1. The Guatemalan delegation wishes to associate itself with the statements welcoming the election of Mrs. Pandit as President of the General Assembly. Apart from being a well-deserved tribute to India, her election is a triumph for woman in her struggle for her rightful place in solving the problems that afflict mankind.
2. The Guatemalan delegation is attending the eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly in the same spirit of sincerity and enthusiastic co-operation as it has shown in the United Nations since it was founded at San Francisco.
3. Guatemala is deeply concerned about the unrest and tension prevalent everywhere, about the threat that the many serious problems that afflict the world may lead to a new war with all its terrible implications for mankind. Guatemala, as a peace-loving country, which believes that man’s ideals can only be fulfilled in a peaceful world, is watching most sympathetically the efforts of the United Nations to solve these grave problems and to re-establish throughout the world the harmony without which man cannot live at peace with his neighbours.
4. The Republic of Guatemala accordingly shared the deep and universal satisfaction at the cease-fire in Korea when the Armistice Agreement was signed with a view to establishing lasting peace in that much devastated area. We firmly believe that the coming political conference will achieve those objectives, and we therefore argued, at the end of the seventh session of the General Assembly, that a new approach must be adopted in seeking a formula which would respect the legitimate rights of all the countries directly interested in the peace of Asia and at the same time bring about the unification of Korea as a democratic State free from all foreign interference,
5. We should also welcome most enthusiastically any efforts which might be made to confine the use of atomic energy to the service of mankind rather than its destruction and to remove this serious threat to man’s very existence in the world. Similarly, like many peoples of the world, we are also anxious that the gigantic expenditure on armaments should be used to improve the economic and social conditions of mankind, since the armament race and poverty have been and will continue to be sources of international friction, trouble and unrest.
6. One of the problems to which Guatemala attaches the greatest importance is the effective exercise and protection of human rights. My delegation wishes to express its serious concern about the undeniable and increasing suppression of democratic freedoms in the world. It must not be forgotten that it was in the defence of those freedoms that the nations joined together in the Second World War against the nazi- fascist system, based on the utter denial of the democratic freedoms of individuals and peoples.
7. For that reason we are appalled and concerned that, under new guises and often on the pretext of defending democracy, a real offensive is developing today against freedoms such as the freedoms of belief, thought and expression which are the very basis of human rights. The tragedy is that, by embarking on such a course, democracy is drawn into areas which hitherto have been confined to totalitarianism.
8. The existence and preservation of democratic freedoms are the basis of human progress and dignity and we are in duty bound to defend them. At the same time, my delegation has been most gratified to hear the statements made in this Assembly by the representatives of some great Powers on their efforts to co-operate in securing the effective implementation of the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations Charter throughout the world, so that, on the basis of those purposes and principles, the peoples could exercise the right to govern their own affairs according to their sovereign will. This implies recognition of the fundamental right of every people to achieve complete political and economic independence, so that they can develop their institutions freely and use their natural wealth to raise their standard of living to a level in keeping with human dignity.
9. The Guatemalan delegation welcomes these statements because it believes that efforts along these lines contribute to the attainment and consolidation of international peace and security. Nevertheless, my delegation must express its surprise and deep disappointment that, despite the fine programme so emphatically described in speeches, some Powers adopt a different approach, inconsistent with these statements, when a country, small in size but sovereign and worthy of respect, endeavours to make these aspirations a reality within its own frontiers.
10. This is the case with Guatemala, a country of only 3 million inhabitants and with an under-developed economy, which is making-efforts and sacrifices to achieve these purposes and a better living standard for its people, better use of its natural wealth and full economic development. It is astonishing that these efforts, far from receiving the promised co-operation, have been the target of a systematic, hostile and unfair campaign designed to prevent the country’s complete liberation.
11. After the revolution of October 1944, Guatemala enacted legislation to safeguard human rights and to transform its economy for the benefit of its people. Among other legislation, the land reform Act seeks to ensure that the land is used to fulfil the social function of property; it applies only to areas that are not under cultivation. Many Guatemalans, and more especially some foreign companies, owned enormous idle estates. Seventy-eight per cent of the cultivable land was in the hands of two per cent of the population.
12. The sovereign right exercised by Guatemala in undertaking its own development and the United Nations principles which support and encourage that right have been opposed by the private interests of powerful foreign monopolies which, despite the injustice involved — and this is the serious aspect — seek the support of their governments. Guatemalan legislation and the measures to implement the country’s economic development programme and to ensure its economic liberation, adopted in the exercise of the nation’s sovereignty and in keeping with the rules of justice and equity, were naturally bound to interfere with the privileges enjoyed by foreign companies which were acquired in earlier times by outside pressure on dictatorial governments and under contracts that were very burdensome to the country. The excessive profits of these companies are obtained by the merciless exploitation of the land and the people.
13. These companies, which have succeeded by specious arguments in obtaining the support of their governments, have spared no effort in their attempts to destroy by every means, however discreditable, the Guatemalan revolution and the democratic government behind it. They have used slander and threats and have even resorted to what shows signs of becoming real economic aggression. All the powerful machinery of the media of information and publicity has been brought into action to spread tendentious reports that Guatemala and its government are “communist” and hostile to the Western Powers; the country has been called a satellite of the Soviet Union; in the most influential papers in the United States articles have appeared advocating an economic blockade against our people for having dared to limit the unjust privileges of the foreign monopolies operating in the country. There have even been shameless calls for intervention, which has been most categorically condemned on the American continent.
