Many of our countries are struggling to cease being banana republics.

They do not want to become balalaika republics.

Do not force them to choose between appealing to the Soviet Union or capitulating to the United States.

My plea is this one.

Do not practice negative overlordship in this hemisphere.

Practice positive leadership. Join the forces of change and patience and identity in Latin America.

The United States should use the new realities of re-distributed world power to its advantage. All the avenues I have been dealing with come together now to form a circle of possible harmony: the United States has true friends in this hemisphere; these friends must negotiate the situations that the United States, while participating in them, cannot possibly negotiate for itself, and the negotiating parties--from Mexico and Venezuela, Panama and Colombia, tomorrow perhaps our great Portuguese speaking sister, Brazil, perhaps the new Spanish democracy, re-establishing the continuum of our Iberian heritage, and expanding the Contadora group--have the intimate knowledge of the underlying cultural problems.

And they have the imagination for assuring the inevitable passage from the American sphere of influence, not to the Soviet sphere, but to our own Latin American authenticity in a pluralistic world.

*****

President Bok, Ladies and Gentlemen:

My friend Milan Kundera, the Czech novelist, makes a plea for "the small cultures" from the wounded heart of Central Europe.

I have tried to echo it today from the convulsed heart of Latin America.

Politicians will disappear.

The United States and Latin America will remain.

What sort of neighbors will you have?