Gobierno de Reconciliación y Unidad Nacional
Unida Nicaragua Triunfa
MESSAGE BY THE GOVERNMENT OF NICARAGUA
INTERNATIONAL DAY OF REMEMBRANCE OF THE
VICTIMS OF SLAVERY AND THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
VIRTUAL, EXTRAORDINARY SESSION
PERMANENT COUNCIL OF THE OAS
8:00AM, FRIDAY, 25 MARCH, 2022
Good morning Mr. President, Ambassador Emerson Hull, Permanent Representative of Saint Kitts and Nevis,
Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen, Representatives of the OAS Member States,
25th March of each year, marks the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
This day, celebrated for the first time in 2008, after the approval of Resolution 62/122 of the United Nations General Assembly, serves to honor the Sacred Memory of around 15 million Africans, taken from their homes and communities, separated from their families, forced to walk in chains for days towards the coasts of Africa, where their terrible torment would just begin.
Huge ships would be awaiting to load them up, over 300 men and women separately, in totally overcrowded conditions, in which they could not even extend their arms and legs. The sinister Middle Passage of what some sarcastically celebrated as the "lucrative triangular trade" between Europe, Africa and the Americas alone, claimed some 4.5 million souls of African Sisters and Brothers.
The strongest survived only to be auctioned in the ports of the United States, Brazil, the Caribbean and other areas of our Hemisphere.
The life expectancy of a slave on the cotton or sugar cane plantations was only 20 years. Even less so in the mining industry. They also worked in the tourist industry, in transportation, construction, and all other "new and old world" industries.
It is appropriate to commemorate this day with the title "Stories of courage in the Americas: Resistance to Slavery and Unity against Racism", and even more so, when it is celebrated after the 21st of March, the International Day Against Racism, given that in addition to the unbridled ambition of the imperial powers and their perverse sense of superiority; it was their cruel need to discriminate, subjugate and harm African Peoples and their descendants, which fueled this genocide of more than 500 years.
The crime of the Transatlantic African Slave Trade remains unpunished to this day, reduced to a kind of regrettable event carried out by a few people who lost their way; ignoring the fact that slavery was and continues to be an institutionalized industry, a crime against humanity without comparison in the History of this World; and Reparations, to which the African and Afro-descendant Peoples, victims of such barbarism, are fully entitled to, continues to be an outstanding debt that European and North American countries refuse to repay.
We condemn the political and economic model of savage capitalism that legitimized slavery, and by commemorating this Day of Remembrance, the People and Government of Reconciliation and National Unity of the Republic of Nicaragua, recognize each and every one of the valuable contributions made by African and Afrodescendant Peoples to the construction of European and American Societies, whose lifestyle was forged upon the shoulders of millions of men and women of physical and spiritual strength and incomparable courage.
Thank you very much Mr President.