I take this opportunity to read a letter from President Nicolas Maduro Moros for the peoples of the world.
“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela extends a greeting of brotherhood to the Presidents, Heads of Government and Prime Ministers of the 193 countries of the United Nations.
“Likewise, we salute Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Mr. Csaba Korosi, President of the General Assembly, and other authorities present at this seventy-seventh annual general debate, wishing them every success in the development of this important debate of ideas for timely and collective action in the face of common problems.
“I take the time allotted to us to speak in this forum, on behalf of 30 million Venezuelan men and women, to send an open letter to humankind, which I believe is the sole addressee and purpose that gives meaning to the words of a twenty-first century leader, above all at such a crucial moment for the world, when greater stewardship is needed from the peoples in creating alternatives to transform reality. It is also because we have never been so aware of being a single community, one and multiple at the same time, as we are now as the very thing we share and that makes us equal — life itself — hangs in the balance. This letter comes from the heart of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, a country that many have heard of and of which, paradoxically, little is known in relation to its political truth, its historical identity and its concrete reality.
“Certainly, a pernicious global campaign of discredit and stigmatization has been waged against our people, our republican institutions and our democratic revolution, for the simple fact that, in the waning days of the last century, we challenged the single-minded regime that was imposed on the world under the mask of the market economy and neoliberal globalization — a model that, in the name of freedom, became the modern version of colonization.
“The aim of this campaign against Venezuela is none other than to create the objective conditions to politically and economically suffocate any attempt to create alternatives to the imperialist and predatory system that capitalism, in all its historical phases, has turned out to be. Imposing their false story, they accuse us of being a dictatorship and a failed State to hide the truth from the world. During the past two decades, my country has held 29 free elections that have defined the social, economic and political model that we call Bolivarian socialism. That is why we have been attacked in multiple ways.
“The peoples of the world should know that every kind of playbook has been applied to Venezuela to destabilize its democracy.
“Politically, imperialism has been unsuccessfully using the illegal method of regime change. They have promoted assassination attempts and invasions, created seditious movements against the Constitution, and even invented a fictitious parallel Government that bordered on the ridiculous.
“Economically, few know that 913 illegal sanctions weigh on our small but dignified country, which, in a word, prevent my people from selling and buying what they produce and need for the development and enjoyment of our individual and collective existence. This translates concretely into suffering, deprivation and systematic attacks that restrict life and the collective rights of my country, which is why we do not hesitate to denounce such cruel measures as crimes against humanity. This economic war, whose losses for my nation have exceeded $150 billion dollars in recent years, intensified during the most serious phase of the global pandemic, making it impossible for us to buy medical supplies, medicines and vaccines.
“The stigmatization has also served Europe and the United States as an alibi for carrying out the most shameless plundering that has been committed against our patrimony and assets abroad. More than 31 tons of Venezuelan gold reserves deposited in the Bank of England, calculated to be worth $1.3 billion, remain sequestered. Another example is the theft of the Citgo Petroleum Corporation, valued at more than $30 billion in February 2019, adding to the more than $10 billion of Venezuelan deposits and funds illegally blocked in foreign banks.
“But these illegal sanctions have never been able to bend the will of our people, but have strengthened it in the same way that the conscience and the resolve to be free are strengthened. Neither have they sidetracked us from our path to social justice. Even in the worst circumstances, our model protects and prioritizes human beings in their social rights: access to housing, education, health, work and culture.
“This act of piracy against our country, however, has left deep wounds in society. Those include induced migration, which is flaunted in the media for political and propaganda purposes precisely by those who have propagated and promoted it with false promises and a blockade of their living conditions. Nothing is said about the fact that 60 per cent of the Venezuelans who migrated have voluntarily returned to their country, fleeing conditions of slavery and exploitation, as well as the mistreatment and persecution to which they have been subjected in many countries of the world. Also hidden from the world is the fact that the Venezuelan State is the only one that has a repatriation policy through its airline, Conviasa, which has been permanently boycotted due to illegal sanctions.
