DANIEL : "The world, apart from this pandemic caused by the virus, has a much bigger problem, which has to do with Mother Earth, with Nature, with the balance that should exist on the planet"

Presidente Comandante Daniel receives credentials
from ambassadors and representatives of international organizations

December 15th 2020
Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, Families of this land of Dario, Diriangén, of Nicarao, of Sandino, land of indigenous roots, where in the midst of our multicolored process the roots of our ancestors are still present, still alive.

This afternoon, we are here in compliance with the provisions of our Constitution, that Constitution which we promulgated after the 1984 elections. These were the first elections after the Triumph of the Revolution.

Well, we went to elections, the electoral process was opened, but we were in the middle of a war, and the US government headed by President Reagan, what it did was take the decision to seek out the opposition that was already participating in the electoral process. There were several political forces, and one of these political forces grouped together many Parties, and when it seemed that everything was going normally, they received the directive, the order from the U.S. government to withdraw from the elections, because if they participated in the elections then the government would be legitimized and the war policy that President Reagan had against Nicaragua would be weakened; on the other hand, if they withdrew from the elections, then the government would be illegitimate enabling them to continue maintaining the conditions for trying to justify their intervention in Nicaragua.

Nicaragua has suffered multiple interventions, many of you must already know enough about the History of Nicaragua, and the persistence of United States incursions into Nicaragua, from the expansionists of the 19th Century, headed by William Walker and accompanying Walker some soldiers that were part of the army of the southern United States that would take part in the war between the North and the South, among them was Colonel Byron Cole. And those soldiers went, without any problem, from the United States of America to Nicaragua.

But what was the origin of that dispute, that intervention, of the United States' desire to dominate Nicaragua? Well, the way across, the passage, or in other words, the Canal. They found it here, ever since the arrival of the Spanish, which was the first invasion we suffered and where resistance was made, led by the Nicaraguan caciques and Diriangén, already the Spanish were saying, looking for the passage, when they found these territories while looking for India, there they were, having crossed all over this Continent, looking for the passage to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

And in the territories explored at that time they found that Nicaragua had the way through, because there was the San Juan River, which ran through a good part of the territory, and the river flowed into the Great Lake; and so the maritime route was already made by Nature, made by God: the river, the lake, and then a small strait of 14, 16 kilometers in the Isthmus of Rivas, which had to be crossed at that time when the transit began. Yes, a transit began and that maritime transit was the result of the Gold Rush in the United States.

Look at how things relate to each other, the US was a great power, at that time the United States was already beginning to develop as a great power, already disputing territories in our Americas, in Cuba, against Spain, when Spain continued to control Cuba and when other territories were controlled by other European countries; in effect Europe was moving its contradictions here, to the Americas.

And in the case of this discovery, with the Gold Rush in the United States, they found it was faster and safer to make the long trip from New York, by passing through the San Juan River and then across the Lake, and since the Isthmus of Rivas was not yet broken, a stagecoach completed the passage to where another of the American Company's ships was waiting.

In other words, it was American companies that saw the business opportunity, for their benefit of course, moving thousands of Americans from the East Coast to the West Coast, where they were in search of gold... The Gold Rush, and they found that crossing the US territory in stagecoaches, horses, wagon trains, well, it was highly risky, dangerous, crossing desert areas, and there was still some Indian resistance, and then too criminals who assaulted them.

On the other hand, on this route there was no problem, and there were no major accidents, they were simply moving, both East and West; that is, from New York to San Francisco, and from San Francisco to New York.

That's where U.S. politics began to take hold in our country, not in a respectful relationship, not in a commercial relationship, but simply out of the desire to seize political power in Nicaragua so as to control the territory.

And along came William Walker leading a group of slave owners, veterans of the ongoing conflict between the North and the South. And they came at the invitation of one of the political parties here, opposed to another party and which between them had the country divided into two governments, one in León, and another in Granada, in León the Liberals, in Granada the Conservatives, who were shooting each other every day.

