107. To begin with, my delegation deplores the unfortunate accident which deprives us of the presence of our distinguished President, Mr. Fanfani, to whom we express our wishes for a prompt and happy recovery. In any case, I wish to make the following statement with regard to him, to appear in the record.
108. On behalf of my delegation and as representative of the Bolivian people and Government, I have great pleasure in conveying to Mr. Fanfani our congratulations on his election to the high office of President of the United Nations General Assembly. The distinguished speakers who have preceded me have fully enumerated the intellectual and moral gifts with which he is endowed. In order to avoid repetition, I shall say only that anyone who, like him, is a citizen and eminent leader of a people so outstanding in the annals of history and culture, has every qualification to preside over our debates. He brings to them a desire for progress that derives from wisdom and the spirit of peace and justice which is born of wisdom. Bolivia, a traditional friend of Italy, salutes Mr. Fanfani with all respect.
109. This hall still resounds with the inspired words of His Holiness Pope Paul VI, who, by an unprecedented decision that bears witness to his vigilance and his desire to contribute to the achievement of peace and justice, has honoured us by transferring the throne of Saint Peter to this Assembly Hall. He came to express his concern at the tragedies afflicting the peoples of the world and to remind us of the eternal truth of the evangelical precepts. In a voice that twenty centuries have not been able to silence, he appealed to us to exercise the sense of responsibility and harmony which should preside over our deliberations. Our delegation pays devout homage to the person of the Supreme Pontiff and, in the name of the age-old submission of the people of Bolivia to the Holy See of Rome, expresses filial acceptance of his lofty supremacy.
110. In its capacity as a non-permanent member of the Security Council, Bolivia took part in the drafting and adoption of the resolutions which, in pursuance of the provisions of the Charter, recommended to this Assembly the admission of Gambia, the Maldive Islands and Singapore as Member States of the United Nations. Having taken part in this previous action, we have a special reason for sharing in the satisfaction felt by free peoples upon the accession of three new States to the rights and duties of responsible international co-operation. We take this first opportunity of wishing these three new Member States a prosperous life accompanied by the benefits of peace.
111. Elected at the eighteenth session of the General Assembly as a non-permanent member of the Security Council, Bolivia joined that important body in January 1964 and its term of office will expire at the end of this year. Following the prescribed order, Bolivia occupied the Presidency of the Council in January and December 1964 and will do so again in November of this year. The Bolivian representatives in the Council have at all times sought, to discharge with dedication and impartiality the responsibilities entrusted to us by this Assembly.
112. In such arduous debates as those relating to the Panama crisis, the situation in Cyprus, the question of Palestine, the events in the Congo and Santo Domingo, the claims of Senegal, the situation in Southern Rhodesia and innumerable others, we have served in a calm spirit of impartiality, always bearing in mind the provisions of the Charter, respecting the powers of the Council and the duties and rights of the regional organizations, analysing the risks entailed in extremist and subversive ideological incursions against peace and democracy, upholding the principles of freedom and self-determination and fighting openly for the elimination of the last vestiges of colonialism and of all forms of political, religious or racial discrimination.
113. Bolivia has tried to fulfil with honesty and discretion the mandate entrusted to it by this Assembly in the Security Council. We are proud to have achieved during our Presidency of the Council, with the invaluable co-operation of all Member States, certain objective responses to the problems of Panama, Cyprus, the Congo and the armed incidents along the Palestine frontier.
114. Bolivia’s seat in the Security Council has enabled our country to understand with special clarity the limitations imposed on our task by the organizational crisis of the United Nations. Our delegation considers that one of the wisest remarks made during this session of the Assembly [1334th meeting] was made by the distinguished Foreign Minister of Brazil, Mr. Leitão da Cunha, when he said that "the United Nations Charter, however flexible, represents a style of political architecture that ... has been superseded by reality". A generation that has the audacity to promote and accept the most spectacular technical innovations should not hesitate to enter, with measured but bold steps, the field of great moral responsibilities and to discuss serenely and profoundly those new aspects which would give greater and more practical effectiveness to the Charter and offer firmer guarantees for the maintenance of peace.
