LaRouche Press Conference In Saltillo, Coahuila Mexico
November 5, 2023

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Click here for a campaign press release on Mr. LaRouche's trip.
 

Q: [translated] Mr. LaRouche, I'd like to ask you, what is your economic forecast, for the United States, and the repercussions this might on [inaud]. I'm from Channel 7, in Saltillo.

LaRouche: The world is now in the terminal phase of a general breakdown crisis. The example of the situation, is the case of Brazil. Brazil is the last standing nation, of any power, in South America. That, in terms of all of South and Central America , the obligations of the U.S. banks is enormous: Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, is only an example.

If, at present, if Brazil capitulates to the present demanded conditionalities of the IMF, then Brazil and all of South America will collapse quickly. The New York banking system will collapse. The IMF system will collapse. If Brazil succeeds in resisting, or demands of--which is lower than 10% interest rates, then Brazil could survive: But the IMF system, again, would collapse. So you're now in a situation, where the so-called normal standards of negotiation no longer work. The present IMF system is a failed, doomed system.

There exist solutions, but the solutions must come from governments, not banking circles. We must have emergency efforts among governments, to put the present international financial system into bankruptcy reorganization, and to establish new conditions, which would be modelled on the precedent of the 1946- 1964 Bretton Woods agreements. The significance of the Brazil crisis, it's the most important turning point in the history of the post-war system. The governments have no choice, to make the necessary reforms now. There are initiatives to this effect from Italy, where my proposal for reform was voted up by the majority of the Chamber of Deputies.

We have reforms, which are occurring, today, as we meet here, in Phnom Penh. The most important nations of East, Southeast, and South Asia--including India--are at this moment, meeting, to reach agreements, establishing a new, Asian monetary economic cooperation system.

So, we're at a point, at which, the idea that the United States makes policy, and people have to decide whether to submit or not, is over! The United States is bankrupt! Half the Federal states of the United States are bankrupt. Technically, the U.S. Federal government is bankrupt. The entire banking system of the United States is bankrupt. It is only the political power of the United States in the world, that has prevented this thing from collapsing already.

Whatever happens in the United States, with today's election, a whole chapter of history comes to an end, at the end of today. The fight will be on the question: Will there be a war, or not? And he big question is the economic question. And the economic question, are we going to junk the present IMF system, and [set up] cooperative action among sovereign governments to reform the system, using the standards of 1946-1964.

The liberal system is dead. A protectionist system of reconstruction and growth is now what's on the agenda. If we don't do it, we'll all die. We have no choice; no government has a choice. Chaos, or reconstruction. I am optimistic.

Q: [translated] What will be the social repercussions of this type of crisis occurring?

LaRouche: We are looking at something worse, than any depression we've known in modern history. If the governments break down, if there's an attempt to use military and related powers, to force the collection of debt, then you will have the situation, throughout the world, which will remember a period which was called the "New Dark Age" in Europe during the 14th Century. So, we have no choice: Change or chaos.

I'm optimistic, because I believe, the situation is so serious, that governments that refused to consider change, will themselves be discredited. The human race is struggling for its survival. Under these conditions, it's obvious that we can not tolerate the alternative. We must defend the human race.

Q: [translated] Good day, sir. If the U.S. government is bankrupt, what happens to Mexico?

LaRouche: It's not really a problem. We have a political problem. The political problem is, if a group of governments--for example: In the IMF system now, the IMF system is not a government. It's like a public latrine--it's a convenience. If the governments that created the IMF decide to change it, the IMF changes. It gets a new form.

In effect, the governments involved, will put the banking system into bankruptcy reorganization. In this case, you have to use natural law, as the standard of bankruptcy. The principle that was established in the 15th-Century Renaissance, the principle of the "general welfare," or "common good": You must defend the people and their posterity. Bankrupt banks will continue to function, under government supervision, because the banks are essential to the economy and to the people. Employment levels must be maintained, and increased. Large-scale infrastructure projects must be launched.

So, with these kinds of measures, under a new institution, which is a bankruptcy reorganization, takes only a majority of majority powers to say, "The system is bankrupt!" Then the states must take over. To do this, you must have a concert of agreement among sovereign nation-states. For example: I mentioned the Italy resolution, when my policy was adopted by the Chamber of Deputies. Agreements are being reached now, throughout China, Korea, among some circles in Japan, Southeast Asia, and India. Governments in continental Europe are prepared to enter into these kinds of negotiations. The patriots of every nation of South and Central America would support this type of measure. My concern is to push the United States government into accepting this reorganization. And events will help me, not because they agree with me, but because they have no choice. So, I'm optimistic.

