Entrevista Diana Uribe al Presidente Irlanda
En el pasado mes de febrero de este año el presidente de Irlanda Michael D. Higgins realizó una visita oficial de cinco días a nuestro país, con ocasión de la firma del proceso de paz entre el Gobierno colombiano y la guerrilla de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia –FARC–. En una apretada agenda, visitó una zona veredal de concentración en Anorí, se reunió con el presidente de Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, dictó una conferencia en la Universidad Nacional de Colombia y se reunió con representantes de la ONU y la Unión Europea.
 So my first question is about reconciliation, it's about how to overcome the bitterness, the hatred that has been lingering for so long in order to believe and make it through the peace, especially not only between the victims and the perpetrators, but among the rest of the society, especially with those sectors that didn't want peace or do not agree with peace. How do you overcome that, how the Irish people overcome that and learn to live together? Well I think it's first of all important to realize that peace is a continual process, it can at any stage break out of a peaceful flow into something that is a return to a conflict that was there before. The Irish peace process now is 20 years old and it requires continual attention. I think your question about reconciliation interests me, I was required to give a number of papers during 2016 celebrating 100 years of Irish independence and I visited Northern Ireland and on my website you will find a paper on remembering, forgetting, forgiving and healing and that is one I gave in Coramila where there were many people from the unionist tradition present. But I tried to address this issue of what is involved in relation to memory and the first thing that is important is that it is of no value to suggest to people that they forget. If you say to someone who has lost a husband or a son or a daughter or someone who is in a wheelchair as a result of an atrocity, in my view it is amoral, certainly and possibly immoral to suggest to them that they should forget. So how then do you deal with this? There are many, by training I am a political scientist, sociologist and I have looked at this literature for a long time from people like Hannah Arendt and Paul McCair and others. I think that what I found myself writing in the papers about the conflict in Northern Ireland was that you must ensure that an event of the past does not damage you to the point at which you cannot function in the present and very, very much in relation to the future, that it does not deprive you of possibilities. So that is the task. And then the next thing is how then do you talk about modesty in place? And I think there I have actually been advocating that people put themselves in the shoes of the other and by putting yourself in the shoes of the other you reach a position where you can have several narratives standing side by side. Now what this means, in the case of Ireland, the First World War of 1914 to 1918 coincides with the declaration of an Act of Independence of Ireland. When people from the poorer areas of Dublin say some of them are in the army fighting for the British Empire, others are going to in fact be people who will be called by the British to oppose the Irish Act of Independence. So you're looking back to this period of time between 1900 and 1920 and you're saying to people what you must allow are all of these different memories to stand side by side. It's a long answer to your question, but it is in fact part of the answer because you must respect the narratives of the other. Then that enables you to have a discourse in relation to the future and my own view is one of the reasons I'm here and one of the reasons Edmund Gilmore comes to Columbia and so forth, we were powerfully assisted in our process by people from abroad, particularly people like Senator George Mitchell, people from the United States, people who came from Scandinavia to actually give us technical advice in relation to disarmament and certainly South Africa where we have a very, very good home. So that is where we are. At any time we're in the middle of elections now at the present time in Northern Ireland and one of the things if people have run out of an agenda in the present they may very easily seek to resume an old form of argument that speaks about these ancient antagonisms. I've looked at the Columbian peace process very closely and what I think is very interesting, we learned a very great deal from it. We learned about, for example, the importance of standing back and creating a space of time so that you could return to the issues. As well as that I think it was unique in relation to having 70 of the victims present. I think in relation to the gender commission and in relation to the position of women and I think that internationally people have much to learn from the process in the manner. Also I think I've been looking at the implementation process and I really feel for people in the remote areas, indigenous people. When I came to Columbia seven years ago I went to Benaventura. There I met mothers, I met people in the African Columbian community who were suffering very much from the violence. And we're getting through. And then comes the other question. When a country has suffered for such a long time, a violence and a stigma like we have, we have a poor self-image, a collective poor self-image. How do you get people to overcome that, to believe that what we're doing, we're actually doing it? Because we were like, the war lasted so long. We had this stigma about the drug dealers and all that. So collectively, individually every Columbian is invincible. But collectively we have a lot of problems to believe that we can make it as a society. Yes, I think when I was a young student in the United States at the end of the 1960s, we were all in the same position, those of us who had come from abroad. I actually think it's very important that we face this too, is that we were there, everyone spoke about modernisation, about development and traditional society. As if the six Princeton studies, people of Armand and Ferber and Huntington and others who wrote these books, that they were in fact actually manuals of how to enter the modern