115. I shall not conclude this part of my statement without paying a tribute to the memory of Mr. Adlai Stevenson, who was a noble friend of us all and who, in my opinion, gave up his very life to the tensions, responsibilities and frustrations of the Security Council in its endeavour to preserve world peace.
116. With a view to remedying an intolerable anomaly of international life, the United Nations, in pursuance of a recommendation adopted at Geneva in 1964 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, convened this summer a Conference of Plenipotentiaries to discuss the transit problems of landlocked countries. It was my duty on that occasion to state on behalf of Bolivia what I now reaffirm before this Assembly, namely, that the international conscience recognizes that Bolivia is not a land-locked country but a State which, owing to transitory circumstances, is temporarily deprived of access to the sea through its own coast.
117. We nevertheless took part in the Conference of Plenipotentiaries because we are members of the Trade and Development Board, in whose work we place great hope, and because we were convinced that that Conference was the first of the many steps that must be taken to ensure that the development of the landlocked countries is not hampered by the unilateral will of the transit countries, which are not content to profit by the geographical position which has given them free access to the sea, but directly or indirectly impose prejudicial conditions on the transit trade of other sovereign States, which are thus subjected to difficulties and humiliations deriving from their land-locked position in addition to the evils of underdevelopment.
118. We repeat now what we said then: that just as it is no longer possible, in the sphere of human freedom, to imagine slaves in chains, so it is no longer possible, in the sphere of commercial freedom, to accept the idea of land-locked countries being restricted in their right to trade and limited in their ability to develop by the unilateral will of certain transit countries.
119. Without prejudice to our efforts to ensure, by every available means, the restoration of Bolivian sovereignty of the Pacific coast — a right which we consider inalienable and imprescriptible and which constitutes a great void in the vital needs of our people—we Bolivians, together with the United Nations, are closely following the salutary development of a current of world public opinion favouring free access to the sea for the land-locked countries, which first manifested itself at the Conference of Plenipotentiaries and should be resolutely fostered.
120. I must now refer to what Bolivia considers the crucial problem of our time, namely that of devising, under United Nations auspices, an international trade system — planned, 'world-wide and compulsory — which will give the emerging nations, especially those producing raw materials and primary commodities, a fairer and therefore much greater share of the profits from trade in those commodities. Those nations are, by a revealing coincidence, the less developed nations; they are the nations in which the population explosion is most serious and it is the people of those nations who are rightly clamouring, violently and urgently, for a better life. I am referring to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and in order to express Bolivia’s views on this question, I need only repeat, with your permission, some of the ideas I expressed at the first session of the Trade and Development Board here in New York a few months ago [12th meeting].
"We who have the honour of representing our peoples in the international conferences of our time are witnessing, perhaps without fully realizing its significance, a moment of decisive change in the history of international co-operation and in the dialectical perspectives of human destiny. I am not referring to the spectacular technical revolution which is incorporating outer space in our patrimony, but to the social revolution which is beginning to use new tools for the good of mankind. It is obvious that this social revolution, which requires neither laboratories nor armies, since it takes place in man’s conscience, has existed since the world began, since the dawn of history, when as a result of different natural conditions, and sometimes as a result of unjust depredations, mankind was divided into the great and the small, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the well-fed and the hungry. This revolution rejects the arbitrary privileges and differences established by inertia and oppression and affirms that human beings — white or black, believers or atheists, poor or prosperous — are human beings first and foremost, that their rights in life and their duties to history are exactly equal and that the only differences that can and should be admitted in the hierarchy of values are the cultural differences deriving from the level of ethical, aesthetic and intellectual development attained by each individual.
"For thousands of years, religions and philosophies have striven to proclaim this equality among men, confirming with the blood of prophets and martyrs a belief that is rooted in the essence of our nature. For thousands of years this revolution has been thwarted; sometimes suppressed by selfish interests, at other times dispersed by the isolation of peoples, the vastness of the world, the difficulty of mutual communication and understanding, or diverted from its noble and peaceful aims by the violence of political sectarianisms, which it would be inappropriate to analyse here.
