Long live the peoples of ALBA! First, I want to share the information that I know the media is waiting for. You are present at this beautiful festival of cultural exchange, but also an exchange of knowledge, because we will have research and discussions about our roots, our common origin, and the development of rhythms and culture, accompanied by those rhythms in each of the countries, not only of our Bolivarian Alliance but also, I wouldn’t say guests, because the Bolivarian Alliance belongs to everyone, because Bolívar belongs to everyone in this world. These are countries we have also invited to join us. Here with us are Colombia, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, comrades from Honduras are on their way, and our alliance countries: Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, and Saint Lucia.”

The drums are sounding. From Saint Lucia, we have Skin Rhythm; from Dominica, The Paix-Bouche Drummers; from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Drum Foundation; from Cuba, the Camagüey Folkloric Ballet; from Barbados, Haynesville Youth Club; from Benin, our Mother Africa is present with Les Espoirs Group; from Bolivia, Disidentes; from Antigua and Barbuda, Hells Gate Steel Orchestra; from Grenada, Lion Pride Percussion. Also, Wasafoli Drumming Group from Trinidad and Tobago, Konpa Aiyiti Group from Haiti, and the Venelengue group from Colombia— Welcome, everyone!

It’s good for those watching us to know that these international groups, along with dozens of Venezuelan groups, will be participating in the celebration of San Juan Bautista all over Venezuela. They will be visiting Curiepe, Aragua, La Guaira, here in Caracas, Puerto Cabello, and Tapipa in Miranda.

Well, look, we are going to be here for three days. On Saturday, we will have the traditional San Juan ceremony, and we will experience it. Here in Plaza Bolívar, there are two stages so that the drums of ALBA, the drums of our humanity, can continuously play for the next three days.

I wanted to write a few words from the soul, from the heart, beyond the information we brought you.

Mother Africa is the mother of humanity; we are all Afro-descendants. In Africa, the gods speak and rebel through the beats of their drums and the rhythms and atmospheres they create.

The drums, their beats, elevate our consciousness, our soul, to a unique level that no other human expression can match. In our America, the indigenous drum is also a channel to the sacred; its beats heal, its beats warn, its beats guide, its beats resist.

In the Caribbean, the drum arrived on ships filled with pain and injustice. They even tried to ban the drum in some Caribbean communities. How naive those imperialist rulers were to think they could forbid the peoples, children of Africa, from being and feeling by trying to ban the drum!

In the genetic code of the Caribbean, in the cultural code of the Caribbean, Mother Africa beats, with her sounds, her embraces, her light, her flavors, her smells, her sufferings, joys, and above all, her dreams.

Each beat of the drum not only reminds us that we share the same origin, it demands, it requires us to understand that we are one people, that our diversity unites us, crosses us, defines us in unity, not only towards the past but in the present, and, above all, will unite us towards the future.

ALBA-TCP, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, is a heroic creation, the foundational creation of Hugo Chávez Frías and Fidel Castro Ruz. Our commanders created ALBA, they made it like the drum, because ALBA calls us to unity, calls us to know and understand each other in unity, to take care of each other, to help each other so we can walk together hand in hand with our souls.

We can make great strides in commercial, economic, political, and even social integration, but if we do not integrate our essences, if we do not integrate our heritages, our identities, if we do not know each other, if we do not embrace them, if we do not dance and sing together, that formal, institutional integration will be little more than nothing and will be as brief as a leaf in the wind.

Here are the ten countries that formally make up ALBA-TCP, but also, as we said, there are invited countries from Africa, from our America, because ALBA is the daughter of Simón Bolívar and Bolívar belongs to everyone. Bolívar liberated us and conceived us as united. When we are separated, disunited, we are oppressed, dominated, killed, while united we will be ourselves, we will be free, we will go at our own pace and with our own rhythms along the paths marked by our own drums that sound with our own hands and are hardened with our own sweat.

ALBA, I insist, is like the drum, it makes us rebel against oppression, against injustice, it demands that we can be original and confirms that we were born together and that only together we could be truly happy.

Already on this date, on the Venezuelan coasts and in various regions, the beats of the celebration can be heard, a beautiful, syncretic, spiritual celebration of San Juan Bautista, with its sangueos, bonfires, passion, devotion, promises, and hopes.

Brothers and sisters from our America, the Caribbean, Africa, you will go to Curiepe, La Guaira, Puerto Cabello, Aragua state, La Vega; you will feel the love of the kind Afro-Venezuelan people, you will feel that beyond the common roots that sustain us, we are in the peoples of the south, we are in the peoples of the global south, in the peoples of Our America, the Caribbean and Africa, we are root, trunk, branches, flowers, fruits, and seeds; we are the trees of the forests of humanity, we are a harmonious and perfect unity that they have tried to avoid, to separate, but it defines us and we will always return to be the saving trees of all humanity in the south.

Feel, dear brothers and sisters, that the wood and leather of our drums are the same in all our countries, it is the same wood, it is the same leather, it is the same sound that defines us, that shapes us, that unites us, and that makes us original, that makes us free, and that together will make us invincible.

On behalf of the ten governments, the ten heads of government of ALBA-TCP, we invite you to enjoy these next few days, but especially on behalf of one of our heads of government who has facilitated this invitation, a man who has fought tirelessly; first, alongside one of the founders of the Alliance, the creator of the Alliance, Hugo Chávez, but then alongside his people and despite the imperialists, with their madness, with their sanctions, with their assassination attempts, we are talking about the People’s President, the Drum President, the Afro President, we are talking about Nicolás Maduro Moros, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Welcome to the homeland of Bolívar, to the homeland of Chávez, to the homeland of the lances, the dances, and the drums for unity!

Thank you very much, welcome.