world. It was always ethnocentric, it was always fallacious, it was always an assumption of the linearity that didn't exist. And among the people I read at that time were essays from people like Orlando Falls Porter. I talked to President Santos about this, and you heard me speak in the university about that, and he has a very famous essay called The Eyes of an Old American Studying South America. What is absurd in it all is that if you followed the Princeton studies model and modernisation theory in its extreme form, you would regard those pursuing land reform, those who believed in liberation theology, as somehow or another some deviants. When in fact actually what you needed to do in relation to socially understanding society, you had to understand the root of the conflict. The root of the conflict in Colombia, I say with respect, is very much something we share an island, it is land. And the issue of inequality of access to land, the issue of inequality of access to opportunities to approach the development of the self through education. My conversation with President Santos filled me with some encouragement in this regard. Well yesterday I meet some members of the civil society, meet some people from indigenous society, and I know what is going to happen. This was our difficult period too, the implementation period, when in fact those who have a very great deal to lose in terms of privileges, in terms of lateral fundismo and so forth, and then if you allow a laguna to develop between the coming together and the surrender of the FARC, and if it becomes available for private armies, paramilitaries, it gives you a whole new thread. The people in the Blackhead, the people in the ground, the people in the inter-church alliances that are represented by those who are working this, people who wanted to have ground up development, the one word all the time that occurs is recolumns. They don't want, as you say, they want to get beyond the point of violence so that it doesn't recur. But if it does recur in a way, great progress is being made, which is very important for example for the decisions that have been made by the Constitutional Court in the past in relation to land and so on, that they be respected. I also, I've come in from Peru and I'm going on to Cuba, but when I was in Peru speaking and speaking there in the university too, I reminded people that it isn't just beginning with the Aztecs, it begins with the ancient civilizations of the Andes. If you take 50 kilometers down the Andes and you look at what the archaeology tells us, it tells us that people had achieved a balance between what crops you could sow, given considerations of climate, given considerations of size, fertility and so forth. And there were seven things. So in a way when we now in 2015 in Paris and New York say we want to do something about climate change and we do something about sustainability, we're actually talking about an old wisdom that was there thousands of years ago. So we should bear in mind this, I think, in a way. I had a message from one of the presidents saying, he accepts my view about that we need to balance ecology, economy and ethics. And I think it's very, I think what you have done in relation to the peace process in Crimea, the implementation process, the steps have been thought out and it is necessary to go ahead. I'm at my age, when I was a young person, I read people like Camillo Dorritu and people like that. And there is an order. I had problems myself about the conjunction between forms of the Christian belief that was allied to the conquistadores, the quinching, if you like, of age and forms of transcendence and spirituality. But that is the past now. Would you say an interesting thing, you asked me about how do you deal with this. I think that Dr. Ejeveri from the University of Sao Paulo has done work on some of the indigenous peoples. And he speaks to us interestingly about Roger Casement who studied the Putumayo. And there are some people from the Putumayo district who came to see me this morning. And we talked. And you know, one of the most interesting things is that they have two concepts in their, they have many, they have 240 languages, they have 70 different families of languages and so on. But they speak about how, if you take the Asana, where the rubber barons in fact mutilated and murdered people and so on. He said the first generation after, they were unable to find themselves to have the capacity to return to these sites. Other generation after that, and then the grandchildren are ones who have literacy. And they felt that they are now empowered enough to be able to go back to this, what happened to their ancestors, two generations old. And they comment, the old chiefs, I remember reading the anthropology of this. And they said, they addressed the spirits of the people who had been defiled in this way. And they said, we have brought your grandchildren to here to show you that they have become, they are now, they have the language of the other people who committed to this too, they are able to understand this. And they referred to the concept of the basket of darkness and the basket of life and so on. And this is a huge capacity and a great enriching period in people's life. When you are able to recognise that which has caused the conflict and sourced it, and now you are at a point to just say, I know in this I am choosing not to be amnesic about it, but neither am I allowing it to disempower me from the opportunities of life. I am very interested in this, but I have, at any event, I was 26 when I came to Central and South America for the first time, and it was a long 50 years ago. I like this so much, this so rich. And Colombia has such wonderful opportunities, which there is no doubt, I would be dishonest if I said that one could achieve all of the fruits of peace and leave the unequal structures in place. No, I think you cannot have such a situation. So therefore, what do you do about it? I think that I would think privileging expenditure on education, and not just education in terms of literacy, but what our world wants at the present time. We are at a very difficult point. We need a kind of economic and fiscal literacy, so that people will be able to discuss options about their future and do so in a way that will allow for