“We ask the multilateral organizations: where have the millions in resources supposedly earmarked to support Venezuelan migrants gone? Accountability would be useful in clearing up the opacity with which such allocations have been carried out. In the same way, we demand that multilateral organizations guarantee the rights of all migrants throughout the world. We do so with the moral authority of a country that, for more than 100 years, has been a beneficiary of good practices towards its migrant population. In this vein, we alert the peoples of the world to the resurgence of xenophobia and aporophobia, hate speech and crimes, and intolerance in general incubated by neo-fascist and neo-Nazi movements that find shelter in political parties and ultra-conservative and far-right Governments.
“Humankind, which sees and listens to us today, has the right to know that, even in the most extreme conditions that I have summarized here, our people have not given up. Quite the contrary, they have paved the way for the consolidation of social peace, economic recovery and the strengthening of democracy. We know in our own flesh the adversity and the miracles that our own will and effort can work. For this reason and from concrete experience, we have built consensus around social and political peace. We have launched an economic plan to confront the blockade, creating new sources of wealth such as tourism, national industrialization, entrepreneurship and agricultural development.
“For the first time in 120 years, we are producing 80 per cent of what we consume and can therefore affirm that we are in a position to join efforts to face the great threats that loom over the world. As one of the main world Powers in oil and gas matters, Venezuela can and wants to be useful, as a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, in the energy emergency that has been dragging on for a decade and profoundly affecting the price and supply system, impacting the poorest and richest countries alike.
“The coronavirus disease pandemic and the conflict between Ukraine and Russia have dramatically aggravated the situation. However, beyond our historical ability to guarantee, as an irreplaceable producer, the energy balance demanded by the international community, we are concerned about the impact of the various world conflicts on food security. Venezuela has 30 million cultivable hectares and is convinced that only a return to sustainable agriculture can help overcome world hunger and poverty. We offer our potential and our firm determination to work actively in the search for global solutions.
“Undoubtedly, all nations are beset by various problems, each of such profound complexity and gravity that it would be difficult to rank them. Perhaps, of all of them, one of the most imperative is that of world peace and security, which today is severely weakened, as has been mentioned by all those who have preceded me at this rostrum. Regardless of our ideological positions, we must agree on the need to prioritize the re-establishment of the diplomatic path and political dialogue over military confrontation. Humankind will not survive a world war. Therefore, an escalation of war in any part of the world is in no one’s interest.
“For my country, a people that has never participated in an international armed conflict, there is no other way than peace, justice, trust and respect for international law. We therefore endorse the proposal of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who calls for the creation of an international commission to facilitate sovereign dialogue between Russia and Ukraine, and we stand ready to facilitate its conditions. We reject all the military provocations and interfering economic sanctions that have been taken against Russia, as well as the hate campaign unleashed against the Slavic people, believing that such actions, far from adding to peace, fuel the fire of war. In my country’s opinion — and I am sure that public opinion is on our side — there is no such thing as good wars and bad wars.
“After the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, international trust was broken and the contradictions typical of an imperialist and supremacist logic became more acute. Since then, we have seen blood spilled with impunity in Iraq, Yemen, Haiti, Somalia, Libya and Syria, to name just a few milestones in the shameful tragedy that is destroying indispensable international law.
“Notwithstanding what has been said, in Venezuela we have reasons to be optimistic. That is because we have learned to trust the people — its intelligence, its benevolence and its attachment to justice and true life. But it is necessary to recognize that the dominant world order faces multiple crises competing in their lethal potential, converging and articulating with one another. The climate crisis aggravates the food crisis, the health crisis deepens the social crisis, the energy crisis intensifies the economic crisis, and the latter endangers world peace.
“Transversally to all this, the no less pernicious crisis of truth is upon us, now exacerbated by information contamination and fake news. We are facing a regime of representation, misrepresentation and suppression of reality imposed by the algorithm of new communication technologies at the convenience of the most powerful. The manipulation of information and emotions is only part of the problem.
