The Chávez play - Venezuela and Argentina
Why did Hugo Chávez buy Argentina's debt? Venezuela's president tries his hand at financial
arbitrage.
Just as Venezuela is known for its exports of crude, Argentina is famous for its exports of IOUs. Less than two years after it handed its creditors a world-record loss in a sovereign
debt-exchange, Argentina's government has found an eager new patron in its oil-rich ally. Over the last year, the government in Caracas has bought some $3.1 billion in Argentine bonds. Is this a case of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's tub-thumping president, putting political solidarity ahead of fiscal prudence? Look
closer.
The roots of the deal lie in the currency controls Mr Chávez imposed on his country during the economic meltdown of 2003. To halt capital flight, he pegged the bolívar, Venezuela's currency, to the dollar (the official rate is now 2,150 to 1), and sharply curtailed opportunities to
buy dollars at that price. As a result, a black market in foreign exchange soon opened up. The
bolívar could not hold its value at the kerbside—a dollar has traded for anything from 2,400 to 2,900 bolívars in the past year—adding to inflationary pressures.
However, unlike most of his countrymen, Mr Chávez can help himself to dollars from the state oil company, PDVSA, or from his own central bank at the official rate. This he did to acquire the $3.1 billion he needed to buy the dollar bonds from Argentina's government, which started
issuing debt with indecent haste after completing its huge bond restructuring in mid-2005.
Argentina's president, Néstor Kirchner, was more than pleased to borrow directly from Venezuela. Doing business with a fellow Latin American leftist is more palatable than asking for money
from the private international lenders he repeatedly bashes. Moreover, Mr Chávez was, in effect, offering to underwrite his debt issue. Venezuela's big purchases meant that Mr Kirchner did not need to test the market's appetite for his government's bonds too deeply.
But almost as soon as he got the Argentine paper, Mr Chávez began to sell it to local Venezuelan banks, at the rate of 2,400 bolívars to the dollar. All told, his government off-loaded $2.4 billion-worth of bonds, pocketing a tidy profit. How tidy? His finance team eagerly announced a
gain of $309m to the press last month; though the true figure may be a bit different.
The banks too were happy. They were free to sell the bonds abroad for dollars, which they promptly did for a handsome profit. Some of them converted the greenbacks back into bolívars at black-market rates, others hung on to them. Either way, this new source of foreign exchange
has relieved pressure on the black market; the bolívar has stabilised and one source of inflationary pressure has eased.
Within Venezuela, critics have complained not about the deal itself, but about who was in on it, and who wasn't. The government has still not revealed its method of choosing which banks would be eligible for a chunk of the massive return Mr Chávez was offering. “Any operation that
hands out $300m discretionally, regardless of the mechanism, is a clear incentive forcorruption,” says Alejandro Grisanti of the Caracas consultancy Ecoanalítica. In the absence of an open bidding process, government officials were free to route the Argentine bonds to banks
already supportive of Mr Chávez, to tie the sale to future support, or to receive payments or favours in exchange for offering them.
But despite this carping, can the two presidents not congratulate themselves on a clever financial manoeuvre that had something for everybody who was party to it? Argentina's government found a reliable customer for its debt; Mr Chávez achieved lower inflation and a $309m
profit for the Venezuelan exchequer; and the local banks divvied up a further gain of $250m-300m.
Unfortunately, there are no free lunches, and there is one big, hidden loser in this transaction: the Venezuelan central bank. Mr Chávez, in effect, plundered its reserves for about $580m, both by forcing it to sell him dollars at the official exchange rate, and by taking dollars
from the state oil company that traditionally went to the central bank. That is a heavy loss to the country, which might need its reserves in a pinch. “But no one's going to complain,” says Walter Molano of BCP Securities, “because nobody owns that money.”
sábado, octubre 28, 2006
miércoles, octubre 25, 2006
Vietnam: el nuevo fenómeno capitalista
Vietnam’s Roaring Economy Is Set for World Stage
Chau Doan for The New York Times
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: October 25, 2006
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Nearly four decades ago, South Vietnamese leaders mapped out their battle plans inside the presidential palace here. When they lost the war, the palace became the base for the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, which worked to impose tight Communist
control.
But in September it was the scene of a very different gathering: a board meeting of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.
In the three decades since Vietnam has gone from communism to a form of capitalism, it has begun surpassing many neighbors. It has Asia’s second-fastest-growing economy, with 8.4 percent growth last year, trailing only China’s, and the pace of exports to the United States is rising faster than even China’s.
American companies like Intel and Nike, and investors across the region,are pouring billions of dollars into the country; overseas Vietnamese are returning to run the ventures.
In the latest sign of Vietnam’s economic vitality, trade negotiators from around the world are preparing, after more than a decade of talks, to put the finishing touches on an agreement, possibly by Oct. 26, for Vietnam to join the World Trade Organization. President Bush, President
Hu Jintao of China, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and other heads of state plan to come to Hanoi in mid-November for an Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation summit meeting.
For Vietnam, the meeting will be a coming-out party, critical to its pride in much the way the 2008 Olympics in Beijing are for China.
“I think they are the next China,” said Michael R. P. Smith, chief executive of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. “It’s not the scale of China, but it’s a significant economy.”
Through the end of last year; Vietnam’s growth rate exceeded that of Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea and even India, its closest rival.
The latest Asian economic tiger, Vietnam now produces and uses more cement than France, its former colonial ruler. The main index for the Ho Chi Minh City stock market and a smaller exchange in Hanoi have nearly doubled in value this year. Vietnam has become the talk of investment bankers and investors across Asia.
But with such growth has come controversy, here and in the United States. Republicans in Congress are divided over a coming vote soon after the midterm elections: Should the United States grant permanent, full trade relations to Vietnam, given the two countries’ history and Vietnam’s current position, where it sells almost nine times as much to Americans as it buys?
