The campaign for debt cancellation, which has reached a widespread during the nineties of last century, has had very diversified positions within. Some members have requested that debt cancellation was made as reparation for the damages caused by colonialism.
The best known is that of Luis Britto Garcia, a Venezuelan professor, which in 1990 published the "Speech by the cacique Guaicaipuro Cautemoc". The main character, an imaginary descendant of the ancient Venezuelan leaders, asked European leaders damage caused by the colonizers to be quantified and then to proceed to compensation with the debt of the countries which were colonized.
The other position, perhaps less known but equally important, is that of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM), a Belgian organization founded in 1990 by legal and natural persons in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia and a member of the International Council of the World Social Forum. The association [...] considers the cancellation of debt as a necessary but insufficient pre-condition and it also calls for payment of compensation by the most industrialised countries for the pillage they have wrought over centuries in the peripheral countries. The last five hundred years in particular have been scarred by the colonial conquest, the ’mining’ and exportation of black slave labour, the extermination of populations, the extinction of local cultures (or of entire civilisations), the depletion of resources and degradation of the environment.The current subjection to a system of foreign debt is just one more level of exploitation. The populations on the Periphery are victims of this pillage; they are therefore entitled to reparation. [...] According to the association, it is now time to transform what is termed "official development assistance" into grants in reparation. The funds promised at the 1992 Rio conference should be tripled of at least 0.7% of the Gross National Product.
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