From
Conquistadores, Dictators and Multinationals to the Bolivarian Revolution
By
María Páez Victor, Ph.D
Keynote speech at the Conference on Land and
Freedom, of The Caribbean Studies Program,
University of Toronto, October 31, 2009
“Es importante no olvidar que uno ha olvidado.”
(“It is important not to forget that one has
forgotten”)
F. Baez, 31
I come to
talk about some horrific things that have befallen Latin American and Caribbean
people, but I also will talk about some extraordinary things that are making
our America the most hope-filled
region, a beacon for the planet’s future.
Today is
the last day of the month of October – the month in which many countries
celebrate “Columbus Day”, the day
supposedly Europeans “discovered” the misnamed continent of America, and
tonight is Halloween when tradition says that spirits of the dead may roam.
What
would the spirits of our America say if we indeed could see and hear them?
I dare to
answer for them: that Columbus was a mass murderer, an unrelenting racist, who
carried out one of the most complete and extensive genocides in history upon
the original peoples of our America.
Their spirits would tell us all the cruelties that these barbaric
Europeans perpetuated upon them.
During
the II World War, the German Nazi government carried out a deliberate and
organized genocide against Jewish people in Europe and it included
eliminating all sorts of “misfits” such as mentally ill people, homosexuals and
indeed, any dissenter to their empire.
It is good that even now, 64 years afterwards, the memory of that
holocaust is kept alive so the world may not forget that state terrorism, that
horrific genocide. An estimate of six million has been calculated died in the
Nazi concentration camps. We must never forget.
However,
an even greater genocide against the indigenous peoples of this continent is
“controversial” or denied, instead of outwardly repudiated. It was that “civilized” European
massacred other “civilized” Europeans that was found so shocking about the Nazi
atrocities. Not so when those massacred are dark people from beyond. Centuries before the Nazi, there was
this other genocide, one that has been largely forgotten, hidden behind a
masquerade called “progress” or “civilization”.
The
period of Conquest of Latin America and the Caribbean - roughly between
1492-1570- was an organized,
deliberate, physical elimination of entire peoples through brutal torture and
death. It included their enslavement “for their own good” , the
suppression of their culture,
history, and languages. They systematically destroyed their original records,
the learning, the music, the theatre, and dance of the original peoples
throughout the vast region. In other words, it was also a cultural genocide. As the brilliant Latin American scholar
Fernando Baez[i][ii]
demonstrates, it is this destruction of our history that lies at the heart of
the contradictions, the dependency and the exploitations that continues today
in Latin America and the Caribbean: a continent that has been robbed of much
more than just its rich resources, its peoples have been denied its collective
memory and true identity.
Let us
remember some of that history because, in fact, it continues to impact us to
this day: the pillaging of our America, the racism with which our peoples have
been and are regarded, the misery under which many are still living, has persisted through Conquest,
Colonialism and post-colonialism to this, the era of global capitalism.
That same
Columbus, whose name is celebrated in streets, schools, monuments, even an
entire country, personally led the massacre against the Taina (Arawak) people of Haiti with a few cavalry, 200
foot soldiers and trained dogs.[iii]
It is well documented in the historical record that in the Caribbean and in Mexico
thousands of indigenous women were raped then thrown to trained dogs that tore
them to pieces.[iv] In Haiti, the repression and murder of
the Taina people was so complete that by mid 16th century, its culture had been
eradicated completely.[v]
A very
small number of Europeans during the Conquest were able to exterminate an
indigenous population of between 70 to 100 million people. None of the genocide of the 20th century can compare
to this carnage, not Hitler, not Stalin, indeed, one cannot think of any historical
genocide of this magnitude.[vi]
Their cultures have been lost.
At the beginning of the 16th Century,
the indigenous people represented 99% of the population of Latin America and
the Caribbean, today they represent only 30%. In the countries that have the
greatest percentage of indigenous peoples (Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia and
Ecuador) they count no higher than 27%. There are 770 distinct indigenous peoples in Latin
America and the Caribbean but not one group has more than 5, 000 members. They
are among the poorest of the poor, excluded, marginalized, suffering misery,
and hounded by landowners, miners, and multinational companies that covet their
lands and resources. The history of our America is the history of land and
freedom – the struggle to defend one and to exert the other.
Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, today México City,
was a marvel of urban design – much more sophisticated, better planned,
healthier and as beautiful as any in Europe. Its destruction and pillage at the
hands of Hernán Cortéz was monumental;
it was the first great looting in our America. The genocide of the Mexican
people was unbelievable, unprecedented:
the 25 million inhabitants that Techochtitlán had in 1500 was reduced to
one million between 1519 and 1605: that
is a 96% decrease of the indigenous population. Tenochtitlán was not destroyed as an “unintended”
consequence of war – as the historian Hugh Thomas asserts: “ its destruction
was a deliberate tactic, deliberately and carefully, methodically carried out,
with all the energy of a European war without thinking that they were ruining a work of art...”[vii]
Fernando
Báez points out that today one cannot imagine building a Christian church on
top of the pyramids of Egypt or Stonhenge – yet that is what happened in
Tenochtitlán: today one can see México’s cathedral that was deliberately built
on the ruins of the great Aztec temples. This is a key example of the cultural
looting, the destruction of a culture and all its artifacts, symbols and history. México of course, in the 19th century went on to
lose half of its land to another empire, the USA.[viii]
The
destruction of Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Inca empire, the largest in
South America that extended from Colombia to Chile and Argentina, followed the same pattern as
Tenochtitlán’s. Francisco Pizarro,
carried out the conquest of the Incas through butchery and treachery. It is documented that he invited the
best Inca warriors and their wise men to visit him and callously poisoned their
drinks with arsenic.[ix]
Lope de Aguirre, another sanguinary conqueror, one of the great destroyers of indigenous cultures, went
thorough eastern Venezuela leaving such a wake of murder and destruction that
his name is still synonymous with all that is vile about the Conquest. He was
obviously insane, as in the end he killed his own companions and his only
daughter. One can speculate that perhaps the blood lust of all these barbaric
men of conquest was a sign of their madness. The great nation of the Caribes in
Venezuela, who ferociously defended its land and freedom, was laid waste by men such as these.
As for
the Mayas, in southern México and Central America, they like the Aztec and Incas, were great
builders and had records of their
knowledge and an accurate solar calendar. Fray Diego de Landa (1524-79) wrote
what the conquerors did to the Mayas :” They carried out unbelievable
cruelties, they cut off their noses, arms and legs, they cut off women’s breasts , tied pumpkins full of rocks
on their feet and threw them into deep lagoons; they beat the children with
sticks when they did not walk fast enough and if they got sick they cut off
their heads…The Spaniards excused themselves by saying that they could not
subjugate so many people unless they filled them with fear of terrible
punishments. ” However, religious fanatism
led this same Landa, in 1562 to authorize the killing of 4,000 Mayans from
Mérida, because they refused to stop adoring their idols.[x]
The
ancient Spanish sought gold in our lands. One historian of the time said they “were
like hungry swine lusting after gold”. Seventy years after Columbus landed,
the Spanish Monarchs – Isabel and
Ferdinand -had obtained more than 185,000 kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of
silver. This fortune was the fruit
of the slave work of indigenous peoples and African people. It is estimated
that 15 million Africans were kidnapped and transported to the Latin America
and the Caribbean – with 5 or 6 million dying on the way at sea.
The Spanish Monarchy was overjoyed with
Columbus’ exploits that came at the most opportune moment to save the
aristocracy from the ruin of their racist wars that had driven the Arabs and
the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. This they carried out so efficiently,
killing or expelling many thousands of them, and destroying as much of their
cultural books and artifacts as possible, that they spent their royal treasure,
ruined their agriculture and economy and were facing a dire decline of their
fortunes, when Columbus offered them the wealth of a new continent and new
peoples to oppress.
Spain had
the upper hand in the colonization of our America but, it was not the only
country. Guilt is shared by half of Europe. The Portuguese, English, French,
Swedish, and Danish ran slave trades and took over many of the Caribbean
islands to turn into sugar plantations.