In the middle of those contradictions the Liberals, who were supposed to be a more progressive political force, made an appeal, calling on Walker to help them militarily to defeat the Conservatives. But once Walker was here, he made himself President of Nicaragua, executed many of those who had brought him here, and the first thing he did was to establish slavery in Nicaragua.

Nicaragua at that time had little experience of independence, 1821 and this all happened in 1854... 1854, note where this confrontation comes from, and there was a struggle, a battle against Walker. But when Walker took over the Presidency, there was the diplomatic representative, the US Ambassador, endorsing Walker's Presidency. They already felt they owned Nicaragua!

But the battle against Walker began... The Central Americans were clear that if Walker dominated Nicaragua, he was going to take over Central America and then take over Mexico, because he wanted to return to the United States again to consolidate or try to consolidate the more conservative, slave-owning forces.

The battle was on and that's where the anti-expansionist, anti-Yankee sentiment was born in Nicaragua. That is where it was born, in those battles, in those battles where in the Hacienda of San Jacinto, when the munitions ran out, Sergeant Andres Castro took a stone and brought down the Yankee who was attacking with his repeating rifles.

And there the first anti-Yankee Hymns appeared... "Death to the Yankee thirsty for gold!" There those Hymns came out, they were not inspired by Lenin, they were not inspired by Marx, nor by Engels; it was the People themselves, with all their Dignity, David confronting Goliath, and Victory was achieved by the Central American Countries joining together, and Walker had to be rescued by the US Navy, and when he was already in retreat, what did the Yankee do? He set fire to the city of Granada and put up a sign there that said "Granada was here". He left that sign up there.

Then the American authorities took him away, protected him, took him to the United States, but he soon entered Central America again. No longer wanting to enter via Nicaragua, he went to enter through Honduras, and in Honduras he was captured and shot. There, buried in the Trujillo area of Honduras, lies William Walker, the first Yankee pirate, whom the US of course treated with tolerance because he represented US expansionism. There was no indictment, he was not punished for committing such a crime against an entire nation, instead when he returned to the United States he was received there as a hero. That was was the birth of that feeling, the feeling was born there and then.

So the Yankees saw the possibilities of the Canal, they began to do studies with their engineers, the Corps of Engineers of the U.S. Army. And we have the documents, the notes of the President of the United States at that time, sending the report to the North American Congress and first the note of the Congress telling the President to gather that information for building the Canal across Nicaragua.

And then came the Liberal Revolution in Nicaragua. The Liberals were there, but there had not been a Liberal Revolution, and so came the Liberal Revolution inspired by the French Revolution. General José Santos Zelaya who led that Revolution did so based on the principles of the French Revolution, and that Liberal Revolution naturally clashed with the plans the United States had to dominate Nicaragua.

At that time, it was the policy of the United States not to allow Europe to penetrate this area. The contradiction was already there, which was clear later in the war with Spain over Cuban territory; the contradiction was already there, and it was developing, steadily developing, and Zelaya sought relations with the European countries, even with France.

France showed interest in the Canal and the United States did not like that, of course. And on the other hand there was England that had taken over the Caribbean Zone of Nicaragua, and Spain had not been able to mobilize and move its control to the Caribbean which was under British rule. Why? Because the English also wanted to dominate Nicaragua.

If the United States was no more than the child of England, the child of Europe; it was the European emigrants led by the British who arrived in North American territory and made themselves owners of territories that did not belong to them. So then they also felt entitled to dominate all these territories and set their sights on the Caribbean area. Why? because that was the way across and they made innumerable incursions along the San Juan River, among them one led by Admiral Nelson.

Numerous raids were made there looking for a way to take El Castillo at the entrance of San Juan River, on the approaches to the city of San Carlos and the Lake; it was a strategic point where the Spanish held that castle, they had built that Castle, and when the English tried to take El Castillo there they were defeated; the one who was able to advance the most was Nelson, he managed to climb some way around the back of the hills around El Castillo, but later he had to give up.

So the great powers fought Nicaragua, that is, the English were simply fighting Spain, that is, they transferred their own contradictions, their wars, their expansionist and imperialist practices to our Latin America and the Caribbean. Yes, because we all know the enormous contradictions among the Europeans, how Europe developed through profound contradictions and wars.