Q: [Antonio la Cruz, from Ovaciones of Mexico; translated] Today, there are elections in the United States, and many issues will be at stake. The question is, will the question of the previous electoral lack of credibility of the current government, with the Florida question, will that shadow hang over the elections today?

LaRouche: Yes.

Q: [translated] What kind of changes in the world will be required, given that globalization has only produced millions and millions of poor people everywhere around the world? And, in the curriculum [vitae] that was handed out to us, you talk about the "end of globalization"--what were you referring to?

LaRouche: Well, first of all, in order to build an economy--.

Go a step backward: In 1964, the United States, with going to war in Indochina, underwent a fundamental change in its outlook. The United States had been, up until that point, throughout much of the 20th Century, the leading producer nation of the world, with the greatest amount of productivity per capital, of any nation in the world. Beginning in 1964, with the Indochina war, we underwent a change, a change from a producer society, to what was called a "post-industrial" or "consumer society."

Under the two actual Presidents of the United States of the 1970s--President Henry Kissinger and President Zbigniew Brzezinski--the United States was transformed, effectively, into a consumer society, through the IMF reforms, and the precedent of what had happened to Argentina and Mexico in 1982. The United States said, "We no longer produce our own requirements. We go to the cheap-labor markets of the world. We destroy all protectionist measures, which allowed countries to develop their own self- sufficient industries. And we operate on a global, cheap-labor system." No money for infrastructure; health-care systems, destroyed; transportation systems, destroyed; power systems, destroyed; health care systems, destroyed; education systems, destroyed. We turn the human race into a mass of cheap labor, where people who are working could not support their families, around the world.

The United States has been living, on goods produced by virtually slave-labor conditions in other parts of the world. This produced a psychological change in the generation which came into adolescence in the 1960s: That generation is now running the world. They don't believe in income, they believe in credit cards. They don't believe in producing, they believe in credit cards. They believe in profit on speculation.

So, we have come to the point, where we are no longer able to produce enough per capita, physically, even to maintain the United States, internally. We depend upon sucking the blood of the world. We've come to the point, when the world starts to collapse, who feeds the United States?

So, you don't have a cyclical boom-bust collapse: You have the development of a system, a change in the system of the world, from a productive system, which was true up until '64, into a consumer system, like ancient Rome, since the Second Punic War. The effort is, to set up a Roman Empire . The problem is, when the United States decided to set up an empire, it made one mistake: Rome started its empire at the height of its powers; the United States tried to create an empire at the end of its power.

So that's the situation. And the question that we now face, is a cultural, psychological crisis, more than an economic crisis. We could solve the economic crisis. Large-scale investment in infrastructure and job creation. The problem is, to get the minds of the citizens and the nations, to be willing to change, back to a producer society, not a consumer society. That's what I think we can do.

But, this will come as a crisis. The political system of the world is having a nervous breakdown. Will it become psychotic and destroy itself? Or will it go to a psychiatrist, and get some kind of cure. I'm acting as a psychiatrist.

Q: [radio station reporter? translated] There's currently a big crisis in Mexico, with regard to the Army, and so forth. Would there be any interest on the part of the United States, in being behind such a crisis? Also, we look at certain other countries, where this has occurred--look at Chile, look at Venezuela--and I understand that you have information about the activities of the United States in those countries, where there is a strong, established army.

LaRouche: The point is, the U.S. military--the Army, in particular, at the level flag-officer--one of the most important oppositions to the proposed war in Iraq comes from the U.S. Army generals, as expressed by some of the retired generals, especially, like General Zinni, the Marine Corps general. The generals know and understand, especially since Vietnam: The leading generals, retired and active-service generals, today, in the United States, served as junior or field-grade officers in Vietnam. The way they became generals is, after the Vietnam War, they stayed in military service; they were promoted; went to command schools; and the thing that's on their mind is: How can we prevent a piece of idiocy like Vietnam from happening again?

These are not the greatest strategic thinkers in history. Their initial education and post-war leadership was bad. But, a general officer, who commands troops, especially Army, has to deal with the reality of the population, including their own troops, and infrastructure of the society. Any competent officer, military officer, thinks like an engineer: You win wars, not by killing; you win wars by engineering, the way the United States won World War II, by engineering. We had logistical beyond anything.

