Evo lays it on the line to the U.N.

While Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received the headlines for their recent addresses to the United Nations, President Evo Morales of Bolivia also had strong words for the world body:

We Need Partners, Not Bosses

By Evo Morales

It is an enormous satisfaction to be here present, representing my people, from my homeland, Bolivia and especially the indigenous movement.

I want to tell you, that after 500 years of be looked down upon, at times considered to be savages, animals, in some regions condemned to extermination, thanks to this consciousness and this uprising and to the struggle for the rights of the peoples, we got here to repair the historic damage, to repair 500 years of damage.

During the republic, we were equally discriminated against, marginalised, they never took into account this struggle of the peoples for life, for humanity during the last 20 years, with their application of an economic model — neoliberalism — that continued the looting of our natural resources, the privatisation of our basic services.

Convinced, and we are convinced, that the way of privatisation of basic services is the best way of violating human rights.

And these small considerations oblige me to say the truth here about the livelihoods of these families, I come to express this sentiment for the humanity of the peoples, from my people. I come here to express the suffering, the product of marginalisation, of exclusion, I come to express above all else, this anti-colonial sentiment of the peoples that struggle for equality and justice.

The rest is here.