CHAVEZ LINES No. 19: Trinidad and the Empire with No Colonies

[magbana]

http://www.abn.info.ve/noticia.php?articulo=179546&lee=17
English version

Chávez’s Lines Nº 19 Trinidad and the Empire with no colonies

Caracas, Apr 28 ABN (Hugo Chavez Frias).- Change of time. This wise concept, introduced by our brother President Rafael Correa, may be the most accurate definition of the current spirit of times. There is no doubt that a new constitutional doctrine is about to come up; we can not read otherwise what's happening today in Ecuador and Bolivia, the predilect daughter of the Liberator. The days of a constitution conceived as an elite costumbrist novel, where only the oligrachy could identify itself with its social customs and character, tipified by the shyster complicity, is undoubtedly coming to an end in our America. Now the vote with the face and Constitution of everybody is born; these constitutions give precedence to the have-nots of history. We will follow very closely the Ecuadorian electoral process; there, every analyst points at a landslide and bright victory of the people of Manuel Saenz, Eloy Alfaro and our Marshall Sucre.

The history of our peoples is now written by those who were prohibitted to write our history. History is not told by the former winners anymore. Since the processes are fraternal, we can not deny the central role that this courageous Venezuelan people has achieved while it continues rewriting history. The Bolivarian flames have burnt the dry grasslands of the olygarchy! The times of pure heat have ended! The harvest begins and a tree will give the shadow we all deserve! José Martí said it: “Now is the time of the furnaces, and only light should be seen.” It is time for our America to dress up as the people; we can corroborate it with the new meaninghe people assigned to the words “vote” and “constitution.” José Carlos Mariategui, a great Peruvian revolutinary thinker said it in a letter... in 1924 and it seems it was written yesterday!: “Our cause is the great cause of the human kind. Despite the skeptical and negative, inconscious and
week allies of the burgeois interests and priviledges, anew social order is growing. Our burgeoisie does not understand neither realize this; so much the worse for them. Let’s obey the voice of our time. Let’s prepare to take our place in History.” In these lands of the South, t6he governments start to be at the height of their peoples, Will we see the time when it will happen in the north? Long life to Ecuador, Bolivarian Homeland¡

New facts and new heroic deeds in our great homeland of the Americas show the entrance of the majority of our nations to what we haver called the Bicentenial Era, beginning to be celebrated on April 19, 2010. Thus we celebrated last Sunday with the big military parade with which we started our tribute to such important dates, followed one after another along the continent.

Let’s remember what Bolívar wrote on April 19, 1820 from the Libertador GHQ in San Cristobal: “To the soldiers of the Leberator Army! Today, we celebrate ten years of freedom. Ten years devoted to combats, to heroic sacrifices, to a glorious death, but also ten years that freed the half of the world from the disgrace, the misfortune, from the chanins.” And even more emphatical: “Soldiers¡ Colombia was born on April 19: from there on count ten years of living.”

This ocasion could not be less glorious to start preparing for the bicentenial, after attending an Summit of the Americas, where our nations showed up with the same dignity of those time of the first independence when they made themselves known to the world. Let’s remember what was established in one of the documents from the Supreme Board of Government that was installed on April 19, 1810: “Venezuela is now added to the number of free nations and expeditely inform this to its neighbors, and asks them support, if the possibilities of the New World are in accordance to theirs, in such a great and difficult enterprise it has begun.” In the same document it is mentioned to “elevate the America to the political dignity belinging to it by law.”

The spark that began in Caracas soon burned up the whole prairie in 1810. On April 25 Buenos Aires fallowed the example and installed a pro-tempore Assembly. Then, on Jully 20, the Viceroy was destitute in Bogota. Chile and Mexico would soon do likewise. The 300 years of peace, to say like Bolivar said, finished and the colonial regime knoked down. And it all started in Caracas: Venezuela was at the vanguard of the process of independence of our America. Today, again, it is in our hands to open the path, and the strength of 1810 boosts us and comes along with us to actualice the definite independence.

In the same spirit of freedom, almost 200 years after, invaded the Summit of ALBA in the historical Cumaná, the marshal city.We have to insist that ALBA is a concrete space, free from the retorical divagation characterizing many Summits that have takn place lately. And finally, the Sucre was born¡

But before talking about our brilliant currency, let me a slight digression. I read a newswire by the Russian agency Ria Novosti on April 16; which gathers the words of Manager Director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Satrauss-Kahn during his speech at the Washington Press Club “The dollar is stronger now than last year… and there are no reasons to suppose that it will not be able continue accomplishing its function (being the main world’s currency).” Those words can just be understood as the stubborn insistence of the terminally ill capitalism of presuming that it can survive to the current demands of history and our peoples. If the U.S. and the imperial institutions of Bretton-Woods insist on making their currencies go into bankruptcy; so much the worst for them.

But here, in our sovereign land, we have decided to present a regional alternative that drives us away from the risk of neoliberal instability; the fiscal irresponsibility of the dollar and its world dictatorship.

Our answer: the Unique Regional Compensation System (SUCRE Spanish acronym). This currency has already started its march, first virtually and afterwards with a physical, specific and consistent expression according to our dynamic economic. Our reserves will take that direction, protected from the paper illusion of the dollar. Thus, ALBA countries will establish its own commercial relations, with a fair, sovereign and co-responsible interchange policy.

We are far away from the perverse competition of capitalism. Through the Bank of the ALBA and common currency, we have made one of the most important steps worldwide towards a regional answer against the financial crisis.

This is the start of the new financial architecture of the countries that agree with the change of époque. May be the dollar is not bankrupt as a currency so far… but undoubtedly it is bankrupt regarding the political and moral aspects long time ago. Its moral is mortgaged.

We went to Port Spain with a unified voice. A voice that does not exclude our sister Cuba; key element in the destiny of our America. And I repeat, what happened in the Fifth Summit of the Americas was not just anything; as well as it happened in the ALBA summit.

All the countries agreed with lifting the criminal and coward embargo on Cuba and with its integration to the great concert of sovereignty we have retaken today, without any tutelage or vassalage. If there is any place in our America that has preserved the dignity of a people against the greatest adversities, resisting thousands of aggressions of the Yankee Empire, that place is called Cuba.

As a powerful hurricane in the Caribbean, most of our countries exceed beyond all expectations the Final Declaration of the Summit of the Americas. I think Correa knew how to summarize it masterfully: “the final document is irrelevant and untranscendental, and the summit has much passed over that document.”

As Martí said in the sacred text of our America (1891): The problem of independence did not lie on a change of forms, but in change of spirit. Let’s say now: this is the same problem. The change of spirit of the competition must be radically replaced by the fraternal spirit. The real change of spirit will produce the real change of forms. In the ALBA and the Fifth Americas Summits, we have demonstrated that it is possible to achieve the change of spirit.

In this sense, we can remember today that wonderful slogan expressed in delicious Trinitarian English – and let this be a great homage and gratitude to the brother people of Trinidad and Tobago, which offered so much love to us every time – “Massa day done:” Capitalist days ended up. The Empire stayed without colonies and the disastrous OAS has become an “unburied corpse.” That is the truth of this time, of this new époque.

P. S. I recommend everybody to read or read again “Open Veins of Latin America.”

Our Culture Ministry and our PSUV must launch a massive edition, and we could even invite Eduardo Galeano to write a prologue and come to the book launching.

WE WILL WIN!

[Judi Lynn]

1. Ah, ha ha ha honk. Good one! " OAS has become an “unburied corpse.” "

Did OAS really expect something different?

Excellent comments. Thank you.