Speech by Colombian President Gustavo Petro at the 79th UN General Assembly

"The democratic project of mankind is dying with life, while the racists, the supremacists, those who stupidly believe that the Aryans are the superior race, are preparing to dominate the world by writing the terror of bombs on the peoples."

My daughter Antonella Petro just sent me a paragraph with which she wants me to start my speech, so with your respect I will read it. It is the paragraph of a 15-16-year-old girl and it goes like this:

"Today I am proud to present myself before you as the president of the heart of the earth. This is how our indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada called my beautiful country. Geographically speaking, it makes sense for us to be the heart of the world. However, if we are the heart, we have to set an example of unity, total peace, and preservation of nature. If the heart works, it is a breakthrough. However, all other parts of the body are important. If one fails, so will the rest. That is why from the heart of the earth we invite all countries to make an act of conscience, to put aside the greed that is killing human beings and Mother Earth and take a step towards total peace."

Up to that point, my daughter carried out her orders. And I continue.

Ladies and gentlemen presidents of the world, in this room a president's ability to communicate depends on the amount of dollars he or she has in the budget, in the number of warplanes they have, and ultimately in the capacity of their country to destroy humanity. The power of a country in the world is no longer exercised by the type of economic or political system or ideas it conveys, but by the power to destroy the life of mankind.

Those of us who do not have that power of destruction, on the contrary, those of us who have the power to sustain life on the planet, speak without much attention being paid and often perhaps only to our own people. That is why we are not listened to when we vote to stop the genocide in Gaza. Even though we are the majority of the presidents of the world and represent the majority of humanity, we are not listened to by a minority of presidents who can stop the bombing. In other words, we are not being listened to by the presidents of the countries that can destroy humanity.

If we call for debt to be swapped for climate action, we are not heard by powerful minorities. If we call for an end to war to focus on the rapid transformation of the world's economy in order to save life and the human species, we are not heard either. It is the power to destroy life that gives volume to the voice on the floor of the United Nations and brings together the majority of its representatives and delegates.

The voice of the nations is not heard and we ask to unite human effort in pursuit of existence. Here we speak, but we are not heard. However, perhaps we no longer speak so that they will listen to us and dialogue with the presidents of world power, but so that the peoples of the world will listen.

Things are worse today than they were a year ago. Eleven million hectares have been burned in the Amazon rainforest in just one month due to global warming and the climate crisis. Scientists said that if the Amazon rainforest burns, we will reach the point of climatic no return, where human decisions to stop the collapse will no longer be effective. Well, the Amazon rainforest is burning. The bells are already tolling for the whole planet, for you, for us, for life and humanity, as Ernest Hemingway said. The bells are tolling not only for you but for all life.

The end has begun. A year ago I called for a peace conference for Palestine on this very spot, before the first bomb had even gone off. Today we have 20,000 children murdered under the bombs while the presidents of human destruction countries are laughing in these corridors, assisted by the communication power of the global media, which today are owned by big capital, rearrange the world without democracy, without freedom.

The democratic project of mankind is dying with life, while the racists, the supremacists, those who stupidly believe that the Aryans are the superior race, are preparing to dominate the world by writing the terror of bombs on the peoples. The control of humanity on the basis of barbarism is under construction and its demonstration is Gaza, Lebanon. When Gaza dies, all humanity will die.

It turns out that God's people were not the people of Israel, not the people of the United States of America, but God's people are all of humanity and the children of Gaza, those were humanity, God's chosen people. They are killing God's chosen people, the children of humanity. There is a reason for this Armageddon of the contemporary world.

There is a logic to the senselessness of governments that applaud genocide and do not take quick action to shift economies towards decarbonization. The logic is not in the political world or at this lectern where all the presidents speak. The logic is outside, and it is called social inequality.

Oxfam says that the richest 1% of humanity has more wealth than 95% of all humanity combined. It is in this inequality, the greatest in our history as a species, that we find the logic of the massive destruction unleashed in the climate crisis and the logic of the bombs dropped by a criminal like Netanyahu on Gaza. Netanyahu is a hero for the richest 1% of humanity since he is able to show that people are destroyed under bombs.

If we measure wealth in CO2 emitted and not in dollars, we have the answer. The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for the advancing climate crisis and opposes ending the world of oil and coal since it is their own source of wealth. Politicians, including the presidents of the most powerful countries on earth, simply obey them.

They pay for the campaigns. They are the owners of the media. They are the ones who hide the truth of science as in the movie "Don't Look Up." They are the ones who say what is thought, what is said, and what should be banned and silenced. In their power of prohibition and censorship, they shout "long live freedom, dammit," but it is only the freedom of the richest 1% of the world population that in its mercantile and liberal sentiment leads us to the destruction of the atmosphere and of life. The free market was not freedom as they said but the maximization of death.

