Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
December 10, 1987
Oslo, Norway
Peace Has No Finishing Line
When you chose to honor me with this prize, you chose to honor a land of peace: you chose to honor Costa Rica. When, in this year of l987 you fulfilled the wish of Alfred E. Nobel to encourage efforts for peace in the world, you chose to encourage the efforts to secure peace in Central America. I am most grateful for this recognition of our search for peace. All of us in Central America are grateful.No one knows better than the honorable members of this committee, that this prize is a signal to the world that you wish to promote the initiative for peace in Central America. With your decision, you are contributing to the possibilities for its success; you are declaring how well you know that the search for peace can never end, that it is a permanent cause needing the genuine support of genuine friends, of people with the courage to promote change toward peace despite all obstacles.
Peace is not a matter of prizes or of trophies. It is not the product of a victory, nor of a command. It has no borders, no time limits, nothing fixed in the definition of its achievements.
Peace is a process which never ends; it is the result of innumerable decisions made by many persons in many lands. It is an attitude, a way of life, a way of solving problems and of resolving conflicts. It cannot be forced on the smallest nation, nor can it be imposed by the largest. It can neither ignore our differences nor overlook our common interests. It requires us to work and live together.
Peace is not only a matter of noble words and Nobel lectures. We already have an abundance of words, glorious words, inscribed in the declarations of the United Nations, the World Court, the Organization of American States and a network of international treaties and laws. We need deeds which respect these words, which honor the commitments avowed in these laws. We need to strengthen our institutions of peace, such as the United Nations, to ensure that they are used on behalf of the weak as well as the strong.
I pay no heed to those who doubt, nor to those who want to deny that a lasting peace can be truly accepted by those marching under different ideological banners, or by those more accustomed to cannons of war than to treaties of peace.
In Central America we do not seek solely peace, nor solely a peace to be followed one day by political progress. Instead we seek peace and democracy together, indivisible: an end to the shedding of human blood which is inseparable from an end to the violation of human rights. We do not judge, much less condemn, the political or ideological system of any nation which is freely chosen and not exported. We cannot impose on sovereign states models of government which they themselves have not chosen. But we can and do insist that every government respect the universal rights of man, whose value transcends all national borders and ideological labels. We believe that justice and peace can prosper only together, never apart. A nation which mistreats its own citizens is more likely to mistreat its neighbors.
Receiving the Nobel Prize on the tenth of December is a wonderful coincidence for me. My son Oscar Felipe, present here, is eight years old today. I say to him, and through him to all the children of my country, that we must never resort to violence; that we must never support military solutions to the problems of Central America. For the sake of the new generation, we must emphasize that today more than ever peace can only be achieved with its own instruments: dialogue and understanding, tolerance and forgiveness, freedom and democracy.
I know that you join us in our call to the members of the international community, and in particular to those nations of East and West which have much more power and resources than my small nation can ever hope to wield. To them I say with the greatest urgency: let Central Americans decide the future of Central America. Leave the interpretation of and the compliance with the Peace Plan to us. Support the efforts for peace in our region, not the forces of war; send us not swords but ploughshares, not spears but pruning hooks. If, for your own purposes, you cannot stop hoarding the weapons of war, then in the name of God, at least leave us in peace.
I say here, to Your Royal Highness, to the honorable members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, and to the wonderful people of Norway, that I accept this prize because I know how passionately you share our search for peace and our hope for success. If in the coming years peace prevails, eliminating violence and war, a great measure of this peace will be owed to the faith of the Norwegian people and will be to your credit forever.
Peace consists, in great part, in the act of desiring it with all one's soul. These words of Erasmus are lived out by the inhabitants of my little Costa Rica. Mine is a people without arms, whose children have never seen a combat plane, nor a tank, nor a battleship. One of my guests at this ceremony, here with us, is Mr. José Figueres Ferrer. He is the man of vision who in 1948 abolished the army of my homeland and thus set our history on a different course.
I do not receive this prize as Oscar Arias. Nor do I receive it as President of my country. I lack the arrogance to claim to represent anyone or anything, but I do not fear the humility which identifies me with the great causes shared by all. I receive it as one of four hundred million Latin Americans, who seek - in the return to freedom and in the practice of democracy - the way to overcome tremendous misery and injustice.
