3
P
rince
of
A
sturias
A
wards
1981-2014. S
peeches
Laureates. Excerpts
Although there is still much to do, Guatemala is today a very different country to what it was
in the past. Political violence has disappeared from our land; in its place flourishes an inclusive
democracy that is releasing the creative potential of the Guatemalan people and broadening the
paths of tolerance, pluralism and the opening up to new ideas and diversity.
Freedom reigns in our motherland and old wounds are healing with the disappearance of the
impunity which was protected by the complicity or tolerance of power, insofar as opportunities for
development are reaching a long-suffering and hardworking people who embrace modernity from
the depth of their ancient cultural roots.
Peace is not the absence of conflicts, but pacific, legal and democratic methods to solve
them. Firm, long-lasting peace requires social and cultural justness and that is the path that the
Peace Accords have taken. The fight against poverty, privilege and discrimination is and should
be a permanent national priority, because the broadening and strengthening of the unity of the
Guatemalan people depend on this priority, a unity which is their main resource for building the
present and the future.
It is still early to evaluate the period we have experienced and earlier still to value that which
has arisen anew in our society. The urgency to overcome so much lost ground and the longing that
this causes us prevent a just appraisal of what we have achieved, particularly the foundations for
the future that we have built.
We still do not enjoy the necessary historical perspective to recognize the rich sediment that
the tragedy itself produced, and ten months of peace after four hundred months of war are not
enough to reveal that broad paths open up ahead of us, paths that our first forbears entreated with
all their heart of the sky and the earth in the dawn of their lives. To tread these paths and not get
lost depends on us alone.
Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen,
on behalf of the
Government of
Guatemala
—
Government of Guatemala
and Guatemalan National
Revolutionary Unity
—
Prince of Asturias
Award for International
Cooperation
1997
Alvaro Arzú Irigoyen was President
of the Republic of Guatemala from
1996 to 2000.
—
Excerpt from the speech given on
the occasion of receiving the Prince
of Asturias Award for International
Cooperation on 24/10/1997.
