On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People's Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) The XXIV Summit of Heads of State and Government of this integrationist platform began this Saturday in the Venezuelan capital.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. President, it is an honor for me to greet you on behalf of the Presidents
00:10of Maracastro, Sarmiento, to greet yourself, your government, your ministers, the people
00:16of Venezuela.
00:17I'm always grateful for your excellent organization, your excellent hosts.
00:23I would like to greet the President of Cuba, Mr. Diaz-Bernal, President of Nicaragua, Comandante
00:29Daniel Ortega Saavedra, President of Bolivia, Luis Arce Catacora, the Prime Minister of
00:37the Commonwealth of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerritt, Prime Minister of Antigua Ibarbuda, Gaston
00:43Brown, Prime Minister, friends and comrades, friends in the East End and the Grenadines,
00:50the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Denzel Douglas, Mr. Lennox Andrews, the Minister
01:00for Development of Grenada, and the President of the Parliament of Honduras, Mr. Claudio
01:06Francis.
01:08Also, from the East End, Mr. Leslie Voltaire, from the delegation of Haiti, as well as Riyad
01:14Malki and the government and the people of Palestine.
01:19Mr. President Maduro, we all remember with love and affection August 25, 2008, in which
01:30Comandante Ortega witnessed from the first row a President of Nicaragua.
01:35You were the Foreign Minister of Venezuela back then, Minister of the Crown, Comandante
01:42Hugo Chavez, and the Cuban delegation sent by Comandante Fidel Castro, as well as delegations
01:48from Bolivia and other countries of ALBA.
01:51On August 25, 2008, Honduras, in Tegucigalpa, was signing its adherence to this great alliance,
02:00the Bolivarian Alliance for Independence of our America.
02:03At that time, the country was living in a very different reality than it has nowadays,
02:08and Latin America also was living in a very different reality.
02:12But we in short, Honduras, that we firmly believe that the process of integration in
02:18Latin America and the Caribbean were the only way to solve social problems, inequality,
02:23and poverty as a consequence of the neoliberal model.
02:27The declaration of adherence of Honduras to ALBA states, in Honduras, we believe that
02:33the neoliberal model signifies the perpetuation of poverty and a systematic process of social
02:39exclusion, which requires the quality of life of Hondurans, preventing the necessary
02:46equality to live in peace and harmony.
02:50That is why Honduras states, we share the conviction that cooperation and solidarity
02:56among the Latin American peoples will make possible the successful insertion into the
03:02world economy, having a central axis, social cohesion, and the privilege of the human being.
03:09Those words had very strong consequences for us because after that, we were the victims
03:19of a coup d'etat.
03:20And to take advantage of this opportunity, I would like to thank you because ALBA never
03:25stopped supporting Honduras.
03:27The member countries never stopped supporting my country under the guidelines of President
03:35Manoselaria and the First Lady.
03:37And today, the president of our country, Xiomara, we took to the streets with Xiomara Castro
03:44and we resisted for 12 years and 7 months the horrible narco dictatorship.
03:52And now we are once again in the government of Honduras.
03:56And I would also like to salute all the grassroots movements joining us today.
04:01Honduras was always a part of these summits.
04:05President Nicolás, we're sitting right there with our brothers and sisters.
04:10So our call is to continue to resist, to continue to struggle so that every people from Latin
04:16America can also claim its place in this table sooner or later.
04:21You talk about the achievements of the president after this process of reconversion.
04:28It was very interesting when the president was talking about AgroALBA because President
04:33Xiomara Castro has managed to stop the exploitation and the giving away of the land and stop the
04:42deforestation.
04:43Only in the area of Mojitia we recovered 400,000 hectares that were being destroyed.
04:50After arriving in government there were 27 schools that were destroyed.
04:55And in less than three years the president managed to recover 5,000 schools.
05:00President Xiomara Castro stopped the third president.
05:05The seven zones of development and employment were 19 regions that were given to 25 economic
05:17groups independently for the destruction of national sovereignty.
05:21But thanks to the mandate of our president, this is no more.
05:25What we have now is a multi-millionaire suit against Honduras in the SEADI mechanism for
05:34defending our national patrimony.
05:37And we will wait to see this lawsuit in the next few months after the president has announced
05:44the ex-appropriation of this arbitration mechanism that only benefits great corporations in prejudice
05:52of the interests of the people and the state.