the engagement and participation of citizens. And how then do you deal with those who have said they voted no, voted yes, we were in the situation in Ireland? I think there is what I call it now a necessary grace of discourse, rather like being able to put yourself into the shoes of the other in terms of narratives. So without having a discussion about the future, you cannot do so by exchanging insults. There are some cultures where this happens as a preliminary to conversation, I'm moving to that, but no, I think that what you need is to be able to respect the process by which people are able to hold what is the hostile or negative opinion. Thank you. Thank you, because that's a long, long process. And we had something like that after the referendum, because a civil society emerged and we started to listen to us in a way we never did before. So in spite of how shocking it was, it gave us a chance to see and hear us like we never did before. But I think this is so important. The other thing which we rarely speak of now is the importance of beauty. If you have in fact actually the 48 million people of Exeter, and they are in the environment they are in, it's such a great reward, a fantastic invitation to be able to say, this is something we are going to be able to share together. I think that those of us who look from a great distance at the position of Columbia, Pope Francis for example and I would have the same approach in relation to what he calls, have we become so anaesthetised in our minds that we are not able to critique the models by which we live. We cannot go on as we are now. The planet itself has been put into danger, as well as that models of development have been imposed on people without consideration of what I would say is intuitive wisdom. I'll give you a practical example as a sociologist. All that time ago when I came to the United States, empiricism and structural functionalism was the hegemonic theory. What you then had if you like as a method, empiricism but also quantification. Now both empiricism is very important and is dealing with fact. In Africa, Asia, Latin America, there are whole inheritance and legacies of intuitive wisdom that are very, very important. So therefore you mustn't reduce what you deal with to what is measurable. It's an old fallacy. What you have to do is that you have to be able to be empirical but allow for the entrance of intuition. This arises as well I think in relation to places where you have your deleterate tradition of Gabriel García, like he has a Borges or anything and why is he interested in Joyce and so forth. I think it is because you have to be able to listen to what your heart tells you, what I call the music of the corazón. You must listen. You must allow for that. Why should you narrow yourself, your options and so on. I also think that five years in South America, Central America, I've been in Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, terrible times, it isn't acceptable that we allow for a great sadness to be the only inheritance that people have. You need a kind of empowering capacity or a capacity for it. But I think you had three questions that you wanted to ask. The last one is how could the Brexit affect the Good Friday Agreement? The Good Friday Agreement is an international treaty. Twenty years old, the treaty I am taught, dealing with Brexit. In relation to Brexit, the Good Friday Agreement is twenty years old. It took a great deal of time to establish it. I'll add one more thing to your previous question. It was important, something that I think you used here, is that you need to put a secretariat in place. And actually if you look at the response to the decision on the plebiscito here, and the fact that one quickly went back to the table and accepted amendments, in the Irish case we wouldn't have a Good Friday Agreement if we didn't put a secretariat in place that could be able to keep producing text when the parties could no longer find it able to be the same rule. If you look at, for example, another example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it doesn't have a permanent secretariat. You're so therefore dependent on a United States proposal, other reaction to it. So therefore where we are now is that the decision has been taken by the United Kingdom. I'm not sure they are entitled to take what decisions they wish, but we are going to protect the Good Friday Agreement. I don't think you will see a border coming back. It's going to be difficult for us. The other thing that Brexit has on us is that Britain is a very significant trading partner, a billion trade every week. Then again in relation to that there are many Irish people in Britain and many British people in Ireland. In fact the same level of investment, there is much Irish investment in Britain, creating as many jobs as there are British investment in Ireland, creating jobs. No, we are not following the British out of the European Union. We've gained from the European Union. There are very significant advantages in having a region that agrees on certain values. We've agreed in relation to equality, in relation to women's rights, in relation to environment and so on. We will continue. So we have to handle the issue of Brexit. If you said to me as well, just think of it like this, the people who are the hardest in favour of Brexit, for a hard breakfast, they assume that they will be able to put together another trading area that might involve the United States made in the image of President Trump, and the United Kingdom, Canada and the third, I doubt if Canada will cooperate with that, but if this is to us, why would we reverse ourselves back to a single narrow market, monolingual and so on, when we have, may I tell you that in the European Union there are of students exchanging who got married to a German, there are a million babies born under the Erasmus. So if you're doing this and if you're moving and if you're exchanging culture, exchanging science, exchanging procedures, why would you resign them to some form of pre-colonised existence? So I don't think it's going to happen. Yes, we are the people most immediately impacted by a decision, but it has implications too for the United Kingdom. We will get past it and we will manage, but we are keeping our international vision. And