    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [March 10, 1999]
    [Pages 335-339]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador in San Salvador
    March 10, 1999

        To the president of the Legislative Assembly,
    thank you very much for your welcome and your fine comments. To the
    president of the Supreme Court, the leaders
    and members of the Assembly; to the other leaders from Central America
    who are here; members of the diplomatic corps; other distinguished
    public officials from El Salvador; members of the American delegation.
    Mr. President, I noticed you said you would
    officially certify the results of the recent Presidential elections
    today, so I don't want to jump the gun, but apparently the President-
    elect is here. And I'm delighted to see him
    as well.
        I have come to Central America with gratitude for our partnership,
    gratitude for the warm reception that my wife received when she came here recently, and later the
    wife of our Vice President, with a distinguished
    delegation of Members of Congress, heads of our Federal agencies,
    members of the White House staff, my new Special Envoy to Latin America,
    former Lieutenant Governor of Florida Buddy MacKay, and others.
        For 2 days now, we have been seeing and speaking with many different
    kinds of people in Nicaragua and Honduras, now in El Salvador, about
    efforts to recover and rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Mitch. We have
    met people who have lost everything but hope. I have been moved and
    humbled by their refusal to be defeated in the face of the deaths of
    their children, their husbands, their wives, their parents, the loss of
    all source of income.
        I am very proud and grateful that the United States, through our
    soldiers, our aid workers, and our Peace Corps volunteers, our private
    donations, have had the opportunity to work alongside the people of
    Central America in the rebuilding process.

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        The message I have heard from all kinds of people is that it is not
    enough now simply to fix things which were destroyed and move on; that
    together we must build a better life for future generations, restoring
    people's lives and livelihoods as soon as possible, in a way that
    strengthens freedom and peace and the rule of law over the long run.
        No one can forget that just a few years ago, the people of Central
    America were suffering from a legion of manmade disasters far more cruel
    than anything nature can bestow on us. There was a time not long ago
    when many in this region believed they could only defend their point of
    view at the point of a gun, a time when civil war and repression claimed
    tens of thousands of lives and cast many thousands more into exile, a
    time when farmers were pushed off their land and children were torn from
    their parents, a time which provoked in the United States bitter
    divisions about our role in your region.
        You have worked hard here in El Salvador to shed light on that dark
    and painful period. Now all of us, as friends and partners, can and must
    join in building a common future, determined to remember the past but
    never to repeat it.
        I hope the people of Central America now see the United States in a
    new way, as a partner, a friend, a colleague in the process of
    strengthening democracy, in reconstruction, in reclaiming your rightful
    future.
        The wars are over. Every country in Central America now is governed
    by elected leaders accountable to their people. What once was a no-win
    contest for power has turned into a win-win contest for better schools,
    safer streets, and economic opportunity. A battlefield of ideology has
    been transformed into a marketplace of ideas. Decades of struggle have
    brought a victory for democracy, the only revolution of our time that
    has not betrayed its principles.
        In so many other parts of the world, things are different. Nations
    still short-change schools and hospitals to pay for arms in the vain
    pursuit of weapons of mass destruction--not in Central America and
    certainly not in El Salvador. In so many other places in the world,
    financial turmoil has undermined confidence in open markets and
    societies--not in Central America and certainly not in El Salvador. In
    so many other places, people still try to resolve ethnic, religious, and
    political tensions by the force of arms rather than the force of
    argument--not in Central America. And no nation has traveled a greater
    distance to overcome deeper wounds in shorter time than El Salvador. You
    reached another plateau through your elections on Sunday.
        A hurricane can transform villages full of life into valleys of
    rubble and death. But it will not wash away the foundations of good
    government and good will the people of Central America have laid. It
    cannot, it will not take away from you the power to shape your own
    destiny.
        All the Central American leaders with whom I have visited have told
    me that if reconstruction is managed in the right way, if it clearly
    benefits all segments of society in a transparent way, if it carves out
    new roles for local government and voluntary organizations, if it
    reflects the necessity of protecting the environment, then this region
    will emerge in stronger shape than before the storm.
        You are striving to build true democracies in which all people have
    a stake and human rights are respected; to build more equitable
    societies that have conquered not only the bitter divide between right
    and left but the embittering divide between poverty and wealth; to build
    safer communities in which people can live in peace and have faith in
    police and judicial institutions; to build a more integrated community
    of the Americas in which borders are open to travel and trade, but
    closed to deadly traffic in drugs and guns and human beings.
        The United States will work with you to realize that vision, from
    relief to reconstruction to renewal. It is the right thing to do.
    Clearly, it is in America's interests. Years ago, we learned that when
    Central America suffers, we suffer, too. In the last 10 years, we have
    learned how very much we benefit when Central America prospers in peace.
    Our exports to Central America and trade between us have more than
    tripled in this decade of reconciliation and hope. But to keep rising
    together, we have much more to do.
        First, we need to keep in mind the extent of the challenge just
    before us, the hurricane-damaged infrastructure that will cost $8.5
    billion to repair. Hope cannot be restored by aid alone. We also must
    expand trade and investment to restore growth. I have asked our Congress
    for funds totaling over $950 million to help restore Central America.