I am from that Latin America whose face is marked by deep traces of suffering, which record the exile, torture, prison and death of many of her men and women. I am from that Latin America still exhibiting totalitarian regimes which are the shame of the human race.
America is marked by profound scars. In the very years that she is seeking a return to freedom, the advent of democracy is revealing for the first time the horrible trail of torture, exile and death left by the dictators. America has enormous problems to overcome. The inheritance of an unjust past has been aggravated by the tragic actions of tyrants, to producing external debt, social insensitivity, economic destruction, corruption, and many other evils in our societies. These evils are in plain view for anyone to see them.
It is not strange that, before the magnitude of the challenge, many are imprisoned by despair. It is not strange that prophets of the Apocalypse abound, announcing the failure of the fight against poverty, proclaiming the imminent downfall of the democracies, predicting the ineffectiveness of all efforts for peace.
I do not share this defeatism. I cannot accept that to be a realist means to tolerate misery, violence, and hate. I do not believe that a hungry man who expresses his suffering should be treated as a subversive. I can never accept that the law be used to justify tragedy, that things must remain as they are, that we must abandon all thoughts of a different world. The law is the path of freedom and as such must offer equal opportunity for the development of all.
Freedom works miracles. For free men everything is possible. The challenges confronting us can be overcome by an America which is democratic and free. When I assumed the Presidency of Costa Rica, I called for an alliance for freedom and democracy in the Americas. I said then, and I repeat today, that we cannot ally ourselves either politically or economically with governments which oppress their peoples. Latin America has never known a single war between two democracies. That is reason enough for every person of good faith, for every government with good intentions, to support the efforts to stamp out tyranny.
I come from a world with great problems, which we are going to overcome in freedom. I come from a world which is in haste, because hunger makes haste. The violence which has forgotten hope makes haste. The dogmatism which betrays dialogue makes haste. I come from a world where we are in haste to render the paths of freedom irreversible, and to frustrate every attempt at oppression. I come from a world in haste to detain the fire of the guerrilla and of the soldier: youth are dying, brothers are dying, and tomorrow no one will know why. I come from a world in haste to open the prison doors and let out the prisoners, in place of opening them to usher in free men.
America is in haste for her freedom, haste for her democracy, and requires the understanding of the entire world to liberate herself from dictators and from misery.
I receive this prize as one of twenty-seven million Central Americans. Behind the democratic awakening in Central America lie over a hundred years of cruel dictators, of injustice, of generalized poverty. To live through another century of violence, or to achieve peace by overcoming the fear of freedom: this is the choice before my small America. Only peace can write a new history.
In Central America we will not lose faith. We will rectify our history. How sad that many wish us to believe that peace is a dream, that justice is a utopia, that shared welfare is impossible! How sad that in this world there are those who do not understand that, in the former plantations of Central America, today nations are embarked on the rightful search for a better destiny for their peoples! How sad that some do not understand that Central America wants not to prolong its past, but to write a new future, of hope for the young and dignity for the old!
The Central American isthmus is a zone of great contrasts, but also of encouraging concord. Millions of men and women share dreams of freedom and development. In some countries these dreams are evaporating against the systematic violation of human rights. They are being shattered by the fratricidal wars in the countryside and cities. They are confronting poverty so extreme that it paralyzes the heart. Poets who are the pride of humanity know that millions and millions cannot read their work in their own lands, because so many men and women are illiterate. In this anguished strip of land there are painters and sculptors who will be admired forever, but there are also dictators who earn no place in our memory for having offended the dearest values of man.
Central America neither wants nor can afford to continue to merely dream. History demands that our dreams be transformed into realities. Today there is no time to be lost. Today we can take our destiny into our own hands. In these lands, home alike to the oldest and strongest democracy of Latin America - that of Costa Rica - and to the most merciless dictators, the democratic awakening demands a special loyalty to freedom.
