the others”.
132. The General Treaty of Central American Economic
Integration, signed and ratified by five Central American
countries, leaves in force those parts of the Treaty of
Economic Association that are not subject to new regulations.
Within what seemed to be a clear-cut Central
American policy, specific bilateral agreements were concluded
to facilitate the application of the legal rule I have
mentioned, which is clear and binding and whose validity
and force do not, of course, depend on any regulations
which may subsequently be agreed upon to facilitate its
application. Moreover, in conformity with the region’s
policy, one of the decisions taken by the Central American
Presidents, meeting at San Salvador, was to accelerate the
stage-by-stage development of the capital market and to
take steps to facilitate the free movement of persons.
133. I am quoting this legal history and this background
to official regional policy to show that migratory movements
in Central America are not the result of a country’s
political misconduct towards its neighbours and that the
mass expulsions of Salvadorian nationals constitute a
violation of clear legal obligations, a flouting of solemnly
declared policies and, furthermore, a disregard of the duties
of States and of the fundamental human rights set out in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. A
State may establish regulations to govern particular aspects
of migration, but it may not rescind acquired rights of
residence and property or impair the freedom, the right to
work and even the physical integrity of residents. An
undesirable alien may be expelled from a territory, but he
may not be deprived of his property; his house may not be
ransacked nor may he be beaten or killed. The rules of
international law do not allow of the mass treatment of
cases of migration, because injustice then becomes the rule
and engenders a policy of overt hostility to the State whose
nationals are being inhumanly treated and mistreated.
134. This year 1969 will go down in the history of
El Salvador as a bitter year, marked by very serious
problems which had not arisen in the more than a hundred
and fifty years since it became independent. There had
been civil strife and every sort of rivalry in Central America,
the expression, by means that were not always appropriate,
of a spirit of rivalry or dissent. But the events of 1969 are
marked by features which some observers have been unable
or unwilling to discern. If anyone had prophesied a year ago
what was going to happen, we would have been incredulous
because we sincerely believe in the depths of our heart that
systematic persecution on grounds of nationality alone
could never occur on American soil, which seemed to have
a special affinity for fundamental human rights.
135. When put to a substantive test, the system for the
protection of human rights has proved to have huge gaps,
and the means of enforcing it have been shown to be
defective. This is an experience which must be examined
objectively by participants, parties and observers, and the
examination must pave the way for reflexion and reform.
The past must be subjected to rigorous analysis; lessons
must be drawn from it and appropriate reforms devised.
The international community and the regional communities
are not yet sufficiently developed to accomplish their aims
speedily and fully; the facts speak for themselves only too
plainly in the Middle East, in Viet-Nam and in Central
America.
136. El Salvador has become an entirely different country
since July 1969; its outlook has changed and it is now no
longer prepared to sacrifice words and deeds on the altars
of many of the myths which have been invented to lull
consciences. Speaking as an observer, I must say that my
country had swallowed the tales of declarations of human
rights, brotherhood, solidarity and integration. The circumstances
experienced by the Salvadorian people were so
harsh and moved so rapidly to extremes that it had to
improvise the defence of its rights and did so in admirable
fashion, achieving its identity in a prodigious and single
surge of national unity. El Salvador has decided, in the
prevailing political and social circumstances, to maintain its
identity as a people and to revise its national and
international policy in order to adapt it to current realities.
137. El Salvador is fighting, has fought and will continue
to fight for the protection of its nationals’ fundamental
fights within and beyond its borders. A policy of renunciation
has never paid off in terms of peace and security,
because it is unfortunately misinterpreted; it is construed as
weakness and consequently encourages hostile acts. El
Salvador still hopes that the Organization of American
States will succeed in overcoming the problems of its
internal operation and will honour the solemn undertaking
signed and endorsed by the American Foreign Ministers in
the resolutions adopted on 30 July 1969.
138. El Salvador is prepared to abide by the rules of the
international community, but it is not prepared to pass
beneath the yoke nor to learn to bend the knee and beat
the breast to appease the policy of other States.
139. The problems of the Central American region have
remote and immediate causes. One of the remote causes
mentioned is under-development. Rather than a cause,
under-development is the background to certain phenomena.