Corporate America is divided, too, over a Bush administration initiative to win votes for full trade status by throwing a bone late in September to Southern senators representing states where textiles are made. Vietnamese officials are furious with Washington over what they see as a
last-minute protectionist attempt to limit the exports of their country’s booming garment industry.
In Vietnam, nearly double-digit growth is starting to produce the same shortages of skilled labor as in India and China. Executives at multinationals like Groupe Lafarge of France and Prudential of Britain say that local accountants, human relations managers and other professionals are so scarce that salaries are soaring 30 percent to 50 percent a year.
Many educated Vietnamese now are like Ha Nguyen, 34, a chemical engineer who is working at his third job in three years, having received big raises each time he changed companies. “Right now, it’s easy in Vietnam to find a job,” he said, pausing while doing a chemical analysis of
cement quality at a corporate laboratory here.
Roads and ports in this country are increasingly choked with cars and ships, the congestion worse than China’s but not yet as bad as India’s. Yet deep-seated corruption has slowed construction; the government has put the brakes on highway building across northern Vietnam this year after uncovering a graft scandal that led to resignations and detentions all the way to the top of the Transport Ministry.
Balanced against these problems is a government that, like China’s, has embraced capitalism after becoming disillusioned with the widespread poverty and sometimes hunger that accompanied tight
state control of the
economy.
Economic liberalization policies have been pursued in earnest since the early 90’s, after poor harvests and economic mismanagement left millions facing malnutrition in 1990.
Among the architects of this change are a handful of bright economists like Le Dang Doanh, a top adviser to the government and the Communist Party who studied in the old Soviet Union and East Germany but became deeply disillusioned with the corruption and inefficiency of state-owned
industries.
“The reform is definitely irreversible,” Mr. Doanh said. “Any attempt to come back to a centrally planned economy, to overplay the state sector, is economically irrational, inefficient and psychologically is counterproductive.”
If anything, Vietnam has leaned in the other direction. The Finance Ministry has just produced a draft personal-taxation law, expected to be approved by January, that offers more tax breaks for the wealthy than the United States does. Inheritances among immediate family members will
be entirely exempt from taxation. So will interest on all but the largest bank accounts, and a fierce debate is under way over whether capital gains should be taxed.
And in some ways, Vietnam is more pro-business than China. Reluctant to anger city dwellers, state-owned power companies in China minimize blackouts in residential areas but cut off power to factories as much as three days a week, forcing them to run on costly diesel generators.
Vietnam takes the opposite course. Takashima Masayuki, general director of a Japanese-owned factory that makes shirts and jackets in Bien Hoa city, said the factory did not even have a generator because the authorities never allowed power to be cut off in the industrial zone
where it is situated. By contrast, Ho Chi Minh City residents say they have brief power interruptions as often as twice a day.
Like China and India, Vietnam has benefited enormously from the return of a diaspora — people who had fled the country. Thousands of overseas Vietnamese have come home after learning English, gaining entrepreneurial experience and acquiring technical skills.
Phu Than, Intel’s country manager for Vietnam and Indochina, was 14 when he was evacuated in the last days before the fall of Saigon, leaving by helicopter with his mother, an employee of the old American Consulate in Danang.
He earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of California, Davis, then joined Intel and now oversees the largest foreign investment in Vietnam, the construction of a semiconductor assembly and test factory that will cost $300 million for the first phase and another $300 million for a likely expansion later.
American businesses are catching on to Vietnam’s attractions, but they still lag behind Taiwan companies, which are the biggest foreign investors in Vietnam, followed by Singapore.
Vietnam’s appeal to foreign companies rests on its young labor pool. Three-fifths of its 84 million people are under 27. And with a policy of limiting families to two children, as distinct from China’s one, Vietnam will continue for many years to have a large proportion of hard-working
low-skill employees.
Typical is Nguyen Thi Hong, 30, who rides each morning on her rusty bicycle to stand outside factories and look for work in Bien Hoa, 15 miles northeast of Ho Chi Minh City; in China, factories advertise far and wide even for unskilled workers.
A brightly patterned kerchief protecting her from air pollution, Mrs. Hong said she and her husband, a mechanic who has found work here, have left their year-old son with his parents in their hometown in the central part of the country.
Vietnam has reduced the percentage of its people living in abject poverty — less than $1 a day — to 8 percent from 51 percent in 1990, a greater advance than either China or India.
But incomes are still far short of Western levels. Few of these Vietnamese can afford to eat American beef or fly in Boeing jets. The country’s trade surplus with the United States has soared — it exported $5.56 billion worth of goods to the American market in the first eight
months of this year while importing $625.9 million.
That imbalance, much of it in the garment industry, has complicated the Bush administration’s effort to persuade lawmakers to approve normal trade relations with Vietnam. The administration tried to shore up support by sending a letter on Sept. 28 to two Republican senators, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, saying that the Commerce Department may file its own antidumping cases against low-price shipments of Vietnamese clothing without waiting for American companies to do so.
But the letter has upset retailers and other importers, who worry that they may end up paying any punitive duties that are imposed.
“The retail industry is really split on this,” said Brad Figel, the government affairs director at Nike, which remains in favor of the bill and is seeking clarification of administration
policy.
Antidumping duties are an emotional issue in Vietnam, after the United States imposed them on catfish exports three years ago and the European Union recently imposed them on Vietnamese and Chinese shoe exports.
Vietnamese officials warn that dumping cases could hurt the regulatory environment for American businesses and cause layoffs at garment factories, where most workers are low-income women.
“These people suffered from the war a lot already, and we would not want them to suffer again,” said Nguyen Anh Tuan, vice director of Vietnam’s Foreign Investment Agency. “American investors should not lose their foothold in Vietnam.”
Talk to garment-factory workers in Vietnam these days, though, and they are looking forward to a future where their children live far better than they do. “My parents were very poor,” said Nguyen Thu Hoai, 28, said as she folded green Nike jackets in a state-owned factory in Ho Chi
Minh City.
