YouSaid · the spoken record

José Manuel Zelaya Rosales,

lines on the record: 51
first: 2006-09-24
most recent: 2008-09-24
sittings or episodes: 3
sources: un-general-debate

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Based on those 5 08-51839 principles, we have signed the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas — ALBA — and, based on those principles, we hope that the international community will also provide the international solidarity needed by Taiwan, which is asking for that solidarity. We ask that God’s blessing for you all and for your families and your nations become a reality today, tomorrow and forevermore.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We must regain trust in the collective so that we can return to trusting in reason and say to the minority that they cannot be the reason for the State simply because of what they own. That alienating argument is unsustainable for the peoples of the world. I fervently appeal this afternoon for us to secure votes for the freedom and peace of all peoples and nations of the Earth, for the principles expressed and ratified today in the sixty-third session of the General Assembly, because I firmly believe that a new world, another world, a better world is still possible. We have united to defend important matters of other countries. We have united to defend the positions of President Evo Morales in Bolivia so that a real social democracy can be established, as he has advocated.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We are now condemned to live without fortune, Everything that we have made, Our own clothing, with the gold of the stars and the silver of the moon.” This is the Christian moral; it is the moral of the message today, tomorrow and forever, that we must accept the fact that this world is extremely materialistic and not very spiritual. It was the message offered when a tycoon approached the Master of Galilee and asked, Lord, how do I save myself? He replied: leave your possessions and follow me. I would like to end with those thoughts on liberty, which is what our societies most need today. Let us ensure that the liberty advocated by our forefathers — Martí, Bolívar and Morazán — transforms the destiny of globalization so that we convert it into a globalization of solidarity, of justice and of harmony among the peoples.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“In conclusion, I wish to take a moment to read a poem entitled, “Gold”, by the Honduran poet and writer Alfonso Guillén Zelaya, who described well through poetry the events we have addressed in the Assembly. “Gold killed in men the native communion; It divided the Earth and corrupted affection. Before that, hunger did not exist. Fruit grew in all places freely before this, Waters, hunting, the plains were free. As there were no owners, there were never thieves. Life was one of peace, of love and of gentleness. People were good, like blessings. But, Lord of the gifts, Your gifts are gone.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We must cultivate, as is logical, genuine freedom for our nations, freedom of the press, freedom of movement, an honest freedom that gives the people the opportunity to know the truth about their problems without lies and manipulation. The new manner of teaching that we are proposing to the General Assembly today could be promoted through the development programmes of the United Nations. We must begin to teach the value of solidarity among human beings, among countries and among the various organizations represented here. That teaching should demonstrate in a practical way that the centre of the world is not material possessions or money; the centre of the world should always be the human being — men and women, young people, children, the elderly, those beings with a soul and who are made in the image of the Creator of the universe.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“To immigrate is a human right, not a crime, and we should consider it in the context of respect for society. All of us want peace and harmony, and this is the best means of obtaining them. The world is also concerned with the enlargement of the Security Council. Like other presidents who have spoken about this matter from this podium over the decades, we believe that there should be democratization at the very top of the United Nations, and the example should begin at home. That way we could discuss the real problems of humanity and find solutions. We therefore need to establish a new pedagogy, a new way of education of our peoples, our children and future generations.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“They should respect the 08-51839 4 national priorities and systems that each country has developed in its programmes, the planning of Governments legitimately elected by the people. Likewise, with all due respect to the European countries and to the United States of America, we wish to ask them to consider — as a gesture of goodwill and in light of the problems that we ourselves are suffering as a result of the financial imbalances that those countries caused — the rights of immigrants who are already on their territories. I would also like to recall that the peoples living in the lands of America and Europe were themselves once immigrants in those lands. What does it cost to reunite migrant families and to begin to deal with their documentation, instead of deporting them?”