Ironically, the immense fortune that Spain obtained from the Americas
was spent -not on industry or investment in the development of Spain itself- but by the idle aristocracy on
conspicuous consumption, and huge estates. Soon Spain owed millions to Europe’s bankers and traders –
German, Genoese, Flemish, Dutch. They all had a stake in Spain’s looting of our
America.
In
Venezuela, for example, to pay off debts to the Fugger German bankers, huge tracts
of land and authority were given to them
(1528) and in 1520 to the German Welsers, both who proceeded to wage a
bloody war against the original peoples of Venezuela in search for gold. Bartolomé de las Casas, who wrote a
chronicle in 1552 of the cruelties of the Conquest, described these Germans as
“rabid wolves and lions”, as “devils” that obliterated entire, peaceful ethnic groups in their
thirst for gold. [xi] One has to
have a strong stomach to read his descriptions of the cruelties of that time of
conquest.
Spain,
its productive capacity stunted, had to import most of the manufactured goods
it needed, and so the manufactured goods Spain sent to its colonies were not
made in Iberia, but in other European countries.[xii] Indeed, it was Latin American gold and
silver, and African gold, ivory and slave labor, which paid the way for
European capitalist development. As the famous economist John Maynard Keynes
stated: “The modern age opened …with the accumulation of capital which began
in the 16th century…which resulted from the treasure of gold and
silver which Spain brought from the New World into the Old…I trace the
beginnings of British foreign investment to the treasure which Drake stole from
Spain in 1580.”[xiii]
The
period of Colonization - from the late-16th
to the mid-19th centuries- was a time in which Spain carried out a methodical
process of substituting cultures of our America for a European one. The racist
mentality predominated, but they would not have recognized it as such, but just
as the natural, logical way of things.
The
colonial elites that emerged took their cue from the Spanish aristocracy. They
had little interest in developing agriculture or industry except in as much as
it allowed them to live in opulence. Its racism, of course, dampened any
interest in the human development of the indigenous populations, except that
which would serve to subjugate it, by eliminating their language, denying worth
to their, traditions, art, history, all to be substituted by European values
and an instrumental Christianity.
Venezuelan
elites today have a profoundly racist complex that has even led intellectuals
to refer to the Colonization as a positive event (“the golden legend”). They
have considered the system of
“encomiendas” –enslavement of Indigenous peoples to work for particular
landowners- simply as a way of “taking care of “ them, and, many have glossed
over the role that African slaves had on our economies and culture. To this
day, many deny that inequality has roots in racism. For example, in Venezuela it has only been now, under
President Chávez’s government that recognition is given to African-Venezuelans.
This the elite denounces as Chávez CREATING racism where none existed before.
Yet
Colonial society was based on a rigid racial system that pervaded all its
workings. There was a legal classification according to racial mix: the white
people were of course the dominating elite, but even they had to have documents
to prove the “purity” of their Spanish blood if they wanted to attain certain
positions of power or join the professions; lower class whites were thus
limited to lesser occupations and positions. All the rest, mixed people, were called “inferior
peoples”, or pardos and legally classified by their
racial mix; mulattos were white and black, Tercerones were mulatto and
white; Cuarterones were Terceron
and white; Quinteron were white and Cuarteron; and Zambo were Indian with
mulato or black. The colonial rules micro-managed all social life and any
education or cultural expression were those approved by the elites. But even
the elites suffered Spanish censorship, which was ubiquitous in literature,
history and the arts.
Throughout Colonial times,
indigenous and Black people were considered lazy, unreliable, and even wicked
and Spain justified their
subjugation to itself and the world, as part of the evangelization of otherwise
savage peoples. Two objectives were foremost: the destruction of any
traditional religion that was not their version of Christianity, and the
eradication of indigenous languages.
More than 1,000 indigenous languages disappeared in 500 years – that is
two per year.
[xiv]
There
were many rebellions and conflicts but I would like to tell you about two
instances against Colonial rules
carried out by Venezuelan women.
By law, only white women were allowed to wear mantillas or mantos
(shawls), hence they were called Mantuanas. In the 1770’s Maria Francisca Peña, a Venezuelan pardo, started to use a manto - and took her
case to the Real Audiencia – the maximum Spanish Law Court- and won that right.