“But I will be able to give my son a good education,” she said, describing a modest Prudential life insurance policy she bought for her 2-year-old son that includes a savings fund for educational expenses. “He will have more opportunities.”
(Que Havez se vea en ese espejo...)
Chau Doan for The New York Times
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: October 25, 2006
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Nearly four decades ago, South Vietnamese leaders mapped out their battle plans inside the presidential palace here. When they lost the war, the palace became the base for the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, which worked to impose tight Communist
control.
But in September it was the scene of a very different gathering: a board meeting of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.
In the three decades since Vietnam has gone from communism to a form of capitalism, it has begun surpassing many neighbors. It has Asia’s second-fastest-growing economy, with 8.4 percent growth last year, trailing only China’s, and the pace of exports to the United States is rising faster than even China’s.
American companies like Intel and Nike, and investors across the region,are pouring billions of dollars into the country; overseas Vietnamese are returning to run the ventures.
In the latest sign of Vietnam’s economic vitality, trade negotiators from around the world are preparing, after more than a decade of talks, to put the finishing touches on an agreement, possibly by Oct. 26, for Vietnam to join the World Trade Organization. President Bush, President
Hu Jintao of China, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and other heads of state plan to come to Hanoi in mid-November for an Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation summit meeting.
For Vietnam, the meeting will be a coming-out party, critical to its pride in much the way the 2008 Olympics in Beijing are for China.
“I think they are the next China,” said Michael R. P. Smith, chief executive of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. “It’s not the scale of China, but it’s a significant economy.”
Through the end of last year; Vietnam’s growth rate exceeded that of Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea and even India, its closest rival.
The latest Asian economic tiger, Vietnam now produces and uses more cement than France, its former colonial ruler. The main index for the Ho Chi Minh City stock market and a smaller exchange in Hanoi have nearly doubled in value this year. Vietnam has become the talk of investment bankers and investors across Asia.
But with such growth has come controversy, here and in the United States. Republicans in Congress are divided over a coming vote soon after the midterm elections: Should the United States grant permanent, full trade relations to Vietnam, given the two countries’ history and Vietnam’s current position, where it sells almost nine times as much to Americans as it buys?
Corporate America is divided, too, over a Bush administration initiative to win votes for full trade status by throwing a bone late in September to Southern senators representing states where textiles are made. Vietnamese officials are furious with Washington over what they see as a
last-minute protectionist attempt to limit the exports of their country’s booming garment industry.
In Vietnam, nearly double-digit growth is starting to produce the same shortages of skilled labor as in India and China. Executives at multinationals like Groupe Lafarge of France and Prudential of Britain say that local accountants, human relations managers and other professionals are so scarce that salaries are soaring 30 percent to 50 percent a year.
Many educated Vietnamese now are like Ha Nguyen, 34, a chemical engineer who is working at his third job in three years, having received big raises each time he changed companies. “Right now, it’s easy in Vietnam to find a job,” he said, pausing while doing a chemical analysis of
cement quality at a corporate laboratory here.
Roads and ports in this country are increasingly choked with cars and ships, the congestion worse than China’s but not yet as bad as India’s. Yet deep-seated corruption has slowed construction; the government has put the brakes on highway building across northern Vietnam this year after uncovering a graft scandal that led to resignations and detentions all the way to the top of the Transport Ministry.
Balanced against these problems is a government that, like China’s, has embraced capitalism after becoming disillusioned with the widespread poverty and sometimes hunger that accompanied tight
state control of the
economy.
Economic liberalization policies have been pursued in earnest since the early 90’s, after poor harvests and economic mismanagement left millions facing malnutrition in 1990.
Among the architects of this change are a handful of bright economists like Le Dang Doanh, a top adviser to the government and the Communist Party who studied in the old Soviet Union and East Germany but became deeply disillusioned with the corruption and inefficiency of state-owned
industries.
“The reform is definitely irreversible,” Mr. Doanh said. “Any attempt to come back to a centrally planned economy, to overplay the state sector, is economically irrational, inefficient and psychologically is counterproductive.”
If anything, Vietnam has leaned in the other direction. The Finance Ministry has just produced a draft personal-taxation law, expected to be approved by January, that offers more tax breaks for the wealthy than the United States does. Inheritances among immediate family members will
be entirely exempt from taxation. So will interest on all but the largest bank accounts, and a fierce debate is under way over whether capital gains should be taxed.
And in some ways, Vietnam is more pro-business than China. Reluctant to anger city dwellers, state-owned power companies in China minimize blackouts in residential areas but cut off power to factories as much as three days a week, forcing them to run on costly diesel generators.
Vietnam takes the opposite course. Takashima Masayuki, general director of a Japanese-owned factory that makes shirts and jackets in Bien Hoa city, said the factory did not even have a generator because the authorities never allowed power to be cut off in the industrial zone
where it is situated. By contrast, Ho Chi Minh City residents say they have brief power interruptions as often as twice a day.
Like China and India, Vietnam has benefited enormously from the return of a diaspora — people who had fled the country. Thousands of overseas Vietnamese have come home after learning English, gaining entrepreneurial experience and acquiring technical skills.
Phu Than, Intel’s country manager for Vietnam and Indochina, was 14 when he was evacuated in the last days before the fall of Saigon, leaving by helicopter with his mother, an employee of the old American Consulate in Danang.
He earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of California, Davis, then joined Intel and now oversees the largest foreign investment in Vietnam, the construction of a semiconductor assembly and test factory that will cost $300 million for the first phase and another $300 million for a likely expansion later.
American businesses are catching on to Vietnam’s attractions, but they still lag behind Taiwan companies, which are the biggest foreign investors in Vietnam, followed by Singapore.
Vietnam’s appeal to foreign companies rests on its young labor pool. Three-fifths of its 84 million people are under 27. And with a policy of limiting families to two children, as distinct from China’s one, Vietnam will continue for many years to have a large proportion of hard-working
low-skill employees.
