- 16 minutes ago
President of Colombia Gustavo Petro statement in the CELAC-Africa high level forum 2026.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you to all of the presidents, foreign ministers, attendants of this first forum of gathering between two regions of
00:12the planet that even though they have been closed in tragedy, they haven't been so together in the solution of
00:22the tragedies of the world.
00:23We are gathered by slavery here. We are gathered here by a fact where we didn't depend on any of
00:31us in here, and for the imposition here of the world and humanity of those most horrible issues, the European
00:42decisions of conceding the fact that there was an inferior race due to the color of the skin,
00:48and that's the destination of this unexistent race, because there are no races, really. They should be to work to
00:58produce wealth more in the rich lands of all over the America, from North America all the way to Patagonia.
01:08And this is one of our fundamental pillars in the construction of what I denominate today the Latin American civilization,
01:17that due to its diverse origin,
01:20civilization. It's considered not as a homogeneous civilization, but also, and that's where we see its wealth, as a very
01:30diverse civilization. The Colombian people have 132 genes of different peoples of the world due to its geographic situation in
01:43the magnetic belt of the planet,
01:46and here will give us the possibility of understanding the same diversity of cultures that we have in our own
01:55blood, which are scattered in the geographical origins all over the planet. Latin America can be able to understand the
02:05world.
02:05And not only with a portion of this world, but it's the, it's the, it's the, the, the, the president
02:14of Gooding Day, what is she mean? Excellent president of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, Yamandu Orsi Martinez. Excellent, excellent,
02:24excellent president minister of Guyana, Mark Phillips. Excellent prime minister of St. Vincent and Grenadines,
02:34and vice president of the vice president of the vice president of the vice president of Colombia, Francia Marquez, honorable
02:40chiefs of the nations, ministers, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and representatives of the governments belonging to select Africa, international observers, ministers,
02:57and members of the national government,
03:02international media, and international media, and international media, and in general, all of the ones who are here with us
03:09in the high level forum, select Africa, Colombia, 2026. And with this, we hope that the forum of chiefs of
03:19states between Africa and Latin America will be able to produce itself here under,
03:24under the presidency of Uruguay and President Orsi. And with this, I hope we can go on a higher level,
03:34and I hope seeing the great potentials that the union amongst all of America, Latin America, Latin America, and the
03:45African Union, for the enormous amount of countries which are members of the UN,
03:50that we can have here with the UN, that we can have here as a focus of political power in
03:54the world, and it's reflecting the possibilities of humanity that will be placing itself under the principal subject of the
04:09political decisions of the world. And that's what I call a global democracy.
04:14And here, I think that the crisis of the UN has to be seen from two perspectives. One, its end,
04:24its collapse. It gets definanced, and basically, it can reach a paralysis of its lack of ability of resolving common
04:35problems of humanity, and the biggest one of all, the war.
04:39And here we have been here for a few years, and we can see how the wars flourish around the
04:46planet. Ukraine, the genocide of Gaza, and now, the conflict in the Middle East, Sudan.
04:56And nevertheless, the UN cannot impede this. It's a lack of power acting, and that's why it was not constructed
05:07for that. It was built, fundamentally, after World War II, so there wouldn't be any more wars.
05:13And now, what we have are wars. Now, perfectly, somebody was saying here, and the President of the United States
05:22was saying this, and he can say, without hesitation, that the UN is not working anymore.
05:30A world without the UN, without the multilateral possibility of discussing common problems, when the common problems are growing in
05:44such a way that they are endangering life itself of the human existence.
05:51For instance, like, for example, climate crisis, and you know Colombia nowadays is suffering incredibly in the north of the
05:59country.
06:01So this would be a counter sentence, and so we can say that the bigger the problems that bother humanity,
06:09there's these instruments of a common action.
06:12And now, following this path, we could lead to terrible conditions, and these terrible conditions are what we can see
06:22here, as they say, like the ears and the eyes of the animals they say in Colombia, but this would
06:32be the best way to get out of the crisis.