And wars for what? Not simply to dominate other European nations, but so that from there they could dominate overseas territories in Asia, in Africa and in Latin America. Then came the two World Wars, that is the great lesson that Europe leaves behind on how to handle its contradictions, when the victims are those developing countries that were colonies of Europe in Asia, in Africa and in Latin America.

But they made it all about Zelaya looking for another route for the Canal, or all about Zelaya applying the death penalty the same as it was applied in the United States for minor crimes. He ordered the death penalty to two Americans, yes, who committed an act of terrorism blowing up a ship here in Nicaragua; Zelaya captured them and had them shot, and there the United States saw its opportunity to bring its troops to Nicaragua.

The note from the U.S. Foreign Minister, Philander Knox, was enough, the Knox Note, where he told Zelaya that he had to leave the Presidency and that U.S. warships were already heading to Nicaragua. This was during the years of the Liberal Revolution in Nicaragua, but the final shock came in 1912.

In 1912 the Yankee troops disembarked at the Port of Corinto, and begin advancing on Leon, on Managua, and then to Masaya where there was resistance from a group of patriots led by General and Doctor Benjamin Zeledon, a Liberal, a patriot who simply could not accept the humiliation of seeing his country occupied by the troops of the United States of America.

He gave battle there in El Coyotepe and La Barranca, and the colonels leading the US combat troops sent letters to Zeledon, telling him he would be spared if he surrendered. But instead he responded with a letter sent to his wife and children, so that they would understand why he would have to give his life: Because by giving his life he was saving the dignity and life of Nicaragua, and the hopes of the Nicaraguan People. And on October 4, 1912, the very day of his birthday, Zeledon fell, and then they dragged his body through the streets, to sow fear and terror among Nicaraguans.

What were the Yankee troops for in Nicaragua? Well, all that led to the imposition of a Treaty on Nicaragua, the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty, Chamorro the sell out traitor, Bryan the U.S. Government representative, under which Nicaragua agreed not to allow any work that had to do with the construction of an interoceanic passage, of a Canal, unless approved by the North American Government.

So it was approved by the Nicaraguan Congress, after an election totally managed by the United States, where in the end the political parties had to resort to the US High Command and to the American Embassy, to decide who had won; political parties accepting the expansionist policy of the United States.

So the intervention was installed and then, in time, came the battle of Sandino against the intervention. And what was Sandino called? A bandit. And what did Gabriela Mistral call him? The Divine Bandit. And the battle against Sandino used air power, that is, here they were using air power already in those years to fight Sandino.

Then came the betrayal. When Sandino sought peace and accepted it, he decided to come down to Managua from the mountains where he was with his troops, running the risk of being killed, because Somoza had already been put in place by the Yankees.

He was received at the Presidential House, given a dinner at the Presidential House, and after the dinner he was seen off by the President, the daughters of the President, the President's wife, and when he was coming down the Central Avenue, passing in front of the Field of Mars which was the base of the National Guard, there he was detained and captured with three other comrades of his Command, and then they were shot, after already having signed the Peace Accords. Somoza the murderer even had his picture taken with Sandino after the Peace Accords, and they embrace each other. And there is Somoza, put in place by the Yankees, so as later to kill Sandino.

This might make you understand why in Nicaragua the People, the majority of the People have anti-Yankee, anti-imperialist feelings. We are not enemies of the American People! As we have said, we have never attacked the United States, we have been victims of a thousand aggressions by the United States, including one of elections held in a Nicaragua occupied by the U.S. troops, which was the height of humiliation to which a country can be subjected.

Why? Because the elections were organized by a Supreme Electoral Council composed of a U.S. High Command. There was not a single Nicaraguan in it! U.S. officers at the head of the Supreme Electoral Council, and then the Electoral Councils in each Department had gringo officers too, from the troops installed here in Nicaragua. And they were the ones who counted the votes, and they were the ones who decided who had achieved victory.

