UN General Assembly
1988

No one warned us of the cataclysm that had to follow. Instead a banker of the North said to just "Do not worry. Sovereign countries never go bankrupt." And so, indeed, they lent us more and more. These debts were at that time guaranteed by the Government of the debtors. And sovereign Governments never disappear. They just change hands. Thus it was that in 1970, our country and those of the South owed only 100 billion dollars to the North. Ten years later we owed $500 billion. Now we owe 1 trillion. It was our Mexican friends who were first to realize it could go no further. They produced oil but its value went down when the cartel collapsed and industry decided on other ways of fuelling itself. Mexico said "We have no money. We cannot pay" and the South woke up to the realities of borrowing.