B1 · Intermediate
12 min
politicshistoryinternational relationshuman rights
La ONU y la esclavitud: ¿quién debe pagar por el pasado?
The UN and Slavery: Who Should Pay for the Past?
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So something happened at the United Nations this week that I think deserves a lot more attention than it got, buried as it was under everything going on in the Gulf.
Sí, mira, la Asamblea General de la ONU aprobó una resolución importante.
Yes, look, the UN General Assembly passed an important resolution.
La resolución dice que el comercio atlántico de esclavos fue un crimen contra la humanidad.
The resolution says that the Atlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity.
Ghana proposed it.
And a lot of countries voted yes.
But here's what caught my eye: the United States, most of Europe, they abstained or voted against.
That tells you something.
Bueno, la resolución también pide un diálogo sobre las reparaciones.
Well, the resolution also calls for a dialogue on reparations.
Y eso es el problema para muchos países occidentales, porque las reparaciones cuestan dinero.
And that is the problem for many Western countries, because reparations cost money.
Right, so let's be precise about what this resolution actually does, because there's a lot of confusion when these things get reported.
It doesn't compel anyone to pay anything.
It's not a treaty.
It's a statement.
Es que eso es verdad.
That's true.
Una resolución de la Asamblea General no es una ley internacional.
A General Assembly resolution is not international law.
Pero tiene mucha importancia política y moral.
But it carries significant political and moral weight.
Es un reconocimiento oficial.
It is an official recognition.
And that word, recognition, is doing enormous work here.
Because if you recognize something as a crime against humanity, you're opening a door.
You're establishing a principle.
That's how international law actually develops, slowly, through statements like this.
Bueno, y el comercio atlántico de esclavos duró más de cuatro siglos.
Well, and the Atlantic slave trade lasted more than four centuries.
Desde el siglo XV hasta el siglo XIX.
From the fifteenth century to the nineteenth century.
Millones de personas africanas fueron capturadas y vendidas como esclavos.
Millions of African people were captured and sold as slaves.
The numbers are staggering.
Somewhere between twelve and fifteen million people transported across the Atlantic.
Two million or more died on the crossing alone.
And this wasn't some rogue operation, it was state-sanctioned, commercially organized, and enormously profitable.
Mira, España fue uno de los países más importantes en este comercio.
Look, Spain was one of the most important countries in this trade.
Los españoles llevaron esclavos a Cuba, a Puerto Rico, a toda América Latina.
The Spanish took enslaved people to Cuba, to Puerto Rico, to all of Latin America.
Eso es parte de nuestra historia también.
That is part of our history too.
I appreciate you saying that directly.
Because one of the things that always strikes me about these debates is how quickly European countries reach for the passive voice.
The trade 'occurred.' People 'were enslaved.' As if it happened without anyone doing it.
La verdad es que sí, hay un problema con la memoria histórica.
The truth is, yes, there is a problem with historical memory.
En España, por ejemplo, no hablamos mucho de la esclavitud en las escuelas.
In Spain, for example, we don't talk much about slavery in schools.
Estudiamos el colonialismo, pero de una manera muy...
We study colonialism, but in a very...
diplomática.
diplomatic way.
Diplomatically.
[laughs] That's one word for it.
Look, the United States is in a genuinely complicated position here, and I want to be honest about that, because the legacy of slavery in America is not just history, it's infrastructure.
It's literally built into the wealth distribution of the country.
A ver, el argumento de los países occidentales contra las reparaciones siempre es el mismo: ¿quién paga, y a quién?
Look, the argument from Western countries against reparations is always the same: who pays, and to whom?
Dicen que es muy complicado.
They say it is very complicated.
And it IS complicated.
I don't want to dismiss that.
But I've noticed that 'it's complicated' is often the position countries take when the right answer is expensive.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Pero hay ejemplos históricos de reparaciones.
But there are historical examples of reparations.
Alemania pagó reparaciones a Israel después del Holocausto.