You can see how this humiliation, this aggression against the dignity of an entire people, can only provoke indignation in the generations that have been grown up later, indignation even in those who say nothing but who in their heart hold back their indignation against the aggression of this great power.

Then came the continuation of the Sandinista Struggle, Sandino's Red and Black Flag seeking to vindicate the nation, seeking how to raise up with pride the Nation's Blue and White flag that had been thrown at the invader's feet, and the Revolution triumphed.

And as I said earlier, in the midst of the war we approved the first Constitution. Then the elections in 1984, when they wanted a part of the opposition not to participate in order to take away the legitimacy of the elections, but after those Elections the national Constituent Assembly was installed, the population was consulted and there we established the principles of Political Pluralism, the Mixed Economy and Non-Alignment in international politics. And we had already joined the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, just after the Triumph of the Revolution.

It has been permanent upheaval, the Yankees refuse to concede, and I have said over and over again to the American emissaries who have come here, with whom we have talked: For you the only good election is an election won, either fairly or by cheating, by the people you are financing and supporting; otherwise, no election is any good. At least in the case of Nicaragua.

Because we, the Sandinistas, an armed Revolution, which came to power by force of arms, having all the Electoral Power in our hands in the year 1990, it was not the Yankees then but the People and it was the Sandinista People who formed the Supreme Electoral Council, some representatives of the other political parties participating in the Elections were integrated too. And we went to those elections in 1990.

On the one hand there was Nicaragua, the People supporting the Sandinista Front; on the other hand there was the United States, President Bush, openly telling the Nicaraguan People that if the Sandinista Front continued in government, he was going to continue United States policy against Nicaragua (President Bush had been the Vice President of President Reagan, but had already taken office) and financing that campaign of terror, in which we suffered more than 50,000 victims in the war, from 1979 to 1990.

We went to the elections and found that the result came out against us, and we understood why. There was so much suffering in the People, and the threat of the continuation of the war, that the same families of young Sandinistas who had fallen in battle, with tears in their eyes, voted against the Sandinista Front. Because the alternative offered by the Yankee threat was either peace or the continuation of the war. If you went with the Sandinista Front, the war continued, if you went with the opposition, run by the Yankees, financed by the Yankees, in the service of the Yankees, then there would be Peace.

That was what decided it. They got 51%, while we were left with 38% in those elections, and we don't doubt them, unlike what we are seeing and what has been seen in the United States of America in these days, and which has been seen in other moments as well, in the election  where Al Gore confronted Bush Jr.

Look how much time has passed in the United States since their election day, finally now there is an official result, which gives the victory to the Democrats, to President Biden, and the President of the United States of America who remains the President until January 20th, does not recognize it, and makes accusations of fraud. On the other hand here, we, the Sandinistas, are accused of being "anti-democratic".

In that February 25th election, the results were already being made known at midnight, with some votes missing from the deepest mountain areas, and a tendency was already being marked that we were not winning the election. And we didn't hesitate, at five in the morning we were at an event at the Olof Palme Center, we were there to announce that we recognized the results.

Then, as the opposition, having the most powerful party here in the country, we sought to make a constructive opposition, and it never occurred to us to use our strength to overthrow the governments that succeeded us, because for the first time in the history of this country, democratic changes of government began to take place, first the government headed by Mrs. Chamorro, then came the candidacy of Dr. Alemán and received all the support of extreme right wing forces, and received all the support of the US government, and received all the support of the media, and today they are ashamed of Dr. Alemán. And with all that support, with all that support, he won the elections. We questioned the Electoral Process, because already then they had changed the correlation of forces in the Supreme Electoral Council, something that is normal, the party that wins seeks to change the correlation of forces in the key powers. They do it in the United States and they do it in any country, with the difference that here the Electoral Power in Nicaragua accepted the result in 1990, the Sandinista Electoral Power accepted an election that it could have stolen, and it did not do so, it recognized the results.