As the dictators of yesterday sufficed only to engender misery and to cripple hope, how absurd to imagine curing the evils of dictatorship of one extreme, with a dictatorship of the other! In Central America no one has the right to fear freedom; no one has the right to preach absolute truth. All dogmas have the same flaw. All are enemies of human creativity. So said Pascal: 'We know a great deal to make us skeptical. We know very little to make us dogmatic.'
History can only move toward freedom. History can only be inspired by justice. To march against the current of history is to follow the path of shame, of poverty, and of oppression. There is no revolution without freedom. All oppression is contrary to the human spirit.
Central America is halted at a terrible crossroads. Faced with the agonizing problems of poverty, there are those who from the mountain or from the government call for dictators of new ideological creeds, ignoring the cry for freedom of so many generations. Next to the grave evils of generalized misery, evils defined in the North-South context, the East-West conflict is brewing. Where the problems of poverty meet ideological struggle, the fear of freedom raises a cross of ill omen for Central America.
Let us make no mistake. The only answer for Central America, the only answer for her poverty, the only answer for her political challenges, is liberation from misery and fear. Those who claim to solve the evils of centuries with a single dogma will do nothing but exacerbate yesterday's problems.
For centuries men and women have sought freedom in Central America. No one must betray this sacred alliance. To do so would condemn our small America to another hundred years of horrifying oppression, to another hundred years of meaningless death, to another hundred years of struggle for freedom.
I receive this prize as one of 2.7 million Costa Ricans. My people breathe their sacred freedom from the two oceans which are our frontiers to the East and West. To the South and North, Costa Rica has nearly always been bordered by dictators and hunger.
We are a people without arms and we are fighting to continue to be a people without hunger.
We are a symbol of peace for America; we want also to be a symbol of development. We propose to demonstrate that peace is both a requirement and a fruit of development.
My land is a land of teachers. For this reason it is a land of peace. We discuss our successes and our failures alike in complete freedom.
Because mine is a land of teachers, we have closed the barracks: our children walk with books under their arms rather than guns on their shoulders. We believe in dialogue, in negotiation, in the search for consensus. We repudiate violence. Because mine is a land of teachers, we believe in convincing rather than in vanquishing our adversaries. We prefer to raise the fallen rather than to crush them, because we believe that no one possesses absolute truth. Because mine is a land of teachers, we seek an economy of cooperation in solidarity rather than one of competition to the death.
For 118 years in my country, education has been compulsory and free. Today every inhabitant is protected by medical attention, and public housing is a fundamental commitment of my government.
While we are proud of many of our achievements, we do not hide our concerns or our problems.
In these difficult times, we must be capable of establishing a new economy to resume growth. We have declared that we do not want an economy insensitive to household needs or to the demands of the poor. We have declared that we will not, in the name of economic growth, renounce our aspiration to create a more egalitarian society. Today our country has the lowest unemployment rate in the Western Hemisphere. We want to be the first country in Latin America free of slums. We are convinced that a land free of slums will be a land free of hate, in which even the poorest nations can enjoy the privilege of working freely for development.
In these bitter years for Central America, many in my homeland have feared that the Central American violence, driven by minds sickened and blinded by fanaticism, would contaminate our Costa Rica. Some Costa Ricans have been impelled by fear to propose that an army could keep the violence outside our borders. What senseless weakness! These thoughts are worth less than the thirty ducats of silver given to Judas. The strength of Costa Rica, the force which makes her invincible to violence and more powerful than a thousand armies, is the force of freedom, of principles, of the great ideals of our civilization. When ideas are lived out in honesty, when freedom is not greeted by fear, we are invulnerable to totalitarian blows.
In Costa Rica we know that only freedom enables all the inhabitants of a country to participate fully in the political system. Only freedom enables men to be reconciled by tolerance. The painful wanderings of so many Cubans, Nicaraguans, Paraguayans, Chileans and others, unable to return to their own lands, are the cruelest witness to the rule of dogmatism. Freedom has no surnames; democracy has no colors. One knows them wherever they exist by the real life of the people.
