"¿Somos libres?" simply translates to "are we
free?". What's not simple is answering the question. But first let me give
you a little bit of context...
I'm in a 20th century history of Latin America
class. But there's a catch to history—it operates in a continuum. You can't
just look at LA history in the 20th century in a vacuum without understanding
the history that came before it. I learned that this is especially true in LA
when I tried to write a paper about the 2001 economic crisis in Argentina and
had to go back 200 years prior to that to get the whole back-story and
understand the Argentine economy overall.
We started around 1492—when "Columbus sailed the ocean
blue", then broke the barrier for European colonization, which continued
for the next few centuries, along with exploitation, abhorrent, racist
treatment of natives, the raping and pillaging of these societies socially,
geographically, physically and economically and the start of an abusive
relationship that still continues today. But we all know that story, don’t we?
Or do we?
The old adage goes that history is told by the victors, and
the stories of the losers are rewritten to explain why they had to be the
losers, how from the beginning they deserved to lose. This is something I’ve
always been told, but it’s sort of hard to know what’s true and what’s only the
illusion of truth when it comes to history. In the US, we of course learn about
colonization, but from the standpoint that Columbus was a great guy who
discovered the new world out of curiosity and once the new people were found,
there was a great cultural exchange. Why is it taught this way? From a young
age, we are also taught about the Holocaust, and as gruesome as that is, 2nd
graders can take it—so why this attitude about colonization? It’s a load of
complete BS that for me wasn’t debunked until high school, and even then, not
very well.
Then, as if the peoples of the colonies weren’t battered enough,
slavery was introduced to ensure that Europeans maintained superiority and
economic wealth, because clearly there is no benefit to slavery other than free
(albeit terrible) labor and a power structure that is hard to topple when you
are both uneducated and have no rights to speak of. But finally in the early
1800s, England outlawed the slave trade and hoped to phase out slaves in
general. Again, we learned this in school, but the reasons why slaves were
outlawed were never too clear. We’d like to give the Brits credit that they
outlawed slavery out of moral reasons because slavery is wrong. The truth is
that they realized that while free labor was the cheapest means, it wasn’t very
conducive to grow the economy, as a large chunk of the market (the slaves) were
excluded from it, as well as the fact that the economy was somewhat stagnant
under this mode of production. They realized that in order to have a larger
economy, they needed more consumers as well as better products. Because while
slave labor was free, it was of the worst quality, as many possessed little to
no skills, nor were they motivated or in any condition to work hard. And while
slaves post-freedom were more or less still slaves in the sense that they had
little purchasing power and made shamefully low wages, they still represented consumer
power and could now contribute to the capitalistic system. They were given the
illusion of freedom, but were still at the absolute margins of society, giving
the Europeans the best of both worlds.
So, the slaves were freed to become slaves more or less to
the system of capitalism. You can say whatever you want about how I sound like
a raving mad Marxist, but the question remains—are we free? No. We’re not free.
And if we are, it’s only so we can be free to consume, which isn’t really free
at all. Am I consumer? Absolutely, and at times I hate that I can get so caught
up in this system when I know it’s destructive and exclusionary. But how do we
fix this? We don’t still have slaves per se, but there are people that live in
the fringe of society, that work for virtually nothing but are said to be free.
These relationships of neocolonial control still exist today. So no, we’re not
free.
Again, I know you probably think I sound crazy, but I’m
upset. Everything I’ve learned about “Columbus discovering the new world” has
been a euphemism, a lie and we’ve ignored the other side of history. We barely
learn anything about Latin America, and what we do learn is painted in such
pretty colors, making the US and Europe look like heroes that saved the “brown
people” from their own backwards way of life. When really they singlehandedly
altered Earth’s course for this path of destruction we’re on now. Seriously
look at the world and tell me it’s any different now than it was a few hundred
years ago. Obviously I knew colonization was awful for everybody but the
Europeans, but I never saw it from a truly non-Western perspective. Why does
nobody teach this perspective in the US? Is it not allowed? Seriously, what’s
going on that we’ve allowed and disallowed certain discourses and permitted
such a strong Eurocentric bias to prevail? I am sick of Europe. That was one
reason I decided not to study abroad in Spain—I can’t stomach the idea of
talking about Europe even more than usual. Everything I have ever learned has
been from a Western perspective, even if the professor really tries to express their disgust at how prevalent this
perspective is. The truth is that unless you speak Spanish or seek out sources from the source, you might not even have
access to this perspective in its truest form. Knowledge is a very powerful
thing—if it weren’t, they wouldn’t censor parts of it, nor tell us what we can
and can’t know. The things I’ve realized here were obvious—things that were
always on the tip of my tongue, but it didn’t come full circle until my
professor posed the question “are we free?” and I immediately realized no.
