Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gave a powerful 25-minute speech on April 18 at the 1st Progressive Mobilization Meeting in Barcelona, Spain, in which he excoriated the “great powers” for treating the Global South as their ‘backyard’ and pointed out that it is “suffocated by abusive tariffs and unpayable debt; it’s once again seen as a mere supplier of raw materials…” [translation machine-generated]
The audience included several thousand people, as well as Pedro Sánchez, the current Prime Minister of Spain (officially titled the President of the Government). and his wife prominently in the first row.
Lula forcefully called on the permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, France, Russia, UK and US—"…for God’s sake, fulfill your mission to make it safe for world peace…stop this madness of war, because the world can’t take it anymore!”
He said pointedly, “A handful of billionaires concentrate most of the world’s wealth…Inequality is not a fact; it is a political choice…This fight [progressives vs. the super-rich] needs to be global—it’s no use keeping the house in order when the world is in disarray…”
Warlords drop bombs on women and children every day, spending billions of dollars on weapons that could be used to address world hunger, solve the energy crisis, and to improve healthcare, he said.
He went on to highlight the fact that the “Global South pays the price for wars it didn’t start…” and that the past invasions of Iraq and Libya, and the current conflicts in Iran and Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, were all based on lies. “Where are Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons?,” he asked.
He called on the UN Security Council member nations to create a just system globally which would place all nations on an equal footing “in the Security Council, the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization.” The fight is not just up to governments, but must be taken out to the universities, churches, trade unions, community groups and society as a whole, Lula emphasized. “We cannot be afraid to speak louder and with great responsibility…the risk that the far right represents to democracy isn’t rhetorical—it is real.”
He concluded by inviting President Sánchez to join with him in this effort to create a more just economic system that allows the poor to have their basic human rights implemented, rights that are listed in the UN Charter of Human Rights—the right to a decent job, housing, healthcare and education, among other basic rights.
He once again emphasized that, “I want peace, love, fraternity, and to see the world progress so that people may live better and divinely. That is what I want…My weapon is Reason.”