05:55Today the president, thanks to these measures, has managed to have the higher investment
06:00in roads, in productive processes, in airports, in education, scholarships, and many other
06:05programs that President Emanuel Zelaya Rosales was only dreaming of when he met and became
06:13a friend of President Hugo Chavez when he entered ALBA.
06:17I told you that they made many consequences for those words.
06:23But your president, Tegucigalpa, only 16 years ago awoke a spirit of struggle in Honduras.
06:30So everything that we dream of is already a reality.
06:34I would like to quickly salute the programs that you mentioned and that were mentioned
06:41by the different authorities.
06:43We believe, as the pro-temporary president of SEALAG, that it is true that we need to
06:49be closer as ALBA members, to be closer as DELA members.
06:53I was joined by Ambassador Alan Oviedo three days ago.
06:57He served as the pro-temporary president of SEALAG that we have for four years.
07:05Now he's the president of Colombia.
07:07As you know, Honduras has the pro-temporary presidency of SEALAG.
07:13Here we have Saint Vincent and Grenada.
07:15We are part of the troika of SEALAG.
07:18And we applaud the effort of ALBA to work with the social movement.
07:23We did that on July 28th, when we commemorated the 15th anniversary of the birth of the resistance.
07:32We had a meeting of SEALAG, and in parallel we have the social movement of SEALAG.
07:37So we recognize that this is the path that we need to take.
07:43I was talking to the secretary of SEALAG.
07:47I was saying that in Honduras, at the beginning of next spring,
07:53the summer of the agricultural act,
07:57we have the opportunity to have a work meeting.
08:08As a note that you already mentioned,
08:12when we talk about TCP,
08:14you were talking about the three treaties that generate a distortion that affects the poorest.
08:22Both Presidente Maracastro and President Zelaya are always defending how public our assets are
08:31and how our common good.
08:36We believe that the public good and the common good unites us.
08:42Because our common good as democracy isn't more important for the superpowers of Britain and Venezuela.
08:51It would be different when somebody with enough money would throw out the interests of anybody else.
08:57So the problem with this, Presidente Nicolás,
09:00is that when someone comes with a bag full of money,
09:03some countries are capable of collecting the private instead of the public.
09:11But we ask what dictatorship would be compared to the dictatorship of the market, of trade,
09:19that has been imposed in our countries for a very long time.
09:22I wanted to talk about something that I already mentioned before.
09:27We know that in 2026 we will celebrate 200 years of the historic and fictionic congress convened by Simon Bolivar.
09:38As in ancient Greece, he tried to join the peoples of Latin America.
09:47And we are close to celebrating that bicentennial.
09:53So we want to talk about the possibility to convene a new and fictionic congress
09:57to relaunch the dream of Bolivar, the dream of Morazán, and the dream of all the Liberators.
10:02And to remember something that was said by the Minister of Honduras,
10:07she was a foreign minister at the time of the coup d'Ă©tat,
10:10and she said that Morazán became the President of Central America months before the death of Liberator Simon Bolivar.
10:20And that Morazán had ensured that the sword of Bolivar that you have shown us would never touch the ground,
10:28that it would always be lifted.
10:30And today we see Morazán, we see Bolivar, we see Chávez, we see Fidel, and we see every single leader.
10:36And I would like to close by briefly reading the beginning of the speech of Francisco Morazán
10:45when he took office as President of Central America in September 1830.
10:50He said,
10:52The sovereign people have told me to play in the most dangerous of the destiny.
10:59I must obey and fulfill the solemn oath.
11:03I offer to sustain the Constitution and the federal dream that I have defended as a soldier and as a citizen.
11:13Today, Mr. President, we are in this table as representatives of our government.
11:18We have Ambassador Oscar Romero, RamĂłn Espinosa, and we have been with the social movements.
11:24Today we are as government, our intention is to never stop struggling as soldiers and as citizens
11:32to defend the dream of Bolivar of Latin America and the Caribbean.
11:36Free, sovereign, anti-imperialist, and with brothers and sisters forever.
11:42Thank you very much.
11:44Thank you to the special envoy of President Iris Xiomara.
11:52Greetings to the forces of resistance in Honduras, our brothers and sisters.
12:02We were there in Nopotal, do you remember?
12:07We were entering.