I
wish to convey my greetings to the Secretary-General
and all the Presidents, Heads of State, delegations and
international organizations from across the world. I
convey also my special greetings to those attending this
annual general debate of the General Assembly.
We are here once again, as usual, to share
experiences relating to leadership and to work for the
sake of life, humanity, equality and social justice. But
we are also here to express our profound differences as
concerns life, peace and democracy. Over the past few
days I have been listening to the statements made by
certain Powers, which leave a lot to be desired in terms
of liberty, equality, dignity and sovereignty.
Thanks to the awareness of the Bolivian people, I
have now held the presidency for almost eight years. In
that time — despite the economic and financial crises in
some so-called developed, industrialized and, I would
even say, even exaggeratedly industrialized countries,
because some Powers industrialize simply to put an end
to life — we in Bolivia have an economic growth rate of
4.8 per cent, on average. Previously it was just over 2 per
cent under the economic policies of the free market and
neoliberalism. This year the economic growth rate is
estimated at 6 per cent, at least, so we are doing well.
I would like to point out that thanks to that economic
growth, in the context of the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) we have reduced poverty; we have met
the MDG of reducing poverty and extreme poverty.
United Nations data for 2011 indicates that that year
1 million Bolivian men and women entered the middle
class. Bolivia has 10 million inhabitants, so that means
that 10 per cent of Bolivia’s inhabitants improved
their economic status. The rate of undernutrition for
children under the age of 5 has decreased even more
than required by the related Millennium Development
Goal. The literacy-rate goal for people between 15 and
24 years of age was met, and UNESCO declared Bolivia
a country free of illiteracy thanks to the cooperation of
Cuba and Venezuela, which have been working with us
since 2006-2007.
The Goal on coverage in terms of maternal health
has been reached, and maternal and child mortality has
decreased. Thanks to that economic growth we have
been able to create vouchers for pregnant women and
for children under 2 years of age, which has made
possible a decrease in maternal and child mortality.
Coverage in terms of potable water has increased. For
example, we created a programme entitled “My water
(more investment for water)”. I must thank the Andean
Development Corporation and the Inter-American
Development Bank for their contributions. With their
funding we put together “My water” I and II, and we
are now on the third programme, with $300,000 per
municipality in rural areas. That has made it possible
for us to provide some municipalities with 100 per cent
coverage in terms of potable water.
I have just come from a major event in the department
of Santa Cruz, where I visited several municipalities.
In two of them, the mayors — who are not from the
party in power but from other parties — told me that
“My water” III will result in 100 per cent of the local
population having drinking water. We have made
advances in that area. Investment in water is a blessing
for life. It means minimizing disease, because potable
water helps people avoid contracting diseases.
I would like all here to know that we have been able
to achieve this thanks to a State that lives in conditions
of sovereignty and dignity. Why am I saying this?
Because previously, politically we were subject to the
American empire. The embassies of the United States
decided who would be minister. Economically, we were
subject to the International Monetary Fund. From the
time we arrived, we have said “Enough!” to submitting
to international organizations and to the United States
embassy. Previously, for any loan, the International
Monetary Fund set conditionalities, blackmailing the
various Governments. Those conditionalities involved
our giving up our natural resources to transnational
companies, so that Bolivia would privatize basic
services. But basic services are a human right and
cannot be private property. So when we freed ourselves
politically and economically, we started to do better.
One of the policies we adopted was to nationalize
hydrocarbons — gas and oil. I want the Assembly to
know, just to share a small experience, that previously
State contracts with transnational oil companies stated
that the bearer acquired the right to the land at the mouth
of the well. When union leaders asked Governments
why the gas and oil were not the property of Bolivians,
they told us that as long as they were underground they
belonged to the Bolivians, but once they were out of the
ground that was no longer the case. They invented this
title business for the land at the mouth of the well.