What happened at the end of the war, in these nuclear warfare freaks--world government through nuclear warfare--they're a phenomenon like Hitler's SS. They hate the regular military. The regular military, the Army officer, a commander who deals with troops and the population, must think in terms of the general welfare. He can not be an inhuman beast. So therefore, they respond in that way. Whereas, these guys who want to make the war, are not military people. So you have, throughout Central and South America, an attempt to destroy the regular military institutions in the Central and South American nations. Who wants to do it, is the war-party! The war-party are not the regular military. The war-party in the United States are draft-dodgers! They think like the Nazi SS. That's the problem.

Q: [translated] Would there be an interest in the part of that war-party to, right now, weaken the Mexican military?

LaRouche: Absolutely! It's obvious a target. This crowd in Washington would want to wipe out the last general in Mexico.

Q: [translated] The question is the following: You talk about protectionism, but here in Mexico, we've been moving in the opposite direction, of opening markets up. For example, the idea of opening for private investment in the energy sector, and electricity in particular, with the argument that there is not enough money available on the part of the government to make the necessary investment.

So, here, in a situation like Mexico, how would we reverse this anti-protectionist policy?

LaRouche: You have to do it, first of all, by will of government. Just to give you a comparison to what we have planned now, inside the United States; and obviously, the energy policy of Mexico, and of the United States, are very closely related.

We have destroyed the energy system in the United States. A good energy system is based on the integration, under government supervision, of either government-run, integrated generation and distribution systems; or the use of government authority, to created privately invested public utilities, which are regulated by government. And the idea is to make these private utilities, sound investments for people to invest savings in, for their old age. [audio break] ...which we will be pushing over the year, and in the United States.

Half the states in the United States, including the state of California, are bankrupt. The cause of this bankruptcy is what's called the "Enron phenomenon"; which was the targetting of Mexico, on energy, was Enron! Now, obviously, you arrest an Enron, if you find it running loose. It's a thief; its accountant is a thief; they're all crooks--arrest them!

Now, what we're going to have to do is: The United States is bankrupt; we have, like Mexico, an enormous, growing unemployment problem. The United States and Mexico share 5 million Mexicans, working in the United States, many of whom are going to lose their jobs. We have, in the northern states of Mexico, industries that depend largely upon markets in the United States, especially the highly vulnerable electricity, electrical industries, and the auto parts industry. We have states in the United States that are bankrupt, because the production basis, the tax-revenue basis, is not adequate to meet the budget. So, on both sides of the border, we have an unemployment problem, which is a key to the state budgetary problem. In other words, if we could have a high enough level of productive employment, the state budgets could be balanced! Half the states of the United States are in that condition.

So, what we're going to do, is, to set up a program of energy and water: To get Federal credit, voted up by the U.S. national Congress, to provide this credit available to the Federal agencies and state agencies, for 25-year projects, in developing the integrated production, generation, and distribution capacity, in electricity and water-management.

Now, look at Mexico. If we do this in the United States, obviously we have to deal with northern Mexico in the same way. The water-management systems are interrelated. Power systems are interrelated. The unemployment problems are interrelated. Obviously, we have to increase employment in Mexico, which means, we have to support the increase of the opportunity for such increases in employment. And, only with such an approach--and, actually in this area, a cross-border cooperation--can we bring the management of budgets on state levels (as opposed to national levels) under control.

Q: [translated] I'd just like to know, what's the reaction to the fact that Mexico is not supporting the idea of the U.S. attacking Iraq militarily.

LaRouche: Well, I think that some people have insight into what conflict was between the two Presidents [at the APEC summit in Los Cabos, Mexico]. I recognized immediately what the problem was. I was completely sympathetic with President Fox. It's obvious: I don't have to agree with him on everything; he was right.

The assumption of relations between, especially Texas governors, and Mexico, especially the Bush family and the PAN [National Action Party] was on the basis, that there would be cooperation in respect to employment, including the treatment of Mexicans working in the United States. We've been looking at this since 1982, and it's become much worse since! There's been some regularization [?] by passing out citizenship cards to Mexicans in the United States, from Mexico. But there's no recognition of this, on the U.S. side!

The issue always was, on the Mexicans working in the United States: Would the United States government honor the fact that they're citizens of Mexico; they're guests of the United States; and the United States would treat them as guests, and would do it in cooperation with the government of Mexico! We've been fighting for over 20 years. Now, the Bush family promised this to the PAN, implicitly.