And the next stage of 17 years was opened; after the government of Dr. Alemán came the government of Ing. Bolaños, and again we made a constructive opposition. It did not occur to us, having the strength to mobilize the people and overthrow any of these governments, it never occurred to us, even in a moment of tension with the government that happened to us in 1990, with the government of Mrs. Chamorro, when they were trying to take away all the revolutionary achievements from the peasants, from the workers, to take away the lands that we had given to the peasants with the Agrarian Reform, and housing for the workers.

Back then, there was a protest by the workers, and we advised the government: Well, there is nothing for it but to negotiate, negotiate. Negotiations began, and the Workers' protest continued.

There came a moment when, the one who was the Prime Minister of the Government of Mrs. Chamorro, who was handling all these situations, Ing. Antonio Lacayo, may he rest in peace, we met with them in one room, in another room the Workers were debating with the government Ministers, debating the issues that had to do with their rights, both the urban Workers and the rural Workers. And there we were with the Ing. Lacayo and other Ministers, insisting on seeking an Agreement there, respecting the basic achievements, the basic rights of the Workers, because at that point there was no other way out.

Then, already exhausted, Ing. Lacayo arrived and said to me: Daniel, Doña Violeta says that I should give you the keys to the Presidency, and that you should take over the Presidency because she is no longer up for it. I answered: No, we are not taking the keys of the Presidency, we are going to take the keys of the Presidency through votes, here you are the ones who have the responsibility to reach a solution to this problem, and to negotiate. In the end the negotiation was achieved and the government of Mrs. Chamorro was able to conclude without major problems.

As I was saying, then came Doctor Aleman, then came Ing. Enrique Bolaños, and every time these elections came around here we had representatives of the United States Government. I remember that one of the most renowned and powerful representatives sent by the United States for the 2006 Elections was General Colin Powell, who was then the Secretary of Defense of the United States.

General Colin Powell came here, met with the President and made declarations, making it clear that the United States supported the "democratic" Candidates, and that it did not support Sandinismo, and that a return of Sandinismo was going to be rejected by American politics. He said so calm as you like with Nicaragua's President at his side. That happened in every election.

Well, we were not in government, we could do no more than protest, criticizing that attitude of coming to humiliate, shaming our country when a Yankee emissary, who is a senior US government official, comes to talk that way. Anyway, in the end we won the elections.

And after winning the election, well, again, history is repeating itself. The US is not happy, they have not been happy in spite of the fact that here in Nicaragua, based on our experience all the country's bloody struggles, and the experience lived also by business people, by workers, by the media,  we managed to form an Agreement, an Alliance between business people, when naturally business people always vote for the right-wing political parties, finance right-wing parties, between them and the workers, urban producers, rural producers, traders, all of them, for what? To carry out a government policy whereby any proposed legislation that could cause controversy had to be discussed at that table, from there they had to reach agreements, and only then could it go to the National Assembly.

At that time we were negotiating with international financial organizations, so we had to reach a consensus to defend a sustainable program for the country, not one that would sink the country. And this resulted in Nicaragua being able to reduce poverty and extreme poverty, strengthen the education system, the health system, and make progress in all areas, and business people were winners, business people were doing well, they were winning, but there are always groups, the groups you'd expect, that condemned this alliance.

The country's growth was the best indicator, the country had sustainable growth from 2008, after the first year of the Government, until 2016; even after the 2008 financial crisis that shook the world's economies, the North American economy and the European economy, we managed, even under those conditions, to achieve growth and not contract, while other countries had lower growth. We had achieved great strength in that union, with no compromise at election time, when of course business people were going to vote for their candidates, and promote their candidates.

That, of course, was a bad example for the region and beyond the Central American region. Because when representatives of Latin American and Caribbean governments came here, they asked us: And how did you manage to reach this understanding, this alliance with business people and workers, because we tried to do it and it is not possible?

And in Nicaragua, the Presidents who came with all the support of the business people, were unable to reach this type of agreement, this type of alliance... They couldn't! After they had promised this to their business people, they couldn't!

