Nikkilude #10: ¿Somos libres?

"¿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 20^th 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, 2^nd 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.