That richest 1% of humanity, the powerful global oligarchy, is the one that allows bombs to be dropped on the women, elderly, and children of Gaza, Lebanon, or Sudan. Or the economic blockade of rebellious countries that do not fit in their domination like Cuba or Venezuela because they need to show their power of destruction to the remaining 99% of humanity so that they will let them continue to direct the power of the world and to appropriate and accumulate more and more of their wealth.

The global oligarchy is leading humanity to its own extinction, and that is where politics pays obeisance to it, completely abrogating the idea of freedom and the power of the people, the idea of democracy. The question to be asked from this rostrum is whether the people will allow it. There is no more time; governments are incapable of stopping the extinction of life. Today we must choose whether it is life or greed, whether it is humanity or capital.

I can only say to the peoples of the world from the weak voice of a country without weapons of mass destruction, without dollars, but beautiful for its natural and cultural diversity, the country of beauty and butterflies of all colors, that it is no longer the time of governments but the time of the peoples. The time is over, either we raise the flag of life, or our towns will be filled with cemeteries as the epidemic showed us. It is the time of the people and we must locally act and globally coordinate.

Fossil capital cannot go on. People must stop it, the poison spewed into the atmosphere is fatal, and the smokestacks that emit it must stop. Every corner of the world can be a battle against these smokestacks.

A century ago, a red flag was raised in the hands of the workers' multitudes speaking of a revolution against capital. That world is over, lost in the gigantism of the states and the absence of freedom, the red flag has not found its place in the history of humanity. But today, with all the more reason, no longer to defend a class, a system of ideas, but to defend collective life, the raised flag is needed again, perhaps no longer red but of all colors, a flag of all humanity to defend its own existence on the planet.

We are the most advanced of life, intelligent life. Intelligent life must be defended, and other forms of life must be defended from a global oligarchy that's attacking it.

A new wealth must be built, no longer based on oil, but on intensity, on the creative and free work that allows the very high productivity now achieved, including artificial intelligence, which must be controlled by a world public power. Productivity allows free and creative time. The network junction of human brains, the greatest power ever achieved, and this neural network of humanity is the one that can allow us to win with the flag raised, the flag of life.

I no longer speak to Biden, Macron, Charles, Xi Jinping, or Putin. From China, I pick up its idea of a dialogue between civilizations, from Europe its social pact project, from the United States its love for original democracy from its founding fathers, from South America its hurricane diversity, its standard-bearer rider, its Simon Bolivar, from Africa its drums that call us to communicate with the spirits of nature, from Jesus the idea of universal love, its union of light with life. From these civilizing sources and more that are in all the peoples of the world, we must take the forces of the greatest battle for life in human history. That battle is undoubtedly a world revolution.

We need to build the greatest army of all time, composed of warriors of life. The army of life will not have the weapons of the global oligarchy, it will not have nuclear weapons, it will not compete for weapons, it will not have the money of the banks, it will not have the power to destroy the children in the genocides of the oligarchy, but it will have the greatest power of all—the power of a united humanity that will not let its existence on the planet be taken away from it.

There is only one infinitesimal point of life in millions of light-years around the universe, and it is called Earth, and on it, there is a superior life, which is intelligent life—humanity.

We cannot let this pearl of the universe be extinguished. Without life, only inert darkness would dominate, and it is that inert darkness that fills the heart and soul of the global oligarchy and its clay idols. It is up to humanity to do battle; it is the time of the people.

If governments could not, as shown here, and decided to play with bombs and senseless wars and kill boys and girls, power games, then it is time to take the solution of the great problems of humanity into the hands of the people themselves—the simple people of humanity. Instead of turning to insensitive rulers, let us turn to us, the common people.

Today, human knowledge is more collective than ever. Perhaps the word socialism today has a new meaning. Brains, which are the real basis of work, are today more connected than ever.

Helping one another was always the magic that allowed us to survive for a million years on this planet. Individuals are only weak and end up in the hands of fentanyl, the drug of death, of human defeat. People are strong if we help each other, and this help reaches the planetary scale. Mutual help, the collective construction of knowledge, humanity as a new political subject, is the basis of a new meaning of socialism.

In the midst of this power of humanity, converted into an acting conscience, new governments and new leaderships will appear. If life overcomes its extinction, it will no longer be the global oligarchy that governs the world; it will be overthrown in order to build a global democracy. A new history is about to begin.

Thank you very much.