In addition, 82 per cent of the benefits went to
transnationals, especially in mega-oilfields, and 18 per
cent to Bolivians. It was looting, it was theft. But since
we nationalized hydrocarbons, I must say that we
have really begun to improve the economic situation
and the social conditions in our country. Just one
example: oil income in 2005, before I was President,
was $300 million. This year, thanks to nationalization
and the fight waged by social movements, oil sales will
total more than $5 billion. Last year we almost reached
$5 billion. That figure continues to grow with new
investments, and today we have reached the stage of
giving added value to those natural resources.
As the Assembly is aware, I am not an expert in
politics or in economic matters. But I am here at the
request of the Bolivian people, learning daily about the
needs, problems and demands of my people, the people
of Bolivia.
I would therefore also like to say that this joint work
with the social movements, which are the organized
representatives of the people, is going well. I would
like the United Nations and the Secretary-General to
know that we have issued a directive and are working
on the patriotic agenda for 2025. What exactly is that
agenda about? As Bolivia was founded in 1825, the year
2025 will be our bicentennial as a republic, while we
are now a plurinational State. We are working with all
social movements and authorities, be they local mayors
or provincial Governments, to establish a medium- and
long-term plan that will make it possible to guarantee a
future for the generations to come.
Besides local issues, there are also pending regional
issues, such as the one between Bolivia and Chile on
sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean. An invasion
began on 14 February 1879, which on 23 March of
the same year gave rise to a limited resistance. Who
invaded us? It was the Chilean oligarchy of the time,
along with British companies. We lost our access to the
sea, and many meetings have been subsequently held
on the issue. An unfair treaty was imposed on us, and it
was not observed.
I want the Assembly to be aware of the following.
In a number of meetings with former Presidents and
with the latest brotherly President of Chile, we have
tried to reach an understanding. However, there has
never been an official proposal to resolve the issue of
the Bolivian people’s irrevocable right to return to the
Pacific with sovereignty.
What did the President of Chile say in September
2010 when he addressed the General Assembly here
in New York (see A/65/PV.12)? He said that treaties
were inviolable and they must not be touched. On
28 January 2013, during the summit of the Community
of Latin America and the Caribbean States (CELAC)
in Santiago, President Piñera Echeñique said that of
course treaties could be perfected. First, he said they
were untouchable, and then he said they could be
perfected. That shows that this issue is on his mind and
that it needs to be resolved.
On 17 December 2012, Piñera Echeñique publicly
stated that Chile would ensure respect not only for the
treaties it had signed, but also its sovereignty, with
all the strength in the world. But in January at the
CELAC summit President Piñera Echeñique said that
sovereignty could not be touched unless economic
interests were at stake. On 22 September 2011, at the
General Assembly President Piñera Echeñique said
that there were no ongoing territorial issues between
Chile and Bolivia (see A/66/PV.15). However, on
2 February 2013, in an interview with La Tercera, a
Chilean newspaper, he recognized the following: Chile
has offered Bolivia autonomy in a territorial enclave. In
other words, he is trying to resolve the issue. But that
proposal has never been made official.
There is a fourth contradiction. On 11 November
2012, at the Ibero-American Summit held in Cadiz,
Spain, the President of Chile said that Chile would
demand that a valid treaty that was still in force — the
treaty of 1904 — be respected, and that any conversation
about the matter must be bilateral in nature: it did not
belong in a multilateral forum such as that in which we
are participating today.
What did the President of Chile say on 2 February
2013? He said that the possibility of a gateway to the
sea without sovereignty, north of Arica, will come to an
end if Peru won at The Hague. Another contradiction:
in June 2013, President Sebastián Piñera Echeñique
said that Chile had the right to defend its territory,
sea and sovereignty with strength and conviction and
that Chile was a country that would never bend in the
legitimate defence of its territory. In June, he said
that Chile would not cede to the Bolivian position
while President Morales continued to belittle him. On
7 September 2013, he said that, naturally, they would
respect the ruling from The Hague. When it came to
the ruling from The Hague, they were a country that
respected rulings.
I simply wanted to state that to avoid conflict.