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        On Friday I sent to Congress a new proposal for an enhanced
    Caribbean Basin Initiative that would provide for Central America and
    the Caribbean even greater benefits than the proposal I made last year
    before the hurricane. It would eliminate our tariffs on all textiles
    assembled here from U.S. fabric, as well as on all textile handicrafts.
    It would allow us, also, to treat all nontextile imports from Central
    America exactly as we treat such imports from Mexico under NAFTA. The
    only requirement is that all nations must meet their obligations under
    the World Trade Organization and participate in the effort to create a
    free-trade area of the Americas.
        Now, if our Congress agrees, clearly this will help people in
    Central America find jobs, market their exports, stand on their feet. It
    will bring us closer to a day when goods move freely from Alaska to the
    tip of South America with benefits to all nations.
        In every country, including the United States, the progress of open
    markets is met by some skepticism and resentment. But look at the facts.
    Hundreds of millions of people on every continent have risen from
    poverty because finally they had the chance to produce goods and
    services for buyers beyond the borders of their nation. This will
    continue if we continue to tear down barriers that shut off countries
    from their customers. Exports have been the main engine of your
    country's growth the last few years. They have helped the United States,
    too. Our expanding trade with Latin America clearly has lifted our own
    growth and limited the impact on us of the global financial crisis.
        As we build a free-trade area of the Americas, however, we must
    remember that trade has to work for ordinary citizens everywhere, to
    contribute both to wealth and fairness. We must build a trading system
    that upholds the rights of workers and consumers, so that competition is
    a race to the top, not the bottom. We must conclude a treaty to ban
    abusive child labor everywhere in the world this year.
        But I know it is not enough to keep children out of work. We must
    get them into school in every nation. Today I am pleased to announce
    that the United States will provide over $8 million in new funding to
    help the children of America start school and stay in school.
        I must say, as I drove along the streets of San Salvador today,
    first to see the President and then to come
    here, I was very moved by the friendly faces of people waving to me. But
    the most touching of all were the children that stood out in front of
    their schools in their uniforms with their little signs and their
    smiling faces. And I could only think that our obligation is to give all
    the children of this region the chance to stand in those lines, in those
    uniforms, and learn what they need to know to prosper in the century
    ahead.
        We must also protect our environment. It is essential to the wealth
    of our nations and the health of our people. One of the central lessons
    of this hurricane is that we have to protect the environment to protect
    people. It was the deforested hillsides, for example, that experienced
    the deadliest mudslides. In places that retained their trees, lives were
    saved.
        Now, we cannot stop hurricanes or earthquakes or storms, but we can
    minimize the damage they do so that every act of God is not a disaster
    of Biblical proportions. We can reforest watersheds and preserve
    wetlands. We can grow crops in a way that preserves instead of spends
    the fertility of our soil. We can build more safely for the future. We
    in the United States are providing computer software and aerial imagery
    to Central America to tell you where flooding and mudslides are most
    likely to occur during the next storm, where roads and infrastructures
    must be rebuilt to last.
        But we also can do more. We must join together to stop the warming
    of our planet. Otherwise, there will only be more of the storms, floods,
    droughts, and record-breaking temperatures that have caused so much
    misery in the last few years, not only in our own backyard but
    throughout the world. We can do this together, and we can do it without
    forgoing economic growth. Each year we are developing cleaner
    technologies and cleaner sources of energy. For example, here in Central
    America you have an abundance of geothermal energy in hot springs just
    waiting to be tapped.
        We simply must face the fact--all of us--that in this new
    information age, nations need not, indeed, nations cannot continue to
    grow their economies by clinging to the industrial age energy practices
    and land management practices and water management practices of the
    past. We can do better. And if we do, we will create more jobs and grow
    our economies faster, whether it is in Central America or the United
    States. And it is a critical lesson for the leaders of every nation to
    teach the people.