Now, you have a crisis, which has swept over, from the United States into Mexico. The maquiladoras are suffering; the Mexicans in the United States are losing jobs; and Bush says to the President of Mexico, "Bah!" I mean, President Fox, on this issue-- it's like "What're you trying to do? Cut my throat?!" And therefore, the President of Mexico says--what I saw as the reaction, was perfectly sensible. "We, in Mexico" (that is, President Fox's party), "we would do almost anything for the United States, based on the assumption that you were going to treat us fairly, on this and other questions." When this came up, and this repudiation of this honorable obligation, the President of Mexico is put in an impossible position! He's got the PRI, which is going, "Huh? huh? huh?" You kiss them, and what do you get? Sicknesses. Inside the PAN, there's consternation; political consternation.

The President is looked at, as though he's been used as a fool! A man comes to him, he says, "Dear friend, are you going to honor this thing, while we talk about this other?" "No!" Well, then, the President of Mexico says, "Wait a minute. The issue now is changed. The Europeans, who are saying the United States government is not trustworthy, are right! The people in Europe, who say, that you can not trust any statement from the United States President, he will lie to you, his word is no good, his promises are no good. Well, maybe the Europeans are right! Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe it's better to trust the Europeans, and assume they're right, than this man, who just stuck five knives in my back!"

I don't see this, as simply a reaction against [President Bush]. I see perfectly rational response, by the institutions of Mexico, who realized from this experience, this evidence, what the nature of the situation is, strategically. And therefore, we said, "We can't believe you on Iraq. We can't believe you on the United Nations. We can't believe you on these things."

And, this is going to be a big problem for Bush, now.

Q: [translated] If this issue of the Mexican government on the question of Iraq, is viewed as a response on the lack of an agreement on the migration question, and there's a fight brewing on this, could there yet be a stronger reaction coming from the United States?

LaRouche: Well, we've got a problem: The United States has elements which are controlling the President, at present. This is a group which is centered on people like Cheney; it's a group which is centered on the allies of Sharon in the United States, who are all gangsters. McCain is essentially the gangster for organized crime; the other Senator from Arizona is also connected to organized crime; Joseph Lieberman, the vice presidential candidate in 2000, is connected organized crime. The Batista Cubans in Florida, the Meyer Lansky mob--that's Lieberman. So, you have this kind of situation.

The President of the United States, I can say, frankly, is not a man of great intellectual power. He responded well to Sept. 11 in some respects, but since January of 2023, he has not been, exactly, in the best mental health. His behavior in Mexico was the worst mental state I've seen him in, so far. The man is almost disintegrating before the press.

He can revolt. He's unpredictable, because of his limitations. He might decide to clean house of many of his advisers--right now!

The way I approach this, of course, I put pressure on all kinds of circles inside the United States: intelligence community, leading Republicans and others, as well as the Democratic Party. The economic issue, other issues, are extremely important. We are trying to bring about a change in the policy of this Presidency, at this time. But, he's a problematic personality to deal with, as President Fox is probably now convinced.

So, we can not predict exactly how he's going to react. You don't know what Nero's going to do in the morning! As the Romans remembered. But, we have to deal with the Presidency of the United States, and my concern is to pull enough strings in the Presidency, to try to bring about a rational response. And I'm optimistic. I'm not optimistic that I can guarantee anything. I do what's right. I believe we have the opportunity to win. And I'm determined to do whatever is necessary, that we win.

Q [translated]: I understand what you're saying about pressures around the Presidency, but what is behind the obsession Of the President of the United States to declare war on half the world, and, in this case, Iraq?

LaRouche: The man is extremely limited. Look at the death penalty in Texas, when he was Governor: The Texas political criminal system is one of the most corrupt in the United States. Who knows who's guilty? When you have a crime committed, in the Texas system, in many cases--as in other parts of the United States--they go out and grab some poor guy, say he's guilty, give him a drunken lawyer to defend him, and send him to execution. And the Governor of Texas kept saying, with all the things we know about injustice in death penalty cases, no acknowledgment: No acknowledgment of the Pope; no acknowledgment of anything. Mexican citizens were sentenced to death in the United States without any rights, without legal representation, without consulting their government.

So, when someone sits on the basis "I am the Emperor. Because I read the words on the teleprompter, and said them, now that is law, forever!" We have a President with very serious mental and moral defects! He's not very intelligent. He's not emotionally well-balanced. And he's being played like a puppet, by puppet- strings, by Lynne Cheney's crazy husband, and similar kinds of people.

So, what you have is, an institutional problem. Therefore, you have to recognize this. I have to defend this guy's life. I have to defend the U.S. Presidency, but I've got to do my part, to try to pull strings to get this thing changed. I think it can be done.

But, we have to be realistic. Sometimes we have to talk plainly about things. If you recognize what the problem is, maybe you'll find the solution. If you pretend the problem doesn't exist, you'll never find a solution. So, I'm optimistic, but very cautious.

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