UN General Assembly
2018

After the failure of those apparent attempts to bring about riots and military attacks described in the pages of The New York Times, that newspaper detailed how United States officials, supported by the Colombian Government and institutions, met and offered their encouragement and support to that attempt at regime change. Can the United Nations system, can humankind and — I say this to my Latin American and Caribbean brothers — can Latin America and the Caribbean accept such methods, which did so much damage to our region throughout the twentieth century? How many military interventions and coups d’état were there? How many dictatorships were imposed during the long, dark twentieth century in Latin America and the Caribbean? And whom did they favour? The people? Whose interests did they represent? They represented the interests of transnational corporations — interests contrary to those of our peoples. We had to endure long dictatorships, such as that of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, because of the determination of the United States elites who believed in the Monroe Doctrine to deny the right that we had earned to govern ourselves