Typical is Nguyen Thi Hong, 30, who rides each morning on her rusty bicycle to stand outside factories and look for work in Bien Hoa, 15 miles northeast of Ho Chi Minh City; in China, factories advertise far and wide even for unskilled workers.
A brightly patterned kerchief protecting her from air pollution, Mrs. Hong said she and her husband, a mechanic who has found work here, have left their year-old son with his parents in their hometown in the central part of the country.
Vietnam has reduced the percentage of its people living in abject poverty — less than $1 a day — to 8 percent from 51 percent in 1990, a greater advance than either China or India.
But incomes are still far short of Western levels. Few of these Vietnamese can afford to eat American beef or fly in Boeing jets. The country’s trade surplus with the United States has soared — it exported $5.56 billion worth of goods to the American market in the first eight
months of this year while importing $625.9 million.
That imbalance, much of it in the garment industry, has complicated the Bush administration’s effort to persuade lawmakers to approve normal trade relations with Vietnam. The administration tried to shore up support by sending a letter on Sept. 28 to two Republican senators, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, saying that the Commerce Department may file its own antidumping cases against low-price shipments of Vietnamese clothing without waiting for American companies to do so.
But the letter has upset retailers and other importers, who worry that they may end up paying any punitive duties that are imposed.
“The retail industry is really split on this,” said Brad Figel, the government affairs director at Nike, which remains in favor of the bill and is seeking clarification of administration
policy.
Antidumping duties are an emotional issue in Vietnam, after the United States imposed them on catfish exports three years ago and the European Union recently imposed them on Vietnamese and Chinese shoe exports.
Vietnamese officials warn that dumping cases could hurt the regulatory environment for American businesses and cause layoffs at garment factories, where most workers are low-income women.
“These people suffered from the war a lot already, and we would not want them to suffer again,” said Nguyen Anh Tuan, vice director of Vietnam’s Foreign Investment Agency. “American investors should not lose their foothold in Vietnam.”
Talk to garment-factory workers in Vietnam these days, though, and they are looking forward to a future where their children live far better than they do. “My parents were very poor,” said Nguyen Thu Hoai, 28, said as she folded green Nike jackets in a state-owned factory in Ho Chi
Minh City.
“But I will be able to give my son a good education,” she said, describing a modest Prudential life insurance policy she bought for her 2-year-old son that includes a savings fund for educational expenses. “He will have more opportunities.”
(Que Havez se vea en ese espejo...)
MI WEB de Noticias en Yahoo
Yahoo nos otorga la oportunidad de mantener en MYWEB las mejores noticias internacionales y nacionales, por eso yo utilizo esa herramienta.
lunes, octubre 23, 2006
El Discurso de Cantinflas (México)
Lean esta joya ... por su contenido social y como parte de la época "de oro" del cine mexicano. Por mi parte pienso que es un excelente homenaje, a un hombre honesto,sensible, y lleno de sano humor que nos legó MEXICO,
a todos sus hermanos Latinoamericanos...
¡GRACIAS MARIO MORENO
POR TODO LO QUE NOS DISTE !
El discurso tiene cuarenta años pero, sin quitarle una coma, podría repetirse en cualquier foro político con absoluta y vigente pertinencia.
Este fue el mismo filósofo de aquella célebre y crucial pregunta, formulada justo antes de sentarse a jugar dominó
"¿Vamos a jugar como caballeros ó como lo que somos?"
disfrútenlo.
A alguien se le ocurrió rescatar este discurso, pronunciado hace 40 años por Cantinflas, supuestamente ante la Organización de Naciones Unidas, en una película en la cual él hacía el papel de embajador.
Esta es la pieza oratoria:
"Me ha tocado en suerte ser último orador, cosa que me alegra mucho porque, como quien dice, así me los agarro cansados.
Sin embargo, sé que a pesar de la insignificancia de mi país que no tiene poderío militar, ni político, ni económico ni mucho menos atómico, todos ustedes esperan con interés mis palabras ya que de mi voto depende el triunfo de los Verdes o de los Colorados.
Señores Representantes:
Estamos pasando un momento crucial en que la humanidad se enfrenta a la misma humanidad.
Estamos viviendo un momento histórico en que el hombre científica e intelectualmente es un gigante, pero moralmente es un pigmeo.
La opinión mundial está tan profundamente dividida en dos bandos aparentemente irreconciliables, que dado el singular caso, que queda en sólo un voto.
El voto de un país débil y pequeño pueda hacer que la balanza se cargue de un lado o se cargue de otro lado.
Estamos, como quien dice, ante una gran báscula: por un platillo ocupado por los Verdes y con otro platillo ocupado por los Colorados.
Y ahora llego yo, que soy de peso pluma como quien dice, y según donde yo me coloque, de ese lado seguirá la balanza.
¡Háganme el favor!...
¿No creen ustedes que es mucha responsabilidad para un solo
ciudadano? No considero justo que la mitad de la humanidad, sea la que fuere, quede condenada a vivir bajo un régimen político y económico que no es de su agrado, solamente porque un frívolo embajador haya votado, o lo hayan hecho votar, en un sentido o en otro.
El que les habla, su amigo... yo... no votaré por ninguno de los dos bandos (voces de protesta).
Y yo no votaré por ninguno de los dos bandos debido a tres razones: Primera, porque, repito que no se sería justo que el sólo voto de un representante, que a lo mejor está enfermo del hígado, decidiera el destino
de cien naciones; Segunda, estoy convencido de que los procedimientos, repito, recalco, los procedimientos de los Colorados son desastrosos (voces de protesta de parte de los Colorados);
¡y Tercera!... porque los procedimientos de los Verdes tampoco son de lo más bondadoso que digamos (ahora protestan los Verdes).
Y si no se callan ya yo no sigo, y se van a quedar con la sensación de saber lo que tenía que decirles.
Insisto que hablo de procedimientos y no de ideas ni de doctrinas.