Or rather, not under-development as such, but an
unbalanced process of development, which places some
countries at a temporary and relative advantage in which
others acquiesce. As meteorologists do, we must investigate
not only the climate but the microclimate, and then the
process of unbalanced development appears against the
background of under-development, forming an integral part of it.
140. We made our contribution to a policy for remedying
the process of unbalanced development in Central America,
having approved the protocol on preferential treatment for
Honduras to that end. Through that protocol El Salvador
showed that it is prepared to shoulder the burden of
solidarity by artificially creating competitive advantages for
one of its partners, Honduras. But El Salvador is not
prepared to broaden this preferential treatment, because it
would be unfair for it to have to bear the burden of the
development of a country with vast natural resources,
which will shortly be able to rise to El Salvador’s own level
of production and to compete on equal terms.
141. Technology, too, produces problems and sometimes
generates a violence which is no less than that in the
developing countries. There is no clear-cut relationship
between conflict and violence, on the one hand, and
under-development, on the other. The categories of development
and under-development were devised for the
purposes of the analysis, originally in economic and later in
more comprehensive terms, of a world thrown out of
balance by the simultaneous existence of a great absorptive
industrial belt and of a situation in which two-thirds of the
world’s population is reduced to producing raw materials
and gathering the crumbs of industry and the dregs of technology.
142. Attributing every evil to under-development is not at
present making the powerful countries more receptive to
the notion of a balanced world development. They will
probably become more receptive to this notion when they
realize that the development of the other parts of the world
will benefit everyone, including themselves.
143. We should distinguish between the remote and the
immediate causes of problems. From the political and legal
standpoint, immediate causes are of direct importance; the
other causes should also be dealt with, and should not be
left solely to the schools, the professors and the trained
speculative scientists, because all the social sciences are
notoriously immature and what they tell us contains a great
deal of the speculative with an unknown admixture of
reality. If we immerse ourselves in the study of the chain of
causation, we may discover what happened in the original
molecule or the original nebula. Some will claim to tell us
by means of electronic computers what concatenation of
causes brought us together here and why we say what we
say, but such speculations tend to remove problems from
their true context and perspective.
144. Such study is useful as a guide to political action, but
it must be preceded by conduct consistent with existing
obligations and with the civilized rules of community living.
The fact that causes may be of one kind or another, remote
or not so remote or interrelated to a greater or lesser
degree, does not exempt any State from its obligation to
fulfil the agreements it has entered into and to comply with
the rules governing the international community. The
remote causes of events too must be dealt with, but this
cannot usefully be done so long as a policy of deliberately
and intentionally harassing or even destroying other States
is being pursued.
145. An exaggerated optimism has gained circulation
about the efficacy of the pacification measures adopted by
the Organization of American States during the outburst of
violence which began on 15 June 1969. The Organization
adopted a great many measures of pacification based on
existing treaties, but it has not so far been able to ensure
their complete implementation. It is not a matter of being
optimistic or pessimistic, but realistic; we must draw up a
cool and objective balance of the results of the pacification
activities and determine at what points they have met with
resistance, so that we may adopt additional measures as
urgently as necessary in conformity with earlier treaties and
resolutions of the Organization. 1 assert emphatically and
categorically that El Salvador has complied with every one
of the pacification measures, but that the other party,
Honduras, has not responded in the same way and,
accordingly, a lack of balance has occurred which is putting
the prestige and efficacy of the Organization of American
States to the test. What is more, Honduras is again
escalating the dispute by means of economic aggression in
the form of the closing of the Pan American Highway and
confiscatory measures against Salvadorian businesses legally
established in its territory.
146. The case is under consideration by the Organization
of American States. Advantage was taken of the presence of
the American Foreign Ministers in New York to hold
informal conversations, which are continuing, but since,
during these conversations, it has not proved possible to
reach any agreement at all likely to lead to the early
cessation of the economic aggression to which my country
is being subjected, I have requested on behalf of my
Government that the consultative organ of the Organization
of American States should be convened so that we can
submit to it the relevant complaints with the urgency which
the situation dictates.