the border? The border I think will in fact not come back at all the way it was. People will talk. I really find that what I like to do is that where my energies go is in relation to what I call a renovato, the renovation of the European Union to create social Europe, and we deal with this aberration as we pass along there. We are not obsessed by the Brexit issue, I think, and the historians will judge the basis on which the decision was arrived at. But maybe another issue that you should think about that arises from it, that a scholar I know, Peter Emerson, writes about, maybe we shouldn't ask people to vote yes or no on issues, maybe we should ask them to vote on preferred options. Do you want A, B, C or D? Do you not want E, F, G, H? What is the strength of your option? So maybe we need the newly formulated forms of democracy to get beyond majoritarian simplicities. But no, we will move on. I'm very, very pleased to know that Ireland will be continuing the implementation process through the Trust Fund in Europe. My heart lifts every time I'm in South America anyway with the Colombian people. I so wish them peace and also to have the full, let this beautiful country be available to all Colombians. Thank you very much. Thank you for your interview, but most of all, thank you for your wisdom. It's a pleasure. Really, it's enlightening. It's really enlightening. It's very helpful to us as well.
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about the conflict in Northern"}, {"start": 155.16, "end": 164.56, "text": " Ireland was that you must ensure that an event of the past does not damage you to the point"}, {"start": 164.56, "end": 170.44, "text": " at which you cannot function in the present and very, very much in relation to the future,"}, {"start": 170.44, "end": 173.56, "text": " that it does not deprive you of possibilities."}, {"start": 173.56, "end": 175.68, "text": " So that is the task."}, {"start": 175.68, "end": 180.48000000000002, "text": " And then the next thing is how then do you talk about modesty in place?"}, {"start": 180.48000000000002, "end": 188.64000000000001, "text": " And I think there I have actually been advocating that people put themselves in the shoes of"}, {"start": 188.64000000000001, "end": 194.20000000000002, "text": " the other and by putting yourself in the shoes of the other you reach a position where you"}, {"start": 194.20000000000002, "end": 199.04000000000002, "text": " can have several narratives standing side by side."}, {"start": 199.04, "end": 208.32, "text": " Now what this means, in the case of Ireland, the First World War of 1914 to 1918 coincides"}, {"start": 208.32, "end": 212.35999999999999, "text": " with the declaration of an Act of Independence of Ireland."}, {"start": 212.35999999999999, "end": 217.04, "text": " When people from the poorer areas of Dublin say some of them are in the army fighting"}, {"start": 217.04, "end": 223.68, "text": " for the British Empire, others are going to in fact be people who will be called by the"}, {"start": 223.68, "end": 227.04, "text": " British to oppose the Irish Act of Independence."}, {"start": 227.04, "end": 234.92, "text": " So you're looking back to this period of time between 1900 and 1920 and you're saying to"}, {"start": 234.92, "end": 239.6, "text": " people what you must allow are all of these different memories to stand side by side."}, {"start": 239.6, "end": 246.44, "text": " It's a long answer to your question, but it is in fact part of the answer because you"}, {"start": 246.44, "end": 249.0, "text": " must respect the narratives of the other."}, {"start": 249.0, "end": 254.04, "text": " Then that enables you to have a discourse in relation to the future and my own view"}, {"start": 254.04, "end": 259.64, "text": " is one of the reasons I'm here and one of the reasons Edmund Gilmore comes to Columbia"}, {"start": 259.64, "end": 266.48, "text": " and so forth, we were powerfully assisted in our process by people from abroad, particularly"}, {"start": 266.48, "end": 272.36, "text": " people like Senator George Mitchell, people from the United States, people who came from"}, {"start": 272.36, "end": 277.59999999999997, "text": " Scandinavia to actually give us technical advice in relation to disarmament and certainly"}, {"start": 277.6, "end": 284.8, "text": " South Africa where we have a very, very good home."}, {"start": 284.8, "end": 285.8, "text": " So that is where we are."}, {"start": 285.8, "end": 293.36, "text": " At any time we're in the middle of elections now at the present time in Northern Ireland"}, {"start": 293.36, "end": 300.44, "text": " and one of the things if people have run out of an agenda in the present they may very"}, {"start": 300.44, "end": 309.48, "text": " easily seek to resume an old form of argument that speaks about these ancient antagonisms."}, {"start": 309.48, "end": 316.24, "text": " I've looked at the Columbian peace process very closely and what I think is very interesting,"}, {"start": 316.24, "end": 318.24, "text": " we learned a very great deal from it."}, {"start": 318.24, "end": 324.24, "text": " We learned about, for example, the importance of standing back and creating a space of time"}, {"start": 324.24, "end": 327.12, "text": " so that you could return to the issues."}, {"start": 327.12, "end": 332.12, "text": " As well as that I think it was unique in relation to having 70 of the victims present."}, {"start": 332.12, "end": 336.88, "text": " I think in relation to the gender commission and in relation to the position of women and"}, {"start": 336.88, "end": 344.88, "text": " I think that internationally people have much to learn from the process in the manner."}, {"start": 344.88, "end": 356.08, "text": " Also I think I've been looking at the implementation process and I really feel for people in the"}, {"start": 356.08, "end": 359.12, "text": " remote areas, indigenous people."}, {"start": 359.12, "end": 362.12, "text": " When I came to Columbia seven years ago I went to Benaventura."}, {"start": 362.12, "end": 370.12, "text": " There I met mothers, I met people in the African Columbian community who were suffering very"}, {"start": 370.12, "end": 373.12, "text": " much from the violence."}, {"start": 378.12, "end": 381.12, "text": " And we're getting through."