UN General Assembly
1968

38. Thus it was that the yellow journalism of the great countries of the time acquired the habit — and generates terrible force — of depicting our manners and our customs, the smallest details of our national life, in a disgusting light, of ridiculing our folklore, of discrediting our most progressive Heads of State: Faustin Soulongue, Henri Christophe, Félicité Salomon Jeune, Dr. François Duvalier, to mention only a few. Thus they acquired the habit of stifling the most legitimate aspirations of a country which, like its sister American republics, had experienced growing pains but was struggling — and is still struggling — to vanquish amidst indifference, misunderstanding and widespread hostility the age-old evils that beset the third world: poverty, ignorance and disease. 39. And yet, despite all those difficulties, my country’s history is one of the most arresting in all the Americas. Its untiring devotion to the cause of freedom has never been questioned; its desire to attain the heights where brotherhood and solidarity prosper has always impelled it to come to the aid of oppressed peoples.