147. The dispute between El Salvador and Honduras has
been raised in the plenary of the General Assembly through
statements by representatives who have expressed an
interest in its settlement. It might be submitted to the
decision-raking organs on the proposal of El Salvador, if
the Organization of American States proves unable to
ensure the survival of the country, which is being overtly
threatened by economic aggression, taking unjustified
advantage of purely geographical circumstances. The United
Nations is vested by its Charter and the inter-American
instruments with the higher and final competence for the
maintenance of international peace and security.
148. El Salvador will wage an unflagging struggle for the
guaranteeing of fundamental human rights. It will never
commit itself to a policy of abandoning its nationals abroad
or of waiving the rights inherent in it as a State. It neither
seeks nor desires any extreme or irreparable situations; it is
prepared to make use of any channels provided by the
international community, though these have not as yet
been indicated, and it hopes to contribute to a policy
calculated to establish conditions of peace and security, on
the understanding that the dissociation of peace from
justice, which has on occasions been the basis for international
compromises, runs completely counter to the
objective of a peaceful world, since justice is the essential
ingredient of a lasting peace.
149. Apart from any views that may be held on the
modern international community, geographical proximity is
a fact which imposes certain consequences and which must
be taken into consideration in establishing a coherent and
realistic policy. El Salvador recognizes geographical proximity
as a fact, but is not prepared to surrender to it rights
whose renunciation would jeopardize its very existence.
150. I have referred to treaties which are in force and
impose multilateral obligations established by law, treaties
which have not been denounced and for whose termination
in conformity with international law no grounds have
arisen. Honduras opened the dispute on 15 June 1969 with
a merciless mass persecution of Salvadorian residents
carried out by mobs and agents of the authorities, with the
connivance and condonation of the Honduran Government.
Since El Salvador has the right to defend its nationals
abroad, it considered that this right had been violated and
that, in the persons of its nationals, it was the victim of an
aggression which assumed the character of genocide. I
should like to know whether there are any States which can
conscientiously, seriously and responsibly affirm that they
would stand idly by and witness the mass persecution of
their nationals abroad solely by reason of their nationality.
El Salvador confined its actions strictly to halting this
aggression and the Organization of American States has
assumed a solemn undertaking to protect Salvadorians
resident in Honduras.
151. The international obligations of the two countries to
one another have not lapsed. El Salvador is fully entitled to
demand that the continuing aggression by Honduras should
cease and to denounce in this world forum that country’s
plans for the physical extermination of El Salvador and the
Salvadorians. Its policy of provocation and pressure is
accompanied not only by the infliction of unlimited
damage but also by something really sinister, which it is
cunning enough to conceal beneath the submissive and
humble manner it affects when it appears at inter-American
meetings.
152. The Organization of American States will have to
take cognizance of the most recent expression of this
continuing aggression—the arbitrary closing of the Pan
American Highway. El Salvador can plead the justice of its
claim before any international tribunal and express its
absolute repudiation of the Honduran contention that it is
not bound to El Salvador by any rule of international law, a
contention which is the legal basis for its policy of
aggression and its plan against El Salvador.
153. The year 1969 has brought about a radical change in
the life of El Salvador, a change which will necessarily be
reflected in all its domestic and international acts. In some
cases and in some relationships, it will mean a withdrawal, in
Others a search for new channels of communication,
commercial and diplomatic. The scrutiny of the past will
serve to open its eyes to reality, not to record debts for
future recovery.
154. El Salvador is no longer and never again will be what
it was in May 1969. It has suffered a profound upheaval, an
awakening to the realities of Central America, and a great
many myths have shattered in its hands. It had been
participating out of solidarity in a series of activities
because it had hoped that the reality was approaching the
splendour of the rhetoric. Now it has learned all too well
the meaning of such words as “solidarity”, “human rights”,
“brotherhood” and the like. It has affirmed its intention of
maintaining its identity, and for this it is stronger than ever,
thanks to the total unity of its people. It is prepared, then,
to face, in circumstances which may well become even
more adverse, the hazards of this contemporary international
society which still lacks maturity; but in settling its
disputes, it intends to make use of the means, incomplete
and often inadequate though they are, provided by the
inter-American regional system and the world system of the
United Nations.