The Eastern Republic of Uruguay wishes, through me, to congratulate Mr. Carlos Sosa Rodriguez, Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations, on his election as President of the eighteenth session of the General Assembly. I take this opportunity publicly to express our confidence in him. We know that he will preside over our debates with a fair mind and an equable spirit.
88. Our delegation has repeatedly voiced at past sessions of the General Assembly a concern which dates from the very beginnings of our nationhood: our love of peace and our firm desire to preserve mankind from the dreadful scourge of another war, the end of which in modern times no one can foresee. In addressing comity of nations I wish, as a first gesture, to express the supreme and unanimous message of our people —our most heartfelt prayer for the blessings of an abiding peace upon all the peoples of the world.
89. Our intention is to state here with all firmness that the time has surely come for us all to give thought to the future so that we may bequeath to following generations a new world, untroubled by threatening storm clouds, thereby setting our minds at rest and nourishing hopes of a bright future founded on the happiness of all men without distinction of race.
90. There is an old saying: "The rich man gives of his abundance; the poor man gives his heart". Uruguay has come here to give her heart and thereby contribute to the achievement of peace, which is the great aspiration of this world of ours with all the tensions and perils. Uruguay's ambition is to make the human condition progressively more tolerable by protecting the worker and safeguarding the family, and exhausting ourselves, if necessary, and every means within our power to attain this great end. We know that this is not easy, but let us have faith in the future. Each one of us must relinquish some small part of what he possesses in order to contribute to peace —the great goal of our collective happiness— unselfishly, without hypocrisy, and with a sincerity and faith in the future which must, of course, have clear and unclouded horizons; otherwise there would be nothing left but chaos, hatred and destruction.
91. Uruguay will give every ounce of support in order to achieve this fundamental goal. Our country's territory is small, but we do not believe that the sacred principles of independence, justice and the rule of law, which we have ever held aloft with our banners, can be measured by a country's physical size. What a country thinks, and how its thought is applied and sustained —those are the important things.
92. It is only right, therefore, that we should reiterate that to our way of thinking human beings and their essential rights are sacred. We hold that it is absolutely indispensable to safeguard human personality in all its aspects, especially by ensuring freedom of thought, expression, association and assembly, and free access to all sources of culture. The idea of persecuting a citizen merely for criticizing or disagreeing with the government is alien to us. These ideals are bound up with all our past, forever stained with the bloodshed in our struggles for independence. Protection of individual rights goes back to the very beginning of our nationhood.
93. We believe in the final triumph of these postulates which are essential to peace and prosperity. We trust that the effort of all freemen, wisely and ably supported by the specialized agencies, will triumph finally over aggression, intervention, totalitarianism, subjugation of one people by another, economic exploitation, poverty and ignorance, and that we shall at last make the progress we desire and win prosperity for all mankind.
94. Uruguay trusts that the law-making function of this comity of nations will be the fundamental means whereby the peoples of the world may live together in peace, order and mutual respect. Consequently we stand for a clear and sincere international policy, and our aspiration is peaceful coexistence founded on the right of mankind to a better life without the awful threat of war.
95. Uruguay, which is the most peace-loving of countries, lost no time in signing the nuclear test ban treaty recently concluded at Moscow by the three great nuclear Powers and opened to accession by all well- disposed nations. It could appropriately be named the Treaty of Hope. It cannot be called a victory for any of the Contracting Parties, but is indeed a victory for the human race.
96. We in the Latin-American continent, which has from its early days been known for its love of peace and hatred of armaments, likewise received with hope the idea of progressing gradually toward the elimination of the awful threat of nuclear war through regional agreements by which we could explore avenues to implement resolutions adopted by the overwhelming majority of States Members of the United Nations on the prohibition and spread of nuclear weapons. We pray God that this may signify the end of an unhappy period of mistrust, anxiety and tension, and a persevering effort to start an historic era in man's quest for peace through mutual understanding and trust.