Since its foundation as a plurinational State, Bolivia has
been by nature a peaceful State. With all due respect,
I would like to inform members that we have turned to
international courts. We have requested the International
Court of Justice to declare that the Republic of Chile
has an obligation to effectively negotiate, in a timely
fashion and in good faith, sovereign access to the Pacific
Ocean in order to re-establish Bolivia’s past, present
and future rights to the sea. I want members to be aware
that this request cannot and should not be interpreted as
an act of hostility. On the contrary, it is a demonstration
of Bolivia’s respect and confidence in the mechanisms
for the peaceful settlement of international disputes.
Members cannot imagine how much damage we
have suffered, economically and geographically, or the
damage that has been done to the people of Bolivia and
to our past and future generations, by the 1879 invasion.
Our grandparents continue to ask us when we are going
to go back to the sea, because Bolivia was born with an
outlet to the Pacific Ocean. So that everyone is aware:
we are seeking a peaceful solution to this dispute.
We have heard the various statements made over
the past few days. One cannot listen to every single one
of them, but I want to say that, while we are working
to eliminate extreme poverty, we, the Heads of State
and Government, are also working for peace with social
justice. Nevertheless, a handful of Powers promote
wars, armed conflict and military intervention without
respecting even international organizations.
We have heard here statements about freedom,
democracy, peace, justice and security. As peoples
who have been the subject of interventions and have
been exploited, marginalized and robbed of our natural
resources by the empires of the time, we wonder what
democracy, what peace and what social justice some
Presidents who come here are talking about. We witness
Presidents and their retinues blocking airspace and not
providing guarantees of our attendance to this forum,
for example. How can they speak of democracy, when
the spy services of the United States violate human
rights and the privacy and security of other States while
using private companies? It turns out that they spy not
only on democratic Governments, but even on their own
allies, their own citizens and the United Nations itself.
Well, fine, let them spy on us anti-imperialist Presidents
and Governments. But spying on the United Nations?
Spying on their allies? I feel that there is a great deal of
overweening arrogance towards humankind.
That is why we continue to speak out. Not only
do they spy, they also hatch coups d’état. What peace
can we speak of when military spending sacrifices the
human rights of our peoples? I would like to ask the
people of the United States: How is it possible, when
there are so many people out of work, for their country’s
Government and President to spend $700 billion on
the military and espionage annually, when there are
so many of our brothers in the United States who are
homeless and jobless and without an education? One
cannot understand how that country can spend so much
money interfering with other countries while leaving
its own unprovided for.
They talk to us of human rights while torture is
being carried out in the prisons of Guantánamo and
on military bases in the Middle East, and while union
and political leaders who do not share imperialist
and capitalist views are also tortured. I would like to
say to the United States that it must not believe it is
master of the world. It is mistaken. Furthermore, it
signs agreements yet refuses to sign some of the most
important treaties in the world. It does not respect
United Nations resolutions.
The security of the empire and the fight against
terrorism have become the biggest excuse and tool
for unilateral military intervention. Terrorism cannot
be combated through more military spending and
interventions or the training of military forces. As
far as I know, the way to fight terrorism is with social
policies, not military bases; with religious tolerance,
more democracy, more equality of justice and more
education.
What country is free from problems? Of course
there are differences. The best thing to do is to provide
means, even if not all our Governments have the same
economic policies. Capitalism wants to emerge from its
crisis through war and armed intervention. We must ask
ourselves who benefits from the wars. Who distributes
the natural resources after an intervention? Whose
hands do they end up in, once countries are bombed?
Who is really governing in the United States, I wonder?
Is it its citizens, or the companies that promote wars?
From outside, at least — I am not an ambassador living
in the United States — what we see is that those who
finance political and election campaigns are bankers
and big businessmen, and they are the ones setting
policy.
Those who govern cannot be mistaken or confused
about the conflict in Syria. Naturally, we are against
the use of chemical weapons and weapons of mass
destruction. But who possesses the greatest nuclear
arsenal? Who invented chemical weapons? Who
industrialized those weapons that end human lives? In
my region, at least, things are perfectly clear. We know
whose hands they are in, where they come from and
who produces them.