}, {"start": 381.12, "end": 384.12, "text": " And then comes the other question."}, {"start": 384.12, "end": 392.12, "text": " When a country has suffered for such a long time, a violence and a stigma like we have,"}, {"start": 392.12, "end": 397.12, "text": " we have a poor self-image, a collective poor self-image."}, {"start": 397.12, "end": 406.12, "text": " How do you get people to overcome that, to believe that what we're doing, we're actually"}, {"start": 406.12, "end": 407.12, "text": " doing it?"}, {"start": 407.12, "end": 412.12, "text": " Because we were like, the war lasted so long."}, {"start": 412.12, "end": 415.12, "text": " We had this stigma about the drug dealers and all that."}, {"start": 415.12, "end": 421.12, "text": " So collectively, individually every Columbian is invincible."}, {"start": 421.12, "end": 428.12, "text": " But collectively we have a lot of problems to believe that we can make it as a society."}, {"start": 428.12, "end": 438.12, "text": " Yes, I think when I was a young student in the United States at the end of the 1960s,"}, {"start": 438.12, "end": 444.12, "text": " we were all in the same position, those of us who had come from abroad."}, {"start": 444.12, "end": 450.12, "text": " I actually think it's very important that we face this too, is that we were there, everyone"}, {"start": 450.12, "end": 457.12, "text": " spoke about modernisation, about development and traditional society."}, {"start": 457.12, "end": 463.12, "text": " As if the six Princeton studies, people of Armand and Ferber and Huntington and others"}, {"start": 463.12, "end": 469.12, "text": " who wrote these books, that they were in fact actually manuals of how to enter the modern"}, {"start": 469.12, "end": 470.12, "text": " world."}, {"start": 470.12, "end": 477.12, "text": " It was always ethnocentric, it was always fallacious, it was always an assumption of"}, {"start": 477.12, "end": 479.12, "text": " the linearity that didn't exist."}, {"start": 479.12, "end": 484.12, "text": " And among the people I read at that time were essays from people like Orlando Falls Porter."}, {"start": 484.12, "end": 491.12, "text": " I talked to President Santos about this, and you heard me speak in the university about"}, {"start": 491.12, "end": 498.12, "text": " that, and he has a very famous essay called The Eyes of an Old American Studying South"}, {"start": 498.12, "end": 499.12, "text": " America."}, {"start": 499.12, "end": 508.12, "text": " What is absurd in it all is that if you followed the Princeton studies model and modernisation"}, {"start": 508.12, "end": 514.12, "text": " theory in its extreme form, you would regard those pursuing land reform, those who believed"}, {"start": 514.12, "end": 518.12, "text": " in liberation theology, as somehow or another some deviants."}, {"start": 518.12, "end": 524.12, "text": " When in fact actually what you needed to do in relation to socially understanding society,"}, {"start": 524.12, "end": 526.12, "text": " you had to understand the root of the conflict."}, {"start": 526.12, "end": 533.12, "text": " The root of the conflict in Colombia, I say with respect, is very much something we share"}, {"start": 533.12, "end": 535.12, "text": " an island, it is land."}, {"start": 535.12, "end": 542.12, "text": " And the issue of inequality of access to land, the issue of inequality of access to opportunities"}, {"start": 542.12, "end": 545.12, "text": " to approach the development of the self through education."}, {"start": 545.12, "end": 550.12, "text": " My conversation with President Santos filled me with some encouragement in this regard."}, {"start": 550.12, "end": 555.12, "text": " Well yesterday I meet some members of the civil society, meet some people from indigenous"}, {"start": 555.12, "end": 558.12, "text": " society, and I know what is going to happen."}, {"start": 558.12, "end": 567.12, "text": " This was our difficult period too, the implementation period, when in fact those who have a very"}, {"start": 567.12, "end": 575.12, "text": " great deal to lose in terms of privileges, in terms of lateral fundismo and so forth,"}, {"start": 575.12, "end": 584.12, "text": " and then if you allow a laguna to develop between the coming together and the surrender"}, {"start": 584.12, "end": 591.12, "text": " of the FARC, and if it becomes available for private armies, paramilitaries, it gives you"}, {"start": 591.12, "end": 593.12, "text": " a whole new thread."}, {"start": 593.12, "end": 599.12, "text": " The people in the Blackhead, the people in the ground, the people in the inter-church"}, {"start": 599.12, "end": 603.12, "text": " alliances that are represented by those who are working this, people who wanted to have"}, {"start": 603.12, "end": 609.12, "text": " ground up development, the one word all the time that occurs is recolumns."}, {"start": 609.12, "end": 615.12, "text": " They don't want, as you say, they want to get beyond the point of violence so that it"}, {"start": 615.12, "end": 617.12, "text": " doesn't recur."}, {"start": 617.12, "end": 624.12, "text": " But if it does recur in a way, great progress is being made, which is very important for"}, {"start": 624.12, "end": 629.12, "text": " example for the decisions that have been made by the Constitutional Court in the past in"}, {"start": 629.12, "end": 633.12, "text": " relation to land and so on, that they be respected."}, {"start": 633.12, "end": 640.12, "text": " I also, I've come in from Peru and I'm going on to Cuba, but when I was in Peru speaking"}, {"start": 640.12, "end": 647.12, "text": " and speaking there in the university too, I reminded people that it isn't just beginning"}, {"start": 647.12, "end": 653.12, "text": " with the Aztecs, it begins with the ancient civilizations of the Andes."}, {"start": 653.12, "end": 658.12, "text": " If you take 50 kilometers down the Andes and you look at what the archaeology tells us,"}, {"start": 658.12, "end": 664.12, "text": " it tells us that people had achieved a balance between what crops you could sow, given considerations"}, {"start": 664.12, "end": 669.12, "text": " of climate, given considerations of size, fertility and so forth."}, {"start": 669.12, "end": 670.12, "text": " And there were seven things."