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• International
• Politics and Government
• 05 / 20 / 2010

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• Speech by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parilla at the Heads of State and Government Session of the 6th European Union- Latin America and Caribbean Summit, Madrid, May 18, 2010

Ms. Christina Fernández de Kirchner, president of Argentina:

Mr. President of the European Council:

This crisis was forecast all of 10 years ago. It arose from speculation and financial, business and fiscal corruption in the United States and Western Europe.

Thus its effects should not be offloaded onto Latin America and the Caribbean, or on the Third World, or even onto European workers, retirees and poor people.

The European Union needs to relate in a different way to Latin America and the Caribbean. It needs to see this region as a group of independent countries with 570 million inhabitants, a solid culture of its own and all its own resources.

Latin America and the Caribbean is no longer the backyard of the United States, nor are we former colonies requiring advice.

The crisis is global, systematic, multiple. For example, while we are arguing, climate change continues its devastation and Europe is reluctant to pay its ecological debt.

I agree on the need for a new world governance, but one based on international law, genuine democracy and social justice.

Today, 56% of human beings are living in poverty. A multipolar world does not exist, nor does the so-called global community.

Multilateralism is still fictitious. Today we have a dictatorial global governance based on domination, hegemony, double standards and hypocrisy.

Suffice it to read the NATO doctrine or look at the military redeployment of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean or the military coup in Honduras.

Neither does the G-20 represent us to the rest. Neither does that dreamed-of "bi-regional association" exist.

It is necessary to avoid the crisis accentuating the distinct nature of the European Union and Latin America and the

Caribbean. Colonial pillage and capitalist plunder have converted Europe into a creditor and Latin America and the Caribbean into a debtor.

That is the case to date, although we have paid the debt various times over.

Everything remains the same, although dissimulated within free trade; for that reason, it is necessary to leave behind Bretton Woods and construct a new financial architecture.

In times of crisis in particular, internal law must prevail and the sovereign equality of political independence of states must be exercised.

The use of threat and force must be prevented. The market will not solve the global crisis or climate change. The world needs first, a new political order and then, structural economic decisions.

Cuba will continue defending truth and reason. Its government only has a duty to Cubans and to the peoples of Our America, of Bolívar and Martí.

Thank you very much

Source: Granma Digital