La Presidenta de Argentina rinde tributo a héroe paraguayo
December 10, 2007 (LPAC)--In her meeting on November 29 with Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who will be inaugurated as Argentina's next President today (2pm EST), paid moving tribute to Marshall Francisco Solano Lopez, the Paraguayan President and military hero who led his outnumbered forces against Argentine, Uruguayan and Brazilian troops in the British-orchestrated 1865-1870 "Triple Alliance War."
The mere mention of this history of Paraguay by Fernandez de Kirchner, coupled with the birth of the Bank of the South, must have international financiers sweating profusely, as they watch their global financial system crumble around them. The "Triple Alliance War" was a war that London organized to annihilate the most advanced example at that time in South America of an industrialization process based entirely on application of the policies of the American System of Political Economy. To ensure that the model would be wiped out, Britain ordered its South American lackeys to slaughter Paraguay's population, a genocide from which that nation has yet to recover.
The Triple Alliance war, Fernandez de Kirchner said, should more aptly be called the war of the "triple treason against Latin America, and its men and women," and against "that great Latin American patriot [Solano Lopez], who was humiliated" and killed as a result of that treason.
Many perhaps don't know, she said, "that here in Paraguay, the very first process of industrialization in all America was developed, and like any dignified and honorable nation, its goal was to achieve reasonable autonomy in its decision-making. And, because of that dignified and independent national conviction, the Paraguayan people were annihilated and humiliated."
Today, Fernandez de Kirchner said, "I want to express [the Argentine] people's recognition of Paraguay, and tell you that perhaps the reason why this is such a special moment for Latin America, is because these [pro-industry] ideas are once again flourishing. They may appear to be new, but are in fact as profound as history itself, because they are based on the pride of belonging to one place, one Fatherland, and one Nation."
The Argentine leader minced no words in attacking the British-inspired free market policies that devastated both Paraguay and Argentina in the 1990s. "Nothing is accidental, my Paraguayan brothers and sisters, in this sad and tragic history through which we Latin Americans have lived, as a result of foreign economic theories which toyed with the lives, the patrimony, and the hopes and freedoms of our compatriots."
"Throughout my political career, I have learned," Fernandez de Kirchner said, "that we can have the most formidable ideas. But, for these ideas to cease being mere ideology, they have to be put into practice and become policy. Politics is when one transforms his ideals into something concrete, that can be experienced by societies and by peoples, because it is to them that we direct our policy orientation as well as the ultimate goal that any popular and democratic government must have: to improve the quality of life of all of our compatriots."
Fernandez de Kirchner also underscored that when her husband, outgoing President Nestor Kirchner, met with President Duarte in 2004 in Buenos Aires, it was not only to deepen bilateral ties, but to also "recognize in Latin America and the Mercosur (Common Market of the South), our home, and our place in the world."