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We say to the countries of the Group of Eight (G8), with all due respect, that that very important organization should expand its membership to include countries that represent the five continents, to include countries of the Americas, such as Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia or Cuba, or, from other areas, India. The G8 should increase its capacity for dialogue with, for example, Central America or the South American Common Market (MERCOSUR), where there are so many societies that could contribute with ideas, for ideas are sometimes worth more than money. The countries that cooperate should respect national systems and not impose their own aid reception mechanisms on us.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We want to be given examples of solidarity and responsibility in the face of the major problems of nations, examples of how to distinguish between matters of importance to human beings and matters that are simply material. To developed countries we say that if they offer us aid, do not attach conditions to our acceptance of it. Do not insist that we accept a neoliberal model that is suffocating and exploiting our communities. We cannot continue to measure development of countries by the profits of large companies. We must measure development by the access of young people to education and jobs, of children to food, of mothers to hospitals, of those who are ill to treatment, and of the undernourished to food.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“This afternoon we want to say, from this United Nations rostrum, that we are very grateful to the developed world, the industrialized world, for their cooperation with us at certain times. However, our peoples and our countries do not want donations. We have not come here to beg. What we want is to be treated with equality and respect, and the right to opportunities and to participate. We do not want to be affected by the asymmetries in the economies and differences in developed countries. We do not want to have models imposed on us, models that only impoverish our nations. We do not want to be given lessons about how to manage our economies.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We should end unfair competition in markets by eliminating subsidies in industrialized countries and removing tariff and non-tariff barriers. That would be a good message of the international community, a good intention at this time of crisis, for those peoples that were once their colonies, a message that we are no longer looked upon as mere game reserves but as brothers in humanity. I am sure that the peoples of the world are able to come together to provide alternatives to a crude system that kills and destroys everything that does not adapt to its unmerciful laws. Developed countries have a responsibility towards the peoples. Members know that very well.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Traders and their spokespeople do not have the right to direct society. The strategic areas of the economy must be at the service of the State and under its control to ensure that society never finds itself without food or medicine and that consumers are not robbed. Profits produced by work, wealth and capital should be better distributed in our societies among the real owners — workers, producers, capitalists, consumers and the State — in order to attain a common good. The major transnational companies that produce medicines and chemical products should make available to developing countries the patents for technological discoveries that can improve living conditions for our citizens. This is a time for human solidarity.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“It is by the logic of political democracies that Governments are controlled and States manipulated, basic services are privatized and the whole of society is indoctrinated with an ideology of gain, egoism and individualism. Imperialism as a system of domination of countries and of trade must disappear from the face of the Earth. The twenty-first century, and the peoples of the twenty-first century, should not have to pay for the excesses and brutality of the twentieth century. We agree that property must exist, as it has a social function. Since the beginning of social organization in the world, property has always been granted within the framework of collective ownership. There must be the authority to intervene in speculative markets, as is happening now in the United States.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We must support a genuine democratic system, not only in international bodies but also internally within our countries. We must reform false democracy, which uses different political means to legitimize that 3 08-51839 system of exploitation and injustice. It is a false democracy, in which men and women are seen merely as voters, as useful instruments employed only to distribute power, whose consciences are manipulated by the highest bidder in a political comedy in which those who possess wealth impose their mercantile irrationality on the larger group of those who are excluded from and marginalized by the system. We must reform that system, improve it and strengthen it so as to convert it into a genuine democracy.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“The question for us all is can that difficult situation being experienced today, particularly by the less developed countries, be saved. The answer is yes, we can save ourselves from that crisis. We can respond. First, the State must act, the State must operate again in terms of social commitment. Capital must be used so that it serves to build a genuinely fair society. The aim should not be to destroy the market but simply to construct a social market economy. Capital should exist, but with limits. Defining the limits of capitalism is important to put an end to its primitive laws of the jungle. The aim is not to eliminate entrepreneurship and the free market, but to check and regulate the abuses and to humanize and sensitize those who are in the driving seat.