‘… the strength of rubble’

“Development is not only amassing wealth and increasing consumption; it is the struggle for human happiness,” said President José Mujica of Uruguay before his counterparts at the CELAC Summit. He added that “defending life means tossing aside the impediments of waste and pollution.” He urged listeners to build intelligence around the integration of a region that has taken “a fantastic step — but there’s much to be done.”

It is known that there is a historic feeling, a cultural tradition and deep roots that go back to the days of the liberators, as well as a historic silence about the aborigene peoples, said Mujica in his address to the plenary session that ended the Second Summit of the CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Wed. 29 in Havana.

“History is a knapsack and the only real thing we can see. The future is always uncertainty, but it’s our hope, our preoccupation, our challenge,” he reflected.

He said that the existing civilization brought gifts of massive knowledge and a way of life that extended human life by no less than 40 years, that raised a giant display case with the illusion of happiness, so the masses could contemplate it.

“But, just like farmers know that they fertilize not only the crops but also the weeds and have to take care of them, good comes hand in hand with the bad. There’s no such a thing as a perfect and anodyne world, just an add-‘n’-substract,” he said.

“We have to integrate for our own development, but this is not just to add wealth and increase consumption, it’s the struggle for human happiness. The only transcendental thing for each human being is the real and concrete life. And that [life] cannot be enslaved, cannot be lost and it’s the goal of every human being, and you cannot undertake development against human happiness. That wouldn’t be development,” he added.

Mujica said that there is an agenda in every country and in the American continent, but there is also a world agenda that no country can revert.

Who is going to clean the continental oceans, removing the nylon that our civilization has created, the president asked the other regional leaders. “Humanity has to deal with its own problems, there is a program for all of humanity. No country, no continent can solve by itself the problems that fill the river of our future lives,” he said.

“To have heft in this world, we have to join together and we have to realize that we can do much if humanity brings all its forces together, if alongside the program of the countries that fight for their agenda there is a program that commits us to combat waste and the misuse of energy,” he said.

Mujica wondered: “We do we waste so much in every direction ($2 billion per minute in military budgets)? If humanity is not capable of thinking as a species, if humanity continues to think only as a country and — within the country — as a social class, thinking only in what’s ours, then civilization is doomed,” he said.

This is the first time that the human being has so many means and tools to build his own history, the president said. “We are partly responsible for the history in which we live. That is why we Latin Americans must come together, for that reason and to think about this world, because we have to shout loudly to this world about the responsibility we have to life.”

“There are nations that consider themselves very strong but have the strength of rubble,” he stated.

About the global changes, he said that it will be a long battle, because it’s not a magical change that stands around the corner. He bet on the development of technology, while being responsible to life. “We must control our wasteful investments so we can help the people when they need help. It’s the responsibility of humanity,” he said.

Mujica told his listeners that if all the automobiles sold this year in Uruguay were placed side by side they would form a line 400 kilometers long. “The planet has limits,” he cautioned.

“Science warned the world in a timely manner, ‘hold your hand!’, but politics failed and the world couldn’t heed science, couldn’t pick up the glove it flung. Just because of this foolishness, we Latin Americans have to integrate,” the leader said.

He said he was convinced that no Latin American country can face this uncertainty alone. “We need a cultural change, a march that will be long.”

Mujica said that “we’ve taken a fantastic step forward” but added that we have to build our integration, the global care of Latin Americans’ health, with intelligence. He said that there is much still to be done and that it’s necessary to create political currents, intelligence, and plant seeds in the heads of the future generations.

At the end, the president reflected about the fate of humanity and the miracle of life. “We human beings are gifted with a conscience and that’s why we must come together, because the continent is young,” he said.

President Mujica’s speech at the 2nd CELAC summit in Havana (in Spanish):