“We are witnessing a global state of surveillance and digital control that violates citizens’ rights to privacy and truthful information, turning our democracies into infocracies, as the South Korean philosopher Byung Chul-Han states in his most recent book. The death of truth is the clearest symptom of the decline of a civilization and the preamble to perpetual conflict. Let us not allow the truth to succumb at the historical moment when we have the best chance of applying it, together with reason and sensitivity, as an antidote to collapse.
“The peoples of America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania know that, due to its transcendent and definitive nature, we must face this multidimensional crisis with humanity by going to the heart of the problem. Where is the telluric fault that is shaking the building of the prevailing order? It lies in the crisis of the Western supremacist, imperialist model of civilization, which denies, attacks and tries to suppress the other and the differences among us, and that does not recognize other models or other political, economic, religious or cultural paradigms foreign to its own.
“Despite Western arrogance, we are experiencing a post-imperial change of era, and the global North must recognize that the reigning unipolar and colonialist order is not capable of responding satisfactorily to the problems and needs that it has created to the detriment of humankind, animal life and the planet. The latter is, from our ordinary worldview, the living being most exploited, violated and destroyed by capitalism in all its historical phases.
“We are not just engaging in ideological reflection, nothing more. The climate crisis, which is already irreversible, could be the confirmation that a change of model is imminent.
“The North must accept the indisputable emergence of new Powers and new leadership, such as China, Russia, India, Iran and Tiirkiye. It has to be open to the possibility of being part of a multipolar, pluricentric world that is free of hegemony. It is urgent that there be an ethical change among the old Powers to build a common new world without colonizers or colonized, in which we work together towards the solutions that our peoples demand of us. There is no time for arrogance or useless confrontations or skirmishes.
“In very unique circumstances 207 years ago, the freedom fighter Simon Bolivar, in his prophetic Jamaica Letter, invoked the wisdom of the West.
“‘And shall Europe, the civilized, the merchant, the lover of liberty allow an aged serpent, bent only on satisfying its venomous rage, devour the fairest part of our globe? ... Is Europe deaf to the clamour of her own interests?’ (Selected Writings of Bolivar, Volume 1 ,p. 107)
“In that regard, I wonder whether European and North American leadership is deaf. We ask ourselves that today, as we are on the brink of a crisis that could be the last crisis for humankind.
“Venezuela hopes that the Assembly will listen to reason, wisdom and prudence, recognize and respect the rights of the peoples of the world and address the injustice committed against the Saharawi and the Palestinian people by denying them the right to a homeland. We hope for an end to the illegal economic sanctions and political persecution against Nicaragua and against our brotherly Cuba, Iran and Russia. We hope that the Argentine people will be compensated and that their rights over the Malvinas Islands, taken with blood and fire by the imperial logic that we have denounced, will be restored.
“Only through dialogue, only through words and reason shared among equals, can we build the bridges we need to heal the wounds and leave behind the abyss that instils fear in humankind.
“It is with that belief, and not to comply with the protocol of the general debate, that I send this message. My focus is on the streets, where the ordinary men and women of Abyei, New York, Istanbul, London, Damascus, Ramallah, Tehran, Cape Town, Moscow, Beijing, Managua, Havana, Caracas and many more places are not looking for answers but rather for a call to be part of the building of a new humanity. Because I believe in the power of words and in those men and women who refuse to give up hope, I am sure that this call will not fall on deaf ears.
“Let us have the good sense to recognize that the hegemonic global model is coming to an end, and let us arm ourselves with the necessary enthusiasm to build a new multicentric, multipolar, intercultural and balanced world.
“Let us change what needs to be changed and let us have the courage to be reborn in the face of new times and new challenges. Another world, another life, is not only possible — it is today more urgent than ever.”
That statement was written by Nicolas Maduro Moros in Caracas on 24 September.