While Uruguay awaits the arrival of the World March for Peace and Non-Violence on 27th December, writer Eduardo Galeano reflected on the initiative’s proposals, the business of war and its consequences. The members who are steering the project in Uruguay will hold a welcoming festival on 29th December on calle 18 de Julio and at the University.
The Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, recorded an audiovisual spot in which he reflects on the business of war and those responsible for it, who, paradoxically, are those responsible for being the observers of peace: “What world is this? Incredible! The five countries that are the observers of peace are the five main producers of arms. Or rather, that peace is in the hands of those in the business of war”.
He also highlighted the chain of violence formed as a consequence of the production of arms: “Those in love with death manufacture arms and the arms manufacture wars and the wars manufacture enemies. What would a war be without enemies? The world is threatened by a political power which invents threats.
Referring to military spending, he added: “(military power) allocates 3 million dollars to military spending every minute and every minute it kills 15 children through hunger or a curable illness. Those poor children, all poor, do not die at the hands of a visible criminal. The executioner does not admit his name and hide his face, but is an entire system of power that manufactures arms, that manufactures wars that manufactures the hungry to justify what it does”.
With regard to his commitment to the World March for Peace and Non-Violence, he indicated: “Those of us marching against war are also marching against hunger, not against the hungry, therefore, we are marching as an act of faith in another possible world, that other world which this criminal world is carrying in its belly, and in that other world, which this world is pregnant with, we will all be at war against hunger and never again at war against the hungry”.
Eduardo Galeano is author of the books “The Open Veins of Latin America” and “The Book of Embraces”, the trilogy “Memory of Fire”, and “Mirrors” amongst others. He was editor-in-chief of the weekly publication “Marcha”, which had Mario Vargas Llosa, Mario Benedetti and Manuel Maldonado as collaborators. Additionally, he was editor of the newspaper “Época” and during his exile in Argentina he founded and managed the magazine “Crisis”, a publication which influenced Latin American intellectuals during the 1970s.
*(Translation: Rhona Desmond)*