Germany paid reparations to Israel after the Holocaust.
Ese acuerdo fue muy importante y funcionó.
That agreement was very important and it worked.
The West German reparations agreement with Israel in 1952.
Three billion deutschmarks over twelve years.
And that was controversial at the time, even within Israel, because some people said you can't put a price on those lives.
But Adenauer pushed it through, and it mattered.
Bueno, y también los Estados Unidos pagaron reparaciones a los japoneses-americanos en 1988, a las personas que estuvieron en los campos de internamiento durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Well, and the United States also paid reparations to Japanese Americans in 1988, to the people who were held in internment camps during the Second World War.
Twenty thousand dollars per survivor.
And I covered a lot of the debate around that in my early career.
The argument that broke it open wasn't moral, it was legal.
People said: these were American citizens whose constitutional rights were violated by their own government.
That framing worked.
Mira, el problema con las reparaciones por la esclavitud es diferente.
Look, the problem with reparations for slavery is different.
Las víctimas directas ya no viven.
The direct victims are no longer alive.
Y los países que pagaron el dinero, y los países que recibieron el dinero, es muy difícil identificarlos.
And the countries that would pay the money, and the countries that would receive it, are very difficult to identify.
That's the core practical problem.
But here's what gets me.
The CARICOM countries, the Caribbean nations, they've been making a very specific argument for years: we're not asking you to compensate individual descendants.
We're asking for investment in the development of countries that were built on enslaved labor and then abandoned.
Sí, eso es interesante.
Yes, that is interesting.
CARICOM presentó un plan en 2014.
CARICOM presented a plan in 2014.
No pedían dinero directamente a las personas.
They were not asking for money directly to individuals.
Pedían hospitales, escuelas, cancelación de deudas.
They were asking for hospitals, schools, debt cancellation.
Inversión en el futuro.
Investment in the future.
And Britain effectively ignored it.
Which I find remarkable, because the British case is so well documented.
Historians have calculated that Britain's entire Industrial Revolution was substantially financed by profits from enslaved labor in the Caribbean colonies.
Es que hay otro detalle muy importante: cuando Gran Bretaña abolió la esclavitud en 1833, el gobierno pagó compensaciones.
There is another very important detail: when Great Britain abolished slavery in 1833, the government paid compensation.
Pero no pagó a los esclavos liberados.
But it did not pay the freed enslaved people.
Pagó a los dueños de esclavos.
It paid the slave owners.
The extraordinary thing is, and I have to say this because people don't know it, the British government was still paying off that debt to the descendants of slave owners until 2015.
British taxpayers, including the descendants of enslaved people themselves, were still servicing that loan.
Bueno, eso es...
Well, that is...
increíble.
incredible.
Y por eso muchas personas en el Caribe, en África, en América Latina, dicen que esta conversación sobre reparaciones no es nueva.
And that is why many people in the Caribbean, in Africa, in Latin America, say that this conversation about reparations is not new.
Es vieja.
It is old.
Solo los países ricos no quieren escuchar.
Only the wealthy countries refuse to listen.
So let's talk about Ghana specifically, because it's not an accident that Ghana proposed this resolution.
Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's founding president in 1957, he was arguing for African reparations and pan-African unity from day one.
This resolution sits in a very long tradition.
A ver, también Ghana organizó el proyecto 'Year of Return' en 2019.
Look, Ghana also organized the 'Year of Return' project in 2019.
Invitaron a personas de la diáspora africana, especialmente afroamericanos, a visitar Ghana y a conectar con sus raíces.
They invited people from the African diaspora, especially African Americans, to visit Ghana and connect with their roots.
Fue un proyecto político y cultural al mismo tiempo.
It was a political and cultural project at the same time.
I went, actually.
Not for the Year of Return, but I was in Accra in 2018 and I went to Cape Coast Castle.
Which is one of the slave forts on the Ghanaian coast, where enslaved people were held before being loaded onto ships.