From then on mulatas took en masse, to the use of shawls. She was considered a
woman of scandal for this. A few
years later, the mulata women of Coro – in the western part of Venezuela- openly rebelled against the white women’s exclusive right to the use of
rugs and carpets in the churches. (There were no pews). This was considered
“abominable dissolution” and
“detestable abuse” and was not successful, but they made their point.
One official stated: “Their mulatismo is of an arrogant, insolent and shameless kind”. [xv]
They eventually prevailed.
The mix
of the races has been held up historically as something positive, as proof that
the Spanish were not racist since they procreated with Indigenous and Black
people. This covers up the horrible historical truth of the rape and sexual
abuse of millions indigenous and African slave women, by their oppressors. It
was not white women who married or procreated with indigenous men or Black men;
it was the white dominant male who took women, mostly as concubines, from among
the indigenous and slave population.
I myself am a direct descendant of a mulato slave, my 3X great
grandmother, named Felipa Lucena.
After giving birth to a lighter coloured son, she won her freedom from
my landowning ancestor, who- to his credit made him- his heir. This son, Capitán Hipólito Casiano
Lucena, (my great, great grandfather) became captain in the patriot army of
Simón Bolívar and an abolitionist who helped Bolívar in his campaign to free slaves. For his efforts, he
was savagely murdered by the local aristocracy of Carora.
In
the 19th Century, during the wars of independence, it is not surprising that
the “pardos” and indigenous peoples flocked to the revolutionary armies. Not
all, but significant numbers. One
historian of the time said that the Venezuelan indigenous peoples did not
forget the indignities and cruelties with which their ancestors had been
treated by the ancient Spaniards and were an integral part of the army of Simón
Bolívar.
One
consequence of the cultural destruction was that the Latin American and
Caribbean societies that emerged, elites and all, believed themselves to be a
mere copy of European societies, and– as the famous Venezuelan writer Rómulo Gallegos postulated
: our societies were a perennial
struggle of “the civilized ”
against “the barbarous”. So our studies centred on European parameters –
literature started with Cervantes, not with the Aztec Códices, the study of
government started the Magna Carta, not with the Popl Vuh, the study of history
started with Columbus, not with the history of Machu Pichu, the study of art,
music, poetry started with its Europeans manifestations not our indigenous
traditions. Therefore, the upper classes persisted in their emulation of all that
was European and later from the USA, and all that was “Indian” or “Black” was
necessarily, inferior.
However,
the sad reality is that after Independence, the countries of Latin America and
the Caribbean fell under the heel of another empire, the USA. Our America obtained a freedom
FROM (a Colonial power) but did not attain a freedom TO (to exercise that freedom according to
their sovereign will).
The
three main instruments of USA
hegemony are:
Economic: through the lure
and inroads of capitalist investments and
business ventures with US corporations.
Military: The first
decades after Independence from Spain,
was via gunboat diplomacy, then by co-opting the region’s armed forces
thorough the infamous School of the Americas in Georgia, USA, that trained the
Latin American and Caribbean military in torture and to wage war against their
own people, all under the justification of fighting communism.
Cultural: this
perhaps is the most ubiquitous, most sophisticated, and most insidious. Its
instruments are a plethora of USA scholarships, internships, and jobs in
corporations, cultural associations, and NGO’s.
Nowhere
was the cultural domination of the USA more intense and more successful than in
oil-rich Venezuela. US oil companies, corporations and associations
acted as a socializing agent to produce leaders for Venezuela in business,
politics, the armed forces, and the police. Venezuela's elites lost the
capacity to operate as instruments of national affirmation the more they became
partners with US foreign capital and multinationals. One sociologist described
this elite as having a perspective that was totally devoid of a role for the
mass of the people; that had little or no sustained contact with them and in no
sense felt pressured to meet the needs of the population. [xvi]We
clearly see this today as this elite battles the nation affirming government of
President Chávez.
US
hegemony was not easy and did not come without a price for Latin America and
the Caribbean. Since the end of the 19th Century, the USA invaded, overthrown,
and destablized governments in the
region about 90 times. Every one of the 20th century dictatorial governments in
Latin America and the Caribbean has been backed by the USA. Indeed, in order to
successfully grab power, it has been the sine qua non that the putative dictator must have the okay of the local
USA embassy.