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Another quite fantastic example to give today is what is happening with the bankruptcy of the big investment banks. Now people are racing to provide funds to those big banks. Logically, if we were to provide them with what is being proposed today to save those banking institutions that have created that speculative capital — a sum of $700 billion — with just a third of that amount we could reduce and immediately put an end to poverty in Africa, Asia or Latin America. That system is the true present-day King Midas, who tried to convert everything into gold and profit for one particular sector. We shall never be free under that system, and we know that we must not accept that condition of neo-slavery and neocolonialism through which, by its domination, it bends us to its purposes.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“However, in the last 12 months, in barely a year, with the doubling of the prices of energy, oil, food, wheat and the main staples that we consume, we are now losing what we achieved in that period of hard work. Another example is what has happened here to the mandate of the United Nations. In 2000, this Organization agreed that poverty should be reduced by at least 50 per cent in 15 years, which we know is not coming about. The goal of reducing poverty and the contributions that the international community pledged to the developing world are not being translated into reality. In contrast, by way of giving an example, for each dollar that the international community contributes to cooperation, it allocates 10 dollars to the arms race.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“To give an example, the international trafficking of drugs, arms and people are other scourges that prevent us developing peoples from achieving the economic freedom and independence to which our nations aspire. The submission of our poor countries to the economic choices of international capital is brutal and surprising. We can say that capitalism is devouring human beings in most parts of the world, and paradoxically it is now also devouring the very creators of that system. Here I shall mention two particularly salient examples. In Honduras, over the last 20 years, many small coffee producers have succeeded in increasing their exports from $200 million to almost $600 million. That involved 20 years of hard work.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Pope John Paul II himself came to call that capitalistic system savage, an immoral mercantile system that exploits men and women and turns them into mere commodities and numbers. The merciless and demonic laws of the invincible market only satisfy the wealth and power of the few, to the detriment of the great majority of our societies. They believe themselves infallible gods. They are like a sinister Proteus that plays cat and mouse with people. They act like Saturn, the Greek god who devoured his children out of fear that they would dethrone him. However, today, with that logic of the law of the market, his sons are devouring their creator in the very cradle of capitalism, in the great centre of Wall Street or the other hubs of speculative capital in the world.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“The State continues to become weaker through privatizations and capital is concentrated in a few firms and a few hands, lessening capacity to produce and generate development for our people. In recent years, the unequal distribution of wealth and income has become ever more entrenched. In Honduras, less than 1 per cent of the population possesses 70 per cent of the national wealth. Barely 10 families with links to international capital control the main economic activities of the country, naturally impoverishing the rest of the population. Over the last two centuries, our peoples and our region have resisted with heroism, dignity and stoicism the onslaught of the cruel system that governs us.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Honduras has become a tourist destination in Central America, because of the beauty of its main Caribbean Bay Islands, such as Guanaja, Utila and Roatán. However, today, all of those advances in our economy and in the fight against poverty are being put in jeopardy by the crisis and the international scale of the financial fraud that has been brought about by the big multinationals in the world. The serious events that today have dragged us into a food and energy crisis with high fuel prices, and the collapse of the financial systems, particularly here in the United States of 08-51839 2 America, have shown that what I and others Presidents are saying today are historic and irrefutable truths. For example, in our countries, particularly in Honduras, poverty and inequality are continuing to grow more marked in our societies.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“As was recognized by the European Commission, the region of the world that is unifying the most and becoming the most integrated is Central America — after Europe, of course. That is part of an important process, because we are addressing on areas and sectors that are important for our society. Francisco Morazán was a martyr who gave his life for the cause of Central American union and for liberal policies, opposing the enemies of independence and freedom. The peoples of Central America and of Honduras continue to fight for these causes. We continue to fight for unity as we seek to establish economic independence. In recent years, Honduras has achieved a sustainable growth rate of between 6 and 7 per cent, and we have been able to reduce poverty and have recognized the international and national importance of protecting the environment.