President Xiomara Speaks

Source: El Heraldo

Date: April 9, 2025

Editorial Introduction

On April 9, 2025, at the IX Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) held in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, President Xiomara Castro delivered a powerful speech in which she condemned neoliberalism, called for greater regional integration, and reaffirmed Honduras’s solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Argentina. Speaking as she handed over the pro tempore presidency of CELAC to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Castro invoked the revolutionary legacy of Bolívar, Morazán, Martí, Allende, Chávez, and Sandino, and emphasized the need for sovereignty, peace, and justice across the region.

Full Speech

Brothers and sisters of Latin America and the Caribbean:

I appreciate the attention paid to this call from the CELAC presidency. Honduras today hands over the pro tempore presidency of this community: the continent of hope, of cultural and political diversity.

This year, we have strengthened CELAC by holding 16 national coordinator meetings, 12 support meetings, and an emergency virtual summit in response to the Mexican embassy takeover.

CELAC is not a perfect organization. It was born from a dream, an ideal, a utopia of our liberators and heroes: the integration of Latin America and the Caribbean in the face of colonialism by the great powers, as a historical, sovereign, and united entity, not as a sacrifice zone imposed on us by global capital.

This dream of the unity of the Great Homeland is more urgent than ever today, as the old neoliberal order imposed on our countries collapses, and great powers, like the United States, redraw their economic map without considering which peoples are left behind.

We cannot continue walking separately when the world is reorganizing itself without us. But we cannot unite by repeating the recipe for failure.

The predatory and exclusionary neoliberal model, promoted by the Washington Consensus in the 1990s, has hollowed out our economies, indebted our countries, concentrated capital in a few hands, and privatized public services, focusing its ambition on nature, which must no longer be the spoils of capital.

The precarization of the working class and public-private partnerships have only generated corruption, violence, and poverty. Our young people have become migrants who, in pursuit of the American dream, are now being expelled en masse from the United States.

Faced with this challenge, the region must be respected as a zone of peace. This commitment against war and in favor of peace must be reaffirmed today. CELAC must not only be a forum, but a tool for emancipation, sovereign cooperation, environmental justice, democratic socialism, and the self-determination of peoples.

We cannot leave this historic assembly, which brought together the 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations, without addressing the issues that affect us, without debating the new world economic order imposed on us by the United States with its tariff measures and immigration policy.

Everyone has the right to express themselves freely, and all their participation will be broadcast live by national and international media and networks in Honduras.

We speak with legitimacy. We have lived for 12 years and seven months under a narco-dictatorship imposed after an oil-producing and imperialist coup d’état perpetrated against former President Manuel Zelaya Rosales, a democratically elected government.

We returned from exile to unite with the people. Through the struggle of peaceful, democratic, and popular resistance, we founded, together with the resistance, the Libre Party, today the vanguard of the people that led us to the presidency of the Republic.

That resounding victory was not just electoral: it was a historic victory.

In three years and three months of government, we have punctually paid off the onerous debt inherited from the narco-dictatorship and have one of the best macroeconomic indicators in the region. We have also implemented the largest investment in infrastructure in history: highways, hospitals, schools, productive roads, sports fields, financing for the productive sector, fuel subsidies, and ordering public finances.

All of this is reflected in a reduction in poverty of more than 10 points and a 15-point drop in the homicide rate.

I want to remember the year 2009, when the unleashed forces of evil stalked the diplomatic headquarters of the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. President Lula da Silva, speaking at the United Nations, denounced the siege and declared: if the coup-mongering military forces dared to enter the Brazilian embassy, where President Zelaya and his family were sheltering, they would be violating all international norms and would face the consequences.

We thank President Lula. His dignity remains. We condemn the cruel and inhumane US economic blockade of more than 64 years against the heroic Cuban people.

Cuba does not export terrorists: it exports teachers, scientists, and the dignity of its people.

We reaffirm the right of the Bolivarian people of Venezuela to independence, support the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, and the sovereignty of the Argentine people over the Falkland Islands.

We join the call for peace in the Gaza Strip. The war of aggression against the Palestinian people must stop.

We recognize the resilience of the Haitian people, who demand a sovereign homeland whose destiny is determined by Haitians themselves and not by foreign interference.

On April 9th, like today, in Bogotá, Colombia, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was murdered for dreaming of a just homeland. We express our solidarity with President Cristina Kirchner, who is a victim of persecution.

I also want to express my condolences to the Dominican Republic for the tragic accident that occurred at a nightclub, where 98 people died.

None of this is past. Everything is present. Everything is future.

Today we hand over the responsibility of the pro tempore presidency to Colombia. We trust in the leadership of President Gustavo Petro and are confident that CELAC will not only overcome the challenges but will also keep alive the unfulfilled dreams of the revolutionaries Zapata, Bolívar, Morazán, Martí, Allende, Chávez, Sandino, and the peoples who never surrender.

Because, as Commander Chávez said, “utopia is on the horizon, and we walk toward it and never stop walking.”

Long live integration!

Long live our people!

Forbidden to forget, we are the resistance.

Thank you very much.