This article appears in the August 18, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Ibero-Americans Rallied with Humanity for Peace Aug. 6
[Print version of this article]
Aug. 12—Humanity for Peace events in several Ibero-American countries Aug. 6 displayed optimism and a commitment to “reason and truth,” as the Schiller Institute’s Dominican Republic collaborator Caonabo Suárez described it. He told the rally in his own capital city, Santo Domingo:
We believe that with you, we’ve contributed to awakening humanity so it understands the danger of nuclear war that threatens us as a species…. Good people around the world are one, and we must act in unity if we want a world of peace and cooperation.
In Guatemala, longtime Schiller Institute supporter Raúl Marroquín declared “mission accomplished!” after organizing a 50-person event in the main plaza of the small northern town of San Cristóbal de Verapaz, population 70,000. Large Humanity for Peace banners adorned the plaza. Marroquín had proclaimed there that the Institute is named—
in honor of Friedrich Schiller, the great 18th Century German poet, writer, philosopher and historian, whose works have inspired the republican opposition in the whole world to oligarchic tyranny.
Optimism characterized the many statements of those who gathered to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and were immensely proud to be part of this international mobilization. They brought its message, with emphasis on the central role of Helga and Lyndon LaRouche and the words of Schiller, even to citizens in small, remote towns. They displayed large colorful “Humanity for Peace” banners and posters in Mexico City, Mexico; San Cristóbal de Verapaz, Guatemala; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Santiago, Chile; and Costa Rica.
On Aug. 4, the series of Ibero-American actions kicked off in Mexico City, where a team of 12 Humanity for Peace (HFP) organizers rallied in front of the United Nations offices. They carried a large HFP banner, and one highlighting John F. Kennedy’s June 10, 1963 American University speech. The organizers briefed passers-by with the four demands of the Humanity for Peace declaration. A public affairs officer from the UN came outside to ask questions about the rally’s purpose, wanting to know how the coalition viewed the role of the UN. He asked about other Ibero-America events, but was surprised to learn that sister rallies were being held around the world, including on Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza near the UN in New York City.
In an example of support activity in countries where there were no organized events, Humberto Herrera of The LaRouche Organization gave a lively interview on the mobilization—including the evening Mozart Requiem performance in New York—to the Voces de Occidente radio program in Buga, Colombia.
Small Guatemala City Leads
The Humanity for Peace rally that took place early in the morning on Aug. 6 in Guatemala’s San Cristóbal de Verapaz, was a beautiful reflection of the power of ideas as represented in Schiller Institute organizer Raul Marroquín, a retired electrical workers’ trade union leader. San Cristóbal de Verapaz is a small northern town whose population is 80% indigenous and speaks the Poqomchi’ language in addition to Spanish.
Some 25 members of the Citizen Observatory for Peace (“Heaven’s Pupil”), of which Marroquín is the director, joined with five people from the KAQ KOJ Environmentalist and Governance Group and 20 members of civil society at the central La Libertad plaza, having adorned it with three large Humanity for Peace banners. They distributed posters, leaflets and 200 bumper stickers with the HFP logo. Ronaldo Antonio Camey, of the Environmentalist and Governance Group, both endorsed Humanity for Peace’s international mobilization and presented the urgent necessity of preventing nuclear war. He quoted at length from Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s 1984 speech at the founding of the Schiller Institute, which highlighted reviving the spirit of the American Revolution and the German classical tradition, and explained Schiller’s role as a great historian, philosopher, poet and dramatist. At that time Zepp-LaRouche had said:
The special method that Schiller used to approach world historic problems is the only one that can still bring us a solution today. The essence of that method can be defined by Schiller’s own words: “Man is greater than his destiny.”
Marroquín followed with history—the origins of the Second World War and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and another colleague read the original Humanity for Peace press release, highlighting its four demands.
‘No One Can Be Indifferent’
The message, “No one can be indifferent,” was delivered to a small group gathered in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on the morning of Aug. 6, organized by Schiller Institute supporter Caonabo Suárez, whose Institute for Analysis and Conclusions (INAC) joined with Humanity for Peace to call on all nations to mobilize for peace and against the threat of nuclear war, “whose epicenter and origin is the Russia-Ukraine war.”
In a prepared statement including Humanity for Peace’s demands, Suárez elaborated on the nuclear war threat, warning that in such a conflagration there could be no winners or survivors, but only the annihilation of the planet. Driving the war offensive, he said, is the collapse of the global financial system and the emergence “of new centers of power with new paradigms of international relations” which the international financial oligarchy cannot tolerate.
Repeating some of the horrifying details that University of Missouri nuclear expert Steven Starr has described, on what Earth would look like after a nuclear war, Suárez stated:
This is why the Dominican people, together with all nations of the world, are standing up for peace against nuclear war, for equality, justice and a new paradigm of peaceful existence, cooperation, solidarity, unity.