97. Uruguay believes, however, that the aim of destroying armaments is not enough. It must be supplemented by creating a new body of law of world-wide application, prescribing the means to enforce this effectively, and banning war and its weapons all over the world. The time has come for man to take thought, make up his mind to put an end forever to futile and unprofitable strife with his fellow, and bend his strength and collective will to the conquest of nature and the equitable distribution of nature's abundance, among all those who are afflicted by poverty, hunger, disease, and ignorance and who cry out for justice. This, briefly, is the philosophy which we truly love and to which we aspire for the sake of all.
98. The President of our National Council of Government, Mr. Daniel Fernández Crespo, on taking office spoke these words in the General Assembly of our Parliament: "Our international policy is to respect all obligations contracted by the Republic, exert ourselves to the utmost for world brotherhood, and strengthen our country's sovereignty by guidance and action. We acknowledge that our international dealings must be founded on the right of people of self-determination and on the principle of non-intervention as a base of reciprocal trust and mutual assistance among the smaller nations." We are obliged by this political ideal of ours based on self-determination to maintain a clearly anti-colonial stand. Uruguay has the honour to be a member and its representative to be Vice-chairman of the Special Committee on Decolonization; and the Assembly is well aware of the clear, firm and determined stand taken by our delegation in that Committee, whose resolutions have never failed to receive our delegation's support.
99. It is our hope that very soon every country in the world will be governed by authorities freely elected by universal adult suffrage without distinction of race, wealth or education, according to the true and sovereign mandate of the people's will.
100. We think, and perhaps rightly, that this General Assembly session is the most important ever held by the United Nations, for it comes immediately after the signing of the nuclear test ban treaty and on the eve of the great Conference on Trade and Development in 1964. We consider that this Conference may prove to be the major event of the mid-twentieth century, since it will analyse the economic factors of the whole world. The attention of all mankind will be focused on this Conference, at which the most important problems confronting the world's economy will be debated.
101. In international trade Uruguay has to deal with markets in countries of very different characteristics. Some are highly industrialized; others, like our own, are chiefly producers of raw materials and foodstuffs. The difference in wealth and income per head between the two groups has been widening steadily to the disadvantage of the latter. There is a very important and graphic indication of this change in the terms of trade. Whereas in the early years of this century Uruguay exchanged one unit of raw material for each unit of manufactured goods, today she must give 1.40 units or more of raw material to obtain the same amount of manufactured goods as before. If we also consider that Uruguay relies almost exclusively on two export products —meat and wool— to earn foreign currency, we see that our position as suppliers is necessarily very rigid.
102. Because of our patriotic concern to revitalize our economy by giving more attention to the agricultural and stock-breeding sector, the mainstay of our wellbeing, and by trying to obtain big outlets for our meat and wool at the highest prices and on the best terms, we shall have to try to sell to those markets which respect our rights and buy from those which will pay us the best prices for our product.
103. In the struggle for development and for our economic emancipation we have had to deal with a number of factors which are opposed to our advancement but which we are convinced we shall overcome.
104. These are all points which we have maintained in the United Nations because they constitute our guiding principles, especially in the Economic and Social Council —whose enlargement, incidentally, will have our whole-hearted support in view of the problems raised by the admission of new sectors of humanity to the Organization. It does not seem logical to retain the original membership of eighteen when the number of missions to this organization has doubled.
105. That is why Uruguay has great admiration for the work done by ECLA in the Western Hemisphere, which is of undeniable value. In the light of the principles expounded and developed by ECLA in recent years and the support given to it by the Charter of Punta del Este no one disputes the urgent need for national economic planning as the only way to accelerate the process of economic and social development.
106. Uruguay placed great hopes in the United States new policy on Latin America, expressed in the Alliance for Progress, but we must confess that we believe this plan for global co-operation is today in need of dynamism to cope with present problems, which has thus far been lacking.
107. Almost two years after the launching of the Alliance, our peoples are anxiously awaiting some positive signs of progress towards better and more equitable standards of living, under the protection of liberty and democratic institutions, with the speediest possible economic and social development.
108. One should not look for immediate victories; it would be disastrous to expect too much of planning or to expect results too soon. No great advances have been made, nor could they have been made up to the present time but we are nevertheless entitled to draw attention to unjustifiable delays or obvious errors. All countries are now trying to hold to their own solution; moreover, the fact that we are working for long-term goals means that the ultimate objectives will also take a long time to achieve.