}, {"start": 670.12, "end": 676.12, "text": " So in a way when we now in 2015 in Paris and New York say we want to do something about"}, {"start": 676.12, "end": 682.12, "text": " climate change and we do something about sustainability, we're actually talking about an old wisdom"}, {"start": 682.12, "end": 686.12, "text": " that was there thousands of years ago."}, {"start": 686.12, "end": 690.12, "text": " So we should bear in mind this, I think, in a way."}, {"start": 690.12, "end": 697.12, "text": " I had a message from one of the presidents saying, he accepts my view about that we need"}, {"start": 697.12, "end": 701.12, "text": " to balance ecology, economy and ethics."}, {"start": 701.12, "end": 708.12, "text": " And I think it's very, I think what you have done in relation to the peace process in Crimea,"}, {"start": 708.12, "end": 716.12, "text": " the implementation process, the steps have been thought out and it is necessary to go ahead."}, {"start": 716.12, "end": 727.12, "text": " I'm at my age, when I was a young person, I read people like Camillo Dorritu and people like that."}, {"start": 727.12, "end": 730.12, "text": " And there is an order."}, {"start": 730.12, "end": 739.12, "text": " I had problems myself about the conjunction between forms of the Christian belief that"}, {"start": 739.12, "end": 747.12, "text": " was allied to the conquistadores, the quinching, if you like, of age and forms of transcendence"}, {"start": 747.12, "end": 748.12, "text": " and spirituality."}, {"start": 748.12, "end": 750.12, "text": " But that is the past now."}, {"start": 750.12, "end": 755.12, "text": " Would you say an interesting thing, you asked me about how do you deal with this."}, {"start": 755.12, "end": 765.12, "text": " I think that Dr. Ejeveri from the University of Sao Paulo has done work on some of the"}, {"start": 765.12, "end": 767.12, "text": " indigenous peoples."}, {"start": 767.12, "end": 771.12, "text": " And he speaks to us interestingly about Roger Casement who studied the Putumayo."}, {"start": 771.12, "end": 776.12, "text": " And there are some people from the Putumayo district who came to see me this morning."}, {"start": 776.12, "end": 777.12, "text": " And we talked."}, {"start": 777.12, "end": 782.12, "text": " And you know, one of the most interesting things is that they have two concepts in their,"}, {"start": 782.12, "end": 790.12, "text": " they have many, they have 240 languages, they have 70 different families of languages and so on."}, {"start": 790.12, "end": 798.12, "text": " But they speak about how, if you take the Asana, where the rubber barons in fact mutilated"}, {"start": 798.12, "end": 800.12, "text": " and murdered people and so on."}, {"start": 800.12, "end": 806.12, "text": " He said the first generation after, they were unable to find themselves to have the capacity"}, {"start": 806.12, "end": 808.12, "text": " to return to these sites."}, {"start": 808.12, "end": 814.12, "text": " Other generation after that, and then the grandchildren are ones who have literacy."}, {"start": 814.12, "end": 818.12, "text": " And they felt that they are now empowered enough to be able to go back to this, what"}, {"start": 818.12, "end": 822.12, "text": " happened to their ancestors, two generations old."}, {"start": 822.12, "end": 828.12, "text": " And they comment, the old chiefs, I remember reading the anthropology of this."}, {"start": 828.12, "end": 833.12, "text": " And they said, they addressed the spirits of the people who had been defiled in this way."}, {"start": 833.12, "end": 842.12, "text": " And they said, we have brought your grandchildren to here to show you that they have become,"}, {"start": 842.12, "end": 848.12, "text": " they are now, they have the language of the other people who committed to this too,"}, {"start": 848.12, "end": 850.12, "text": " they are able to understand this."}, {"start": 850.12, "end": 857.12, "text": " And they referred to the concept of the basket of darkness and the basket of life and so on."}, {"start": 857.12, "end": 863.12, "text": " And this is a huge capacity and a great enriching period in people's life."}, {"start": 863.12, "end": 870.12, "text": " When you are able to recognise that which has caused the conflict and sourced it,"}, {"start": 870.12, "end": 878.12, "text": " and now you are at a point to just say, I know in this I am choosing not to be amnesic about it,"}, {"start": 878.12, "end": 885.12, "text": " but neither am I allowing it to disempower me from the opportunities of life."}, {"start": 885.12, "end": 895.12, "text": " I am very interested in this, but I have, at any event, I was 26 when I came to Central"}, {"start": 895.12, "end": 901.12, "text": " and South America for the first time, and it was a long 50 years ago."}, {"start": 901.12, "end": 907.12, "text": " I like this so much, this so rich."}, {"start": 907.12, "end": 912.12, "text": " And Colombia has such wonderful opportunities, which there is no doubt,"}, {"start": 912.12, "end": 920.12, "text": " I would be dishonest if I said that one could achieve all of the fruits of peace"}, {"start": 920.12, "end": 923.12, "text": " and leave the unequal structures in place."}, {"start": 923.12, "end": 926.12, "text": " No, I think you cannot have such a situation."}, {"start": 926.12, "end": 928.12, "text": " So therefore, what do you do about it?"}, {"start": 928.12, "end": 933.12, "text": " I think that I would think privileging expenditure on education,"}, {"start": 933.12, "end": 939.12, "text": " and not just education in terms of literacy, but what our world wants at the present time."}, {"start": 939.12, "end": 941.12, "text": " We are at a very difficult point."}, {"start": 941.12, "end": 945.12, "text": " We need a kind of economic and fiscal literacy,"}, {"start": 945.12, "end": 950.12, "text": " so that people will be able to discuss options about their future"}, {"start": 950.12, "end": 955.12, "text": " and do so in a way that will allow for the engagement and participation of citizens."}, {"start": 955.12, "end": 960.12, "text": " And how then do you deal with those who have said they voted no, voted yes,"}, {"start": 960.12, "end": 962.12, "text": " we were in the situation in Ireland?"}, {"start": 962.12, "end": 968.12, "text": " I think there is what I call it now a necessary grace of discourse,"}, {"start": 968.12, "end": 974.12, "text": " rather like being able to put yourself into the shoes of the other in terms of narratives."