MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC, DOCTOR ERNESTO SAMPER PIZANO, AT THE INSTALLATION OF THE SECOND RE-UNION OF ELDERS AND PRIESTS OF AMERIKA, IN SANTA FE DE BOGOTA
Santafé de Bogotá, D.C., June 20, 1997
Don Francisco Quiroga, President of SENDAMA and Minister Priest of the K’iichee’ Mayan Solar Cult; Mr. Cirilo Pérez Oxlaj, Wandering Wolf, Envoy of the Mayan K’iichee’ Council of Elders and President of the Council of Elders of America; Special guests, ladies and gentlemen:
Sponsored by the SENDAMA Foundation, and with the attendance of more than four hundred guests from the indigenous peoples of America, the Second Re-Union of Indigenous Elders and Priests of America is being initiated today in Santafé de Bogotá.
Ambassadors of the cultures of tradition and ancestral wisdom of the continent, the same ones that our positive sciences very often insist on ignoring if not despising, the indigenous elders and priests, even if they come in the name of the Eskimos, the Apaches and the Dakotas of the North, the Mayans and the Cuna of the Center, the Kogi, Huitotos, Quechuas, Pallares and Guaraníes of the South, want to talk to us about their sacred traditions and make a vehement call to the reconciliation of man with man, and of man with nature.
United like the fingers of the hand, as their sacred texts say, the indigenous elders and priests of America agree, as do their calendars, that we are on the verge of a second chance, a new Era of reunion, communion. , it speaks, of reunion and common union of man with the world, and that concrete actions must be carried out to save the natural environment in which we live, lest tomorrow we are left with sick humanity and without the earth, lest tomorrow As they say, “the breaking of the glass mantle”, that is, of the ozone layer, damage that they have wisely spoken about for more than twenty years, results in physical and mental illnesses “that do not even have a name”, and that are already beginning to appear and become evident in living organisms and in the climate imbalance of the planet.
I never cease to marvel at the happy circumstance that Colombia has been chosen as the headquarters of this Second Re-Union of Indigenous Elders and Priests of America, because ours is a bridge country between the North and the South, because it is located in the region of the Amazon, the lung of the world, and because, as the elders said two years ago at the First Re-Union, sooner or later we had to enter a peace process similar to that of Guatemala; Nor does it cease to amaze me that this meeting almost coincided with the delivery, safe and sound in Caquetá, of the 60 soldiers and 10 marines that the guerrilla had been in their possession for nine months. It never ceases to amaze me, because the feeling I had last Sunday is the same one that all Colombians, the friendly countries of America and the world had: that we were celebrating the festival of peace, the prelude to our peaceful coexistence, the beginning of the reconciliation.
I don't think anyone except some dark-hearted prophets of disaster ever felt defeated. On the contrary, as I have said on several occasions, I believe that the country won, I believe that no one was defeated or humiliated. I also believe that peace among Colombians must be achieved, as in any part of the world, through dialogue and agreement, through the democratic and civilized exercise of listening and recognizing the other as an interlocutor, as a speaker, as a listener, as a person. . We already have too much evidence, almost all of it unfortunate, that not much can be expected from those who monologue and even less from those who pontificate and try to impose their opinions as revealed truth, since what this results in is that those positions become more radicalized and increases the differences.
It is a real shame that I cannot attend the Second Meeting of Indigenous Elders and Priests of America, because as ruler of this dear Nation, as a Colombian and as a person, I know that all of us, absolutely all of us, have a lot to learn from the representatives of those cultures of tradition that visit us today, and that in their words, in their predictions, in their wise advice, as well as in the admirable way in which they receive the world, may be the key to human happiness on the planet that, although paradoxically violated by “civilization,” they hope that it will itself restore health and balance.
Thank you so much.
ERNESTO SAMPER PIZANO