Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during his speech at the G77+China Summit held in Havana, Cuba on Friday, September 1, 2023. Photo: Presidential Press
The following is a speech given by President Nicholas Maduro:
Dear comrade Miguel Mario Díaz Canel Bermúdez. Dear comrade and maestro General of the Army, Raúl Castro Ruiz. We would like to convey our affectionate greetings and an ever supportive embrace to the heroic people of Cuba, who today, once again, is the host por excelencia of the peoples of the South, Havana, capital of the family of the Global South. It could not be better indeed that our organization G 77 plus China should meet precisely in the epicenter of the resistance of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. Revolutionary Cuba, the Cuba of the people, the Cuba founded by the great Fidel Castro Ruz. And here we are in Havana.
We traveled 28 hours, from Beijing to Algeria, from Algeria to Havana, to arrive in time to be able to shake your hand, dear comrades, and to be able to share with this family. I was saying this to a president from Africa with whom I was talking. This is our home. This is our family. This is the space where we are all equal. Where no one pretends to impose himself, to dominate, to loot, to despise, to exclude anyone. This is the great family of Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, the family of the peoples of the South. The G-77 will be 60 years old and later the incorporation of China.
Next year we have the South Summit in Uganda. We wish Uganda and Africa every success in making that powerful history. Historic summit. Sixty years, you say, fast. But indeed, what has happened in this world in 60 years? How many struggles? How many battles? How many advances? How many setbacks? How much pain? How many hopes? And here we are, 60 years later, setting the standard for what should be a civilizing model that allows dialogue, inclusion and integration, we as Peoples of the South have to look for our own paths, our own political models and not accept the dictates of any power with colonial or domination pretensions.
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The 21st century must be our century. We have to promote practical cooperation of greater impact, of a higher level in education, in science and technology. Science and technology cannot be separated from education. We have to link it and we have to promote practical cooperation between regions, between countries. And we have to ask our brothers and sisters who have made more progress to help each other. We have to ask for more support, more help. I have just arrived from China, and one is truly impressed by the scientific and technological advances in all fields of social life, of economic life, of the life of society.
We have to ask the new emerging powers that occupy a fundamental space in this 21st century and are part of our family, such as China, India, among others, to allow us to make more progress in access to knowledge, to technology. Applied to health, a fundamental element. Applied to agriculture and food production. Applied to the development of industry, applied to the development and management of outer space, which we cannot do without no matter how small our countries may be. Knowledge, science and technology have been applied to telecommunications, social networks and the Internet.
If there is something where there is a marked gap and that all our peoples know it, it is the management of the internet. Who manages the internet? Who produces the internet? Who has imposed with the hegemony of the internet the social networks that today circulate in all our countries without any type of regulation of legislation, any type of control? That as well as the social networks can impact, as they impact today in a dominant and fundamental way, the social and communicational life of our countries, without the possibility that the national states can have some kind of orientation, regulation, as would be necessary. So it is necessary to prioritize the application of knowledge to science and technology to achieve communicational independence in the phenomenon of the internet and social networks.
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Dear comrades, the G-77 plus China must promote a powerful global initiative within the United Nations organization so that the unilateral coercive measures against the peoples of the world, against all the countries of the world, cease. Today we are suffocated by the criminal blockade of more than 60 years against the people of Cuba. My country, Venezuela, has been the victim in the last six years of more than 950 unilateral coercive measures at all levels of the economy and society. We had an example during the pandemic, when the North called all the companies that produced antivirals, medicines and vaccines to threaten them if they sold anything to Venezuela. We had to resort to the direct and solidarity relationship that allowed Venezuela to have access to medicines, to antivirals and then to vaccines in the most difficult moments, in the year 2020-2021. And it was thanks to the solidarity and support of China, Russia, Cuba, India and Turkey, that Venezuela, a blockaded and persecuted country, was able to have access to the medicine it needed, to the vaccines it needed.
So the G-77 has to raise its voice louder and say enough is enough of persecution against the peoples of the world who want independence and who want to build their own models. We have to do more, much more. We have traveled a road full of great experiences in these 60 years of the G-77 plus China. And it seems that all the historical, political and geopolitical conditions are coming together so that our peoples, the peoples of the South, can raise our banners of independence and sovereignty in this 21st century. And to be able to say and to be able to build the 21st century as our century, the century of free peoples, without empires, without colonialism, without hegemonism, free peoples, who base our relations on solidarity, cooperation, knowledge and permanent complementarity.
Comrade President Miguel Díaz-Canel, I am deeply grateful for the invitation extended to our homeland, and Cuba and the G-77 plus China can count on the determined, militant and active support of our homeland in the great causes of this 21st century, which is our century, the century of the peoples of the South. Thank you very much.
