Juan David Latorre
On the occasion of the commemoration of the 211th anniversary of the signing of the Act of Independence of Venezuela and the Day of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, yesterday, Tuesday, the Venezuelan Embassy organised a floral offering at the foot of the monument to Simón Bolívar in the Camoens Park in Madrid.
After an exhaustive review of the main historical events of the independence of different Latin American countries, the head of the mission of the Venezuelan Embassy, Mauricio Rodríguez Gelfenstein, pointed out that “commemorating the date of independence of Venezuela is also commemorating the independence struggles of any of the Latin American countries, whose representatives are with us today to commemorate the past and reflect on the present”.
In those times when independence was being fought for, Mauricio Rodríguez pointed out, “you were either Spanish or Creole. The exploited were different from the exploiters, and a contradiction arose whose sign was rebellion, emancipation became a yearning and union a pressing need. The indigenous rebellions were constant and in them, by the way, women intervened massively in the struggles for land and in defence of their ethnicity. In this pulse of history, Francisco de Miranda, first, and Simón Bolívar, later, promoted boldly in theory and in their concrete practical action a vision of the New World and its form of articulation. They synthesised this collective yearning for independence and for justice, peace and integration”.
“Today, in the midst of imponderable turbulence, we are witnessing the reconfiguration of the established order, new times, new ways of understanding politics and relations between nations. We face today highly complex situations such as global warming, the changes arising from a ferocious pandemic, the use of staple foods as part of wars against peoples, the use of coercive measures to strangle governments and nations, and the exacerbation of global fear and its corresponding secondary response, as has been the case since 11 September 2001”.
“The idea of multipolarity is advancing, as Hugo Chávez had already advanced very synthetically before becoming president in 1998,” concluded the head of the Venezuelan Mission. But this multipolarity is not passive resignation in the face of events assigned by others”. To defend against this new order, “this new colonialism, the unity of nations is necessary to achieve the balance of the universe that neutralises imperialism and arrogance. Independence and integration. One without the other is meaningless. Our America is at a propitious moment to share and articulate all its potentialities, geographical, cultural and productive, and thus provide constructive responses to the new global challenges we face. Our principles and values endorse sovereignty, unity and peace with our own identity”. “From Venezuela we have said throughout this century, either we unite or we sink. Or to put it more poetically, alone we are a drop, together we are the downpour”.
