Fri Mar 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

October 12: Day of Pillage of America

524 years after Colombus arrived, our continent is facing a new colonization process. On the contrary of what has been told to us for generations, the European powers did not came to bring progress to the continent but to take its wealth. So the technological, scientific and life quality advances brought by the Europeans had no other goal than to multiply the wealth of the powerful ones across the sea, paid with the sacrifice of the exploited people here.

By Nepo – PSTU Argentina.

 

With this process, a new world order was born in which the countries in America were subjected to the greed of the European capitals –that were later equaled and exceeded by the US capitals-, what consequently gave birth to a dominant class in the sacked and subjected countries; a class that lives out of the crumbs left after the pillage of their countries. These are the national bourgeoisies, the bosses.

Back to Colony

Even though there were sectors like the ones led by Bolívar, San Martín, Moreno, Castelli, Monteagudo [leaders of the Latin American Independence Revolution process] , etc., that fought for a liberation dream and a unified Latin America against the powerful ones of the world, the ones who delivered the achievements of the independence to new bosses -serving the defense of their own businesses, ended up winning the battle. The “new bosses” were the powers that went from taking advantage of our countries through commerce to directly squeeze them through unpayable loans and usurer “investments” that ended up destroying our sovereignty, up to the limit we found ourselves in today: on the threshold of a true “re-colonization”.

The Transpacific Partnership (TPP) is a proof of that, as much as Chevron’s agreement in Vaca Muerta, or the trans-oceanic channel they pretend to build in Nicaragua. Also, the education and cultural destruction, through projects like Aprender 2016[1], passing through military agreements and interventions like the one in Haiti. And as in the first colonization this situation strikes directly the poor and working women, and its expression is the huge network of women trafficking, together with other daily growing forms of violence.

The crisis of capitalism is what forces this system to act during its decline process similarly to how it was in its origin: exploiting entire continents in a brutal search for profits. The difference is this time it does not bring any advance to our life quality but intensification of the barbarianism instead.

The reasons of the defeat

One of the myths regarding the Conquest process is the superiority of the European weapons crushed all native resistance. This is false, not only because until the independence there were still great extensions of lands under indigenous control, but also because the native peoples continued to resist until advanced times of the XX Century, adopting their own enemies’ techniques.

In fact, the two reasons that allowed the defeat of the indigenous America were “internal”: the co-optation by the conquerors of those peoples’ leaders, and the isolation and disorganization of the peoples in front of an enemy that had the entire world at disposal. Those reasons are still current, in the ideologies of isolation and/or separatism against the dynamic of historical evolution, as much as in the organizations of the native peoples, which continue to look for agreements with the political and economic powers, up to the point of ruling for the rich and the imperialism, as is the case of Evo Morales [Bolivia].

Revolution or Colony

Thus, none of the current ruling sectors can liberate us from the imperialism, as they belong to a social class whose reason of existence is the hand-over of our countries. Only the workers and the poor people can achieve such liberation, to which we have to take the power out of the lackeys of the foreign capital. And unlike the heroic indigenous resistance, instead of doing it country by country we must fight together, not only the workers of our region but the workers all over the world. This is the only way to avoid the disaster capitalism is sinking us into.

The solution is not to go back in history, to the Inca or Aztec Empires, neither to be isolated and oppressed tribes. From the Conquest of America until today, the development of the bourgeoisie in its imperialist phase faces us to a global economy and labour division, with workers on one side and the imperialism and its lackeys –like the leaders and owners of the economy- on the other. So we need to “turn the tortilla”[2], like the song says. The world economy must be of, and driven by, the workers. It is the only way for each community and human being to live as they really want. It is imperative to build a new world, free of the injustice and atrocities of capitalism; to impose a society in which economy serves the necessities of humanity as a whole and not just the greed of a few powerful ones. It is the only way to repair the damage caused over the last five centuries.

Originally Published in Avanzada Socialista N° 118 – October 2016.-

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Notes:

  1. Aprender 2016 – Learn 2016. It is an educational evaluation program implemented in Argentina (starting on October 18), that sets mandatory multiple-choice tests performed by teachers of schools others than the one/s they work at. It is being highly repudiated by the Education Community, as “it is a standardized process that considers the teachers as mere executioners and the students as mere objects of study”.
  2. “Que la tortilla se vuelva”, expression that means “to turn the table”, in reference to a famous song of the Chilean band Quilapayún: “Cuándo querrá el Dios del cielo / que la tortilla se vuelva / que los pobres coman pan / y los ricos mierda, mierda” (When will God want the tortilla to turn, for the poors to eat bread, and the rich ones to eat shit).

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Translation: Sofia Ballack.

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