So they asked us: How did you do it? What did you do? And we explained that it is actually established by law that the government of Nicaragua is obliged, regardless of who is in government, to promote this type of Agreement and this type of Alliance; it is no longer a matter of the will of whoever governs, but it is in the Constitution of our country. We make this clear, as it is written in a reform that was made to the Constitution.

But then came the conspiracy and there came the violent protest; it was not the peaceful protest that we see in other countries, where we see no one with rifles, except in the United States, that those who support President Trump are walking around with rifles, machine guns, which they should not! And they walk around in military fatigues.

Here there appeared armed protest, with rifles, shotguns, attacks on State institutions, destruction of hospitals and the burning of hospitals, destruction of schools and the burning of schools, destruction of Town Halls and the burning of Town Halls. These were their objectives, seeking to disrupt everything that had been built for the benefit of the poor, for the benefit of the People. Because if anyone goes to a public hospital it is the poor, working people, they are the ones who go to public schools as well. Because we re-established the principle, which had been broken under previous Governments, of free education, free health care. We established those principles, so then schools multiplied, hospitals multiplied, health centers multiplied, but they set out to set fire to them, to destroy them, and we prevented the police from leaving teir stations, which was really difficult. Yes, the police were holding out facing armed attacks in their stations, every day.

And we have a lot of police officers who were killed. At the checkpoints where the coup activists were present, police who were in civilian clothes, who were passing by and were discovered when they were searched, or Sandinistas who were found with their party card, were immediately tortured, and then shot. And the coup activists would film the moment of capture, they would film the moment that they were being sprayed with fuel, they would film the moment that they were being set on fire and that they were burning, and they would publish it on social media.

The coup activists did so themselves, and everyone knows who they were, because they didn't hide their names, or their social, economic or religious status, they didn't hide it. They felt that they had already defeated the Revolution, a Revolution of Reconciliation, of Unity, and one that was giving extraordinarily good results.

Yes, they did that with dozens of police officers, hundreds of police officers were seriously injured, some lost an arm, some lost a leg, they were crippled, police women were also murdered, not to mention students, teachers who were identified as Sandinistas, murdered, and they were marking the houses of Sandinista families so that they could later arrive there to work out how to kill them.

And we bided our time, we endured, we were already enduring the People's demands, while the international campaign was fierce: We were the "assassins", and the coup activists the "peaceful protesters". But there came a moment when the population, the very same people who sympathized with the hard-line parties in opposition to the Sandinista Front, began to cry out, where are the police? Where is the State? Until finally, after months, after going through countless dialogues where we proposed they suspend the road blocks they maintained with armed people, suspend the attacks against the police, and the attacks against the schools, and the attacks against health posts, the attacks against families, and against media.

Here, they broadcast happily when they burned down a radio station, broadcast it gleefully as a great Victory; and every time they killed a police officer and tortured them, they also broadcast with glee in social media and some news media. An aberrant situation!

And I said, well we have to have the patience of Job, meanwhile, yes, facing the responsibility of the deaths, how many dead, dozens of dead, and the destruction of public property everywhere. Well, in the end there was nothing left but, well, for the police to impose order, which is the role of the police.

Here it came to the point that, the US Ambassador, there was a US Ambassador here at that time, who of course encouraged all these types of crimes; there came a moment when she was driving to her residence and at one of the roadblocks she heard shots, and it was that the coup activists had stopped an escort vehicle of hers to take possession of the weapons, and they also took possession of the US Ambassador's vehicle. Two vehicles.

Then the Ambassador came and began calling and telling Compañera Rosario: But why don't you impose order? What are the police for? This is an obligation of the State. Ah, yes, but on the other hand, they were saying that the police should not go out, that the police should be kept in their quarters, while crimes and destruction were being committed all over the country.

And when the police did set out to impose order, then once again the campaign intensified, and the human rights organizations, those of both the United Nations and the OAS, simply no Sandinistas died here, no police died here. They have not taken the trouble to investigate, what they did was conduct interviews where without any foundation they accused the police, the Sandinista Front, of having killed citizens who had died in hospital for other reasons.

