We Need a Continental Plebiscite

We'll struggle against financial capital and its insatiable interests.
We'll struggle against paying the external debt,
which we denounce as truly international usury.

Dom Pedro Casaldáliga

We, the peoples of the Americas, from our profoundest convictions and our dreams, wish to raise our voice and manifest our preoccupation and indignation before so many injustices, in vogue now for centuries, against our peoples by international capital and by irresponsible governments.

The countries of the Third World, as are those of our continent, still suffer—today through a systematic structure—crucial problems that affect the majority of the population. Denied are our rights to work, to food, to land, decent housing, education, and information.

What is globalized is misery, not true progress. This globalization generates dependence, and destroys the sovereignty of peoples. Capital circulates freely while people can't. The priority is competition instead of solidarity. The market is absolutized while ethical values are ignored.

Everything has its price, including dignity. Natural resources are being depleted, risking human survival. Land is privatized, as well as a leaning toward privatizing water, biodiversity, plants, animals, and, who knows, one day the wind, the sun... Property is valued more than life.

But we know that it-s not enough to scream. It's important to struggle with awareness, uniting forces and dreams. We will struggle for the fundamental rights of our peoples: sovereignty, identity, autonomy, freedom, food, work, land, housing, free public quality education.

We will struggle against the monopoly of information by economic groups of imperialist governments, which control the principal communication media of the masses. We'll struggle against financial capital and its insatiable interests. We'll struggle against paying the external debt, which we denounce as truly international usury. We'll struggle against violence and machismo, against political manipulation and economic corruption.

We all join together, against imperial domination which uses the IMF, International Bank and the OMC, and which favor, on our continent, militarism, violence, repression, with their bases and with their military plans—Plan Colombia, Plan Puebla-Panama, Plan Dignity in Bolivia—and their profits from the Amazon.

We come together right now to unmask and combat ALCA (Free Tree Agreement of the Americas), a system that is being imposed upon us as a new form for colonial domination of the continent. We especially propose that this year 2002, in all of our America, a great plebiscite, a true popular continental consultation so our peoples decide about ALCA and above all about what affects us directly

Let's raise our awareness, let's organize, in every space and corner, and always walk with our people as a people.

Born in 1928 in Balsanery, Barcelona, Spain, Bishop Dom Pedro Casaldáliga, is a Claretian missionary. He has been living in Brazil since 1968. Ordained bishop of the rural and dusty area of São Félix do Araguaia, state of Mato Grosso, in 1971, he is one of the loudest most passionate voices of the so-called Liberation Theology. His preaching and actions have upset the military, the government, big farmers and the Vatican. For five times during the dictatorship (1964-1985) the military tried to expel him from Brazil accusing Casaldáliga of being a communist. And he can't count the times he has received death threats. Writer and poet, he has written dozens of books.

This material is distributed by Sejup (Brazilian Service of Justice and Peace) You can visit them at http://www.oneworld.net/sejup/ 

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