By Hugo Chavez
 |
|
“I
won’t tire of repeating that we are one people. We are obliged to find one
another, going beyond formality and discourse, in the same feeling of our unity”
- Hugo Chavez
|
Caracas, February 22,
2013
Late Venezuelan president’s letter to
the participants of the Third Africa-South America Summit, Equatorial Guinea,
February 2013.
Brothers and Sisters,
Please receive my
most fervent Bolivarian greeting of unity and solidarity, filled with all my
joy and hope for the progression of this long-awaited Third Summit of Heads of
State and Government of South America and Africa.
From the bottom of my
heart, I truly regret that I cannot be physically present to reiterate my
irrevocable commitment to the unity of our nations once more, in a sincere and
everlasting embrace. I am there with you, however, represented by the
Chancellor of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, comrade ElÃas Jaua Milano,
whom I have asked to convey the deepest expression of my love for these
continents, which are more than brethren, united by inseparable historic ties,
and destined to move forward together towards their full and absolute
redemption.
I say this from the
depths of my consciousness; South America and Africa are one single people. The
depth of the social and political reality of our continent can only be
understood, within the womb of the vast African territory, from which I am sure
that humanity originates. And from Africa, originate the components and codes
that make up the cultural, musical and religious syncretism of our America,
creating a unity between our peoples that is not only racial, but also
spiritual.
Similarly, the
empires of the past, guilty of kidnapping and murdering millions of daughters
and sons of Mother Africa, as a means of feeding an exploitative slave system
in their colonies, implanted the seeds of African warrior blood and fighting
spirit in our America, which produced the burning desire for freedom. Those
seeds germinated and our land engendered men as grand as Toussaint Louverture,
Alexandre Pétion, José Leonardo Chirino and Pedro Camejo, among many others,
resulting in the initiation of an independentist, unionist, anti-imperialist
and restorative process in Latin America and the Caribbean, over 200 years ago.
Then in the twentieth
century, came Africa’s libertarian struggles. Her independences, her new
neocolonial menaces, her heroes and martyrs: Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral
and Nelson Mandela just to mention a few.
Those that conquered
us in the past, blinded by their hunger for power, did not realise that the
barbaric colonialism they imposed on us would become the catalyst of our first
independences. Thus, whilst Latin America and the Caribbean share a past
history of oppression and slavery, today more than ever, we are the children of
our liberators and their heroic deeds. We can and must say with conviction and
resolve, that this unites us in the present, in a vital struggle for the
freedom and definitive independence of our nations.
I won’t tire of
repeating that we are one people. We are obliged to find one another, going
beyond formality and discourse, in the same feeling of our unity. Together we
must dedicate ourselves to creating conditions that allow us to rescue our
peoples from the maze they were thrown into, first by colonialism and then by
the neoliberal capitalism of the twentieth century.
For this reason, I
wish to now recall two great fighters for South-South cooperation, the former
Presidents of Brazil and Tanzania, Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva and Julius
Nyerere respectively, whose contributions and efforts over time enabled the
formation of this great forum for solidarity and complementary cooperation,
such as ASA [1].
However, the times
that we are currently living in oblige us to give our deepest, most urgent
consideration to the effort needed in order to transform ASA into a truly
productive apparatus for sovereignty and development in social, economic,
political, productive and environmental spheres.
It is in our
continents that sufficient natural, political and historical resources can be
found, which are necessary to save the planet from chaos that has been brought
about. We must not miss today’s opportunity provided by the independentist
sacrifice of our forefathers, to unify our capabilities to turn our nations into
authentic centres of power which, to quote our father Simon BolÃvar the
Liberator, would be greater for their freedom and glory than for their extent
and riches.
Always resonant in my
soul and conscience are the words of the incommensurable Uruguayan General José
Gervasio Artigas; ‘We cannot expect anything, if not from ourselves.’ I believe
that this deeply profound thought contains a great truth that we must accept,
with absolute certainty.
