We, the excluded of the Americas, cry out from the bottom of our hearts in
protest against the inequality and injustice of the world in which we live.
We are all passengers on the same ship, the planet Earth. Nonetheless, just
as on the sailing ships of the colonizers and our transatlantic airplanes
today, we journey in unequal conditions. A minority traveling first-class
enjoys all the privileges of superfluous consumption, with antisocial
attitudes, and environmental depredation. This minority has access to
sophisticated medicine, education, culture, and to the benefits of the latest
technology. Down in the unwholesome hold, the majority of the world's
population is crowded together, sunken in hunger, disease, violence, and
exploitation.

Our cry is raised against a type of economic globalization that, in favoring
the few developed countries and acting to the detriment of poor nations,
reveals its true character of global colonization. The world GDP, currently
calculated to be US$25 trillion, is the sign of the brutal accumulation of
wealth in the hands of a few: the G-7 countries (United States, Canada,
England, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan) retain US$18 trillion.

The remaining US$7 trillion must be divided among more than 180 countries! It
is inadmissible that only three US citizen-Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Warren
Buffett-possess, together, a fortune greater than the GDP of 42 poor nations,
with 600 million inhabitants! Poverty, not progress; dependency, not
sovereignty; competition, not solidarity are being globalized.

For this reason, there are 204 million poor and 90 million people in extreme
poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, to which we must add the pockets
of poverty that exist in various parts of the opulent United States. Our cry
is one of protest against the neoliberal economy which, monitored by the IMF
and the World Bank, reduces democracy to the market and citizenship to
consumerism, and which violates the sovereignty of our national States
through impositions and threats.

If the rich nations want progress, why not establish fair rules for world
trade, eliminating the restrictions and commercial practices that lower the
prices of goods exported by poor nations? If they want peace, why don't they
put an end to the arms race, which consumes US$800 billion dollars yearly,
and stop exporting arms to Third World countries? If they want to stop the
drug trade, why don't they eradicate the fiscal paradises where dirty money
is laundered by "respected" First World bankers, and prohibit the exportation
of ether and acetone from the US to drug manufacturers?

Our cry denounces the fact that, after the Second World War, Latin America
had no debts, but today it owes nearly US$1 trillion. It is the highest per
capita external debt in the world. Consequently, our Continent is the
champion in inequality between richest and poorest. Our countries are
victims of speculative capital, of cultural colonialism, and of military
intervention under the pretext of combating the drug trade. The number of
hungry and unemployed people has never been so high in the Americas.

Our cry is one of indignation, but it is also a cry of hope. We see, with
joy, rural workers mobilizing to demand land reform; groups representing the
most diverse countries and issues joining together to block the meetings of
multilateral financial institutions, as in Seattle, Washington DC, and
Prague; social movements organizing massive demonstrations to demand change
in nearly every country in the continent, and especially in Mexico,
Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador. We witness the force of
indigenous peoples who rise up courageously to demand the demarcation of
their lands; the multiplication of women's movements against sexist
discrimination; the organization of black people's movements to demand
respect for their cultural roots and their civil rights, which have
historically been suppressed. In Brazil, six million people spoke out
against the payment of the external debt in a citizen's plebiscite held
recently throughout the country.

These signs, evident today throughout the world, give us hope that the
International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and the World Bank
will be replaced by democratic institutions, where every country has an equal
voice and an equal vote, with the aims of regulating the flow of speculative
capital, dismantling the wealthy countries protectionism, and prioritizing
human rights and social justice.

We hope that our outcry will spread to such an extent that the government of
the United States will be forced to withdraw from Colombia, avoiding a
conflict which would put both the population and the biodiversity of the
Amazon at great risk. Our cry also calls out for an end to the cruel
blockade, which the United States imposes on Cuba.

We hope that our struggle for basic rights will soon be converted into
reality: the struggle for land reform; changes in economic policies to
eliminate unemployment and exclusion; demarcation and protection of
indigenous lands; respect for the environment; the end of economic and
cultural dependence of our people, and the cancellation of our external debt,
as part of the Jubilee Year declared by Pope John Paul II. We defend the
access of the entire population to fundamental rights: land, work, decent
housing, education, and health care.

Our cry will reach the ears of all those who are sensitive to solidarity and
who dare to embrace the utopia of a world without inequalities, without
poverty, and without exclusion, founded upon justice and liberty.