Para mí todas las ideas son respetables aunque sean "ideítas" o "ideotas" aunque no esté de acuerdo con ellas.
Lo que piense ese señor, o ese otro señor, o ese señor (señala), o ese de allá de bigotico que no piensa nada porque ya se nos durmió, eso no impide que todos nosotros seamos muy buenos amigos.
Todos creemos que nuestra manera de ser, nuestra manera de vivir, nuestra manera de pensar y hasta nuestro modito de andar son los mejores; y el chaleco se lo tratamos de imponérselo a los demás y si no lo aceptan decimos que son unos tales y unos cuales y al ratito andamos a la greña.
¿Ustedes creen que eso está bien?
Tan fácil que sería la existencia si tan sólo respetásemos el modo de vivir de cada quien.
Hace cien años ya lo dijo una de las figuras más humildes pero más grandes de nuestro continente: "El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz" (aplausos).
Así me gusta... no que me aplaudan, pero sí que reconozcan la sinceridad de mis palabras.
Yo estoy de acuerdo con todo lo que dijo el representante de Salchichonia (alusión a Alemania) con humildad, con humildad de albañiles no agremiados debemos de luchar por derribar la barda que nos separa, la barda de la incomprensión, la barda de la mutua desconfianza, la barda del odio, el día que lo logremos podemos decir que nos volamos la barda (risas).
Pero no la barda de las ideas, ¡eso no!, ¡nunca!, el día que pensemos igual y actuemos igual dejaremos de ser hombres para convertirnos en máquinas, en
autómatas.
Este es el grave error de los Colorados, el querer imponer por la fuerza sus ideas y su sistema político y económico, hablan de libertades humanas, pero yo les pregunto: ¿existen esas libertades en sus propios países?
Dicen defender los Derechos del Proletariado pero sus propios obreros no tienen siquiera el derecho elemental de la huelga, hablan de la cultura universal al alcance de las masas pero encarcelan a sus escritores porque se atreven a decir la verdad, hablan de la libre determinación de los pueblos y sin embargo hace años que oprimen una serie de naciones sin permitirle que se den la forma de gobierno que más les convenga.
¿Cómo podemos votar por un sistema que habla de dignidad y acto seguido atropella lo más sagrado de la dignidad humana que es la libertad de conciencia eliminando o pretendiendo eliminar a Dios por decreto?
No, señores representantes, yo no puedo estar con los Colorados, o mejor dicho con su modo de actuar; respeto su modo de pensar, allá ellos, pero no puedo dar mi voto para que su sistema se implante por la fuerza en todos los países de la tierra (voces de protesta).
¡El que quiera ser Colorado que lo sea, pero que no pretenda teñir a los demás!- los Colorados se levantan para salir de la Asamblea-.
¡Un momento jóvenes!, ¿pero por qué tan sensitivos?
Pero si no aguantan nada, no, pero si no he terminado, tomen asiento.
Ya sé que es costumbre de ustedes abandonar estas reuniones en cuanto oyen algo que no es de su agrado; pero no he terminado, tomen asiento, no sean precipitosos... todavía tengo que decir algo de los Verdes, ¿no les es gustaría escucharlo?
Siéntese (va y toma agua y hace gárgaras, pero se da cuenta que es Vodka).
Y ahora, mis queridos colegas Verdes,¿ustedes qué dijeron?:
"Ya votó por nosotros", ¿no?, pues no, jóvenes, y no votaré por ustedes porque ustedes también tienen mucha culpa de lo que pasa en el mundo, ustedes también son medio soberbios, como que si el mundo fueran ustedes y los demás tienen una importancia muy relativa, y aunque hablan de paz, de democracia y de cosas muy bonitas, a veces también pretenden imponer su voluntad por la fuerza, por la fuerza del dinero.
Yo estoy de acuerdo con ustedes en que debemos luchar por el bien colectivo e individual, en combatir la miseria y resolver los tremendos problemas de la vivienda, del vestido y del sustento.
Pero en lo que no estoy de acuerdo con ustedes es la forma que ustedes pretenden resolver esos problemas, ustedes también han sucumbido ante el materialismo, se han olvidado de los más bellos valores del espíritu pensando sólo en el negocio, poco a poco se han ido convirtiendo en los acreedores de la humanidad y por eso la humanidad los ve con desconfianza.
El día de la inauguración de la Asamblea, el señor embajador de Lobaronia dijo que el remedio para todos nuestros males estaba en tener automóviles, refrigeradores, aparatos de televisión; ju... y yo me pregunto: ¿para qué
queremos automóviles si todavía andamos descalzos?, ¿para qué queremos refrigeradores si no tenemos alimentos que meter dentro de ellos?, ¿para qué queremos tanques y armamentos si no tenemos suficientes escuelas para
nuestros hijos? (aplausos).
Debemos de pugnar para que el hombre piense en la paz, pero no solamente impulsado por su instinto de conservación, sino fundamentalmente por el deber que tiene de superarse y de hacer del mundo una morada de paz y de
tranquilidad cada vez más digna de la especie humana y de sus altos destinos.
Pero esta aspiración no será posible sino hay abundancia para todos, bienestar común, felicidad colectiva y justicia social.
Es verdad que está en manos de ustedes, de los países poderosos de la tierra, ¡Verdes y Colorados!, el ayudarnos a nosotros los débiles, pero no con dádivas ni con préstamos, ni con alianzas militares.
Ayúdennos pagando un precio más justo, más equitativo por nuestras materias primas, ayúdennos compartiendo con nosotros sus notables adelantos en la ciencia, en la técnica... pero no para fabricar bombas sino para acabar con el hambre y con la miseria (aplausos).
Ayúdennos respetando nuestras costumbres, nuestras costumbres, nuestra dignidad como seres humanos y nuestra personalidad como naciones por pequeños y débiles que seamos; practiquen la tolerancia y la verdadera fraternidad que nosotros sabremos corresponderles, pero dejen ya de tratarnos como simples peones de ajedrez en el tablero de la política internacional.