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Mr. President, allow me to extend you the warmest and most heartfelt greeting of the people and the Government of Honduras. I would also extend this greeting to all nations and peoples represented here. I congratulate you, Sir, a distinguished representative of the Republic of Nicaragua who today is leading the Assembly. Your prestige as a man of peace and harmony and as a builder of dreams and utopias has been recognized throughout the world through the numerous prizes you have received, which honour the peoples of Central America. Honduras currently holds the presidency pro tempore of the Central American Integration System, and I would like to recognize the work of the United Nations and use this opportunity also to recognize the determination of the Central American Presidents to bring about a process of Central American integration.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We must, where necessary, overcome the neglect to which the developing world is subject. Our great poet and thinker, Alfonso Guillén Zelaya, said that we certainly cannot control fate. Prometheus always has to find someone to liberate him if civilization is to move forward. It is not possible for humankind to come to an end of its history without first giving the most disadvantaged peoples of the world the opportunity to live. We trust in the future. Humankind knows that hope is not lost and has full confidence in the principles of the infinite god of love who guides us, and not in the god of violence, whom we reject. Before this Assembly, we express the fervent wish for peace in the world, a new dawn for humankind in which everything would be different and our energies would focus on serving human beings and not on trade.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Central America and Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize and the Dominican Republic are united by the dreams of Francisco Morazán, the champion of Central America, a region of leaders in contemporary continental thought and artists of stature throughout Latin America and the world, the belt of the Americas and a bridge to the world, in the words of General Omar Torrijos. Through me, they offer a fraternal and united invitation to visit. We have every facility. We have the most beautiful places on the planet, with great potential in such areas as tourism, bio-energy, telecommunications, agriculture and the environment. We cannot remain passive or inactive in the face of social despair. Our lives are replete with dreams.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Just as the Kyoto Protocol protects biological life on the planet, the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantee life and peace in our societies. Let us ensure that they are implemented. We express solidarity with peoples who are fighting for their identity, and reaffirm our support for the Republic of Taiwan in its efforts to achieve recognition in this forum of nations, in its fight for independence, and in its constructive and faithful dedication to the many development processes under way in Central American countries.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“All of us in Central America, Mexico and Latin America deeply regret the fact that we have seen no progress on the corresponding legislative initiative that the President of the United States submitted to the United States Congress. We know that he did so with the best of wills, and we therefore believe that President Bush should not falter in promoting that proposal. The construction of a wall can only separate us. We must find other mechanisms to resolve the problem. Halting the mass deportations and reunifying families would be a gesture highly appreciated in national and international public opinion. We also recognize the work of various Governments, in particular the efforts of President Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, who has reached immigration agreements and quotas with various countries.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“They want us to recognize their rights and to give them responsibilities, to value and consider them in what they represent, and to see them for what they are: a productive and mobile human force that is vital and beneficial both to the economy that they serve and to the economy of their country of origin. I propose that we provide a legal basis, a fair and legal international framework to ensure that immigration becomes an ordered phenomenon beneficial to all. I propose that we seek consensus, reach agreement and establish the necessary international cooperation. Our world needs immigrants and I implore its representatives, in the name of mercy and justice, to help stop the shameful persecution of immigrants. We must apply the law of family reunification. It is God's will that the families of immigrants be reunified.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“It empties communities, impedes the processes of democracy and generates unfavourable conditions because of which this wonderful working force is compelled to leave. Migration is a very complex and contradictory social phenomenon that deserves serious scientific treatment, beyond simple emotions and feelings. Immigrants are people who are simply looking for better market opportunities in order to sell the only thing they have: their power to work, their energy, and their boundless desire to overcome their poverty and set out on the road to prosperity and well-being, which are basic elements of life. They are human beings who deserve to be treated as such and to enjoy the basic respect that humans should enjoy.