Your Excellency has been placed in front of my country to seal in my name the health of my compatriots. This is what the sovereign people entrusted to him through the free exercise of his right, when he elected you, to exercise the sacrosanct First Magistracy of the Country. So that you should guide your performance in this position always always seeking that good health of the people, regardless of the political inclinations of the members of it.
As you can see the Honorable Member, the Republic of Venezuela, now in 2018 presided over by Vm., Two hundred years have passed since those glorious events and I am sorry to know, by news received from my beloved Venezuela, that your situation is not very flattering. It torments my soul to inform me of the precarious situation of Venezuelans. I have to conclude that I have plowed in the sea. So many years of sacrifices did not yield the expected results. My country is not sovereign today, its people are not happy either, and its rulers have not established justice. This is the bad news coming from my country.
My project and other liberators was to obtain for Venezuela a Republic where my compatriots would be guaranteed the greatest amount of political stability the greatest sum of social happiness and the greatest sum of economic prosperity. But I have learned, from friends that I have in my beloved Caracas, that the health of Venezuela is very distressed. Nothing of this dream has materialized in my native land. The situation has deteriorated too much after four years of his presidency. My informants tell me that you blame the economic war to be the cause of national evils. But they also tell me that you have not won any battle of that war in these six years. You speak recurrently about the war but without obtaining any victory in the field of combat. Meanwhile, my people suffer the hardships that such a situation generates, without any chance of victory being seen on the horizon, given that the drivers of my country, including your Lordship, do not succeed in the tactics or strategies to obtain the victory. .
In six consecutive years of deterioration of the socioeconomic conditions of the Venezuelan compatriots, life there is also dire. Of wars I can speak to you properly, because like you, you should know I was doing it for almost 20 years in America on an extended route from Caracas to Potosí. Sometimes I lost battles, but I also won many, and above all, I triumphed in the most important and definitive ones. First I had to fight against the Spaniards for opposing these to our freedom; and then I had to do it against my own comrades in arms at odds with the Republic and with me. I defeated all of them and that's how Colombia, Peru and Bolivia stood up on their past ruins.
Regarding the war I will tell you that in such situations the first thing that a chief must do is to identify the enemy with precision, to know the combat power of the enemy, the men at his disposal, his war equipment, his sources of provisions, territories he dominates and combative morality. If you do not do this, the war is lost, how I am informed is happening with you, in Venezuela. You have not won, no battle against your enemies after almost four years of the war announced by your Lordship. For example, according to my informants from there, the Lordship has lost in her years of government, among others, the Battle of Bread, Rice, Sugar, Coffee, Flour, Cement, Medicines, Meat, Cheese, Egg, Bachaqueros, Ticket, Today, and stop counting. Because of all these failures, the country confronts many calamities. The factories, companies and estates in the hands of the government are bankrupt, food is very expensive and scarce, just as medicines, public services are very deteriorated, millions of young people emigrate because they can not find safe work, the public administration suffers from the evil of corruption, many lives are lost every day caused by the evildoers who have flooded every corner of the country, the national economic system is on the ground without producing the basics to feed the Venezuelans, the external debt reaches crippling levels for the finances of the country, and a new wealthy class, called the boliburguesía, has emerged in my homeland
However, two hundred years later I must tell you that I am disappointed to see the prostration that my country is showing today. It seems that we have been victims of a divine fatality. The Almighty has sent us the fatality of the rulers and of the elites that emerged under his lap. These have been responsible for making it impossible for a prosperous, modern, and just country to flourish in Venezuela.
On the contrary, today, that country that shined for its triumphs throughout America and gave examples of perseverance, tenacity and courage, is at the tail of all the countries that make up this continent.