Reconózcannos como lo que somos, no solamente como clientes o como ratones de laboratorios, sino como seres humanos que sentimos, que sufrimos, que lloramos.
Señores representantes, hay otra razón más por la que no puedo dar mi voto: hace exactamente veinticuatro horas que presenté mi renuncia como embajador de mi país, espero me sea aceptada.
Consecuentemente no les he hablado a ustedes como Excelencia sino como un simple ciudadano, como un hombre libre, como un hombre cualquiera pero que, sin embargo, cree interpretar el máximo anhelo de todos los hombres de la tierra, el anhelo de vivir en paz, el anhelo de ser libre, el anhelo delegar a nuestros hijos y a los hijos de nuestros hijos un mundo mejor en el que reine la buena voluntad y la concordia.
Y qué fácil sería, señores, lograr ese mundo mejor en que todos los hombres blancos, negros, amarillos y cobrizos, ricos y pobres pudiésemos vivir como hermanos.
Si no fuéramos tan ciegos, tan obcecados, tan orgullosos, si tan sólo rigiéramos nuestras vidas por las sublimes palabras, que hace dos mil años, dijo aquel humilde carpintero de Galilea, sencillo, descalzo, sin frac ni condecoraciones: "Amaos... amaos los unos a los otros", pero desgraciadamente ustedes entendieron mal, confundieron los términos, ¿y qué es lo que han hecho?, ¿qué es lo que hacen?: "Armaos los unos contra los otros"....
He dicho...".
Cantinflas 1966, México
a todos sus hermanos Latinoamericanos...
¡GRACIAS MARIO MORENO
POR TODO LO QUE NOS DISTE !
El discurso tiene cuarenta años pero, sin quitarle una coma, podría repetirse en cualquier foro político con absoluta y vigente pertinencia.
Este fue el mismo filósofo de aquella célebre y crucial pregunta, formulada justo antes de sentarse a jugar dominó
"¿Vamos a jugar como caballeros ó como lo que somos?"
disfrútenlo.
A alguien se le ocurrió rescatar este discurso, pronunciado hace 40 años por Cantinflas, supuestamente ante la Organización de Naciones Unidas, en una película en la cual él hacía el papel de embajador.
Esta es la pieza oratoria:
"Me ha tocado en suerte ser último orador, cosa que me alegra mucho porque, como quien dice, así me los agarro cansados.
Sin embargo, sé que a pesar de la insignificancia de mi país que no tiene poderío militar, ni político, ni económico ni mucho menos atómico, todos ustedes esperan con interés mis palabras ya que de mi voto depende el triunfo de los Verdes o de los Colorados.
Señores Representantes:
Estamos pasando un momento crucial en que la humanidad se enfrenta a la misma humanidad.
Estamos viviendo un momento histórico en que el hombre científica e intelectualmente es un gigante, pero moralmente es un pigmeo.
La opinión mundial está tan profundamente dividida en dos bandos aparentemente irreconciliables, que dado el singular caso, que queda en sólo un voto.
El voto de un país débil y pequeño pueda hacer que la balanza se cargue de un lado o se cargue de otro lado.
Estamos, como quien dice, ante una gran báscula: por un platillo ocupado por los Verdes y con otro platillo ocupado por los Colorados.
Y ahora llego yo, que soy de peso pluma como quien dice, y según donde yo me coloque, de ese lado seguirá la balanza.
¡Háganme el favor!...
¿No creen ustedes que es mucha responsabilidad para un solo
ciudadano? No considero justo que la mitad de la humanidad, sea la que fuere, quede condenada a vivir bajo un régimen político y económico que no es de su agrado, solamente porque un frívolo embajador haya votado, o lo hayan hecho votar, en un sentido o en otro.
El que les habla, su amigo... yo... no votaré por ninguno de los dos bandos (voces de protesta).
Y yo no votaré por ninguno de los dos bandos debido a tres razones: Primera, porque, repito que no se sería justo que el sólo voto de un representante, que a lo mejor está enfermo del hígado, decidiera el destino
de cien naciones; Segunda, estoy convencido de que los procedimientos, repito, recalco, los procedimientos de los Colorados son desastrosos (voces de protesta de parte de los Colorados);
¡y Tercera!... porque los procedimientos de los Verdes tampoco son de lo más bondadoso que digamos (ahora protestan los Verdes).
Y si no se callan ya yo no sigo, y se van a quedar con la sensación de saber lo que tenía que decirles.
Insisto que hablo de procedimientos y no de ideas ni de doctrinas.
Para mí todas las ideas son respetables aunque sean "ideítas" o "ideotas" aunque no esté de acuerdo con ellas.
Lo que piense ese señor, o ese otro señor, o ese señor (señala), o ese de allá de bigotico que no piensa nada porque ya se nos durmió, eso no impide que todos nosotros seamos muy buenos amigos.
Todos creemos que nuestra manera de ser, nuestra manera de vivir, nuestra manera de pensar y hasta nuestro modito de andar son los mejores; y el chaleco se lo tratamos de imponérselo a los demás y si no lo aceptan decimos que son unos tales y unos cuales y al ratito andamos a la greña.
¿Ustedes creen que eso está bien?
Tan fácil que sería la existencia si tan sólo respetásemos el modo de vivir de cada quien.
Hace cien años ya lo dijo una de las figuras más humildes pero más grandes de nuestro continente: "El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz" (aplausos).
Así me gusta... no que me aplaudan, pero sí que reconozcan la sinceridad de mis palabras.
Yo estoy de acuerdo con todo lo que dijo el representante de Salchichonia (alusión a Alemania) con humildad, con humildad de albañiles no agremiados debemos de luchar por derribar la barda que nos separa, la barda de la incomprensión, la barda de la mutua desconfianza, la barda del odio, el día que lo logremos podemos decir que nos volamos la barda (risas).