In this class and my film class especially, my professors
seem to have strong attitudes about the unspoken “evils” of capitalism as well
as the neocolonial power structures that still exist. Another epiphany I had
along these lines was in my film class when we watched “La virgen de los
sicarios” (Our Lady of the Assassins). The film centers on Medellin, Colombia in the midst
of the 1990s, where drugs ruled all. Sicarios
are assassins—though they’re not professional snipers or paid assassins—they’re
bloodthirsty kids looking to kill anyone for any reason usually to maintain and
assert their power and dominance. Are they vicious? Absolutely. Is their
behavior justified? No. Buuuut, at the same time, upon further analysis, these
drug chains get pretty interesting.
Imagine you’re a coke addict (especially in the 1990s…).
Given that drug addictions are chemical (and social), chances are you’ll
probably go through whatever rigamarole to get your drugs. Now put yourself in
the movie—you’re a 14 year old kid desperate for money in a town where cocaine
rules, hungry for power and clearly aware of how the system works—drugs give
you money and power. These represent the two very different but symmetrical
realities of cocaine, one being consumption, the other being production.
Cocaine is clearly a black market trade, but I think it shows the problems with
drug consumption and capitalism almost better than anything. Because when
you’re doing coke, there’s actually a few trickles of blood in every line
because in addition to the violence even within the drug trade/gang violence
within the US (see my BAFICI entry for Cocaine Cowboys 2, or just google it)
there’s also the violence it took to get the cocaine in the first place. But
nobody’s thinking about that when they do cocaine. Nobody stops and thinks
about the chain of consumption in this aspect, yet it’s what fuels a lot of
violence in certain places in Latin America because it is a means of making
ungodly sums of money, having control over others and therefore earning power.
This is what Latin America (and other neocolonial areas) often lack—the ability
and freedom to choose a better means to acquire money and power. More or less
they’re still in the same position they have been for centuries—they’ve got the
goods, but have no say in anything once they sell the raw products. They didn’t
come in on a ship from Africa and could be actually quite wealthy, but they’re
still slaves to the system.
But what can we realistically do? Yes there are certain
conscious choices we can make, such as to not do cocaine because in addition to
being physically harmful, it contributes to this warped power structure and
dark side of capitalism. But even if you’re a sober vegan that rides a bicycle,
it’s still virtually impossible to live in the modern world without being a
part of this chain. No life, nor choice, is without consequence. Even if each
choice is made with careful consideration—it’s impossible to be a perfect world
citizen. But I think it’s still important to think about these choices because
the good thing about consumption is that it’s generally elective—we can say
what we want and don’t want based solely on what we choose or don’t choose.
Thinking about how and why we choose could radically alter life as we know it.
But the problem is that not everybody gets to choose, and even basic choices
are not available sometimes, nor are they always clear. Everybody knows that in
any economic system there are winners and losers, but I am still very disturbed
by the fact that the current system we have is so violent, repressive and
ingrained despite the fact that we’re trying to show how much progress we’ve
made. The world’s exactly as it was hundreds of years ago, more or less, and
this is what scares me. So are we free? No. Some are, but for this to be true,
it means the majority can’t be.
This concept is really difficult for me to fully explain
because it’s still formulating in my mind. Additionally, there are some things
I am trying to say, but know I come off as some radical “communist” or the
“burdened” white girl complaining about the world, yet typing this on a laptop
computer in a cozy home, totally removed from any of the actual poverty she’s
talking about. But for me, the most important thing right now is to just think
about these concepts and learn more from different perspectives so I can better
formulate my rhetoric and ideas on the topic to NOT sound like a radical hippie
princess. But at the same time, that also means we need to stop thinking in
such black and white terms and seek out different perspectives. Knowledge,
above all, should be the power that we all have a right to, the power that we
strive for, therefore giving everyone a voice in the discussion and not just
because they’re the ones holding the gun.
