One Great Latin American Nation

Evo Morales in Caracas

By Alex Contreras Baspineiro
Reporting from Caracas with the Narco News Team

April 16, 2002

The indigenous and campesino leaders of the American continent, participating in the first World Gathering in Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, have suggested the construction of a huge, single Latin American nation as an alternative to the unilateral power of the US in the region.

“We should keep calling for the freedom and construction of one great nation in Latin America,” said Bolivian congressman and coca farmers’ leader Evo Morales. “That is the only option we poor people have against this savage and murderous imperialism.” Events such as those going on today in Caracas, he said, should happen regularly in countries that dare to face these problems. In this way, the social and political movements of the continent can unite, and Latin America will no longer be simply “the trash heap of North American imperialism.”

“I don’t see another way, because today we see the arrogance of the Bush family in their invasion and politics of genocide in Iraq. Today we can see an inhuman, savage capitalism that wants to dominate the entire world,” he said.

Evo remembers that seven years ago, he told a journalist that the continent could produce many Cubas. “This worn-out leader, he doesn’t know what he’s saying,” the press responded. With his head held high, Evo said that now two revolutionary governments actually exist in this land called América: Cuba and Venezuela. Brazil and other countries, he continued, are now walking down the same path.

Rafael Alegría, leader of the Via Campesino de Honduras (Route of the Honduran Farmers), said that “if neoliberalism is to be a global system, then the struggles of the Latin American people should be globalized as well.”

A People on the March

Jaime Amorín, leader of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST in its Portuguese acronym) said, “we Latin Americans are a people on the march.” That march, he said, is towards a new model for Latin America, free of the imposition of genetically engineered food, free of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA; a plan US President Bush is pushing to envelop the hemisphere in a single, US-led neoliberal market), and free of meddling non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

“We know what we want,” said the leader of the landless, “and we know where we want to go. And that’s one great Latin American Nation, free from the Yankees and free from the FTAA.”

These three agrarian leaders were the presenters at a workshop titled “Sovereignty and Food Security” in Caracas’s Teresa Carreño theatre. At this gathering, true democracy is being defended and, also, fomented in our América.

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