Pero no la barda de las ideas, ¡eso no!, ¡nunca!, el día que pensemos igual y actuemos igual dejaremos de ser hombres para convertirnos en máquinas, en
autómatas.
Este es el grave error de los Colorados, el querer imponer por la fuerza sus ideas y su sistema político y económico, hablan de libertades humanas, pero yo les pregunto: ¿existen esas libertades en sus propios países?
Dicen defender los Derechos del Proletariado pero sus propios obreros no tienen siquiera el derecho elemental de la huelga, hablan de la cultura universal al alcance de las masas pero encarcelan a sus escritores porque se atreven a decir la verdad, hablan de la libre determinación de los pueblos y sin embargo hace años que oprimen una serie de naciones sin permitirle que se den la forma de gobierno que más les convenga.
¿Cómo podemos votar por un sistema que habla de dignidad y acto seguido atropella lo más sagrado de la dignidad humana que es la libertad de conciencia eliminando o pretendiendo eliminar a Dios por decreto?
No, señores representantes, yo no puedo estar con los Colorados, o mejor dicho con su modo de actuar; respeto su modo de pensar, allá ellos, pero no puedo dar mi voto para que su sistema se implante por la fuerza en todos los países de la tierra (voces de protesta).
¡El que quiera ser Colorado que lo sea, pero que no pretenda teñir a los demás!- los Colorados se levantan para salir de la Asamblea-.
¡Un momento jóvenes!, ¿pero por qué tan sensitivos?
Pero si no aguantan nada, no, pero si no he terminado, tomen asiento.
Ya sé que es costumbre de ustedes abandonar estas reuniones en cuanto oyen algo que no es de su agrado; pero no he terminado, tomen asiento, no sean precipitosos... todavía tengo que decir algo de los Verdes, ¿no les es gustaría escucharlo?
Siéntese (va y toma agua y hace gárgaras, pero se da cuenta que es Vodka).
Y ahora, mis queridos colegas Verdes,¿ustedes qué dijeron?:
"Ya votó por nosotros", ¿no?, pues no, jóvenes, y no votaré por ustedes porque ustedes también tienen mucha culpa de lo que pasa en el mundo, ustedes también son medio soberbios, como que si el mundo fueran ustedes y los demás tienen una importancia muy relativa, y aunque hablan de paz, de democracia y de cosas muy bonitas, a veces también pretenden imponer su voluntad por la fuerza, por la fuerza del dinero.
Yo estoy de acuerdo con ustedes en que debemos luchar por el bien colectivo e individual, en combatir la miseria y resolver los tremendos problemas de la vivienda, del vestido y del sustento.
Pero en lo que no estoy de acuerdo con ustedes es la forma que ustedes pretenden resolver esos problemas, ustedes también han sucumbido ante el materialismo, se han olvidado de los más bellos valores del espíritu pensando sólo en el negocio, poco a poco se han ido convirtiendo en los acreedores de la humanidad y por eso la humanidad los ve con desconfianza.
El día de la inauguración de la Asamblea, el señor embajador de Lobaronia dijo que el remedio para todos nuestros males estaba en tener automóviles, refrigeradores, aparatos de televisión; ju... y yo me pregunto: ¿para qué
queremos automóviles si todavía andamos descalzos?, ¿para qué queremos refrigeradores si no tenemos alimentos que meter dentro de ellos?, ¿para qué queremos tanques y armamentos si no tenemos suficientes escuelas para
nuestros hijos? (aplausos).
Debemos de pugnar para que el hombre piense en la paz, pero no solamente impulsado por su instinto de conservación, sino fundamentalmente por el deber que tiene de superarse y de hacer del mundo una morada de paz y de
tranquilidad cada vez más digna de la especie humana y de sus altos destinos.
Pero esta aspiración no será posible sino hay abundancia para todos, bienestar común, felicidad colectiva y justicia social.
Es verdad que está en manos de ustedes, de los países poderosos de la tierra, ¡Verdes y Colorados!, el ayudarnos a nosotros los débiles, pero no con dádivas ni con préstamos, ni con alianzas militares.
Ayúdennos pagando un precio más justo, más equitativo por nuestras materias primas, ayúdennos compartiendo con nosotros sus notables adelantos en la ciencia, en la técnica... pero no para fabricar bombas sino para acabar con el hambre y con la miseria (aplausos).
Ayúdennos respetando nuestras costumbres, nuestras costumbres, nuestra dignidad como seres humanos y nuestra personalidad como naciones por pequeños y débiles que seamos; practiquen la tolerancia y la verdadera fraternidad que nosotros sabremos corresponderles, pero dejen ya de tratarnos como simples peones de ajedrez en el tablero de la política internacional.
Reconózcannos como lo que somos, no solamente como clientes o como ratones de laboratorios, sino como seres humanos que sentimos, que sufrimos, que lloramos.
Señores representantes, hay otra razón más por la que no puedo dar mi voto: hace exactamente veinticuatro horas que presenté mi renuncia como embajador de mi país, espero me sea aceptada.
Consecuentemente no les he hablado a ustedes como Excelencia sino como un simple ciudadano, como un hombre libre, como un hombre cualquiera pero que, sin embargo, cree interpretar el máximo anhelo de todos los hombres de la tierra, el anhelo de vivir en paz, el anhelo de ser libre, el anhelo delegar a nuestros hijos y a los hijos de nuestros hijos un mundo mejor en el que reine la buena voluntad y la concordia.
Y qué fácil sería, señores, lograr ese mundo mejor en que todos los hombres blancos, negros, amarillos y cobrizos, ricos y pobres pudiésemos vivir como hermanos.
Si no fuéramos tan ciegos, tan obcecados, tan orgullosos, si tan sólo rigiéramos nuestras vidas por las sublimes palabras, que hace dos mil años, dijo aquel humilde carpintero de Galilea, sencillo, descalzo, sin frac ni condecoraciones: "Amaos... amaos los unos a los otros", pero desgraciadamente ustedes entendieron mal, confundieron los términos, ¿y qué es lo que han hecho?, ¿qué es lo que hacen?: "Armaos los unos contra los otros"....
