UNESCO. General Conference; 30th; Records ... - unesdoc - Unesco

(21.7) Whenever that kind of thing happens the establishment calls upon the armed forces and the police to
defend its property and use truncheons or bullets to repel those wild people, those thousands of women carrying
their children on their backs, who are looking for somewhere to sleep and something to eat. I remember appealing
to the people of Venezuela to look at such situations not just with their eyes, but with their hearts. Because it is
situations like that, it is the structural violence that has been built into political models for centuries, that give rise
in the end to serious, violent conflict. Structural violence does not often sound like a machine gun; it makes no
noise. But hunger, disease and inequality kill many more than any machine gun and they arise from those political
models, from those economic models, including the model that is so fashionable in the world nowadays, savage
neo-liberalism, as His Holiness John Paul II rightly called it. And “savage” is the right word, since it represents the
application of Charles Darwin’s theory: every man for himself, the survival of the fittest and the strongest. But the
strongest always tread the ashes of the weakest underfoot. It is at that structural violence, often legalized and
protected arbitrarily by force, that we must look, not just at the gun that a man may take up some night in
desperation, seeking a way forward, seeking a solution to the terrible tragedy of a people.
(21.8) As we draw to the close of this century of world wars, atomic bombs, bipolar empires and social
exclusion, it seems to me extremely important that UNESCO has declared - and has already started work on - a
Plan of Action for the Year 2000, that mythic year proclaimed as the Year for the Culture of Peace.
(21.9) Simón Bolívar, our great guide, leader of Venezuela, Latin America and the world and undoubtedly one
of the outstanding figures of the millennium, said in 1819, “I am just a straw swept up by the hurricane of
revolution”. That is what individuals are: minute particles in the overall process, or as Montesquieu said: “a drop of
water in the wave”. Fortunately, however, in Venezuela a wave has now surged up: in these last few years we have
realized the truth of that Cartesian expression, used I think by Albert Camus in “The Rebel”, “I rebel, therefore we
are”. In Venezuela the people have spoken and said “we are” and have risen to their feet: millions of men and
women have stood up in Venezuela, raising the flag of Bolívar on high and have advanced like a wave opening up
the path forward and sowing for the future. On behalf of that people, Bolívar’s people, who are fashioned from the
clay of liberators, who have the blood of fighters in their veins and are the seed of explorers, we must be ready to
dare, to leap into the void. As the soldiers’ oracle says, and as I learned many years ago, if the void opens up before
you, rise to the challenge, commend your soul to the Almighty and go forward unflinchingly.
(21.10) The people of Venezuela have learned to dare and are daring to rise to their own challenge. I bring you all
greetings from the people of my country. I am no more than a messenger for the millions of voices and beating
hearts that are now beginning to take courage, and I believe that this new striving in Venezuela is contributing in
some small way to our joint efforts to achieve that peace to which we all aspire. But it is a real peace, not the peace
of the cemetery or of the muzzle, nor the peace of the chained slaves, or the peace of Victor Hugo’s “Les
Misérables”. Real peace means life, education, culture, the happiness of all. As Bolívar said, “let there be happiness
among us”.
(21.11) I believe we are quite a distance from that, but as a certain king said before the gates of Paris: “Paris is
well worth a mass”. The human being is well worth a thousand masses and a thousand struggles and a thousand
roads. Thus, as we come to the close of a century and of a millennium, I believe that throughout the world we all
have to endeavour anew, albeit with greater vigour, acknowledging our mistakes as we Catholics and other
Christians do when saying our mea culpa. We may have to speak louder and be fearlessly bolder. From whatever
quarter pressure may come, there can be no fear when the lives of millions are at stake, no fear when behind us are
our children, our grandchildren and the unborn who are threatened by death and by structural violence and by
injustice. “We have to put fear behind us”, again to quote Bolívar, who once said “let’s put fear behind us, for if we
waver, we are lost”. And when I speak of Bolívar, I speak of millions of men and women who, over the centuries,
put fear behind them when the time came. We recently lost one of their number, we lost a great leader of the Third
World, namely Julius Nyerere, who did not give me time to shake his hand one day. For Nyerere and for Bolívar
and for those who have striven for justice, we are going to take ourselves in hand once again. But we have to unite
our voices so that they can echo and be heard everywhere, because the world is full of deaf people. They are deaf
although biologically able to hear; and the world is full of blind people who are blind although able to see. And
there are many who have hearts that beat but are unfeeling, and who have skin that is as hard as rock. We are going
to get through the rock.
(21.12) I believe that now more than ever we all have to unite, thereafter moving on, learning and seeking out the
paths of unity. How many summits I have been to in under a year! A Summit of the Group of 15, in Jamaica, to
begin the year; then in the Dominican Republic, a Summit of the Caribbean States and in Tobago the CARICOM
Summit; and in Cartagena de Indias, the Summit of the Andean Group, and in Mexico the Summit of the Rio
Group; in Rio de Janeiro, the Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean with Europe, and I am now getting ready
for the Ibero-American Summit in Havana in two weeks. Summits, summits and yet more summits. As I said in
Santo Domingo, we Heads of State and Presidents sometimes go from one summit to the next, but we must not
forget that our peoples go from one abyss to the next.
(21.13) Venezuela is ready to contribute what it can to this quest for peace, for the culture of peace. Its foremost
resource, as the Chairperson of the Executive Board aptly put it, is the human being. We have begun an internal
process in Venezuela, but one which, in today’s world, is bound to make itself felt outside the country. In
Venezuela we have started a revolution which is peaceful, given that no weapons are involved, and democratic
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