Zepp-LaRouche Brings BRICS to U.S. Doorstep
by Gretchen Small and Dennis Small
Nov. 20—Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche addressed by video an overflow crowd of more than 100 people, most of them youth, gathered in Mexico City for a seminar titled “A Life or Death Choice Between Two Systems: The BRICS and the Scientific-Economic Revolution that Will Change the World.” Zepp-LaRouche brought the message to this U.S. neighbor in the midst of Mexico’s political upheaval, telling the audience that the revolution centered on China’s New Silk Road initiative and the BRICS nations’ fight for development, is grounds for optimism for Mexico, and for humanity as a whole (see below for a transcript of her remarks).
Civilization stands “at a crossroads, where the future fate of mankind is completely open,” she stated. “The evil system of the British Empire, of Wall Street, of London, exists still. But in reality, they are finished already. It is only a question if they will be able to pull the world down with them, in a catastrophe or not. But there is the optimistic perspective, that of the new power center” of the BRICS and those countries associated with them, the majority of mankind, fighting for a new world economic order, which can usher in “a completely new phase in the history of civilization,” in which humanity will “build and extend infrastructure into nearby space,” through space colonization and space development.
The seminar was organized by the LaRouche Citizens Movement of Mexico (MOCILA), and webcast by EIR to listeners in Spain, in at least 10 other Ibero-American countries (including at two universities in Colombia and a meeting in Guatemala City), and in the United States.
It took place in the midst of a London-led effort to trigger a “color revolution” to overthrow the Enrique Peña Nieto government of Mexico, which had dared reach out to China and the other BRICS as allies against the Wall Street and London interests who run the drug trade. It took a political fight to even find a place in which to hold a conference on the BRICS in Mexico City, and the very day it was held, anarchist forces were turned back by the police from Mexico City’s international airport, which they were intent on occupying, preparatory to mass marches in the late afternoon.
Universities have been the center of the turmoil, dominated by wild radicalism, but MOCILA organizers sparked great interest among serious thinkers with bold posters announcing the BRICS seminar, which they plastered across several of Mexico City’s biggest campuses. Two-thirds of the attendees at the seminar were university students (who paid to attend), including a contingent who came from Querétaro—a city four hours away from Mexico City, until the planned high-speed rail line is built. Youth dominated the question-and-answer period.
Zepp-LaRouche was the main speaker on the first panel of the four-hour seminar. The Russian Embassy’s Economic and Trade Attaché, Nikolay Shkolyan, had been scheduled to speak on the first panel, on the subject of the BRICS New Development Bank, but had to send his regrets due to illness. Gabriela Cedillo, General Coordinator of the Mexican edition of China Today, a magazine published in six languages and founded by Sun Yat-sen’s widow Soong Ching-ling, spoke, conveying a sense of the development revolution taking place in China, and the Chinese view of the BRICS as extending that to the world. China doesn’t have only five-year plans, but is planning for 50 years ahead, as seen in the Three Gorges Dam, its rail system, and its establishment of a presence in space. It has not been easy, it has been a fight, but it is on the right path. She invited Mexican students to study Chinese, apply for scholarships to study in China, and join its space program; Mexican companies were invited to sell their products in China.
Bringing the World On Board
The second panel was geared to give participants a bird’s-eye view of how the BRICS process was offering a way out to countries and regions still lashed to the sinking Titanic of the trans-Atlantic financial system: Mexico and Ibero-America, Spain and Europe, and the United States.
Gerardo Castilleja of the MOCILA opened the second panel, speaking on Ibero-America and Mexico’s relationship to the BRICS. He emphasized that South America, led by Argentina, was already breaking from the trans-Atlantic system, and that Mexico could and should do the same, returning to the developmenet projects and strategic outlook of President José López Portillo (1976-82). He explained that the “color revolution” launched against Mexico’s institutions was designed to prevent just that from happening.
José Carlos Soto of the Spanish LaRouche Movement spoke by video on saving Spain and Southern Europe from destruction under the Troika, posing the relations between the BRICS as the model for a Europe freed from the Troika (IMF, European Central Bank, European Commission). He pointed to the special significance of building a tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar, so that Spain can fulfill its mission to be the bridge to Africa of the World Land-Bridge (see excerpts from Soto’s remarks below). And Dennis Small, of the U.S. LaRouche movement, spoke on the strategically decisive issue of getting the United States, too, to jump ship from the Titanic, and return to its own Hamiltonian roots by joining with the BRICS, exactly as Chinese President Xi Jinping has offered.
The discussion period was characterized by thoughtful questions, as participants struggled to understand the fundamental difference between today’s imperial system of globalization and the new architecture being created by the BRICS. Underlying several of the questions was the difficulty people have in conceiving of governments and peoples who are acting out of love of humanity, concerned with securing the betterment of the other, as well as themselves. Are the BRICS another type of geopolitical formation? Do the BRICS have a different kind of security policy, as well as an economic one? How can we protect the interests of Native Americans, women, and the environment? All of which allowed for a profound discussion throughout the seminar of the oligarchic, bestial concept of man, versus the actual identity of the human species as the only willfully creative species, based on love of mankind.