Faced with the proximity of violence in Central America, Costa Rica - her history and the idealism of her youth - enjoined me to bring to the battlefields of the region the peace of my people, the faith in dialogue, the need for tolerance. As the servant of my people, I proposed a peace plan for Central America. This plan is based also in the liberating call of Simón Bolívar, expressed in the tenacious and valiant work of the Contadora Group of Support.
I receive this prize as one of five Presidents, who before the entire world have consecrated the wills of our peoples to change a history of oppression for one of freedom; to change a history of hunger for a destiny of progress; to change the weeping of mothers and the violent death of youth for hope, for the path of peace which we wish to travel together.
Hope is the greatest force moving peoples. Hope that transforms, that creates new realities, opens the way toward human freedom. To offer hope, courage must be joined to wisdom. Only thus can we avoid violence; only thus can we achieve the serenity to respond peacefully to offense.
However noble a cause may be, some will desire and promote its failure. Some few today seem to accept war as the normal course of affairs, as the way to solve problems. How ironic that powerful forces are irritated by the interruption of war - by the attempt to destroy reasons for hate! How ironic that the attempt to stop war provokes anger and attacks, as if we were disturbing a just sleep or obstructing a necessary path, rather than fighting a heartbreaking evil! How ironic that the efforts for peace reveal those for whom hatred is stronger than love, in whom the longing for a military path to power destroys reason, overwhelms shame, and betrays history!
In Central America we five Presidents have signed an accord to seek a firm and lasting peace. We seek that arms be silenced and men speak. Conventional arms are those which are wounding our children; conventional arms are those which are killing our youth.
The dread of nuclear war, the horrible depictions of an atomic apocalypse, seem to be making us insensible to conventional arms. The memory of Hiroshima is greater than the memory of Vietnam. How we wish that the same respect be given to conventional as to nuclear arms! How we wish that killing many people little by little, day by day, were as objectionable as killing many in a single day! Is our world so irrational, that if the atomic bomb were possessed by every nation and the destiny of all depended on a single lunatic, we would have more respect for the use of conventional arms? Is it thus that universal peace would be more secure? Is it our right to forget the 78 million human beings fallen in the wars of the twentieth century?
Today the world is divided between those who live in terror of being destroyed in a nuclear war, and those dying daily in wars of conventional arms. This terror of the final war is so great as to engender a frightening insensitivity to the proliferation and use of non-atomic arms. It is urgent - demanded by our intelligence, enjoined by our piety - that we fight as much to prevent another Vietnam as to prevent another Hiroshima.
Arms do not fire themselves. Those who have lost hope fire them. Those who are dominated by dogmatism fire them. We must fight for peace without dismay, and accept without fear the challenges of a world without hope and threatened by fanaticism.
The peace plan signed by the five Presidents faces every kind of challenge. The path of peace is difficult, very difficult. We in Central America need the help of all to achieve peace.
It is easier to predict the defeat of peace in Central America than its victory. It has always been easier to predict defeat than victory. So it was when man wanted to fly, and when he wanted to conquer space. So it was in the difficult days of the two world wars in this century. So it was, and is, when man tackles the most terrible illnesses and the task of eliminating poverty and hunger in the world.
History has not been made by the men who predicted failure, who renounced their dreams, who
abandoned their principles, who allowed laziness to stultify their intelligence. Those who at times have fought for human triumphs in solitude have always been accompanied by the spirit of their peoples, by the faith and destiny of many generations.
Perhaps it was in hours as difficult for Central America as those in which we live today, perhaps it was in premonition of the present crossroads, that Rubén Dario - the greatest poet of our America - wrote these lines in the conviction that history would change its course:
Pray, generous, pious, and proud;
pray, chaste, pure, heavenly, brave;
intercede for us, supplicate for us,
for already we are almost without sap and bud,
without soul, without life, without light, without Quixote,
without feet, without wings, without Sancho
and without God.I assure the immortal poet that we shall not renounce our dreams, fear wisdom, or flee freedom. I assure him that in Central America we shall not forget Quixote, we shall not renounce life, we shall not turn our backs on the human spirit, and we shall never lose faith in God.
I am one of five men who signed an accord, a commitment which consists, in great part, in the act of desiring peace with all one's soul.
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