The Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, offered an exclusive interview to our multiplatform TeleSUR and discussed issues of regional importance for Latin America and the Caribbean. teleSUR
00:00And the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Granadines, Ralf Gonsalves, offered an exclusive interview to our multi-platform Telesur and discussed issues of regional importance for Latin America and the Caribbean. Let's listen.
00:12Hello, studios. We continue our tour of St. Vincent and the Granadines. And in this case, in Kingstown, we are very honoured to be joined by Prime Minister Ralf Gonsalves at this moment. Thank you so much, Prime Minister, for joining us here in Telesur.
00:34Thank you very much for having me.
00:35And we are here for a very special occasion. Venezuela is celebrating its Declaration of Independence on July 5th.
00:44And St. Vincent and the Granadines has always been in favour of boosting those ties of solidarity, of integration in the region, even in a moment in time in which major powers are doing a lot of things against those ties of solidarity.
01:00Why is it important to continue those efforts?
01:05The great Africanist leader from Jamaica, the right excellent Marcos Mosiah Garvey, National Hero of Jamaica, remarked in the early 20th century at the time of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the largest organisation of persons of African descent in the diaspora ever.
01:29He said, in a very summary way, if you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together.
01:43But when you go far together, you end up going faster than if you go alone.
01:50It's a philosophical proposition which has manifested over the centuries.
01:55Whereas, we are in a society, the atomised individual, the apotheosis of the atomised individual, the highest point of the atomised individual is the American Howard Hughes, who ended up as a pathetic figure.
02:13Whereas, the solidarity of Chateau of Bolivar, of Marti, of Fidel, of Chavez, that is what brings true benefits to a community.
02:34An individual alone, an individual alone, an individual alone may be able to print, may be able to paint something, but for it to reach a wide audience, it needs a number of persons to help disseminate it.
02:51Community athletes.
02:52Community athletes.
02:53Absolutely. So, you ask me, that's why we are in CARICOM, that's why we are in the Organisation of East Caribbean States, that's why we are in the ALBA, different circles of regional integration.
03:06That's why we are in SILAC, the Community of States of Latin America and the Caribbean, which is a wider hemispheric regional entity.
03:15And we are in all of these bodies, and they all have points of relevance and contact with each other.
03:22Alone, we're not going to go far. We have to work together.
03:28And the important thing about any integration is that that integration must be organic, not mechanistic. Organic in the sense that the strengths and weaknesses of each unit, of each territory, those strengths and weaknesses are dissolved into the whole, so that the whole ends up being more than a summation of the individual parts.
03:55And then, we must ensure that the various parts are not unequally yoked, so that every single entity, at the end of the day, profits.
04:10Not profit in narrow monetary terms, but that value is added to them and their people and their lives as a consequence of that integration. That's what it is about.
04:22Prime Minister, you were mentioning Marti and Fidel, and we are visiting here from Havana, actually, and one of those attempts against integration has been the targeting of Cuban medical missions during the past months.
04:36What is your perspective on the topic of this moment after a few months were passed from the last statement from the US?
04:43Well, we in the Caribbean, and particularly St. Vincent and the Grenadines, we have answered with dignity and with openness and with honesty to our American friends that they've got it wrong.
05:00And they had a view of the Cuban medical brigade and those in education and those in infrastructure, the engineers, the land surveyors and the like, that they got it completely wrong.
05:16This is not an exploitative system. We have a sophisticated structure of modern labor laws, and we are signatories to a range of international conventions. So too Cuba. And we abide by them.
05:31There's no exploitation taking place here. There's no human trafficking. If you go around and you talk to the Vincentian people, and you talk to the Cubans themselves, I don't have to go to the details here. I give you what is the summary conclusion.
05:44And I think that the Americans are satisfied with what we are doing and what we have said. And we have been, I've been an open book on it. Now it is true that there's a jaundiced view in some of the taverns in South Florida.
06:03But if ever there was any arrangement which they talk about, if ever that existed, it has never existed since I came to office 25 years ago, maybe some other time before that, which I don't know about.
06:20I can only speak for the last quarter century. Since I've been Prime Minister and since we have been working with Cuba, with this remarkable act of solidarity through nurses, doctors, engineers and the like.
06:37Now, Prime Minister, last question. What brings us here is Binsimas and we are trying to capture the spirit of the carnival and take it and share it with the rest of the region and the South American continent as well.
06:53It's magnificent music.
06:54Exactly.
06:55And songs of all types, calypsos and soca and steel band and mass is like, it's unique. There's a generalized carnival throughout the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean, but we have our unique flavor and I hope you get to take in some of it.
07:15And you will see as we go about people interacting with love. This is a land and an area of peace.
07:22And that's why I support very strongly President Maduro's quest to have a campaign for peace and against war.
07:33And that's why St. Vincent and the Grenadines, we became the local of the Argyle Declaration, which brought Guyana and Venezuela together along with other CARICOM countries and Brazil and so forth.
07:47So that whatever dispute and challenges they may have, we settle them peacefully.
07:53Right now, I am coming to the 214th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Venezuela.
08:02I'm coming from the Southern Grenadines where I just had a farewell lunch with 40 members of the Guyana Defense Force who came here to help us over the last three months to rebuild homes.
08:16And Venezuela has helped in innumerable ways. I've just come from an event involved in Guyanese.
08:23My brothers and sisters are there. I'm here now with my Venezuelan brothers and sisters. We are one.
08:29Whatever difficulties we have, we sort them out in peace, not in war, in solidarity.
08:37Thank you so much, Prime Minister, for joining us. It's been our pleasure.
08:40Thank you very much.
08:41That was, of course, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves here in Telesur.
08:46And this is just another bit of what is happening here in Kingston.
08:50We go now back to studios and we will continue with more.