}, {"start": 974.12, "end": 980.12, "text": " So without having a discussion about the future, you cannot do so by exchanging insults."}, {"start": 980.12, "end": 984.12, "text": " There are some cultures where this happens as a preliminary to conversation,"}, {"start": 984.12, "end": 989.12, "text": " I'm moving to that, but no, I think that what you need is to be able to respect"}, {"start": 989.12, "end": 996.12, "text": " the process by which people are able to hold what is the hostile or negative opinion."}, {"start": 996.12, "end": 1000.12, "text": " Thank you. Thank you, because that's a long, long process."}, {"start": 1000.12, "end": 1004.12, "text": " And we had something like that after the referendum,"}, {"start": 1004.12, "end": 1012.12, "text": " because a civil society emerged and we started to listen to us in a way we never did before."}, {"start": 1012.12, "end": 1020.12, "text": " So in spite of how shocking it was, it gave us a chance to see and hear us like we never did before."}, {"start": 1020.12, "end": 1022.12, "text": " But I think this is so important."}, {"start": 1022.12, "end": 1030.12, "text": " The other thing which we rarely speak of now is the importance of beauty."}, {"start": 1030.12, "end": 1038.12, "text": " If you have in fact actually the 48 million people of Exeter,"}, {"start": 1038.12, "end": 1042.12, "text": " and they are in the environment they are in,"}, {"start": 1042.12, "end": 1049.12, "text": " it's such a great reward, a fantastic invitation to be able to say,"}, {"start": 1049.12, "end": 1054.12, "text": " this is something we are going to be able to share together."}, {"start": 1054.12, "end": 1062.12, "text": " I think that those of us who look from a great distance at the position of Columbia,"}, {"start": 1062.12, "end": 1070.12, "text": " Pope Francis for example and I would have the same approach in relation to what he calls,"}, {"start": 1070.12, "end": 1080.12, "text": " have we become so anaesthetised in our minds that we are not able to critique the models by which we live."}, {"start": 1080.12, "end": 1083.12, "text": " We cannot go on as we are now."}, {"start": 1083.12, "end": 1086.12, "text": " The planet itself has been put into danger,"}, {"start": 1086.12, "end": 1092.12, "text": " as well as that models of development have been imposed on people"}, {"start": 1092.12, "end": 1098.12, "text": " without consideration of what I would say is intuitive wisdom."}, {"start": 1098.12, "end": 1102.12, "text": " I'll give you a practical example as a sociologist."}, {"start": 1102.12, "end": 1106.12, "text": " All that time ago when I came to the United States,"}, {"start": 1106.12, "end": 1112.12, "text": " empiricism and structural functionalism was the hegemonic theory."}, {"start": 1112.12, "end": 1118.12, "text": " What you then had if you like as a method, empiricism but also quantification."}, {"start": 1118.12, "end": 1125.12, "text": " Now both empiricism is very important and is dealing with fact."}, {"start": 1125.12, "end": 1136.12, "text": " In Africa, Asia, Latin America, there are whole inheritance and legacies of intuitive wisdom that are very, very important."}, {"start": 1136.12, "end": 1145.12, "text": " So therefore you mustn't reduce what you deal with to what is measurable."}, {"start": 1145.12, "end": 1148.12, "text": " It's an old fallacy."}, {"start": 1148.12, "end": 1159.12, "text": " What you have to do is that you have to be able to be empirical but allow for the entrance of intuition."}, {"start": 1159.12, "end": 1166.12, "text": " This arises as well I think in relation to places where you have your deleterate tradition of Gabriel Garc\u00eda,"}, {"start": 1166.12, "end": 1171.12, "text": " like he has a Borges or anything and why is he interested in Joyce and so forth."}, {"start": 1171.12, "end": 1180.12, "text": " I think it is because you have to be able to listen to what your heart tells you, what I call the music of the coraz\u00f3n."}, {"start": 1180.12, "end": 1183.12, "text": " You must listen. You must allow for that."}, {"start": 1183.12, "end": 1187.12, "text": " Why should you narrow yourself, your options and so on."}, {"start": 1187.12, "end": 1196.12, "text": " I also think that five years in South America, Central America, I've been in Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras,"}, {"start": 1196.12, "end": 1206.12, "text": " terrible times, it isn't acceptable that we allow for a great sadness to be the only inheritance that people have."}, {"start": 1206.12, "end": 1213.12, "text": " You need a kind of empowering capacity or a capacity for it."}, {"start": 1213.12, "end": 1217.12, "text": " But I think you had three questions that you wanted to ask."}, {"start": 1217.12, "end": 1226.12, "text": " The last one is how could the Brexit affect the Good Friday Agreement?"}, {"start": 1226.12, "end": 1230.12, "text": " The Good Friday Agreement is an international treaty."}, {"start": 1230.12, "end": 1236.12, "text": " Twenty years old, the treaty I am taught, dealing with Brexit."}, {"start": 1236.12, "end": 1241.12, "text": " In relation to Brexit, the Good Friday Agreement is twenty years old."}, {"start": 1241.12, "end": 1244.12, "text": " It took a great deal of time to establish it."}, {"start": 1244.12, "end": 1248.12, "text": " I'll add one more thing to your previous question."}, {"start": 1248.12, "end": 1255.12, "text": " It was important, something that I think you used here, is that you need to put a secretariat in place."}, {"start": 1255.12, "end": 1260.12, "text": " And actually if you look at the response to the decision on the plebiscito here,"}, {"start": 1260.12, "end": 1264.12, "text": " and the fact that one quickly went back to the table and accepted amendments,"}, {"start": 1264.12, "end": 1270.12, "text": " in the Irish case we wouldn't have a Good Friday Agreement if we didn't put a secretariat in place"}, {"start": 1270.12, "end": 1277.12, "text": " that could be able to keep producing text when the parties could no longer find it able to be the same rule."}, {"start": 1277.12, "end": 1281.12, "text": " If you look at, for example, another example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,"}, {"start": 1281.12, "end": 1284.12, "text": " it doesn't have a permanent secretariat."