06:34So, and here we're seeing the lack of human capacity to solve the main problem, extension, that our children, our
06:46grandchildren won't be able to exist anymore in this beautiful planet.
06:52Now, according to the panels of scientists and their software, very complex software, for example, a company like Colombia, that
07:03you have seen here with its own diversity, great diversity of nature, it would be a desert by the year
07:142070.
07:16And the year 2070 is not so far away from the lives of our children.
07:21How would you see a desert-type Colombia by the year 2070?
07:25Or a luxury city who's bombarded here, like Dubai that is showing their issue, in a decade they would be
07:37having 50 degrees Celsius in temperature.
07:41The missiles that are now falling would be the least problem in relationship to the possibility of the existence under
07:5050 degrees Celsius with the amount of energy that would be needed to sustain life in a city where we
07:59wouldn't be able to take a walk in the streets.
08:03Now, human sustainability will continue appearing everywhere.
08:08Now, here the question that we're asking ourselves in here is the thesis of Marco Rubio, which was defended in
08:17the meeting of Munich about security and peace.
08:21And I couldn't be there, and the question is, is it valid?
08:25Marco Rubio said an academic thesis statement that is within the universities of the United States, which is defended primarily
08:38by a man called Saul Hupting, who proposed after the fall of the Berlin Wall that what would be appearing
08:47would not be the paradise of Fukuyama,
08:51but a new era of conflicts which were crossed by a war, a clash war, and conflictive encounters amongst human
09:03civilizations.
09:04Now, if the world is a war among civilizations that in one way is incarnating here, a war between religions
09:14and different histories here, and different origins here, and different ancestral origins here, and the array of human civilizations here,
09:25we have to prepare ourselves for a world war.
09:27And there has to be a question on the floor.
09:30And there has to be a question on the floor.
09:31What is the civilization that is predominating over the rest of the civilizations?
09:36Now, in a sentence like this, we are approaching very, very tightly to the same sentence of Ebers and Hitler,
09:45which was already inherited all the way from a European point of view, that the race, and you know there
09:54are no races in the world.
09:56And the superior race would be the white race, which would be equivalent to the Western and Christian civilization.
10:09So, over this speech in Europe that could sound, well, it could sound well in Europe, it was repeated over
10:1814 or 15 Latin American countries.
10:21Many of them, many of them, and I say it again, like Ecuador, like Bolivia, like Guatemala, we weren't there
10:31with immense proportions of their populations which are indigenous, with very high levels of migrations from other Latin American people.
10:47Now, so we would have to ask ourselves, if we were there in this meeting, if a Latin American president
10:55whose peoples are coming from Africa in a forced way and transforming themselves, transform the slaves with the highest, the
11:04highest proportions in America, or like in Brazil and in Colombia, of the Caribbean.
11:11The Caribbean, they would throw them away from the ships and they would never be slaves and they would never
11:18be slaves and they would configure new cultures that they would be connected with, like with the culture.
11:24And I want to call out here in San Andreas Island, and I want to call out here in San
11:29Andreas Island, and that I heard very well the story of President Ralph here in San Vincent and Granatines here
11:34in some meeting of SELEC.
11:37If a President, if a President, whose Quechua has its official language, and if the ancestral cultures of more than
11:4860,000 years ago in America, with art, like the one we see in Brazil from, you know, 30,000
11:57-year-old art, and the Amazon River, and what we see here in Colombia, in Chiriquete,
12:05which is 22,000-year-old art, which is 22,000 years old, what I call the Sistine Chapel of
12:12Prehistory, and generations that they were putting within the walls, the scenes through art, one and another generation over the
12:24same painting to show humanity, to transcend to the point that the inhabitants who lived there
12:33were not just simple animal hunters and survivors due to their meat, but they had families, they had a community,
12:44they danced, they sang, and they would talk amongst each other,
12:49and they would construct art before any Egyptian, before any European, and they were one single people from Alaska all
13:01the way to Patagonia, with no wars exchanging products that they would make back then.
