Evo Morales: 'A millennium of people and not of empire'

The following is an edited extract from the speech delivered by Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, to the United Nations on September 19.

During the republic, we [indigenous people] were discriminated, marginalised. They never took into account this struggle of the peoples for life, for humanity during the last 20 years, with their application of an economic model — neoliberalism — that continued the looting of our natural resources, the privatisation of our basic services.

I come here to express the suffering, the product of marginalisation, of exclusion. I come to express above all else, this anti-colonial sentiment of the peoples that struggle for equality and justice.

I want to say to all of the delegates that in my country we have begun to search for deep democratic and peaceful transformations, we are in a stage of thinking how to "re-found" Bolivia. Re-found Bolivia to unite Bolivians, re-found Bolivia not to take revenge against anyone, despite the fact that we have been kept down through discrimination, re-found Bolivia, above all, to finish with distain, hatred, against the peoples.

We have decided to pass over from the social, union, communal struggle to an electoral struggle so that we ourselves can be the actors to resolve social problems, economic problems, structural problems.

Certainly, many countries have the same problem as my country, a country, a nation with so much wealth but also with so much poverty, where the natural resources have historically been stolen, looted, auctioned off by the neoliberal government, handed over to the transnationals.

The time has come, now at the head of this struggle of the peoples for power and land, to recuperate, recuperate those natural resources for the Bolivian state under the control of the peoples.

And when we speak of recuperating our natural resources, via the dirty campaign of accusations they say that the government of Evo Morales will not respect private property. I want to say to you, in my government private property will be respected.

It is true that we need investment, we need partners, not bosses, not owners of our natural resource. We understand perfectly that an underdeveloped country needs investment, and I want to say, to clarify in front of all of you some worries, some false accusations: if the state exercises the property rights of a natural resource such as natural gas, hydrocarbons, oil, then we don't expel anyone, we don't confiscate off anyone.

It will be respected, but they will not earn like before so we are left unable to resolve the social problems in my country.

This new millennium needs to be a millennium of life, not of war, a millennium of people and not of empire, a millennium of justice and equality and any economic policy needs to be orientated towards ending, or at least lessening, these so-called asymmetric differences between one country and another country, those social inequalities.

I want to ask with great respect, that it is important to withdraw troops from Iraq if we want to respect human rights; it is important to withdraw economic policies that allow the concentration of capital in only a few hands.

[Evo Morales's complete speech is available from <http://boliviarising.blogspot.com>.]

From GLW issue 685