He dicho...".
Cantinflas 1966, México
domingo, octubre 22, 2006
The tourism and the environmental ethics
The tourism and the environmental ethics
The difficulties to achieve an equilibrium
Alfredo Ascanio (askain)
It does more than 50 years Aldo Leopol already presented the dilemma that existed between the development and the conservation of the environment in its book of titled A Sand County Almanac (1949). In the chapter IV, “The Upshot”, Leopol said that “the land ethic did not yet exist; there is as yet not ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it…the land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations."
Twenty years later Charles A. Reich in its work The Greening of America indicated that the question is, “can we develop to new consciousness that places the individual and humanistic value above the machine? “ And now in this century Andrew Holden of University of Luton (United Kingdom) asked himself: “is needed a new environmental ethics for the tourism?
The matter is that up to now the environmental ethics is only anthropocentric, that is to say an economics ethics that ignores the responsibility of the man with the nature.
Holden says that "is difficult to achieve a homogeneous environmental ethics for the tourism by the variety of its interests. The imposed politics by imperative economic and neglecting the environmental price of the use of the geographical spaces, only conducted to the governments to establish criteria of conservation to avoid the impacts, but in truth of what treats is of preserve the middle for assure the energetic development of the tourism".
An unacceptable ambiguity by some ONGs more extremists as the "echo-warlike" of the mountains of Colorado to be opposed to the reintroduction of the Lynx inside the ecosystem.
Al contrary of it what occurs with the anthropocentric ethics, that ignores the intrinsic value of the nature, the true environmental ethics offers to all the not human entities (animal, plants, rocks) the same moral position that the human beings.
All the entities not-humans should enjoy the life liberty rights and of other legal rights, the same as the individual rights that demands the man for if.
The problem is to recognize the right intrinsic of the nature then the tourism as business carefully. The tourism should be revised because to reach the true sustainable tourism the value of the environment would have a greater importance that the value like a resource of leisure.
The tour operators in the market of the tourism of masses like Touristik Union International (TUI) now united to Thomson Travel Group, have developed politic environmental but that is only a slant ethnocentric to reduce their energy losses and of emissions contaminants but for elevate their profit value of their business and also the codes of conducts are based on conserve for be able to develop the tourism in ambiances a lot more natural by reasons that they damage not al sector.
Who benefits or damages a new environmental ethics? That new ethics he consists of passing from the anthropocentric ethics to a not anthropocentric ethics that assure the equality of the rights of the nature of the man.
That is to say: an echo-holistic ethics to put the emphasis in the survival of the species and the ecosystems, but the the development of the tourism would have restrictions in certain natural areas, which seems that is impossible for now because this new model suppose and a conceptual change in the system of far away beliefs of the rational thing for return at most spiritual.
Despite its promise, for this subject not exists a simple answer. Beyond the concept of echo-holistic ethics for the majority of the parts interested in the tourism it supposes a very drastic change that would be able them to damage.
2006/10/23 오전 10:07
The difficulties to achieve an equilibrium
Alfredo Ascanio (askain)
It does more than 50 years Aldo Leopol already presented the dilemma that existed between the development and the conservation of the environment in its book of titled A Sand County Almanac (1949). In the chapter IV, “The Upshot”, Leopol said that “the land ethic did not yet exist; there is as yet not ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it…the land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations."
Twenty years later Charles A. Reich in its work The Greening of America indicated that the question is, “can we develop to new consciousness that places the individual and humanistic value above the machine? “ And now in this century Andrew Holden of University of Luton (United Kingdom) asked himself: “is needed a new environmental ethics for the tourism?
The matter is that up to now the environmental ethics is only anthropocentric, that is to say an economics ethics that ignores the responsibility of the man with the nature.
Holden says that "is difficult to achieve a homogeneous environmental ethics for the tourism by the variety of its interests. The imposed politics by imperative economic and neglecting the environmental price of the use of the geographical spaces, only conducted to the governments to establish criteria of conservation to avoid the impacts, but in truth of what treats is of preserve the middle for assure the energetic development of the tourism".
An unacceptable ambiguity by some ONGs more extremists as the "echo-warlike" of the mountains of Colorado to be opposed to the reintroduction of the Lynx inside the ecosystem.
Al contrary of it what occurs with the anthropocentric ethics, that ignores the intrinsic value of the nature, the true environmental ethics offers to all the not human entities (animal, plants, rocks) the same moral position that the human beings.
All the entities not-humans should enjoy the life liberty rights and of other legal rights, the same as the individual rights that demands the man for if.
The problem is to recognize the right intrinsic of the nature then the tourism as business carefully. The tourism should be revised because to reach the true sustainable tourism the value of the environment would have a greater importance that the value like a resource of leisure.
The tour operators in the market of the tourism of masses like Touristik Union International (TUI) now united to Thomson Travel Group, have developed politic environmental but that is only a slant ethnocentric to reduce their energy losses and of emissions contaminants but for elevate their profit value of their business and also the codes of conducts are based on conserve for be able to develop the tourism in ambiances a lot more natural by reasons that they damage not al sector.
Who benefits or damages a new environmental ethics? That new ethics he consists of passing from the anthropocentric ethics to a not anthropocentric ethics that assure the equality of the rights of the nature of the man.
That is to say: an echo-holistic ethics to put the emphasis in the survival of the species and the ecosystems, but the the development of the tourism would have restrictions in certain natural areas, which seems that is impossible for now because this new model suppose and a conceptual change in the system of far away beliefs of the rational thing for return at most spiritual.
Despite its promise, for this subject not exists a simple answer. Beyond the concept of echo-holistic ethics for the majority of the parts interested in the tourism it supposes a very drastic change that would be able them to damage.
2006/10/23 오전 10:07
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