"What is now happening is that the technical progress of recent years, by shortening distances, disseminating information, expanding educational facilities, drawing individuals and peoples closer together and mingling them, is promoting a creative symbiosis in the political and social thinking of all races. Three quarters of the peoples of this planet now know that they belong to an under-developed, region; that they provide valuable primary commodities to sustain the prosperity of other nations, but that bread, hospitals and. schools are often beyond their means; that they buy at high prices and sell at low prices; that their misfortune is the foundation of others' happiness. We say these things without bitterness but we are glad to be able to say them. We respect the prosperity of the big nations, for we know that it is not based on our primary commodities alone but also on the creative genius of their races, the efficiency of their Governments, the disciplined work of their peoples and the vision of their intellectual and political leaders. This is all a thing of the past, a settled account, and the peoples of the under-developed regions, far from wishing the big nations any harm, want to learn from their technology, to follow their example and to engage them in a friendly dialogue so that we may seek together a solution to the problem of the hungry man. Our aim is to achieve the material prosperity that they already possess. Their aim is even more important; it is to preserve their dignity as cultured nations by assisting us, not with charity, but with justice.
"This is the decisive change to which I referred earlier. It first appeared at Geneva in 1964 and we must consolidate it. We must realize that the Trade and Development Board is not seeking to promote a duel between conflicting interests, but a world-wide agreement, in order that through general prosperity we may save the two things that must be saved: world peace and man’s faith in his own destiny.
"In the work of this Board, the eternal social revolution is trying to find, for the first time in history, a constructive, peaceful and universal method, namely the establishment of an international trade system designed to harm no one but to stress unequivocally, dramatically and urgently the duty to increase by every possible means the incomes of the emerging nations.
"Steps must be taken to ensure as soon as possible that in the Far East half of the world's population shall no longer live on scarcely one quarter of the food produced on our planet; that vigorous Africa snail no longer struggle in frustration, lacking the means to create the infra-structure needed for development; that 200 million Latin Americans shall no longer languish on their rich fields and inexhaustible mines like 'a beggar on a golden chair', receiving for their labours scarcely enough to keep body and soul together.
"It is a terrifying thought, but we should do well to recall that the population of the Far East is increasing by two million a month; that each month sees the birth of a million and a half Chinese, half a million Latin Americans and another half million Africans. All these mouths must be fed, all these bodies clothed, all these minds educated, and to this end it is essential to develop the productivity of all continents, rationalizing agriculture, trade and the extractive industries, avoiding useless duplication of effort and drawing upon the surplus available to some in order to provide a bare minimum for others. The spectre of the population explosion, of hungry men and angry peoples, is knocking like a giant at the door of our era, while the United Nations discusses Article 19, the Berlin Wall and the bombing in Viet-Nam. A bell is tolling but it is not tolling for us, for we are the disinherited, the countless throng."
121. We know that the path of the Trade and Development Board will not be smooth. We are threatening immense interests, traditionally founded on our inertia and impotence, and they may be expected to fight hard before withdrawing.
122. A few months ago I took part, as the representative of Bolivia, in the United Nations Tin Conference, convened pursuant to the Geneva recommendations to discuss a new international agreement designed to regulate the fluctuation of world market prices for that metal. All the producing countries (which are under-developed countries), acting with exemplary unity and open sincerity and wielding convincing evidence based on facts, fought in vain to have included in the convention — I shall not say a higher price for tin, although the limited world production of 20,000 tons would entitle us to such a price — but simply a "higher scale of prices" which would enable the buffer stock to function effectively in relation to the real market price.
123. The developed countries participating in the Conference, i.e., the buyers, expressed deep sympathy for our problems but finally said "no". They ignored the non-recoverable nature of this wealth, the dreadful sacrifice and poverty of the miners, the rising price of the machinery needed in the mines, the need to stimulate long-term investment through remunerative prices and, what is most serious, they forgot the Geneva recommendations and all those great objectives, now nothing more than empty words, which once expressed our hopes. They even told us that it would not be advisable to increase the price of tin because great progress was being made in the development of substitute materials, and so, answering our anguished demands with veiled threats, they left us where we were.