In other words, citizens may have died in a hospital after being there for days with a kidney or heart condition, but even so they were put on the list of people killed and the human rights agencies simply took it as true, but they also accused the hospital doctors of not having given that person medical assistance. It was a savage campaign that went to the extreme of convening the UN Security Council to seek a condemnation of Nicaragua. Of course, that condemnation did not happen.

In this land where you now are, beloved brother and sister Ambassadors, in this land, you will have to deal with those who every day accuse us of denying freedom of the press. Well, look at the television channels and you will see that there are television programs that are very critical of the government, even saying all kinds of falsehoods, and well, that is no longer freedom of expression, but rather wanton scandal. Let them shout what they want!

And you can see newspapers and news media, both newspapers that are physically circulating, and news outlets that now circulate on social media saying whatever they want, they invent all kinds of things.

Of course this is not only a problem of Nicaragua, we know that this is a global problem, the way in which communication is being manipulated, and above all, how it is forcing many governments among those countries that claim to be the most "democratic" in the world, such as the Europeans and the United States, to take measures and adopt laws, in order to control this type of information.

Right now England is proposing, yesterday, or the day before, laws seeking to regulate and stop immediately news being circulated when what they are doing is promoting hatred, violence and instability, in any country.

So this is the reality here in Nicaragua, beloved Nicaraguan sisters and brothers, and beloved Ambassadors. A reality that is part of the history of all our Peoples. All of our Peoples are living complex situations. There is no country on the planet that is perfect, it does not exist, and it has not even been possible to achieve compliance with the principles to which all nations signed up, including the United States, after World War 2, the United Nations Charter. That Charter is there, but it is not fully applied, the UN Charter is not fully complied with.

It is also clear that the world, apart from this pandemic caused by the virus, has a much bigger problem, which has to do with Mother Earth, with Nature, with the balance that should exist on the planet, where the human species is led and driven by the elites that have economic power but who do not promote social and economic sustainability for those Peoples who do not have the wealth the rich countries accumulate, but some of these countries still think that they are going to be saved. And this problem is what we all know as Climate Change.

As regards the Paris Agreement, we have gone backwards. We hope, as the President-elect of the United States, President-elect Biden, announced, that the United States will join the Paris Accord and that we will really make progress on the Paris Accord. Even though it is already being said, and was said when the Paris Accord was signed, that the goals set out there were insufficient. That is being said, not by people who are simply campaigning with a lot of love, a lot of feeling... No! Its is being said by scientists, by scientists of developed countries, said by scientists that at NASA are working and seeing what is happening and the speed with which these changes are progressing, and therefore, destruction will continue to progress, not the destruction of the planet, in the end, but the destruction of Life, the destruction of the human species. The planet simply suffers, every day causing more and more frequent natural disasters.

Many of you have arrived in the middle of two hurricanes here in the Central American region, two hurricanes that came through Nicaragua, two hurricanes, the first one of force four, the second one of force five. Well, hurricanes have come to Nicaragua before, but not so often and much less two hurricanes of that power arriving one after the other.

On behalf of our People, I would like to acknowledge and thank the cooperation, the solidarity of peoples and governments who, beyond political and ideological differences, have contributed to addressing the damage left by these hurricanes, in Nicaragua, in Honduras, in Guatemala, and in the worst affected countries.

And I thank the international organizations of the United Nations, from whom we have received Credentials, that have also acted very quickly, they have even been present in the Caribbean zone, some Ambassadors have also visited the Caribbean Zone, demonstrating sensibility, concern, looking at how to bring a little relief to these Peoples, to these zones where we really do have disasters, loss of houses, destruction of houses, in the Caribbean and in all the country, because even the southern zone was affected. Here the peripheral municipalities were also affected, in the center, in the North, and of course in the Caribbean.

I want to conclude, a celebration for us all, I am sure that we all celebrated, all governments, all Peoples celebrated, the just decision, which is a moral affirmation, the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the World Food Program. So congratulations, beloved comrade Ambassador of the World Food Programme. The award was formalized by videoconference on December 10th, that is, five days ago... Congratulations, Congratulations and Congratulations! Welcome everyone!