Our South-South
partnership must be an authentic and permanent joint effort that must thwart
their plans for sustainable development of the Global South, of our nations.
While in no way
denying our sovereign relations with the Western powers, we must remember that
these are not the source of comprehensive and definitive solutions to the
problems that our countries share. Far from it, some of them have neocolonial
designs on us that threaten the stability we have begun to strengthen our
continents.
Sisters and brothers,
for this Third Summit of Heads of State and Government of ASA, I want to evoke
the spirit of fraternity, unionism and willpower that drove the development of
that wonderful Second Summit on Margarita Island in Venezuela, which allowed us
to unanimously take on the commitments of the Declaration of Nueva Esparta.
With much faith, I sincerely hope that here in Malabo we might achieve the same
momentum and performance of that extraordinary moment for our unity process,
the Summit of 2009, as demonstrated as much by massive appeal as by the
quantity and substance of the agreements reached.
Today from Venezuela,
we renew our firmest commitment to strengthening the Permanent Secretariat of
the Strategic Presidential Table of ASA and its main tasks and functions, so as
to accelerate the pace of consolidation in our institutional framework, and
thus achieve greater efficiency in our collaborative work.
With much pain and
regret, I am sorry that our work, formally initiated in 2006, has been
interrupted by the imperial forces that still seek to dominate the world. It’s
neither by luck nor by chance, and I say it with full responsibility, that
since the Summit on Margarita, the African continent has been the victim of
multiple interventions and attacks by Western powers.
Among the main
objectives of the various imperial invasions and bombings, dismissing any
chance for peaceful political solutions to internal conflicts that began in
some African nations, were impeding the process of consolidating unity among
African peoples, and consequently, undermining the progress of their union with
Latin American and Caribbean peoples.
Since the beginning
of the nineteenth century, neocolonial strategy has been to divide the world's
most vulnerable nations, so as to subject them to an enslaving relationship of
dependency. For that reason Venezuela was radically opposed to the foreign
military intervention in Libya from the outset. For that very same reason
today, Venezuela reaffirms her absolute rejection of all NATO interventionist
activity.
Facing the
extra-regional threat to the advancement and deepening of our South-South
cooperation, I quote the words of BolÃvar in his letter from Jamaica in 1815;
‘union, union, union, must be our ultimate slogan’. In this Third ASA Summit
held in our sister Republic of Equatorial Guinea, our Government renews its
absolute willingness to progress in the work required to strengthen our
partnership in areas that I personally suggested during our last summit, on
beautiful Margarita Island.
Energy, education, agriculture, finance and communication
remain our priorities, for which we reiterate our approach to making progress
in concrete initiatives such as PetroSur, the University of the People’s of the
South, or the Bank of the South, just to mention a few.
In the area of
communications, from Venezuela we propose that TeleSUR, the effort we have
succeeded in developing in conjunction with other South American countries, be
coordinated with Africa from these latitudes, in order to enable it to meet its
main function: to connect the peoples of the world to one another and to bring
them the truth and reality of our countries.
Finally, I want to
reaffirm my wish that the results obtained in this Third ASA Summit will allow
us to gain our definitive independence, living up to modern demands and as the
Liberator would say, bringing the greatest amount of happiness for our peoples.
I am thoroughly and
absolutely convinced that we will succeed in this cause of centuries, entrusted
to us by our liberators and martyrs, the millions of our women and men given up
in sacrifice for their total and absolute liberty. I quote the words of the
infinite Father once again, our Liberator Simón BolÃvar: ‘We must expect a lot
from time; its vast womb contains more hopes than past events, and future
events must surpass those gone by’.
Let us march then
towards our togetherness and definitive independence. Paraphrasing BolÃvar once
more, I say; let us form one homeland, one continent, one people at all costs,
and everything else will be tolerable.
Long live the South American and African
union!
Long live ASA!
Ever onwards
to victory!
We will live
on and we will succeed!
Commandant
Hugo Chávez FrÃas
This letter
was translated from French for Pambazuka News by Natasha da Silva.
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