Ray Cazorla: "It's going to take years to heal the rift in the United States"

Ray Cazorla is an advisor to the Democratic Party in the United States, a businessman, social entrepreneur, activist and nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020 for different initiatives he has carried out around the world. One of them is the organisation of the New York Summit awards, which he created to highlight the role of Hispanics in the world. Cazorla spoke about this and much more in the Atalayar Radio microphones. 

There are many things to comment on, the New York Summit, the inauguration of Biden's mandate, the future of the United States, where do we start?

Let's start with the New York Summit. For us, it is one of our most important projects and the one I personally hold most dear. It was born out of the need that President Trump initiated during his term in office, because I founded the New York Summit just when Obama left and Donald Trump came in with a speech against Hispanics, and that is when this magical space was created at a global level with the aim of recognising the work of the Hispanic world. It has been quite difficult, but today we have a very special summit that every year recognises great people, from members of the Kennedy family, the Mandela family or the Luther King family, Nobel Prize winners and very important people from Spain such as Antonio Banderas, Rafa Nadal, the Vicente Ferrer Foundation. This is also the origin of the possibility we were given last year to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

This is an initiative from which your Spanish-American company has branches in many cities around the world, is that right?

We are very active in Spain, we have opened offices in 2018/2019 practically from the south to the north of Spain: Malaga, Seville, Madrid, Murcia... and now we are waiting to open in Galicia. In Latin America, a few years ago we opened a fairly large centre in Buenos Aires, we are opening in San Juan de Puerto Rico and our central nucleus is in New York City and Washington D.C.

It's impossible to avoid asking about the Democratic Party and Joe Biden, who hasn't even been in the White House for a week, but any move by Biden or Harris these days provokes a gigantic global buzz. How can we-and you in advising the party-assess the new president's first steps?

I think he is focusing on reversing Trump's policies and, as you can see, his first steps have been the signing of a battery of presidential orders offering a clear example of what his style will be like and, above all, where his policies and plans for key issues in the country such as the pandemic, economic recovery, the fight against climate change, immigration are heading... I think that, to a large extent, these are all policies that are the opposite of what Mr Trump was doing. There are many challenges ahead, the country is quite polarised and he is going to have quite a complicated mandate, but the style he has been setting since he came in is brilliant in my opinion. 

For this reason, I would like to ask you: the word "unity" was the most repeated word last Wednesday at the inauguration of his mandate. Will Biden be able to unite two halves of a country that are so far apart?

I think it's going to be a very difficult task, I feel that it's going to take years to heal the fracture in the country. In Biden's own words, he is going to defend the Constitution and democracy, in short, try to defend the United States without leaving anyone behind, which is a term he has been using since the pre-campaign and I think it is very noticeable. This is one of the great challenges that Mr Biden will have to face on a daily basis during his term of office and I am convinced that he is already planning measures to achieve harmony throughout the country and, above all, unity in this great country that has always been a benchmark for democracy and freedoms.

There may be people who understand that the first decrees approved by the new president are not very much along those lines, but are inspired only to dismantle what Trump did, and that for now there is no nod to the more conservative Republican part of the country, which represents 75 million votes.

Yes, well, he is facing great challenges, firstly to reverse Trump's policies, but which have caused damage in the international context, let's not forget that the first thing he did was to pull out of the Paris Treaty, a serious mistake for those of us who believe that the fight against climate change should be in all conversations at an international level and, after that, his exit from the WHO, and so on. I think Biden is trying to rebuild the country, also with a view to the gallery, to the international context. He's only been in office for a few days, let's wait and see what happens in the first year. I'm optimistic and I think he's making a very strong start with the idea of restructuring, not at all to appear to be going against Trump's policies, I think the ultimate goal is to heal the country, which is very much needed. 

Do you think that the fact that both houses are in the hands of the Democrats might suggest that the presidency is going to be very simple?

Obviously, it is good news for Biden, but in spite of this, both he and Harris, who have been at this for a long time, know that the only way to achieve real change that will last over time is to work in a bipartisan way, Democrats and Republicans. I would like to think that the sides and sectarianism are over, and we must talk, dialogue, debate and reach agreement, reaching intermediate points when necessary for the good of all Americans. 

The most urgent thing is undoubtedly to fight the effects of the pandemic, including the economic ones, but of course the health ones, as in the rest of the world. Where do you think this fight against the virus is heading?

Well, he has launched a series of strategies, which he has called war strategies, to contain the pandemic in the United States, and he has warned of an important fact, that the number of deaths from COVID is probably going to exceed 500,000 this February. The plan published by Biden, which is some two hundred pages long, has among its objectives to accelerate the manufacture, distribution and administration of vaccines, to guarantee access to them for all Americans without discriminating against any type of group and to combat the scepticism of those who do not want to be vaccinated. In short, Biden has promised that the United States will administer 100 million doses of the vaccine in its first 100 days, a major challenge if it is met; it will mean that, if it succeeds, the United States may achieve the herd immunity it seeks so much by the summer.  

I imagine that there are many groups, especially Latinos, Hispanics in the US, who view this new phase ahead with greater hope than the one that has ended, is that so?

Well, without a doubt, the President himself knows the immense contribution of the Hispanic and Latino community to the economy, to politics, to culture and also to the development of the country itself. That is why he has proposed to elevate the Hispanic community to where it deserves to be, which is in the country's decision-making, but he also wants to reimagine relations with neighbouring countries, with borders and migratory processes in order to put people at the centre of the conversation. The DNA of the United States and its identity, which makes it one of the greatest countries in the world, is precisely that, and Biden and Harris are very clear about that.   

Where do you see the future of the Republican Party going? There are a lot of questions both about the role that Trump is going to take, how the Republicans are going to manage to restructure their offer to the country and how they can get to the elections in four years' time, although this is still too far away. How does the United States see the possibility of the Republican Party holding out as a major opposition party and being able to reemerge from the Trump earthquake of the last few years

I love the question because it determines how the Republican Party must feel. The party is fragmented, the departure of Mr. Trump gave us all in real time an image that many people allied to the Republican Party shunned his policies, especially those of the last few days; in fact, we have seen videos of Republicans such as Arnold Schwarzenegger or Rosario Marín, the former president of the Treasury under George Bush Jr, who campaigned for the Democratic Party because they were very clear that Donald Trump did not resemble the pillars of the Republican Party. This ultimately suggests that there was a fracture in the Republican Party because of those supporters who believed and believe in Trump. There is some serious work to be done during this term to put it back together and to be able to elect a leader who is worthy of living up to what the Republican Party means to the American people. I have a bittersweet feeling about all this because it seems that to talk about the Republican Party is to talk about the dark side and it is not at all, it represents an important part of the House and the Senate. It also represents an important part of the country, so you have to respect it and you have to support them to rebuild.   

In what important aspects do you think Joe Biden's foreign policy will be different from Donald Trump's?

The United States is not capable on its own of dealing with the major challenges of this generation. The main challenges include climate change and the energy transition, as well as the challenges posed by digitalisation, pandemics, public health and the problems associated with the fight against terrorism. The country needs global partnerships and to win back the respect of all the Allies that Trump has failed in recent years.