When
Fidel Castro had the audacity to overthrow the US backed dictator Batista, and
after the failure of the US invasion of Bay of Pigs, then Operation Mongoose (1961) authorized by President Kennedy, befell Cuba with
all manner of covert operations to overthrow the government. It was a prelude
of greater crimes to come.
The
peoples of our America then suffered another wave of genocide, an ideological
one. In 1975, a diabolical plot emerged with the direction of the CIA, to unite
the dictatorships of Latin American in a “War on Communism”. It was the
infamous Operation Condor that
murdered, tortured or disappeared thousands of social reformers, socialists,
and communists, from the various countries, noticeably Chile, Argentina,
Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. The inhuman men who
carried out this Operation,
invented “rendition” whereby people were snatched off the streets in one
country and then transported to a second country where they would be tortured
and disposed of without leaving a trace.
The
examples of Fidel Castro and Salvador Allende were too great a risk for the USA.
Venezuela,
then supposedly a model of democracy, had a secret police trained and led by
CIA agents (such as the criminal Luis Posada Carriles who blew up a
Cuban airliner and is today living freely in Miami.) This secret police invented a novel way of disposing of
troublesome reformers after torturing them they would drop them into the sea
from helicopters, hoping that way their bodies would never be found. But bodies were found -washed up on the
shore.
Throughout
the region, 60,000 progressive
reformers, socialists or communists were victims of this genocide.
In the
1990’s, a new phase of economic domination emerged: a more virulent model of
Capitalism. Not content with the “normal” extraction of resources, the
multinational companies, with their partners, the IMF and the World Bank came
up with the package of policies that would extend markets further into areas
previously run by governments. This was called the Washington Consensus. Its
premise was that multinational private enterprises could do a better job of
safeguarding the public interest than the inept governments of the region.
Therefore it prescribed privatization of public services, wide spread
deregulation, lifting of tariffs, unrestricted investment flows and free access
of large corporations to public contracts and domestic markets. These corporations
even wanted to own the water that fell from the skies and ran in our streams.
These neo-liberal capitalist
measures were foisted onto Latin American and Caribbean governments as
conditions for obtaining international loans and even by threats. They have
been a spectacular failure by almost any indicator: in one decade, they stunted
the growth of income per person in the region (it fell from 82% to 9% to 1%),
they increased the number of poor by 14 million, yet US banks and corporations
obtained $1 trillion in profits from Latin America.
[xvii]
The country that was most affected
by these measures was the country that most thoroughly applied them: Venezuela.
It was the country where the first
popular rebellion against these measures occurred in February 27th
of 1989 –the Caracazo- wherein about 3000 were killed by armed troops.
By 1998, this oil-rich country’s economy was in ruins,
schools and hospitals were almost derelict, and almost 80% of the population
was impoverished.
But
now we come to the good news.
In
1998, against all odds, Hugo Chávez, won the presidential elections in
Venezuela by an astounding landslide, literally eliminating the two parties
that had hitherto mis-governed the country for 40 years. Immediately the elites and middle
classes opposed him as an upstart, an Indiana who does not know his place, a
Black who is a disgrace to the position. Hugo Chávez established a new
Constitution that re-set the rules of a government that had been putty in the
hands of the elites. Ratified in overwhelming numbers, the Constitution gave
indigenous peoples, for the first time, the constitutional right to their
language, religion, culture, and lands. It established Human Rights, civil and
social, like the right to food, a clean environment, education, jobs, and
health care, binding the government to provide them. It declared the country a
participatory democracy with direct input of people into political decision
making through their communal councils and it asserted government control of
oil revenues: Oil belongs to the people.
The
wealthy elite and its satellites, with backing of the USA, failed to overthrow
President Chávez in 2002, and failed to paralyze the state oil company and the
economy in 2003 with sabotage and lock out. These desperate acts of a
profoundly anti-democratic opposition served only to consolidate the Bolivarian
Revolution. However, the opposition continue to this day, its covert
operations, and international campaign to discredit President Chávez, financing
paramilitary and opposition groups.