13:08Now, if this, what I denominate as civilization, and which is right here in America, from a time before any
13:18European had arrived in here, this does not transform us, the ones who come from Latin America, by merging ourselves
13:30with Arabic, Latin, ancestral black bloods,
13:34into something that we wouldn't be able to denominators into something that we wouldn't be able to denominate as an
13:39Occidental and Christian civilization.
13:42Now, with this, we have to define ourselves. We had to put our head down because perhaps our grandfather came
13:52from Rome, or Madrid, or from Germany, but it was mixed with the black person, with the indigenous person,
14:03and we sang, and we sang, and this is our, this is a marvel, and we can dance anywhere in
14:09the world, because our blood is within the chains of any part of the world, and therefore, we can lay
14:18our head down,
14:18and therefore, we can't move our head down, and we can sing with a Latin who has the same blood.
14:23Which is diverse. And to think that we can be a part of an homogeneous civilization which is called Western
14:32and Christian.
14:34And I think Latin America wouldn't know what it is, and think we wouldn't have a reason to be here.
14:44I believe that there would be a need of having a select and think we wouldn't be called as Caribbean
14:51and have a Caribbean culture like mine or Andean like others or from the plains or from the jungle or
15:01from the sea with poets, literature and novels, which are not all exactly the same as the ones that can
15:08be written in Washington or New York.
15:12And not for me having a, for me having a culture that makes me reject the stories, the history that
15:20happened in North America and Europe.
15:23We also bring the blood of the Roman Empire and we have been influenced by it.
15:30We can also understand and drink whiskey and we can talk with the German philosophers, with Habermann who just died.
15:39And we can also read the poems of Walt Whitman, the anarchist, and we can know what happened to San
15:48Jacinto and how through his anarchy, they dared to die to defend the working class, the Aryan working class in
16:00Chicago or New York.
16:03We can understand the indigenous who are there and the black people, we can be as what was considered denominated
16:11this and I won't put the name of race, a world in which what is cosmic is part of our
16:19essence.
16:21We are not from the ground, we are cosmic, and considering this new situation that is being presented, I believe
16:30that Latin America and Africa must find their own identity.
16:35Not to close ourselves in a parish or in a tribe, but to talk to the world about another perception.
16:45Today is objectively clear how can we help the world.
16:52From here I tell Rubio, you're wrong, you're a Latino.
16:57And as a Latino, you can understand us, and we don't have to hide our roots, because I'm proud of
17:08being Latino.
17:09But being Latino doesn't mean just to vanquish one and the other.
17:17In Latin America, we have understood that despite some troubles, we have embraced each other as brothers and sisters, not
17:27to destroy the neighbor's house, not to kill the son of the mother through a missile.
17:35To distinguish that a man on a boat that is bringing an unlawful element, because has nothing else to eat
17:44in the Caribbean, doesn't deserve to have a missile that finishes his family and his suffering.
17:52But instead, by talking, we can find solutions.
17:56That's what I told Trump the day that I met him directly.
17:59We can understand each other if 70% of the electric generation matrix of the United States that is consuming
18:12oil and pollutes the environment can be replaced by three times the generation power of clean energies of South America.
18:25We just need to have some cables.
18:28We need an investment that is done only to bring on ships energy, and half of the problem of the
18:37climate crisis can be sorted out.
18:41And the same can be done with Africa and Europe.
18:44And the same can be done in Central Asia with China.
18:51So we can have a solution plan of some of the main issues of the humankind that has it on
19:00the edge of extension and the loss of our children and grandchildren.
19:03And it's to clean the energy matrix of the world with clean energies based in sun, in wind, in water,
19:12in geothermal.
19:15Why aren't we working in that plan that sets the end, and the plan can work with this, and not
19:27to throw missiles one to the other?