Democracies do not wage war. What we are seeing
is that those who make the decisions about wars are the
arms industry, the financial system and oil companies.
Plutocracy has become a substitute for democracy. The
Government of the rich and powerful decides the fate of
the world. We are facing a new moment in the imperial
geopolitical disposition — and I do not wish to revisit
how Latin America and the Caribbean, like Africa and
the Middle East, were at one time carved up by various
imperial Powers, who were interested not in resolving
issues of poverty, democracy and equality but rather
in those countries’ natural resources — and now, once
again, those Powers wish to divide it all up through
military intervention and with military bases.
Another subject being debated is the colonization
of space, as we have seen in recent years. Those who
believe they are the masters of the world have told
us that their power has no limits and that they can
intervene wherever they feel like. Again, I wonder what
the United Nations is for. What do we have treaties and
conventions for? What use is multilateralism? Human
multilateralism we welcome; inhuman interventionism
will be combated by people all over the world. I believe
that as a union leader and as someone from one of the
most humiliated sectors in the history of Latin America,
the indigenous peasant peoples.
War is a business for capitalism. There can be no
peace without justice; there can be no equality as long
as the business of war has pride of place. It starts and
wages wars for its businesses. That is why I believe it is
important at this event to consider such issues in depth.
Another instrument of domination is the fight
against drug trafficking. But I have to say that despite
the efforts of the Bolivian people and Government,
there are certain Powers that do not shoulder their
responsibilities in combating the traffic in drugs,
because the drug market is in the capitalist countries.
Since we got rid of the Drug Enforcement Agency
(DEA) and launched our own national policy — and
thanks to some of our neighbours, such as Argentina,
Brazil and Chile, to which I am grateful for their joint
efforts — we have seen improvements and a better way
of fighting drug trafficking than the way imposed by
the DEA and the United States. I welcome the fact that
the United Nations has acknowledged the decrease in
drug trafficking in Bolivia, but it has not been certified
by the Government of the United States. Who should
we believe, the United States or the United Nations? I
leave it up to the Assembly.
I have felt somewhat insecure when it comes to
visiting the United Nations in New York, which is
why we should think seriously about changing the
location of the Headquarters of the Organization. The
Headquarters of the United Nations should be in the
territory of a State that has ratified all the treaties
adopted by the United Nations. As the Assembly is
aware, the Government has never ratified the treaties on
human rights or the rights of Mother Earth. They do not
guarantee us visas or overflights. I offer my solidarity
with my friend Nicolás Maduro Moros, President of
Venezuela. How can we be sure that a meeting of the
United Nations here in New York is secure? Perhaps
some of us do, but those of us who do not share the
views of imperialism and capitalism feel completely
insecure.
I would just like to say, though not out of fear, that
we should not be complicit in such an arrogant attitude
to the peoples of the world. How can we genuinely
believe in the United Nations if we do not respect
resolutions — for example, those ending the economic
blockade of Cuba. There are only two or three countries
that do not vote to end it. Most of us welcome it and
vote for the resolution every time. But if it is not
implemented and not respected, then why are we here
at the United Nations?
Furthermore, I wish to inform the Assembly
that everyone knows that the United States harbours
terrorists, criminals and the corrupt. They escape
from Bolivian justice and arrive here. The United
States Government is not assisting in the fight against
corruption. What kind of an agreement could we then
have in the fight against corruption?
Beyond that, the United States accuses the
Governments of other countries. It accuses Cuba, of
promoting terrorism. How can Cuba do that? Perhaps it
is due to such accusations that only 60 or 70 Presidents,
of the more than 190, have come here. I feel that such
policies scare off Presidents. Who will come next year
to vote, when resolutions are never respected?
That reason, and many others, should encourage us
to consider changing the Headquarters of the United
Nations. I do not expect it to be Bolivia, or South
America. There are countries that have ratified all of the
human rights treaties. That is where the Headquarters
of the United Nations should be located.