It has
been ten years since Hugo Chávez was first elected president of Venezuela, and
in those years, we can now say that a new dawn has come not just over
Venezuela, but over the entire sub-continent thanks to his example.
The
impact of his Bolivarian Revolution can be seen in how it has used the enormous
oil revenues and reserves to meet the real needs of Venezuelans, and this
includes, the eradication of illiteracy, dramatic lowering of infant mortality,
lowest rate of malnutrition in South America, the lowest ratio of inequality,
the lowest unemployment in decadaes and the great majority of the people have
direct access to free health care, free schools, a network of daycare, a
subsidized food distribution network, and subsidized medicines. The misiones, integrated anti-poverty programs that have dramatically
reduced poverty, have been internationally lauded. Only Cuba fares better.
But one
of the biggest achievements of the Bolivarian Revolution is existential: a new
sense of identity, a new sense of belonging, as one ordinary Venezuela said on
national TV: ”We are no longer invisible” The great majority of Venezuelans
feel they are now in control of their own government and destiny – despite the
continuous attacks from the oligarchy and its satellites. Now the Chavistas
frame all the political discourse and its name is Socialism of the XXIst
century.
For the
first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a country in the world repudiates
the barbaric version of capitalism that has prevailed since Ronald Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher, and embraces a new socialism, one that has its roots in the
indigenous people’s socialism, in Liberation Theology which was born in Latin
America, in Humanism, in the inspiration of Cuba, as well as the works of Marx,
but not exclusively in European socialism. It is not Stalinism, it is not a
copy of what has passed for socialism to date, but Venezuela’s own brand
infused with the idea that the people are the protagonists of democracy, that
the economy should serve people not the other way around, and that only their
active and direct participation in political decision making will free the
country from corruption and inequality.
The
Revolutionary government of Venezuela can also claim the resounding achievement
of having brokered the beginning of solid, true, integration of the nations of
our America.
It
started with TELESUR, a TV channel fed
by the state TV stations of the nations, so that we can learn from one another
and enjoy our news, art, music, directly not through the mediation of CNN.
In a
historic moment, ALBA, destroyed the
Free Trade of the Americas with which Georoge W. Bush wanted to chain our economies. ALBA is its repudiation-
an association of solidarity where economic projects are geared toward social
justice and human development.
PETEROSUR is a consorsium of the state oil companies of South
America to ensure that the oil and gas is used not just to fuel the growth of
richer nations, but to help with the infrastructure needed at home.
PETROCARIBE is an initiative to provide much needed fuel to the
smaller Caribbean nations with preferential financial arrangements and a fund
for joint projects. It is also an assertion that Venezuela is a Caribbean
nation.
The BANCO
DEL SUR represents the liberation of our
America from the usury and hegemony of the IMF, World Bank and other
international banks and organizations whose loans have imposed nefarious
neo-liberal capitalist policies on governments.
And UNASUR, defense
organization of South America is the jewel in the crown of integration. Its
existence is the death of the USA’s Monroe Doctrine as South America asserts
that it alone assumes the defense of the region. It rejects the
USA’s “war against terrorism” ,
stating there is no terrorism in our America, but there is an ideologically defined civil war, in
Colombia. As well, UNASUR has an energy council to put in place safeguards for
the supply of energy for the region to protect the natural environment.
There is a grave external risk that
looms, over Venezuela. The one
super-power has not ceased to try to de-stabalize, isolate, balkanize, and even
overthrow this democratically elected progressive government. The oil is a tremendous lure – like
gold was in the past. The USA
funnels millions of dollars to bogus NGO’s, and the anti-democratic opposition
which accepts payments from a foreign government that is hostile to their
nation. And its ally, Uribe’s Colombia is a double threat: not only because of
its enormous armed forces, but also its paramilitary forces that constantly
raid and invade Venezuela’s borders. These Colombian paramilitary are also
hired killers for the Venezuelan rich landowners opposed to Land Reform and up
to now have murdered 160 rural leaders.
It is important to point out that:
- The
Colombian Army (500,000) is twice the size of combined armies of Venezuela
and Ecuador
- Military
expenditures 10 times those of Venezuela
- After
Israel and Egypt, receives the largest amount of US military aid in the
world
The USA has responded to the
achievements of Venezuela and the election of 11 progressive, left wing
government in our America, with increased militarization.