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        Each time--[applause]--it's okay if you hesitate on that; my
    Congress is not sure I'm right, either. [Laughter] But I am. I can only
    tell you this from our own experience. Each time the United States has
    set higher environmental standards, our businesses have created the
    technologies to meet them, and we have actually had more jobs and faster
    growth as a result. Of course, this has to be done in a sensible way. It
    matters how it is done, but it can be done. Healthy market economies, in
    the end, cannot resist change; they must adapt to change.
        Like protecting the environment, protecting our people from drugs
    and crime is a challenge we must meet together. We have come far in the
    last few years in building a common understanding of the drug problem.
    The United States has recognized that we have a fundamental
    responsibility to reduce demand for drugs. The nations of Central
    America have recognized that drugs cannot pass through a society without
    leaving addiction and crime in their wake. So we are fighting the
    scourge together today for the sake of all our children.
        We also have to join forces to fight the proliferation of small arms
    to criminal gangs. For all the deadly advanced weapons technology in the
    world today, the weapon most responsible for the most death and
    destruction is not a missile or a bomb but the rifle. In too many parts
    of the world, it is easier and cheaper to buy a gun or a grenade than to
    buy a schoolbook or a life-saving drug.
        No country suffered more in Central America's civil wars than El
    Salvador. Today, no country suffers more from the weapons and gangs left
    over from the war than El Salvador. This assembly here can help to meet
    this challenge by expanding our extradition agreement and preventing
    criminals from escaping punishment by flight across borders.
        But America must also do our part to meet this threat to us all. We
    will continue to help you to train police forces that can fight gangs
    and gunrunners, while respecting human rights. We have tightened our
    laws to prevent Americans from making arms deals abroad that would be
    illegal at home, beefed up controls on our southern border, and stepped
    up prosecution of smugglers. Together we helped to negotiate an OAS
    convention that criminalizes the unregulated manufacture and sale of
    firearms, mandates strong export controls, and requires all firearms to
    be marked so they can be traced from one end of our hemisphere to the
    other. I am determined to try to extend that convention to the entire
    world by the year 2000, and I hope I can count on your support for that
    endeavor.
        Now, if we can do these things, if we can create jobs, lift people
    out of poverty, protect our environment, build safer communities, we
    also will diminish the pressure that causes so many people in this
    hemisphere to leave their homes in search of a better life. Legal
    migration from Central America has enriched the United States greatly.
    It has made us a stronger, a more vital, a more enterprising, a more
    diverse society. But poverty and the yearning for a better future have
    also brought many illegal migrants to our Nation.
        As the President said, people do not leave their families and their
    homes and risk a dangerous journey for the uncertain prospects of life
    in a strange land willingly. Most illegal immigrants are not, by nature,
    lawbreakers. Most are simply looking for the chance to live in dignity
    and provide for their children. Nevertheless, we must continue to
    discourage illegal immigration, for it undermines the control of our
    borders, which every nation is entitled to pursue. And even more, it
    punishes hardworking people who play by the rules and who wait for their
    turn to come to the United States. Therefore, we must enforce our laws,
    but we will do so with justice and fairness. I believe fairness means
    treating people equitably, whatever their country of origin.
        Now, during the 1980's, many Central Americans fled oppression by
    both the right and the left. Some were hurt by soldiers, some harmed by
    rebels. All whose lives were shattered have a right to sympathy, safety,
    and justice. Many who have been in the United States for a long time
    have established deep roots in our communities. At my request, following
    the Central American summit in Costa Rica 2 years ago, our Congress
    passed legislation to help them. But it did so by establishing different
    treatment among groups of Central Americans, depending upon where they
    were from. I will do everything I possibly can to overcome that
    different treatment. And I will work with our Congress to write laws
    that are more evenhanded. Our treatment of people from Central America
    should reflect what they suffered, rather than who caused the suffering.
    This is wrong, and we should change it.

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        Now, it is important for all of us to stop looking backward and
    start thinking forward about the future we want to build for our
    children. More than half the people of your nation today are under the
    age of 20. The same is true in Guatemala and Nicaragua and across
    Central America. These young people with no adult memories of war will
    not be defined by the need to take sides in a bitter struggle between
    two ideological extremes.
        Instead, they will come of age in the 21st century with the
    unquestioned right to choose their leaders and shape their destinies.
    Now they will use that right, I believe, to demand of their
    representatives better education, good jobs, fair justice, clean water,
    safe streets. They will want the things that will give them the tools to
    live their own dreams, that can help them to give value and meaning to
    their lives.
        I believe we have a solemn obligation to make democracy deliver for
    them so they will see a bright future, a future that is their future
    here in Central America. Juntos para un mejor futuro. Se lo debemos a
    los fallecidos; se lo debemos a nuestros hijos. We owe it to the fallen;
    we owe it to our children.
        Muchas gracias. Thank you very much, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:55 a.m. in the Legislative Assembly
    Hall. In his remarks, he referred to Legislative Assembly President Juan
    Duch; Supreme Court President Eduardo Tenorio; and President-elect
    Francisco Flores and President Armando Calderon Sol of El Salvador. A
    portion of these remarks could not be verified because the tape was
    incomplete.