(Ed. note: It is not clear whether the following discourse was the one actually read aloud by the cacique in Madrid in February 2002. Nevertheless, I translated these words attributed to Guaicaipuro because the sublime message within them should be read by English readers and I was unable to find an English version.

For further provocative reading on the topic of South American history please read Eduardo Galeano's "devastatingly triumphant" (NY Times Book Review) trilogy, Memory of Fire)

In simple language, which was translated simultaneously to over a hundred chiefs of state and other dignitaries from the European community, the cacique Guaicaipuro Cuatemoc made his audience uncomfortable when he said:

"Here, I, Cuatemoc, have come to greet those who attend this solemn reunion.

Here, I, a descendent from those who inhabited America 40,000 years ago, have come to greet those who found America only 500 years ago.

Here, we all come together. We know who we are, that is sufficient. We will never possess anything else.

My European brother, the immigration officer, asks me for a visa that will allow me to discover those that discovered me.

My European brother, the banker, asks me to pay a debt forced upon me by Judas, who I never authorized to sell me.

My European brother, the lawyer, explains to me that all debts are paid with interest even if human beings and entire countries need to be sold without asking their consent.

I am beginning to understand your ways, brothers. But I too can claim debts and ask for interest.

It is written in the Archives of Indias, paper over paper, receipt over receipt and signature over signature, that just between 1503 and 1660, 185 thousand kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of silver arrived in San Lucas de Barrameda from America.

Stolen!? I cannot believe it! For that would mean that our Christian brothers forgot their Seventh Commandment (Ed. note: "Though shall not steal")

Exploitation!? Save me Tanatzin (Ed. note: Aztec goddess, mother of the earth) from thinking that the Europeans, like Cain, murder and deny the blood of their brother!

Genocide!? That would be giving credit to alarmists, like Bartolome de las Casas, who equates the discovery of America with the destruction of the Indians, or agreeing with ultrosos such as Arturo Uslar Pietri, who state that the beginning of capitalism and modern European civilization resulted from the inundation of precious metals from the Americas.

No! Those 185 thousand kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of silver should be considered as the first of many other loans from America, destined for the development of Europe. Anything else would presuppose the existence of war crimes, which would not only demand the immediate return of riches taken, but also legal payments for damages and injuries sustained.

I, Guaicaipuro Cuatemoc, prefer to believe in the less offensive of these hypothesis. Such incredible exportation of capital was nothing more than the initiation of a "Marshalltesuma" Plan to guarantee the reconstruction of a barbaric Europe, ruined by their deplorable wars against the learned Muslims, who were the creators of algebra, polygamy, the cleansing bath and other benchmarks of civilization.

This affirmation allows us to ask ourselves, on this the anniversary of the Fifth Century of this Loan:

Have our European brothers made responsible and rational, or at the very least productive use of the funds so generously given by the International Indo-American Fund?

It is deplorable to say this but no. Geopolitically, they dispersed the wealth in the battles of Lepanto, in invincible armadas, in third Reich's and other forms of mutual extermination, with no other result but to end up being occupied by the gringo troops of NATO, like in Panama, but without the canal.

Financially, they have been unable, after a 500 year grace period, to either cancel their debt and interest with America, nor become less dependent on the liquid capital, natural resources and cheap energy that the Third World provides.

This deplorable picture corroborates the observation by Milton Friedman that a subsidized economy can never function and obliges us, for the Europeans own good, to call for the payment of the capital loans and interest that we so generously have waited to collect all these centuries.

As I say this, we would like to qualify that we will not lower ourselves to charge our European brothers the vile and bloodsucking tariffs of 20 even 30 percent , which our European brothers charge the countries of the Third World.

We will limit ourselves to demand the payment for the precious metals initially given at an interest rate of 10 percent accumulated for only the last three hundred years, the first two hundred years we give as a grace period.

From this base, and applying the European formula for accumulated interest, we inform our discoverers that they owe us, as a first payment of your debt, 185 thousand kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of silver, both amounts elevated to the power of 300.

In other words, a number that for its total expression would need 300 zeroes and whose weight in kilos would be much greater than the weight of Planet Earth. These weights in gold and silver are very heavy. How much would they weigh measured in blood?

To say that Europe, in half a millennium, has been unable to produce sufficient riches to cover the accumulated interest, would be like admitting that Europe's financial system completely collapsed and/or understanding the demented irrationality of the foundations of capitalism.

Those 185 thousand kilos of of gold and 16 million kilos of silver should be considered as the first of many other amicable loans from America for the development of Europe.

For the record, such metaphysical questions do not bother us Indo-Americans.

However, we do insist on the signing of a Letter of Intention that will discipline the debtor nations of the Old Continent, and force them to meet their immediate obligations with a rapid privatization or reconversion of Europe, which will permit them to pay our initial bill entirely, as their first down payment of their historic debt..."

In actuality, but unknowingly, Guaicaipuro Cuatemoc was expounding on a thesis originally derived by an International Rights group used to determine a nations true external debt.

(Ed. note: What now? Will bold, indigenous Latin American leaders, such as Evo Morales in Bolivia, bring up this argument before International Tribunals? Or will the cacique's words be brushed under the rug as innocent ramblings, allowing the IMF to continue its historically unjust debt collection and capitalism to continue devouring the wretched of the earth from its ill-built foundation of to the victor belongs the spoils?)