CÚPULA DA AMÉRICA LATINA E DO CARIBE SOBRE ... - Funag

INTERVENÇÕES (VERSÃO ORIGINAL)
development of the region and if we are to create prosperity for our people.
Many of us over the years have shown a tendency to look north for the means
and the economic space to facilitate growth and development. What I find,
increasingly, is that the space is more and more competitive and it no longer
has our name on it. Consequently, we do not have as great a claim as we had
in the past.
I think for too long we have underestimated the power and potential that
lies within the region. President Chavez pointed out yesterday that we comprise
nations encompassing some five hundred million people with an amazing
diversity of natural resources and with a human institutional capacity to
transform the region into an economic powerhouse. I believe the time has
come for us to tap into that power and to put that power to work for the
benefit of the people of the region. And that I submit must be the paramount
reason why we are gathered here.
We already know the principal problems that confront us, globally and
regionally. We spend a considerable amount of time, in meeting after meeting,
narrating to each other what those problems are. We offer our different
opinions, we diagnose the problem, we prescribe what needs to be done,
and having done all of that, we pack our bags and go home. That may have
some therapeutic value, but I submit that it is not a mandate for action. President
Jagdeo made the point yesterday that no one, no one, is going to solve these
problems for us. The responsibility to solve these problems lies in our own
hands; the power to solve these problems lies in our own hands, and I think
that we must find our way and find the way to assert and exert that power.
I think the time has come for us to get to work. We all accept the value
and immense advantages that are to come with a broader, coordinated Latin
America and Caribbean movement. And again I want to commend President
Lula for inviting us here, for bringing us together. But I believe it is important
for us to determine the scope of our intentions and the modalities we will
develop to actualize those intentions. I understood from President Chavez’s
initial intervention yesterday that this is the direction which he is suggesting
and in which we should move as well.
I think we have two options. We can either meet in a loose conference, a
kind of consultative process in which we exchange views and ideas. We could
serve as little more than 33 sovereign States meeting in the same room, having
a conversation. But my question is: do we not have enough of those? Have
we not done enough of that? We have a second option. We can agree on an
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