AS if there weren’t sufficient reasons to lose ones mind, the proliferation of initials related to the crisis are multiplying in such a way that nobody can finally work them out. The first was the G-20, a select group in Washington that claimed to represent everyone; the second, the likewise select APEC group that met in Lima. Present there was the richest country in the world, the United States, No. 1, with an annual per capita GDP of $45,000 and the one in approximately 100th place, the People’s Republic of China, with $2, 483, the largest investor in U.S. Treasury Bonds.

Speaking at an economic conference attended by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner in that science, President Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic, who is in neither of the other two groups, describes the G-192 group as the total membership of the UN.

Among other important figures, George Soros, the grand magnate of Hungarian origin and an immensely wealthy U.S. citizen, was listening.

It is a task for chess players to figure out the arguments of the highly diverse national and entrepreneurial interests within the G-20 and G-21 groups.

The fact is that if a Third World country signs free trade agreements with eight or 10 developed or emerging countries at the same time, among which some are characterized by being traditional producers of abundant and attractive merchandise at low cost, or sophisticated industrial products like the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea etc., the nascent industry of a developing country will have to compete with the sophisticated products that emerge from the industrial sector of the more developed countries or from the laborious hands of their powerful partners, one of which manages – in its own way – world finances. Their sole role is as producers of the cheap raw materials required for large-scale investment which, in all events, will be foreign property fully guaranteed against any nationalizing caprices. They are left with nothing more than outstretched hands awaiting the pious aid for development, and an eternal debt to pay with the sweat of their sons and daughters. Isn’t that what has been happening to date?

That is why I have no hesitation in being in solidarity with the position of Chávez, when he affirms that he is not in agreement with the Lima prescription. There are more than enough reasons. Let us observe how things develop, while demanding rights without going down on our knees.