There is blackmail when it comes to visas. I had to
wait for a visa in order to come here, and then it was
for only four, five or six days — no more. What good
is such a visa? One has to watch the clock and when
to leave, because the visa will be taken from us. We
are being threatened, intimidated and blackmailed with
visas.
If the Assembly is here to seriously discuss the well-
being of humankind, perhaps my country can share
with some who are present here the idea of seriously
considering establishing a tribunal of the peoples,
including major international organizations that defend
human rights, to begin an investigation of the Obama
Government.
I was surprised by the words of United States
President Obama at the start of his term. It struck me
when he stated, “I was elected to end wars”. Those
were his words, found in newspapers, on radio and on
television. I said to myself, this fraternal President of
the United States originates from a family that suffered
from discrimination like me. We are going to agree and
we will put an end to war. I was deeply struck by that.
Now we are seeing the exact opposite. Perhaps it is due
to the Nobel Peace Prize. We congratulate him. In the
end, however, it is a Nobel Peace Prize, rather than a
Nobel war prize.
What is the basis for a trial? It certainly includes
crimes against humanity and the bombing of Libya.
I would like to know who owned the oil in Libya
beforehand? Who owns it now? Previously, at the least,
the people of Libya benefited from that oil, but how is it
being managed and used now? What happened in Iraq?
I am convinced that behind any war or intervention,
a plan is being devised on how to later seize the
natural resources. That was our experience in Bolivia.
However, we have recovered our natural resources
democratically, without bullets but with votes, not
with money but based on the awareness of the Bolivian
people.
As for prosecuting acts of international terrorism,
the financing of terrorist groups and the arming of
opposition forces — once I expelled the United States
Ambassador to Bolivia, I had no regrets. We are better
off now, politically and democratically. We are now
ending our cooperation with the United States Agency
for International Development, which had been plotting.
We want and welcome cooperation, so long as it is
unconditional and free of blackmail or preconditions
involving Presidents or the privatization of natural
resources and basic services.
Imagine the damage inflicted on a country by
an economic blockade. It is the best tool of genocide.
Therefore, if we are truly responsible for the well-being
of humankind, if we are responsible for truth, justice
and peace, then we must organize to fight back so that
no president — from South America, the Middle East
or anywhere else in the world — will ever again cause
harm to life or to humankind.
Like previous debates here — on the financial,
climate, economic and food crises — the Assembly is
now addressing the issue of interventionism. As long
as imperialism and capitalism exist, peace, justice,
liberty, dignity and sovereignty for the people of the
world will never be possible. I am convinced of that,
because I have a little experience. We should therefore
contemplate a world free of oligarchies, monarchies
and hierarchies, and then consider the sort of human
order we would want for the world.
All of us possess sovereignty and dignity, whether
we are small and backwards — “developing”, as they
call us — or whatever our situation. What damages the
political class? Sometimes it is arrogance, the abuse of
power and corruption. As Presidents of Governments, it
is our obligation to fight against such policies that cause
so much harm to the political class. It is our obligation
to change the politics. In my experience, politics is not
about business or profits. It is about service, commitment
and extending the greatest effort for one’s people. If
anyone thinks that politics involves business or profit,
they are wrong. Such President or Government will not
go far. If a Government allows bankers, financiers or
multinational corporations to govern, it is mistaken.
A Government must be controlled by a President who
has been democratically elected by the people, with the
participation of society and for the well-being of the
majority of the people.
We welcome the fact that private property is
respected. However, it is something else when economic
policy and governing are considered in favour of the
few, rather than of the many. With my little bit of
experience, therefore, I call on all members to fight
against the economic policies that cause great harm to
humankind around the world.
I reiterate that as long as imperialism and
capitalism exist, the struggle will continue, the people
will continue to rise up, but there will be no justice.
Freeing ourselves from imperialism and capitalism will
certainly ensure peace and social justice and dignity
and sovereignty for our peoples.