124. Countries with non-commercial tin stocks have continued to make sales which are totally unrelated to the free functioning of the market and are intended only to regulate prices directly, taking the buyers' interests into account but sacrificing the producers' expectations. We may therefore conclude that as far as tin is concerned the ideals of Geneva and the influence of the United Nations are unable to raise the scale of prices to a realistic and remunerative level, to check the substitutes race which eventually may well deprive an entire nation of its income, or to persuade the powerful Governments of both East and West to refrain from disguised dumping, which helps powerful international industries but leaves the producing countries in their customary poverty.
125. We may learn some important lessons from this: the Trade and Development Board, and especially the Committee on Commodities, must aim at gradually transforming their theoretical documents into worldwide executive instruments compelling all States to agree on prices for raw materials which are fair in relation to development needs. The Committee should devise objective and mandatory legal measures to eliminate the danger of substitutes as long as the commodities concerned are vital to the economy of any one country. The Committee should also propose procedures designed to prevent anyone from altering the arrangements agreed upon in international commodity agreements through indiscriminate sales of non-commercial stocks. If these three things are not done, we shall regretfully be obliged to conclude that as far as the vital question of commodity prices is concerned the Trade and Development Board has written in the sand.
126. Bolivian history, which is characterized by frequent conflicts and many tribulations, is the story of a proud people who from the beginning of their history have been obliged to fight a continuous, heroic and dauntless battle for freedom. Our nation has now been freed from colonial political domination and our economy from exploitation by foreign monopolistic interests; our peasants are free to own their land and our people are free to participate in the sometimes bitter conflict between ideologies, but our battle continues.
127. We have yet to free two million indigenous inhabitants from ignorance; we must free large sections of our population from endemic diseases and malnutrition; we must free our territory from the effects of its own diversity and magnitude by establishing an adequate economic infra-structure; we must free our development plans from the complexities imposed upon them by the diversity of climates and races; we must free our productivity from the high costs resulting from unreliable and outdated technical conditions which we cannot improve owing to a lack of resources; we must free our own freedom from the penetration of extremist ideologies which seek to destroy it; lastly, we must free our nation as a whole from the absurd and intolerable land-locked position imposed upon it by armed aggression followed by territorial mutilation.
128. We are not ashamed to tell the truth, because the accurate diagnosis of disease is the first step towards health and because it is others, not ourselves, who are to blame for Bolivia's condition. Furthermore, it is this fact that is receiving the attention of the military junta which governs my country and of the people as a whole, in a crusade of discipline and work which is already in progress. It is not by chance that this Assembly is being told the truth about Bolivia.
129. Under-development imposed by the iniquitous exploitation of the past? That is Bolivia. Illiteracy, limited educational facilities, lack of hospitals, inadequate economic infra-structure? That is Bolivia. An economy based exclusively on mineral production, low and arbitrary prices for those minerals, sales by other nations of non-commercial stocks which deal a death blow to our exports of raw materials? Development by other nations of the production of substitutes, which may one day cause the collapse of our balance of payments? That is Bolivia. Continually rising uncontrolled prices for the industrial, agricultural and manufacturing machinery we need? An increasingly unjust and dangerous disequilibrium in the terms of trade, an insidious campaign against any eventual substitution of imports? That is Bolivia.
130. It is for all these reasons that Bolivia looks with great respect to the United Nations, to the high intellectual and moral qualities of the Secretary-General, U Thant, and to the technical and administrative efficiency of the United Nations staff. The exploitation and plundering to which solitary countries were subjected in the shameful days of colonialism and aggression will be rectified and will disappear in this era of united countries, before this Assembly, which man has created in his own image: that is, with obvious imperfections and contradictions but with an inflexible desire for peace, justice and goodness; in his own image, because man is good.