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Emigration is a right, a simple and basic human right. Those who see the problem of migration simply from the point of view of family remittances or voting by emigrants abroad are committing a serious and short-sighted error. They are wrong to look at the phenomenon of growing migratory flows in the world in this way. The problem is complex and difficult. It is related to the economic structure of the country that produces emigrants political problems, natural disasters, war, violence, poverty, unemployment. Migration weakens the social cohesion of the country that produces emigrants, facilitates outflows of share capital and stimulates the fleeing of manpower at its most productive and hard-working stage.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“This triple status as a country of origin, a receiving country and a country of transit is what gives us the moral authority to talk about this topic with the necessary correctness and firmness, but also with indispensable feeling and solidarity. To be an emigrant is not to commit a crime. Migration has not been and should never be considered a crime or threat, but rather a human right. Migration does not belong to nor should it be included in the security agenda of any country. That was done only in the time of fascism. It should be included and considered within the framework where it really belongs, that is, the development agenda of our countries. In this way, we would no longer witness the monstrous spectacle of inhuman persecution simply because people are migrants, undocumented aliens, pursued and humiliated.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Bombarded by alienating propaganda, illusions are created that later turn into urgent economic needs, producing diasporas compelled by the famous pursuit of the American dream. There is no better opportunity than this universal forum to expand on a theme that concerns all of us countries of origin as well as receiving countries. It is impossible to measure the drama of the emigrant experience, the modern self-exiles that go from place to place in search of better opportunities. Honduras, my country, is a multi-ethnic and multiracial society and full of immigrants. My country throughout its history has been a territory of passage and a refuge for foreign migrants and a centre which has produced its own emigrants looking for a better life in far-off places.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“We are appealing to the global conscience to share urgent efforts to intervene in the extreme speculation in oil prices. We need to establish mutual cooperation in order to produce forms of alternative energy without it becoming a new opportunity to come up with low- or high-intensity wars that only threaten the sovereign rights and the right to strengthen peace of the democracies of the world. These are the contrasts of the modern world. Paradoxically, while borders are opening up to speculation, abuse and free trade in commodities, they are closing to people, especially to emigrants. The lack of ethical limits of a society of unfettered consumption produces false expectations among young people in developing countries.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Barely five years ago, the price of a barrel of oil was about $13; today it is already above $80 a barrel. It has increased by a dramatic 600 per cent, thus subjecting our nations to a state of greater dependence and international destitution. The economies of our countries cannot withstand this economic blood-letting, which destroys any attempt for social protection. A large part of what we can invest in order to combat illness, ignorance, hunger and age-old backwardness now drains to the large transnational oil corporations. While we are fighting to reduce poverty and its ills ills caused by those who claim to be free of all blame and responsibility the masters of the world and of trade are increasing prices to indecent scales as instruments of pressure with the rise of oil.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“We simply want to go on record in expressing our just and necessary demand for equitable treatment in trade relations in the international market. We are not asking for sympathy or pious condescension. We are asking for respect. We want people to pay a proper price for our products and to value our effort and work with the same criterion that is used to rate the effort of other peoples and other communities that produce goods and services. We demand equitable rules and standards. We require the just treatment that we deserve as authentic and real members of this planet that we all share. Likewise, we would like to mention in the Assembly a problem that almost all of us are experiencing. We are suffering the same fate because of speculative increases in the international markets in the price of oil and its derivatives.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“One of the most obvious and classic examples of this problem, which is worth mentioning in this Assembly, is the excessive charges and increased tariffs imposed by the European market on the bananas from our region. A similar example is the recent revision request from the United States that we impose new tariffs on products and on the sale of textiles and finished fabrics that Honduras exports to the United States market. This weakens the spirit of the trade rules we signed barely a year ago and would affect Honduras’ sales to the United States market a market that investors in our country have gained by dint of hard work, competing in order to sell at the best price and to sell goods of better quality. As the Assembly can see, we are not coming here to ask for the impossible or to demand what is not owed to us.