AND THESE YOUNG old, if they are architects, for example, don't ask themselves how much housing is needed in our countries, or sometimes, not even in their own country. There are students, who, following strict liberal criteria, make an honest living from their profession, but basically, they still think only of their own interests.
Back in Chile, there are many doctors--and I am a doctor--who do not understand or who do not want to understand that good health can be bought; and that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of men and women in Latin America who cannot afford good health. These doctors do not want to understand, for example, that more poverty means more sickness, and, in turn, more sickness means more poverty, and, therefore, if they perform their duty well for the patient who can pay, they do not think of the thousands of people who cannot afford to go to their offices. There are only a few doctors who struggle to establish government agencies to bring good health to the masses.
In the same way, there are teachers who are not worried at the fact that there are also hundreds and thousands of children and young people who cannot enter school. The statistics of Latin America are dramatic in their painful reality.
Today, almost all of our countries have been politically independent for more than one and one-half centuries, but where is the data that shows how much of our dependency and exploitation remains? Although potentially rich countries, the vast majority of our nations are poor.
In Latin America, a continent with more than 220 million inhabitants, there are 100 million illiterate or semiliterate people. In this country there are more than 30 million unemployed people, and, taking into account those who work only occasionally, the figure rises to over 60 million.
ON OUR CONTINENT between 53 and 57 per cent of the population suffers from malnutrition. Latin America lacks more than 28 million housing units.
Under these circumstances, one might ask, what will happen to the young people?--because this is a young continent; 51 per cent of the population of Latin America is under 27. It is a tragedy that I can say--and I wish that I was wrong--that no government, including, certainly, mine and those of my predecessors in Chile, has solved the problems of the majority of our continent regarding unemployment, malnutrition, housing and health care. To say nothing of better recreation and shorter working hours and more holidays for the poor.
Our nations have been surrounded and imprisoned by poverty and ignorance for one and one-half centuries. From the pain and suffering of the masses surge aspirations of reaching higher levels of material life, existence and culture. It is antihuman, it is anti-social, to deny this to man.
If these figures are bad today, what will happen if things don't change by the time there are 360 or 600 million of us? In a continent where the demographic explosion is compensating for the high infant mortality rate, our nations defend themselves. But despite this, the population of our countries increases vigorously. It is true that technological advance in the field of medicine has risen, and these advances have improved living conditions somewhat. Our average life expectancy has also risen, although, certainly, it is still much inferior to that of the capitalist industrial countries and the socialist countries.
But no government on this continent --there are a few democratic ones, there are some more pseudodemocratic ones, and there are even a few dictatorships--no government has been able to overcome these great problems. Some, especially the democratic ones, have made indisputably laudable efforts, laudable because they listen to the voices of protest, the aspirations of their people. They seek to advance in this frustrating attempt, in order to stop these problems from weighing heavily on our lives.
AND WHY DOES all of this happen? Because the inmense majority of our countries are single producers: we are the countries of chocolate, bananas, coffee, tin, oil or copper. We are countries that produce raw materials and import manufactured articles: we sell low and buy high.
By buying high, we are paying the high salaries of the technician, the clerk and the worker in the industrialized countries. Because our primary resources are in the hands of foreign capital, we ignore marketing strategies, we don't set prices or levels of production. We have had this experience with copper and you have had it with oil.
The great finance capitalists look at our countries for the possibility of obtaining great profits. Many times, because of the guilty complacency of people who don't want to understand the meaning of patriotism, they find those opportunities for gain.
But what is imperialism, young companeros? It occurs when the concentration of capital in the industrialized countries reaches the stage of finance capital and abandons investments in the metropolitan economies in order to invest in our countries. This capital, that has little use in its own metropolis, is therefore able to earn huge profits in our lands. These contracts are made between companies that are based here and the companies that own them from beyond our frontiers. The agreements are beyond our control.
Thus, we are countries that cannot take advantage of the surplus of our own production. This is a fact that this continent well knows--not because of social agitators with political last names, like the one I have of socialist--but because of figures provided by committees of the United Nations. In the past decade, Latin America exported more capital than it imported.
IN THIS WAY, a reality common to the immense majority of our countries has been produced: we are potentially rich, but we live poor. In order to continue living, we borrow. But at the same time we export capital. This is a typical paradox in the international relations of the capitalist system.
It is indespensable to understand what this system means to us. Internationally powerful countries base the growth and strength of their economies on our poverty and financially strong countries need our raw materials in order to remain strong. The reality of the market and price structure forces the nations of this and other continents deeply into debt, to the point where the debt of the countries of the Third World reaches the fantastic figure of $95 billion dollars.
My country is a democratic one with sturdy institutions, a country whose parliament has functioned for 160 years and where the armed forces--the same as in Mexico--are professional armed forces, who respect the laws and the popular will. My country is the second largest producer of copper in the world, the biggest strip mine in the world, and the biggest underground mine in the world. My country has run up a per capita foreign debt second only to Israel, which can be considered a nation at war. I must this year pay $420 million--which is 30 per cent of my government's income--for the interest and amortization alone. It is easy to understand why it is impossible that this situation can continue and this reality be maintained.
Add to that the fact that the powerful countries set the rules of commercial trade--they control transport, they impose the insurance rates, they loan us money with the stipulation that a high percentage of that money be re-invested in the metropolis. Besides, we suffer the consequences when the powerful countries or the most powerful country feels the need to devalue its currency. We pay the consequences. If the international money market trembles in the industrial countries, the repercussions here are much stronger, much harder, they weigh more heavily on our people. If the price of raw materials falls, the price of manufactured articles, and even of imported food, goes up. When the price of food goes up, we discover that there are customs barriers which impede products from those of our countries that export food from entering consumer markets in the industrial countries.