7
Oct
2025
Watch
EU political strategy on Latin America (debate)
Madam President, Eduardo Galeano wrote that the metals snatched from the new colonial dominions of America stimulated European economic development and can even be said to have made it possible. Six centuries later, Europe still does not recognize that Latin America was not discovered, but invaded. Spain and other European powers committed enormous looting and genocide and must apologize and repair our brotherly peoples of America. Far from doing so, Europe's current relationship with Latin America remains a form of colonialism. The chains of exploitation, begun then, continue today in new forms: extractivism, debt, unequal trade agreements such as Mercosur, environmental devastation, racism or forced migration. European elites want the wealth of Latin America, but they close borders, deny rights to migrants and despise demands for social justice, food sovereignty or fair trade while promoting militarization disguised as security cooperation. And in addition, we continue to define our relationship with Latin America based on the interests of the United States, especially against China. But why do we do the dirty work of Donald Trump, responsible for coups d'état, unleashing an ethnic war with mass deportations, the illegal blockade of Cuba and attacks on the sovereignty of countries such as Colombia, Venezuela or Mexico under the excuse of drug trafficking? Aren't American pharmaceutical companies and the absence of public health primarily responsible for the fentanyl crisis? Six centuries later, Europe, submissive to Trump, warmongering, complicit in the genocide in Palestine, still believes itself to be the owner of what never belonged to it. I do not know when you will realize, Commissioner, that this is how you are digging the grave of this dying Europe. As Simon Rodriguez said, either we invent or we err.