Barak Obama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has
installed seven USA military bases in Colombia, with a capacity to accommodate huge C 17 planes that can cross the sub continent without re-fuelling. These
planes are useless against narco-traffic, the supposed reason for the bases,
but they are a direct menace to
Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia and to the whole region. Not a single one of the presidents of
South America approved of these bases. Colombia is
now a springboard for preemptive strikes, a prelude to a Middle East type of
conflict in the region.
There is also indignation in the region
that, after 50 years, the USA has
re-activated the IV Naval fleet with the capacity to invade even the rivers of our America.
Furthermore,
the affairs of the USA in the region have largely been taken out of the State
Dept and placed under the Southern Command. This means that the issues and social problems in Latin
America and the Caribbean are now defined as security problems, as risks that
merit a military response. One of these risks they refer to is “radical populism”, meaning the leaders and movements that US
politician and corporations do not like: such as Chávez, Morales, Correa. In other words, the USA has
militarized its interactions with the region. Ominous signs indeed.
The
international media conglomerates misrepresent and purposefully distort the events
in Venezuela and the region, and it does not properly convey the sufferings of
our Honduran people today. In Canada, it is noticeable that not one major media
outlet has a permanent reporter in Latin America, hence Canadians mostly
receive news and opinions filtered through the USA perspective.
Although
the calamities of yesteryear that befell our America are past, the old greed is
present today in the exclusion, assaults by mining companies, multinational
agri-businesses, large estate owners, drug traffickers and the ever present
threats of the USA and its lackeys. Imperialism and resource devouring
unbridled capitalism is not to be underestimated.
But, in
the name of the 100 million people who lost their lives and cultures in Latin
America and the Caribbean, let us not talk about the “discovery’ of America but
its invasion. President Hugo
Chávez has been the first president to rename Oct 12, calling it “The Day of
Indigenous Resistance”, and this year
President Evo Morales has renamed Columbus Day, “The Day of Mourning”. Let us not forget that we have forgotten what has
happened in the history of Latin America and the Caribbean, so that ethnic,
ideological or cultural genocide may never be repeated on this Earth
However,
there is a new dawn, a new cadre of leaders who follow the steps of
Guaicaipuro, Tupac Amaru II, Tupac Catari, Simón Bolívar, José Martí, Bernardo
O’Higgins. Today, Latin America is
the most exciting, the most hope –filled area of our globe today. It has key
leaders, not ashamed of their indigenous and African roots, who have made their
people the true participants and protagonists of government. They are truly
exercising their freedom to defend the land, to challenge the imperialism and
unbridled global capitalism that is destroying our planet with ecocide.
We will
prevail. Venceremos.
[ii] Fernando
Baez,
El saqueo cultural de América Latina,
Random House, 2008
[iii] Eduardo
Galeano,
The Open Veins of Latin America,
Monthly Review Press, 1973
[iv] F. Baez,
El
saqueo, 37; Bartolome de Las Casas, Brevisima
Relacion de la Destruccion de Las
Indias, 1552, Ediciones Presidencia de la
Republica, Caracas, 2003, 45-6
[v] Memorias,
La
Revolucion Haitiana, Julio-Agosto, 2008, #4, 17
[vi] F. Baez,
El
saqueo, 39
[vii] Hugh Thomas,
La conquista de Mexico, Barcelona,
Planeta, 677
[viii] F. Baez,
El
saqueo, 25,26
[ix] [ix]
F. Baez,
El saqueo, 82
[x] F. Baez,
El
saqueo, 75
[xi] Bartolome
de Las Casas,
Brevisima Relacion de la Destruccion de Las Indias, 1552, Ediciones Presidencia de la Republica, Caracas, 2003, 91
[xii] E.
Galeano,
Open Veins, 22-27
[xiii] John
Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, W.W. Norton, 1963, 361-362
[xiv] F. Baez,
El
saqueo, 103
[xv] Memorias,
Alborotos
del Mulatismo, Julio-Agosto, 2008, #4, 28
[xvi] Frank
Bonilla,
The Failure of the Elites,