Chileans Against War
In Santiago, Chile’s capital and main city, Humanity for Peace joined with three other groups—World without War and Without Violence, the Community for Human Development, and the Coordinator Against Nuclear War—to hold an enthusiastic rally Aug. 6 at the beautiful Parque Metropolitano. Humanity for Peace was not an official co-sponsor, but its representative, Mauricio Aguilera, was welcomed and invited to speak. Participants wanted to learn more about the Schiller Institute, and about the Humanity for Peace banner featuring the Schiller Institute logo displayed next to those of the three organizing groups.
The Santiago event opened opportunities for expanding the Schiller Institute’s presence in Chile, reflected in the interest shown by the representative of the Coordinator Against Nuclear War, who said in a short video statement to Aguilera that the war in Ukraine was NATO’s proxy war against Russia for the purpose of dismembering it.
The daily Pressenza published an opinion piece on Aug. 5 by Juan Gómez, who has participated in recent months’ weekly meetings of the International Peace Coalition catalyzed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Gómez publicized the rally and reported that the Schiller Institute and the other organizer groups “all belong to the Humanity for Peace Coalition,” waging “an unyielding battle” to educate citizens and get them out on the streets to show the world’s governing elites “that humanity has stood up to oppose their macabre goals.”
In a related initiative, on Aug. 9, marking 78 years since the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Mauricio Aguilera presented a formal letter from the Schiller Institute to the office of Chile’s President Gabriel Boric at the La Moneda presidential palace. It identified NATO’s offensive toward nuclear war and the extermination of human civilization, driven by the collapse of the global financial system, and presented the four points central to Humanity for Peace’s international mobilization. The Schiller Institute urged President Boric to speak out on behalf of peace, and call for a ceasefire and peace negotiations without conditions between the parties “before the situation goes out of control.” (See box: ‘Speak Out in Favor of Peace’)
Accompanying Aguilera were representatives of Chile’s Humanist movement, who had joined with Humanity for Peace in the rally at the Parque Metropolitano, and who presented their own letter to the President’s office.
Preview the issue here and see the full table of contents.
The Schiller Institute has just released Volume 2, No. 1, of its new journal Leonore, which opens with the following from Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.’s October 20, 2002, article, “The Historical Individual:”
“The principal cause for the doom of any culture, is that mental disorder typical of popular opinion, which is to assume the validity of any assumptions currently adopted by a learned profession, or religious teaching, or more crudely adopted as ‘generally accepted popular opinion’.”
The 88-page issue, contains eleven articles, including the first English translation of one of the last letters by the 15th century scientific and political genius, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, which has been called his “religious last will,” and an original translation of Friedrich Schiller’s “On the Sublime,” described as “perhaps his most refined discussion of the process of the development of the soul.”
The preview includes the ground-breaking article by Jason Ross, “Vernadskian Time: Time for Humanity,” which addresses “the paradoxes posed by Vernadsky’s scientific work,” which open the way to a an entirely new set of definitions of space, time and matter, taken from the standpoint of the human mind.
The journal is yours as a monthly Schiller Institute contributing member. Memberships start at $5/month. Sign up here.
‘Speak Out in Favor of Peace’
The Schiller Institute presented this letter Aug. 9 to Chilean President Gabriel Boric, at the Presidential office.
His Excellency President of the Republic Gabriel Boric Font
Santiago
Your Excellency:
In addition to greeting you, we write Your Excellency to express our profound concern over the current world situation in which the leaders of the United States and NATO are escalating and using Ukraine as a tool to wage a war to dismember Russia and then later do the same to China. Right now, the conflict has reached a point where the threat of nuclear war has intensified, not only meaning the end of human civilization but also of every living being on the planet. The true cause of this war is the imminent collapse of the trans-Atlantic financial system [whose overseers] aren’t willing to allow a new paradigm to come into being for the benefit of all humanity. It’s the nations of the BRICS and the Global South which are fighting to bring that new paradigm into existence.
For this reason, the Schiller Institute and its founder Hela Zepp-LaRouche felt the moral obligation to create an International Peace Coalition, made up of 30 different organizations, which commemorated on Aug. 6 the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, organizing a worldwide mobilization to demand the following four points:
1. The immediate ending of all funding and weapons to Ukraine.
2. Convene immediate unconditional peace talks.
3. The dissolution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
4. A new international security architecture must be created to end the division of the world into blocs, eliminating geopolitics. This new architecture must take into account the security concerns of every sovereign nation, large or small.
We urge Your Excellency and the government over which you preside to speak out in favor of peace, to call for a ceasefire and peace negotiations without conditions between the parties to the conflict before the situation goes out of control.
Cordial regards,
Mauricio Aguilera B.
Schiller Institute, Santiago [back to text]