19:30Kill babies as if it fills with gallons in the chest of someone, a genocide in Gaza.
19:42What do we do being together with genocide?
19:45What do we do telling the genocide that we are bringing army, Latin American armies, to help another?
19:55We are going to kill them, or are we there to request to demand that the peace is there with
20:04Mexico, with Brazil, with France?
20:08Colombia has looked for agreements with the African Union, through the president of Burundi, with which I talked yesterday.
20:18Why don't we demand an immediate ceasefire?
20:23Their responsibilities will appear later on.
20:27Who should first?
20:30Is the Gaza genocide that we have here that is bringing to destruction of everywhere with this, with the enormous
20:40buildings.
20:41That if it wasn't the beginning of a crime against humanity, that if we had to wait for the negotiation
20:51and not to activate a missile,
20:53any responsibility that comes now, humanity needs an immediate ceasefire, so that the word is the only thing that is
21:10tantamount to the balance of the dollar or the money that is the multitude on the streets.
21:21And if we want to change the conflict to economic catastrophe, and even to a possible world war, as we
21:35saw in the war in Ukraine, humanity must demand everything with words and on the streets, an immediate ceasefire.
21:46So that this space of talking, of putting the words on the table in a tranquil manner, without waiting that
21:57at the end of the meeting, the human body is totally destroyed for something that comes from a drone or
22:05from a missile, we can effectively find solutions to the different elements.
22:12To know that we hope that we hope that the environment is a place that has all Africa and all
22:23Latin America can be all, and the huge planet, the full planet can be all, because the nuclear war, a
22:32nuclear weapon is only something for blackmail.
22:36If you don't believe in the same thing that I do, I'm going to blackmail you, and we are not
22:40here to think the same, but to be different.
22:43The only way in which we can create a global democracy is through diverse humankind, and this is working with
22:55the different nations, and the multilaterality has to move towards a different stage that is nothing else but the meeting
23:05of the humanity through the civilizations.
23:09I would answer to Marco Rubio, that I know that he is not very fond of me, that the main
23:17thesis of this time of the humanity is not how the Eastern West white civilization is defended, the Christian, like
23:28the old crusades.
23:30This already went by.
23:32We don't want to destroy the universal culture of Europe.
23:36We believe that the European culture is sublime, and we acknowledge it as Latin American, as part of the humanity.
23:47We read Habermas, Jagger, and Marx.
23:50We read the best French philosophers.
23:52We acknowledge Foucault as one of those great philosophers, and Ortega Gasset in Spain, and the school of Frankfurt, and
24:02the school of Vienna, and we acknowledge the Russian culture as one of the most sublime expressions of the culture
24:10and the human art.
24:12But it's not the only art.
24:15That sublime art only has to be found, only has to meet the art of Asia, China, Africa, Latin America,
24:26and other parts of the world.
24:27It's a dialogue between civilizations, and not the facing between civilizations.
24:40Multilateralism is a meeting of the humanity and the diverse people of humanity looking for common solutions to the problems
24:49of humanity through a dialogue,
24:53our honest, sincere dialogue, acknowledging our differences, without having one group to try to defeat another, but instead acknowledging them,
25:06and knowing that through acknowledgment the different civilizations of the world, we can find the most efficient route to the
25:15solutions of the problems of the human existence.
25:18And not only to know that we can live on this planet, but together advocate to work for the sake
25:26of humanity that is taking life to the stars.
25:30And that can only be done if we are working together as brothers and sisters.
25:36So this meeting Africa select is part of the effort.
25:41We are going to have more on the meeting that comes next of the select Latin America to grant their
25:49presidency to the Republic of Uruguay is also part of this effort.
25:55It's not final meetings of the extension of multilaterality, but instead those are the initial meetings to set up a
26:07new unit of the humankind.
26:09Thank you so much, Vice President, for listening to me and to all of you.
26:14Thank you so much.
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