Bolivia: Evo Morales at the conference for a world without walls

By Ricardo Gómez García

On the 20th of June, five thousand people from 45 countries listened to President Evo Morales at the inauguration of the World Conference of the People “for a world without walls towards universal citizenship”. Repeatedly interrupted by applause, Morales said in one part of his speech:

“Brothers and sisters, walls are an attack on humanity. Walls between people, they don’t protect, they confront. Walls between people don’t bring us together, they divide us. Walls between people don’t show respect, they aggravate. Walls between people don’t liberate, they asphyxiate. Walls between people don’t make us equal, they discriminate. Walls incentivise fear, they incentivise confrontation and racism.

“Brothers and sisters, walls go against the history of humanity. Walls mutilate science and knowledge. Walls imprison the soul, they give rise to hatred and difference, they suffocate freedom. No country in the world has triumphed by building walls, they have only certified and prolonged their decline. No society progresses in isolation, no nation is great when it’s closed off. Human beings, scientific knowledge, ethics, the fundamental values of any society have always grown through the free planetary circulation of ideas and people. In the heart of every human being is a being whose nature is migratory. Societies and nations have been built through the creative mixing of migrants that have been enriched with the skills of their ancestors. So, just as there are no walls for good, just as there are no walls to stop the rain, just as there are no walls against words, so there also cannot be walls for people and families in the world.”