“We Want to Live in Peace!” →

Speech of Honduran President Xiomara Castro before United Nations

“The industrialized nations of the world are responsible for the serious deterioration of the environment but they make us pay for their lifestyle, and for this, they spare nothing to plunge us into their plans and into an endless crisis, trying to tie us hand and foot.”

“This arbitrary world order is unacceptable to us: where there are third and fourth category countries, where those who think they are civilized do not tire of carrying out invasions, wars, financial speculations and crucifying us with their inflation over and over again.”

Rights Action forwards this sppech, that was distributed by NicaNotes, a project of Nicaragua Network (http://www.nicanet.org/), a project of the Alliance for Global Justice (https://afgj.org/)

 

Photo: NBC News

 

In 2009, a US and Canadian-backed military coup in Honduras ousted the democratically elected President Mel Zelaya, sparking massive and prolonged national protests, and international outcry (except for the governments and media of the US and Canada) which demanded restoration of the democratic order.

What ensued was 12 years and 7 months of brutal, corrupt, ‘open-for-global-business’ regimes fully supported by the US and Canada, the European Community, World Bank and IMF – regimes that were also trafficking hundreds of millions of dollars of cocaine from South America on up through Honduras to Mexico, then to the cocaine markets in the US and Canada.

On September 20, 2022, Honduran President Xiomara Castro addressed the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Honduran President Xiomara Castro
77th session of the United Nations General Assembly
September 20, 2022

Not only am I the first woman to have the honor of leading our Central American nation, but I also represent the first democratically elected government after going through 13 years of dictatorship, the 2009 coup d'état, full of cruel assassinations and death squads, two separate electoral frauds, a pandemic and two hurricanes.

It is impossible to understand Hondurans and the great caravans of migrants without recognizing this context of cruel suffering that we have had to go through.

But electoral democracy is not enough to obtain the material and spiritual well-being of our people.

Thirteen years of a dictatorship, protected by the international community, led the country to multiply by six its public debt and reach a poverty rate of 74 percent, the highest rate in the history of Honduras.

Five out of ten of my compatriots live in extreme poverty, but I am clear that none of these figures impresses anyone in the world today that lives under the monetary dictatorship that imposes the most draconian measures of fiscal discipline on the poorest, that increases the suffering of the neglected majorities, and where speculative capital has no limits.

It is evident that for our country to survive today we must reject this presumptive austerity that rewards those who concentrate wealth in a few hands and exponentially increases inequality.

Since we arrived [in office] at the end of January, we have shown a strong desire for consensus, always expressing the firm decision to achieve agreement on our commitments without denying any of them.

But attempts to undermine the will of the people come at us from all directions.

Conspiracies are fomented among the same sectors that looted the country and from their coup allies emboldened by a brazen anti-democratic attitude, sometimes disguised as diplomacy.

The public policies endorsed by the rentier economic model* of the international financial community during the last 13 years have dragged us into a world full of violence and poverty with failed and abandoned projects, corruption, looting and drug trafficking.

None of the international witnesses to the electoral frauds of 2013 and 2017 were ignorant of those who were condemning our people [to suffering], and yet they were complacent about the worst plague that has hit our country. The arrogance of capital and petty interests made many opt for deception while organized crime led the country to the abyss.

The poor nations of the world will no longer endure coups, the use of lawfare**, or Color Revolutions, usually organized to plunder our vast natural resources. The industrialized nations of the world are responsible for the serious deterioration of the environment but they make us pay for their lifestyle, and for this, they spare nothing to plunge us into their plans and into an endless crisis, trying to tie us hand and foot.

The Honduras that I direct is being built with a vision of humanistic refoundation, imbued with dignity and sovereignty, which will do what is legally possible to recover our environment, and achieve the common good for all our population.

This arbitrary world order is unacceptable to us: where there are third and fourth category countries, where those who think they are civilized do not tire of carrying out invasions, wars, financial speculations and crucifying us with their inflation over and over again.

I take this platform to demand that we be respected, we want to live in peace! DO NOT continue trying to destabilize Honduras and dictate its measures or choose to whom we should relate.

The people are sovereign and they demonstrated it last November 28, supporting my victory, the largest in history. And the resistance that fought against the imposed dictatorship during these 13 years accompanied me en masse in the streets this September 15, the day of our independence, casting out the public threats and the custom of delivering national assets to the highest bidder.

Never again will we carry the stereotype of the Banana Republic; we will end the monopolies and oligopolies that only impoverish our economy.

A generous people, who have defended our forests and rivers, will not forget the hundreds of murders of young people and of our comrade Berta Cáceres, nor the forced disappearance of Honduran men and women because of their way of thinking, like the five Garífuna comrades two years ago.

Every millimeter of the homeland that was usurped in the name of the sacrosanct freedom of the market, including the Zones for Employment and Economic Development (Zedes) and other regimes of privilege, was irrigated with the blood of the original peoples. My social and democratic government will return to a state of justice and law, so that this does not happen again.

We are working hard to prioritize stimulus and the elimination of fiscal abuses. We have already started promoting a law for energy as a public good, the restoration of rights to workers, support for our internal market by investing in agriculture for food security, and subsidizing the poorest so they no longer pay for electricity.

We have proposed renegotiating free trade agreements. We have made the sovereign decision to invest in our development with import substitution, competing in international markets without subsidizing the excesses of developed nations.

For women, who have been denied their inclusion in development for centuries, we will recognize their importance in society as part of its backbone. We will provide health, quality education, security and food sovereignty to our children and youth.

For Honduras, each caravan of migrants fleeing from the dictatorship that was set up for more than a decade is a hard loss for our country and for their families. This exodus, caused by neoliberal injustice, generates more unemployment and binds us to an undesirable dependency.

In our country, paradoxically, emigrants generate more foreign currency income than many of the traditional exports. Our solidarity and accompaniment are with the TPS*** recipients.

In Honduras we cannot continue to support the hypocrisy of a system that now judges a few people for crimes related to drug trafficking, but supported them for more than a decade in the commission of criminal actions, two electoral frauds, and crimes against the homeland and against millions of Hondurans.

For all this, we are going to set up an international commission to combat corruption and impunity with the support of the Secretary General of the United Nations. Honduras will only have a future if it takes firm steps to dismantle the neoliberal economic dictatorship.

That is why we have already begun the refoundation of our homeland and of education with the ideals and values of our national hero, Francisco Morazán Quezada.

*Rentier capitalism describes the economic practice of gaining large profits without contributing to society.
**Lawfare is the use of legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimize an opponent, or to deter individual's usage of their legal rights.
***Temporary Protected Status (TPS) allows people to live and work in the US for a period when their country is experiences war or environmental disaster.

“A triumphant day. A day of many tears”
End of the U.S./Canadian-backed Narco-regime in Honduras
https://mailchi.mp/rightsaction/a-triumphant-day-a-day-of-many-tears

Socialist President Xiomara Castro Is Trying to Revive Democracy in Honduras
By Hilary Goodfriend, https://jacobin.com/2022/07/honduras-socialist-president-xiomara-castro-democracy-libre-party

Act / Stir up the pot / Chip away
Keep sending copies of Rights Action information (and that of other solidarity groups/ NGOs) to family and friends, your networks, politicians and media outlets, asking: ‘When will there be binding legal and political accountability for how our governments, companies and investment firms help cause, benefit from and turn a blind eye to corruption and impunity, and to poverty, repression environmental harms in countries like Honduras and Guatemala (and beyond)?’

Follow work of / get involved with other solidarity/NGO groups