}, {"start": 1284.12, "end": 1289.12, "text": " You're so therefore dependent on a United States proposal, other reaction to it."}, {"start": 1289.12, "end": 1295.12, "text": " So therefore where we are now is that the decision has been taken by the United Kingdom."}, {"start": 1295.12, "end": 1301.12, "text": " I'm not sure they are entitled to take what decisions they wish,"}, {"start": 1301.12, "end": 1304.12, "text": " but we are going to protect the Good Friday Agreement."}, {"start": 1304.12, "end": 1307.12, "text": " I don't think you will see a border coming back."}, {"start": 1307.12, "end": 1309.12, "text": " It's going to be difficult for us."}, {"start": 1309.12, "end": 1314.12, "text": " The other thing that Brexit has on us is that Britain is a very significant trading partner,"}, {"start": 1314.12, "end": 1317.12, "text": " a billion trade every week."}, {"start": 1317.12, "end": 1323.12, "text": " Then again in relation to that there are many Irish people in Britain and many British people in Ireland."}, {"start": 1323.12, "end": 1328.12, "text": " In fact the same level of investment, there is much Irish investment in Britain,"}, {"start": 1328.12, "end": 1332.12, "text": " creating as many jobs as there are British investment in Ireland, creating jobs."}, {"start": 1332.12, "end": 1336.12, "text": " No, we are not following the British out of the European Union."}, {"start": 1336.12, "end": 1338.12, "text": " We've gained from the European Union."}, {"start": 1338.12, "end": 1343.12, "text": " There are very significant advantages in having a region that agrees on certain values."}, {"start": 1343.12, "end": 1348.12, "text": " We've agreed in relation to equality, in relation to women's rights, in relation to environment and so on."}, {"start": 1348.12, "end": 1350.12, "text": " We will continue."}, {"start": 1350.12, "end": 1354.12, "text": " So we have to handle the issue of Brexit."}, {"start": 1354.12, "end": 1358.12, "text": " If you said to me as well, just think of it like this,"}, {"start": 1358.12, "end": 1363.12, "text": " the people who are the hardest in favour of Brexit, for a hard breakfast,"}, {"start": 1363.12, "end": 1369.12, "text": " they assume that they will be able to put together another trading area that might involve"}, {"start": 1369.12, "end": 1373.12, "text": " the United States made in the image of President Trump,"}, {"start": 1373.12, "end": 1378.12, "text": " and the United Kingdom, Canada and the third, I doubt if Canada will cooperate with that,"}, {"start": 1378.12, "end": 1387.12, "text": " but if this is to us, why would we reverse ourselves back to a single narrow market,"}, {"start": 1387.12, "end": 1392.12, "text": " monolingual and so on, when we have, may I tell you that in the European Union"}, {"start": 1392.12, "end": 1397.12, "text": " there are of students exchanging who got married to a German,"}, {"start": 1397.12, "end": 1400.12, "text": " there are a million babies born under the Erasmus."}, {"start": 1400.12, "end": 1405.12, "text": " So if you're doing this and if you're moving and if you're exchanging culture,"}, {"start": 1405.12, "end": 1408.12, "text": " exchanging science, exchanging procedures,"}, {"start": 1408.12, "end": 1417.12, "text": " why would you resign them to some form of pre-colonised existence?"}, {"start": 1417.12, "end": 1419.12, "text": " So I don't think it's going to happen."}, {"start": 1419.12, "end": 1426.12, "text": " Yes, we are the people most immediately impacted by a decision,"}, {"start": 1426.12, "end": 1429.12, "text": " but it has implications too for the United Kingdom."}, {"start": 1429.12, "end": 1433.12, "text": " We will get past it and we will manage, but we are keeping our international vision."}, {"start": 1433.12, "end": 1435.12, "text": " And the border?"}, {"start": 1435.12, "end": 1438.12, "text": " The border I think will in fact not come back at all the way it was."}, {"start": 1438.12, "end": 1444.12, "text": " People will talk. I really find that what I like to do is that where my energies go"}, {"start": 1444.12, "end": 1450.12, "text": " is in relation to what I call a renovato, the renovation of the European Union"}, {"start": 1450.12, "end": 1457.12, "text": " to create social Europe, and we deal with this aberration as we pass along there."}, {"start": 1457.12, "end": 1464.12, "text": " We are not obsessed by the Brexit issue, I think, and the historians will judge the basis"}, {"start": 1464.12, "end": 1466.12, "text": " on which the decision was arrived at."}, {"start": 1466.12, "end": 1470.12, "text": " But maybe another issue that you should think about that arises from it,"}, {"start": 1470.12, "end": 1473.12, "text": " that a scholar I know, Peter Emerson, writes about,"}, {"start": 1473.12, "end": 1479.12, "text": " maybe we shouldn't ask people to vote yes or no on issues,"}, {"start": 1479.12, "end": 1482.12, "text": " maybe we should ask them to vote on preferred options."}, {"start": 1482.12, "end": 1488.12, "text": " Do you want A, B, C or D? Do you not want E, F, G, H?"}, {"start": 1488.12, "end": 1490.12, "text": " What is the strength of your option?"}, {"start": 1490.12, "end": 1500.12, "text": " So maybe we need the newly formulated forms of democracy to get beyond majoritarian simplicities."}, {"start": 1500.12, "end": 1503.12, "text": " But no, we will move on."}, {"start": 1503.12, "end": 1509.12, "text": " I'm very, very pleased to know that Ireland will be continuing the implementation process"}, {"start": 1509.12, "end": 1512.12, "text": " through the Trust Fund in Europe."}, {"start": 1512.12, "end": 1516.12, "text": " My heart lifts every time I'm in South America anyway with the Colombian people."}, {"start": 1516.12, "end": 1525.12, "text": " I so wish them peace and also to have the full, let this beautiful country be available to all Colombians."}, {"start": 1525.12, "end": 1530.12, "text": " Thank you very much. Thank you for your interview, but most of all, thank you for your wisdom."}, {"start": 1530.12, "end": 1532.12, "text": " It's a pleasure."}, {"start": 1532.12, "end": 1535.12, "text": " Really, it's enlightening. It's really enlightening."}, {"start": 1535.12, "end": 1539.12, "text": " It's very helpful to us as well."}]