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“I acknowledge that we are competing in imperfect markets with unequal rules of the game, which provide advantages and disadvantages. Some receive all kinds of subsidies and preferential tariffs, which transform their products into privileged goods. Speculative pricing, dumping, monopolies, oligopolies and other discriminatory practices are promoted, and certain parties are able to advance their interests and impose their will on those of us who are struggling just to reach the threshold of development. We demand that the rules of true free trade and competition be respected. We do not want to be relegated to the basement of history. Our peoples have the right to reach the summits of prosperity.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Free trade, so highly touted in all our speeches and international propaganda may, if we do not redirect it properly, turn into yet another ruse disguising unequal relations, the unjust distribution of advantages and the undue, invisible code of unfair and discriminatory competition. Let us just look at the figures of the World Trade Organization, which acknowledge that barely 7 per cent of international trade goes through free channels and the free market of economic and transparent rules. The rest, that is, more than 90 per cent of global trade, takes place outside the scope of the illusory standards of liberty and justice that we all aspire to. We must remedy this situation. Now is the time. We must continue to establish the conditions to improve international agreements.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“We now have a climate conducive to public and private enterprise. We are beginning to strictly implement the transparency law as a civic instrument to provide better access to public information. We have already presented, during the recently concluded sixty-first session of this very special forum, the Assembly of the people, our demands, our proposals and a reaffirmation of our values. Most of the people of Honduras believe in democracy and social liberalism, and in a free-market economy in its true meaning, as a useful instrument for the equitable trade of commodities the fruits of human labour. However, in actual practice the only possible means of testing our theories international trade operates in an unequal and inequitable way, as do the relations between powerful and economically weak countries.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Allow me to express our gratitude to the Secretary- General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, who has done a laudable job, thus enhancing the prestige of the United Nations. I am here on behalf of the people of Honduras, who have entrusted to me the torch of Central American peace so that I can hold high in the Assembly Hall this light that illuminates understanding among peoples and nations. Honduras is filled with a spirit of hope. Today we have the best social and economic indicators of recent decades. We have an average economic growth of more than 7 per cent. We have very good results in the area of job creation. We have begun to speed up poverty reduction by more than 6 per cent in 18 months. We have reduced forest fires by 40 per cent, together with illegal logging and the advance of migratory agriculture and extensive ranching.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Time limitations prevent me from addressing all the other important topics. Allow me to conclude this brief statement by expressing wishes for true peace and opportunity for everyone, in the conviction that the peoples of the world can exist only when in the heart of man there is fear of the wisdom of God. Let us all say yes to the loving God, to that God that considers man a brother to man and not an enemy of man — to that God of non-violence. That is the God we hymn and glorify, and we in Central America and Honduras join together in a song of hope: “Is it today? Yesterday? Tomorrow? You know the answer. Brothers, awaken. And Morazán is watchful.””
2006-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 61 (2006)
“We continue to fight for food security, for energy independence, for the social morality that we all 17 06-52737 deserve and for an economy that is at the service of markets, yes, but also at the service of people. We form a common front against poverty and against the corruption which today is invading our culture at many levels. Unless we overcome this, we cannot win genuine sovereignty. Central America opens itself to the world so that the world can open itself to Central America. We are prepared for investment in tourism and in various areas of our economy and society. We are ready in Central America — El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize and now the Dominican Republic. We represent this central waistband of America, this bridge of trade and markets — a bridge to a free world, a better world.”
2006-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 61 (2006)
“They come, fragrant little America, To nail you to the cross, to flay you, To cast down the metal blazoned on your banner. Invaders fill your dwelling-place And toss you aside like lifeless fruit, ... And others plunder your ports ... Is it today? Yesterday? Tomorrow? You know the answer. Brothers, awaken. And Morazán is watchful.” We, the Central American peoples, stand tall, ready to take the opportunities offered by development and genuine free trade, seeking our common destiny, seeking it today — which is not the end of history, but the beginning of a new era for humanity, if we shoulder our responsibility and commitment. We have not lost our desire for liberty or our longing for hope.”
