Guatamala City, August 20 (PL-RHC) -- Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa called the economic, financial and trade blockade of Cuba, maintained by the United States for more than 50 years, the worst outrage against human rights, international and inter-American law.

Giving a master lecture in the 5th Regional Forum of the Esquipulas Foundation in Guatemala City, the Ecuadorian president said the blockade openly violates the OAS Charter, and recalled that he himself has condemned it 22 consecutive times at the United Nations.

Correa was given an ovation by thousands of members of the audience that attentively followed his conference entitled “Human Beings Before Profits: A Different Economic Vision for Development.”

The 51-year-old president remarked that although his country is small and has limitations, it would not passively accept the role assigned to it in this new international labor division.

In his speech, he criticized neo-dependency, neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism. And he gave the example that one of the most glamorous demonstrations of neo-colonialism was the Organization of American States (OAS) itself.

“Why do we have to discuss our problems in Washington?” The Ecuadorian president defended having our own spaces for processing regional conflicts and asserted in that regard that the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States was a great opportunity and hope.

The U.S. blockade of Cuba has an extra-territorial nature, as Cuban representatives at the UN have expressed in numerous speeches at the General Assembly of that international authority.