Bill Clinton: “Mr. President, let me begin by thanking you for your warm introduction and your invitation to speak at this sacred…”

“Mr. President, let me begin by thanking you for your warm introduction and your invitation to speak at this sacred place. I am deeply honored to be the first foreign leader ever to address the people of Venezuela at the Tomb of Simon Bolivar. To the people of this city, I thank you for the extraordinary welcome you have given to Hillary and me and to our entire delegation. Todo esta chevere en Caracas. Todo esta chevere en Venezuela. Let me welcome especially all the young people who have come here today and say a special word of appreciation to the National Youth Orchestra, which played our national anthems and my favorite march so magnificently. It is the young and their future that I wish to speak on this day. It is especially fitting that we meet here at the Panteon National, for the liberator belongs not only to Venezuela and the other nations of the Andes; Bolivar belongs to all the Americas. He stands alongside Washington and San Martin and the pantheon of liberty's heroes. He was the first to imagine a hemisphere of democracies, united by shared goals and common values. His example stirred the hearts of men and women throughout our region. Indeed, today, we in the United States can still mark the frontier of our Nation in the 1820's by finding our towns, our counties, our villages named Bolivar in the States of Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia. When the liberator died, his vision of freedom and peace in the Americas seemed an impossibility.…”