2006-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 61 (2006)
“America has been inspired throughout history by great men and women of renown. Here in North America, Lincoln was a splendid guide for democracy. In the South, it was Sucre, San Martín and Bolívar; José Martí in the Caribbean; Villa and Zapata in Mexico. And in Central America, we have Jerez, Mora, Valle, Darío, Turcios, Omar Torrijos and the pro-union martyr Francisco Morazán, among others. The Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, Nobel laureate for literature, said it well: “Deep in the night Morazán is watchful. Is it today? Yesterday? Tomorrow? You know the answer, Central ribbon, slender America, ... Raised up on emerald sea-feathers: Territory, unity, slim goddess Born in the water-foam battle. They destroy your sons, and worms Spread their pestilence over you. ... Now comes the axe-brandishing tiger. They come to devour your entrails.”
2006-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 61 (2006)
“The Governments of the world must be led by men and women who long for peace and not by multinational corporations that promote war. Here, civil society organizations could play a major role in correcting this situation and denouncing it. I represent Honduras, a country of the Isthmus of Central America, and, like our Central American brothers and sisters, we continue to face the innumerable paradoxes that arise between civilization and barbarism. We have been the historical theatre of absurd wars, ambitions and sterile battles, very often exported, and the horrors of death and pillage. Yet the peoples of Central America are in the vanguard of those looking for joint solutions. We have the creative capacity that keeps us from losing faith or hope in a better world.”
2006-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 61 (2006)
“We have come to this Assembly to wish everyone the best, but also to point the finger at those who preach false free trade that only deepens poverty and seek to seduce us with the erratic mirage of remittances that we so easily accept but which in fact are the fruit of a labour force that we have exported; the result of the cruel fate of our emigrants; the inexorable and evil tragedy of people caught between freedom, marginalization and slavery. My Government and the people of Honduras condemn the monopolistic controls, the privileges and the absurd exceptions that prevent us from building true freedom with democracy and market access, the paradigm that we all want to move towards without the protectionism we all condemn.”
2006-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 61 (2006)
“So we are here to denounce hypocrisy, double-talk and moral double standards on the part of those who proclaim and promote a solution to our problems through democracy and free trade, but who seize and hold hostage the concepts of internal and external spaces and promote a system of privileges, oligopolies and monopolies, half-truths and flawed markets that they hold captive. They are insensitive to the demands of the majority, very often tortured by hunger, unemployment, indifference and exclusion.”
2006-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 61 (2006)
“We also need protection for the vulnerable of the world: for children and young people, for farmers who sow their small plots; for those businesspeople who cannot get a foothold on the ladder of international trade; for the owners of microenterprises who are reaching out in search for the well-being and dignity they deserve. All of us, of course, want a free market, but an ethical one. We want to live in a globalized world — but one in which respect for identity, patriotism and the dignity and sovereignty of peoples are also global.”
2006-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 61 (2006)
“When the last half of the twentieth century came to an end, we sincerely believed that we had put an end to political, ideological and religious tyrannies. But today we see them cropping up again, together with the tyrannies of trade, which are often more cruel than the others. Today, they want to sell us a free-market policy, but ultimately that is a ruthless, insensitive economic policy that is protectionist for many sectors. Instead of opening the door to a social approach to the market, where freedom is for people, we only have freedom for investment, and we forget about individuals and citizens and the rights of women and children, the most vulnerable groups who, although lacking in power, yearn for a better life. 06-52737 16 Certainly, we need to have protection, but not just protection for investments and big capital.”
2006-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 61 (2006)
“But we also have to recognize that there are things that are difficult to understand in an environment that is supposed to be conducive to peace and development: the contrast we see among different latitudes of the Earth; the immense needs of peoples; the contrast of poverty; drums of war that resound everywhere; nuclear threats; cruel situations for nations and peoples. Rather than narrowing, social divides have grown wider in recent decades. Morality is not being combined with economy or science. Morality is moving away from the principles and values of a just and true God. That is why our presence in this important Assembly is needed to focus clearly on the fact that humanity needs to seek its objectives according to healthy principles that will dignify our peoples.”
2006-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 61 (2006)