Jose Luis Chavez

Remarks by the President of the Republic of Costa Rica, D. Oscar Arias at the Summit of the Americas.

Trinidad and Tobago
April 18, 2009

I have the impression that every time Caribbean and Latin American countries meet with the President of the United States of America, is to ask for things or to claim things. Almost always, is to blame the United States for our past, present and future. Do not think that's entirely fair.

We can not forget that Latin America had universities before the United States created Harvard and William & Mary, which are the first universities in that country. We can not forget that on this continent, as in the world, at least until 1750 all Americans were more or less the same: all were poor.

When the Industrial Revolution in England, other countries are mounted on the wagon: Germany, France, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand ... and the Industrial Revolution passed over Latin America like a comet, and we did not realize. Certainly we lost the opportunity.

There is also a very big difference. Reading the history of Latin America, compared to U.S. history, one realizes that Latin America John Winthrop had no Spanish or Portuguese, to come to the Bible in his hand ready to build "a City upon a Hill", a city to shine, as was the claim of the pilgrims who came to America.

50 years ago, Mexico was richer than Portugal. In 1950, a country like Brazil had a per capita income higher than that of South Korea. 60 years ago, Honduras had more wealth per capita than Singapore, and Singapore today, in 35 or 40 years, is a country with $ 40,000 of annual income per capita. Well, something went wrong Latin Americans.

What went wrong? I can not list all the things we've done wrong. To begin, we have a school for 7 years. That is the average schooling in Latin America and is not the case in most Asian countries. Certainly not the case in countries like the U.S. and Canada with the best education in the world, similar to that of Europeans. For every 10 students who enter high school in Latin America, in some countries only one finishes this school. Some countries have an infant mortality of 50 children per thousand, while the average in the more advanced Asian countries is 8, 9 or 10.

We have countries where the tax burden is 12% of gross domestic product and is not responsible for anyone except ours, which do not charge money to the richest people in our countries. Nobody is to blame for that, except ourselves.

In 1950, every American citizen was four times richer than a Latin American citizen. Today, an American citizen is 10, 15 or 20 times richer than a Latin American. That's not the fault of the United States, is our fault.

In my speech this morning, I referred to a fact which to me is grotesque, and the only thing it shows is that the value system of the twentieth century, which seems to be that we are putting into practice in the twenty-first century is wrong value system. Because it can not be that the rich world spend 100,000 million dollars to relieve the poverty of 80% of the world's population on a planet that has 2,500 million people with an income of $ 2 per day, and spent 13 times more ($ 1,300,000,000,000) in weapons and soldiers.

As I said this morning, can not be that Latin America spends $ 50,000 dollars on weapons and soldiers. I wonder: who is our enemy? Our enemy, President Correa of ​​that inequality that you rightly points out, is the lack of education, the illiteracy is not spent on the health of our people that we do not create the necessary infrastructure, roads, roads , ports, airports, that we are not dedicating the necessary resources to stop environmental degradation, is the inequality we have, we really disappoint, is the result, among many things, of course, that we are not educating our sons and our daughters.

You go to a Latin American university and still think we are in the sixties, seventies or eighties. It seems that we forgot that the November 9, 1989 something very important happened, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the world changed. We must accept that this is a different world, and frankly I think that all academics, that all thinking people that all economists, all historians, almost agree that the twenty-first century is the century of Asian, not Latin Americans. And I, unfortunately, agree with them. For while we are still arguing about ideologies, we are arguing about all the "isms" (which is best? Capitalism, socialism, communism, liberalism, neoliberalism, social Christianity ...) the Asians found an "ism" very realistic for the XXI century and the end of the twentieth century, that is pragmatism. To cite just one example, remember that when Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore and South Korea, having realized that their neighbors were getting rich in a very fast, he returned to Beijing and told the old Maoist comrades who had joined on the Long March, "Well, the truth, dear comrades, is that I do not care if the cat is white or black, the only thing I care is that it catches mice." And if Mao had been alive, he would have died again when he said that "the truth is that getting rich is glorious". And while the Chinese do this, and from 79 to now grow to 11%, 12% or 13%, and have lifted 300 million people out of poverty, we continue arguing about ideologies that we should have buried long ago back.

The good news is that Deng Xiaoping achieved this when he was 74 years. Looking around, dear Presidents, I do not see anyone who is close to 74 years. So I ask you not only hope to meet them to make the changes we need to do.

Thank you very much.

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