I've been in a lot of difficult places in my career.
That place is something else.
Mira, yo también fui una vez.
Look, I also went once.
Hay una puerta en el castillo que se llama 'la puerta de no retorno'.
There is a door in the castle called 'the door of no return.' The people who passed through that door never returned to Africa.
Las personas que pasaron por esa puerta nunca volvieron a África.
Never.
Nunca.
Right.
And on the other side of that door, you're standing directly above the holding cells where people were kept for weeks or months.
So the physical reality of it is...
it's not abstract.
It's not history in a book.
Y por eso la resolución de la ONU importa, aunque no tiene fuerza legal.
And that is why the UN resolution matters, even though it has no legal force.
Porque pone el tema en la agenda internacional de manera oficial.
Because it puts the issue on the international agenda officially.
Ya no puedes ignorarlo completamente.
You can no longer ignore it completely.
Here's what I think the real implication is though.
The vote itself is a map.
Who voted yes, who voted no, who abstained.
That map tells you exactly where the fault lines of the new global order are.
The Global South versus the Western bloc.
And it's a fault line that's going to keep splitting things apart.
Es que eso es exactamente correcto.
That is exactly correct.
Los países africanos, los países del Caribe, muchos países de Asia y América Latina votaron que sí.
African countries, Caribbean countries, many countries in Asia and Latin America voted yes.
Los Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea, Gran Bretaña votaron que no o se abstuvieron.
The United States, the European Union, Great Britain voted no or abstained.
And there's something almost ironic about the timing.
We're in a moment where the United States is withdrawing from a lot of multilateral institutions, pulling funding from the UN, questioning alliances.
And then the Global South passes a resolution like this, and it stings more because of that context.
Bueno, y hay otro aspecto importante.
Well, and there is another important aspect.
Muchos de los países que se opusieron a la resolución tienen elecciones pronto.
Many of the countries that opposed the resolution have elections coming up.
Los políticos tienen miedo de la reacción de sus votantes si apoyan las reparaciones.
Politicians are afraid of the reaction of their voters if they support reparations.
That's the honest truth of it, isn't it.
This is not primarily a legal or a philosophical debate.
It's a political calculus.
And right now in Europe and the United States, the political winds are blowing hard against anything that looks like redistribution across borders.
La verdad es que sí.
The truth is, yes.
Pero yo creo que esta resolución cambió algo.
But I believe this resolution changed something.
Antes, el debate sobre las reparaciones era marginal, era de activistas.
Before, the debate about reparations was marginal, it belonged to activists.
Ahora es un debate oficial en las Naciones Unidas.
Now it is an official debate at the United Nations.
Eso es un paso adelante.
That is a step forward.
I think you're right about that.
No, genuinely.
The Overton window just shifted.
And what's considered a radical demand today can become a negotiating floor pretty quickly in international politics.
We've seen it happen.
A ver, para terminar, yo quiero decir algo sobre España.
Look, to finish, I want to say something about Spain.
Nuestro país participó activamente en el comercio de esclavos.
Our country actively participated in the slave trade.
Todavía no tuvimos una conversación nacional seria sobre eso.
We still have not had a serious national conversation about that.
Esta resolución de la ONU es una buena oportunidad para empezar.
This UN resolution is a good opportunity to start.
And that's probably the most honest thing anyone could say about this.
Not 'what does this resolution accomplish' but 'what conversation does it force.' Because the conversation itself is the point.
The world spent five hundred years not having it seriously, and maybe that's starting to change.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Bueno, no resolvimos el problema hoy, Fletcher.
Well, we did not solve the problem today, Fletcher.
Pero hablamos de él con honestidad.
But we talked about it honestly.
Y eso ya es algo, creo yo.
And that is already something, I think.
That's about the best we can promise anyone who listens to this show.
No solutions, but real questions, asked seriously.
Thanks for being here, both of you, the one listening and the one arguing with me from Madrid.