109. To expect immediate results will obviously lead to rapid disappointment and unconsidered criticism. However, while we recognize that planning —particularly within our institutional framework— is a slow, although vigorous and decisive, process, it must be realized that the peoples of America require some immediate results and that the social situation in America also requires that certain goals should be achieved with the greatest possible urgency. It is evident that we need to find our own way.
110. We have thus attempted to find general rules and principles to govern our efforts and we have tried global planning and sector planning techniques. But these inevitable attempts at systematization must not make us forget that each country has its own circumstances and conditions, its own distinctive social and political history, and a national solution must be found for each of them. The solution must be found through planning and that is our aim. The task is not an easy
one and it therefore requires much time. Uruguay has nevertheless reaffirmed its belief in the appropriateness of this method and is confident that it will succeed through a system of planning agreed upon by the three groups concerned: Government, management and trade unions.
111. In this process we have not only sought to make a theoretical analysis of our economic variants or the model for our development; we have also stressed the search for and the promotion of specific development projects which will bring a new dynamism to our economy in the near future. At the same time we have set in motion the machinery for proposing basic reforms in political bodies, since without such reforms, we fear, any attempt at planning would be fruitless.
112. Thus, we have attempted to find our solution through planned development based on a twofold approach involving both a general survey of the nation's economic structure, as a whole and by sectors, and the execution of specific projects and structural reforms, the object being to set in motion a dynamic political process directed towards the elaboration of an over-all programme.
113. We are not building our future on external aid alone; we are aware of the need for efforts on our own part and of what we must do with our own means, our own labour, our own enthusiasm, our own purposefulness and our own resources. We must make a thorough study of the possibilities of trading with other regions of the world, particularly with those currently developing at a very high rate, such as the socialist economies, for example.
114. It is undeniable that the same deterioration of trade relations, which has historically done so much harm to Latin America's position in the world market, continues throughout the continent. We have protested a thousand and one times against the implications of this situation which leads to a transfer of wealth and the reduction of our opportunities for growth. A thousand and one times, at international conferences, we have maintained the view that no international aid can compensate for the loss of wealth resulting from the low prices paid for our products on the international market. We firmly reiterate that view today and we demand equitable prices and markets rather than loans and external aid.
115. The picture now appears even more gloomy because of the rapid growth of groupings on the European continent, as a result of the establishment of the Common Market. Latin America cannot remain indifferent to this situation, and we must see how our Governments can find a way out and a genuine and effective solution to this grave problem.
116. The Uruguayan Government, I may state, will give its full support to measures designed to improve the economies of the under-developed countries and to bring about, at the earliest possible date, the desired balance in our economic relations.
117. The world must eliminate a great curtain, which is neither the iron curtain nor the bamboo curtain that separates wealth from poverty. We cannot make any constructive advances in our diplomatic, trade and cultural relations if we do not firmly resolve to eradicate hunger, unemployment, lack of education and class differences from the face of the earth. This is, obviously, an urgent task to be given the highest priority.
118. It is our belief that sound approaches to a modern world structure may be found in the opportunities for co-operation in the economic and social field and that we all have the same responsibility to carry the work to a successful conclusion along those paths. In this dialogue between people from all regions of the world, which takes place in an atmosphere of complete freedom, we can state our views and our fundamental aim, which is to satisfy the needs of the individual and the family by creating a happy community. Renan said that it is not speaking the same language or belonging to the same ethnic group that makes a nation, but, the sharing of great things in the past and the will to accomplish great things in the future.
119. Uruguay therefore invokes its history, the expression of its great past, and would imbue with a modern dynamism the minds of men who, like Artigas, gave us our country and whose ideals should not remain static. We declare here today to the representatives of virtually all nations of the world that our great ambition for the future is to achieve a lasting happiness based on freedom, for that is the only way in which nature may be overcome and subordinated to those aims which are the symbols of peace: work, order, law and, above all, justice for the 2,000 million human beings who hunger and thirst for justice but who also suffer from hunger and thirst.