14. We are particularly grieved that one powerful government is echoing this campaign and exercising pressure on behalf of these investors, demanding privileged treatment for them as compared with Guatemalans. We are convinced that the interests of these investors are contrary to the legitimate and true interests of their people and government, and that they are merely a cause of unnecessary friction between friendly States when they improperly resort to diplomatic protection to involve their government in the defence of an untenable cause.
15. The Guatemalan delegation wonders whether this attitude foreshadows a return to the tragic interventions of the past. Guatemala is only beginning the effective exercise of democracy in a country which has been the victim of relentless dictatorships and pitiless economic exploitation. Like any other country, Guatemala is jealous of its independence, its sovereignty and its dignity, and therefore is not and cannot be a satellite of the Soviet Union, the United States or any other Power. Guatemala’s international policy, like its domestic policy, is not subject to that of any foreign Power. Guatemala has succeeded in maintaining and will always maintain absolute independence in expressing its views in international organizations, particularly in the United Nations, and is guided solely by its respect for democratic principles and its love of justice.
16. The Republic of Guatemala is not opposed to the investment of foreign capital in its territory. It asks only that foreign investors should honestly abide by the law of the land on an equal footing with Guatemalans. However, it categorically rejects any intervention of a colonial type, and the claim that foreign capital should enjoy privileges which the law does not confer on nationals. It has been repeatedly argued that investment of foreign capital is the panacea for the ills of the under-developed countries. But little attention has been given to the terms of such investments, and it is often forgotten that some of the investing companies are the main cause of the backwardness of the countries concerned. In many cases monopolistic investments have strangled the general development of countries where, as for example in Guatemala, they control the port facilities, the principal means of transport and communications, electricity and so on. These strategic factors of economic development are thus placed primarily at the disposal of foreign companies, in disregard of the general interests of the national economy, and the country’s trade is subjected to the most arbitrary and unreasonable tariffs and practices.
17. We do not believe that, when the United Nations recommends the encouragement of foreign investment for the economic development of the under-developed countries, it takes investors like the United Fruit Company in Guatemala as a model; such investors have raised a wave of indignation in many Latin-American countries, whose wealth they have exploited for the exclusive benefit of their shareholders without even paying a fair share of taxes to the country concerned. The history of investment in bananas, oil, copper, tin, etc., in Latin America is very similar to the lamentable history of colonial exploitation in some parts of the world. Companies of this kind take everything for themselves; they suck dry the wealth of the soil, pay high taxes in their home countries and accumulate millions for a handful of shareholders who never know that their fat dividends are the fruit of the sweat and poverty of thousands of workers crushed by ignorance, sickness and hunger.
18. My delegation is absolutely certain that the United Nations cannot possibly be thinking of this kind of investment when it recommends that investment should be encouraged for the benefit of the under-developed countries. Being convinced that this is so, Guatemala is gratified that the General Assembly is giving attention and special importance to the economic problems of the under-developed countries. It attaches great importance to the study and analysis of these problems, in which it will co-operate whole-heartedly. Guatemala expresses its firm hope that the efforts which are being made in some small countries to achieve economic independence will receive the co-operation of the United Nations and the respect of all Member States which have undertaken, under General Assembly resolution 626 (VII), not to impede, directly or indirectly, the use and exploitation of a country’s natural resources for the benefit of its people.
19. I should now like to refer to a problem of another type. Guatemala has never been able to acquiesce in the mutilation of its territory, in the case of Belize, which, on historical, legal, economic, geographical and moral grounds, is an integral part of Guatemalan territory and is unlawfully occupied by a non-continental Power. The occupation of Belize by the United kingdom is due only to the triumph of might over right, but the Government and people of Guatemala are confident that the United Kingdom will act in accordance with its traditional spirit of justice and agree to enter into friendly negotiations leading to a satisfactory solution of the problem, as the Guatemalan Government has repeatedly proposed in the last few years. From this rostrum, Guatemala repeats these friendly proposals to the United Kingdom Government.
20. In stating the foregoing, the Guatemalan delegation wishes to place on record that Guatemala renews its protest against the continued occupation of this territory which belongs to it and recalls the reservations which it has systematically formulated in the United Nations with regard to its rights.
21. The Guatemalan delegation also wishes to reaffirm its position with regard to the 200 million men and women who still do not enjoy self-government and whose destiny is in alien hands. The Government and people of Guatemala are fully convinced that the colonial era has gone for ever and that the continuance of these systems is anachronistic and contrary to the spirit of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Guatemala has consistently expressed the view that colonial systems must disappear from the face of the earth, since all people have the right to decide their own fate, which will not be possible until they are allowed to achieve political independence and until their full sovereignty is recognized. The fallacy that colonialism is a means of protecting defenceless peoples, civilizing savage peoples and teaching self-government, is a totally discredited myth.
22. We firmly trust that United Nations action for the political, economic, social and educational advancement of the non-self-governing peoples and of the peoples of the Trust Territories will make it possible to abolish colonialism and to give effect to the principle of the self-determination of peoples. Guatemala will therefore continue to support enthusiastically every measure to improve conditions in those territories with a view to their complete liberation.
23. Finally, the Guatemalan delegation wishes to take the opportunity of expressing its earnest hope that this eighth session of the General Assembly will strengthen peace and international co-operation for the benefit of mankind.