Building A Bridge of Struggle Across the Border An Interview with Subcomandate Marcos   By AURA BOGADO March 10, 2006   I conducted this interview with Subcomandante Marcos, at The Center for the Documentation of Son Jarocho in Veracruz. We talked about the Zapatista's Other Campaign, change in Latin America, Zapatista women's struggle, and Latinos in the United States. Marcos is currently on a six-month tour of Mexico to organize and advance the Zapatista's Other Campaign. This interview is an excerpt from the forthcoming Open Media book, The Other Campaign, by Subcomandante Marcos with an introduction by Mexican public intellectual, Luis Hernández Navarro to be published by City Lights Books, April 2006. All royalties from the book will benefit indigenous media projects in Chiapas, Mexico.   Bogado: Why The Other Campaign now -- for 2005 and 2006?   Marcos: Well, because we, as Zapatistas, had to endure a process of preparation--like the uprising in 1994, where we prepared for 10 years to realize it--we also had to engage in a process of preparation for The Other Campaign.   The Other Campaign was actually born in 2001, when Mexico's three political parties--the PRI, the PAN and the PRD--denied the COCOPA initiative for Indigenous cultural rights. So at that point, we evaluated that the path with the Mexican political class was exhausted--we had to find another path. The options were: War, going back to fighting; or staying quiet in silence and waiting to see what would happen; or doing what we are doing now.   When we decided that we had to prepare for this possibility, we anticipated that it would be very likely that people who had supported us up until that point for Indigenous cultural rights would take back their support at the hour we distanced ourselves from the political parties, especially from the so-called "institutional left": the PRD. But at the same time, we had to prepare ourselves against a surgical strike, a strike from the military or from the police--under any pretext, that would attempt to behead the EZLN and leave it without direction.   For us, the initiative of the Sixth Declaration is of the same magnitude, or maybe even greater, than our Declaration of War in 1994. We had to be prepared to lose our entire leadership. Because, according to our method, at the same time that we set out to do something, we have to put our leaders in front to set the example. We had to be ready to lose not only Marcos, but all of our known leadership, the ones that will be going out to do the political work: the Comandantes, like Comandanta Esther, Comandante Tacho, Comandante David, Comandante Zebedeo, Comandanta Susana ... the ailing Comandanta Ramona was also going to come out, but unfortunately [she died] . . . . All of us who are more or less publicly known were planning to come out, so we had to prepare for that, and we had to make plans for the first exploratory tour, which has fallen on me, which we are doing now.   Right now we're in Veracruz--Southern Veracruz--and in the event that something happens, the chain of command will be clear; nothing of what we've gained so far will be lost, or we will at least be able to defend it as much as possible. It could not have been before, and it could not have been after, because if we were already prepared, there was no need to wait longer to do it.   We specifically choose the electoral period, so that it would be clear that we want to do something else, and so that people could really see and could compare and contrast our political proposal--which many people have already joined from other organizations and groups--with politics from the top. Always, since our birth, we've insisted on another way of doing politics. Now, we had the chance to do it without arms, but without stopping being Zapatistas, that's why we keep the masks on.   Bogado: For people in Latin America, there is often a lot of hope in politicians like Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, or Chavez in Venezuela. How do you see this change in the so-called left in Latin America?   Marcos: We always turn to look towards the bottom, not only in our own country, but in Latin America particularly. When Evo Morales presented this invitation for his presidential inauguration, we said that we were not turning our gaze upwards, neither in Bolivia nor in Latin America, and in that sense, we don't judge governments, whose judgment belongs to the people who are there. We look with interest at the Bolivian indigenous mobilization, and the Ecuadorian one. In fact, they are mentioned in the Sixth Declaration.   The struggle of the Argentine youth, fundamentally, this whole piquetero movement, and of the youth in general in Argentina, with whom we strongly identify with. Also with the movement to recover memory, of the pain from what was the long night of terror in Argentina, in Uruguay, in Chile. And in that sense, we prefer to look at the bottom, exchange experiences and understand their own assessments of what is happening.   We think, fundamentally, that the future story of Latin America, not only of Mexico but for all of Latin America, will be constructed from the bottom--that the rest of what's happening, in any case, are steps. Maybe false steps, maybe firm ones, that's yet to be seen. But fundamentally, it will be the people from the bottom that will be able to take charge of it, organizing themselves in another way. The old recipes or the old parameters should serve as a reference, yes, of what was done, but not as something that should be re-adopted to do something new.   Bogado: What can men do, for example, to increase the representation of women anywhere in the world--from families to cultural centers and beyond?   Marcos: In that respect, well, for us and for all organizations and movements, we still have a long way to go, because there is still a really big distance between the intention of actually being better, and really respecting the Other--in this case women--and what our realistic practice is.   And I'm not only referring to the excuse of "this is how we were educated and there's nothing we can do . . ." which is often men's excuse--and of women too, who obey this type of thinking and argue for it one way or another among other women.   Something else that we've seen in our process is that at the hour that we [insurgents] arrived in the communities and they integrated us as part of them, we saw significant, unplanned changes. The first change is made internally among the relationship between women. The fact that one group of indigenous women, whose fundamental horizon was the home, getting married quite young, having a lot of children, and dedicating themselves to the home--could now go to the mountains and learn to use arms, be commanders of military troops, signified for the communities, and for the indigenous women in the communities, a very strong revolution. It is there that they started to propose that they should participate in the assemblies, and in the organizing decisions, and started to propose that they should hold positions of responsibility. It was not like that before.   But in reality, the pioneers of this transformation of the indigenous Zapatista woman are a merit of the women insurgents. To become a guerrilla in the mountainous conditions is very difficult for men, and for the women, it is doubly or triply difficult--and I'm not saying that they are more fragile or anything like that: it's that in addition to the hostile mountainous conditions, they also have to be able to put up with the hostile conditions of a patriarchal system of our own machismo, of our relationships with one another.   [Another difficulty that the women face] is the repudiation of their communities which sees it as a bad thing for a woman to go out and do something else. [After passing their training] a group of insurgent women are now the ones who are superior, and when they head back down to the communities, they now are the ones who show the way, lead, and explain the struggle. At first this creates a type of revolt, a rebellion among the women that starts to take over spaces. Among the first rebellions is one that prohibits the sale of women into marriage, which used to be an indigenous custom, and it gives, in fact (even though it's not on paper yet) the women the right to pick their partner.   We also think that while there is an economic dependence from women on men, it will be very difficult for anything else to develop. Because in the end, the women can be very rebellious, and very capable and all of that, but if she depends on a man economically, she has few possibilities. So in that sense, in the communities of the Autonomous Rebellious Municipalities, and in the Councils of Good Government, the same women that are already authorities with responsibilities at the municipal level, or on the Councils of Good Government, open spaces, projects, and economic organization for women in such a way that they construct their economic independence, and that gives more substance to [the women's] other independence.   Nevertheless, we're still lacking a lot in the area of domestic violence from men against women. We have gained some in other areas, for example, girls who were not going to school are now going to school. They weren't going before because they were women, and because there weren't any schools, and now there are schools and they go, regardless of whether they are men or women. And women are already in the highest posts of civil authority--because in the military authority, in the political organizing, we can say that women need to be included--but in matters of civil society, we [insurgents] don't hold authority, we only advise. So in reality, the women in the communities now reach the civil authority and autonomous municipal posts, which was unthinkable for a woman to reach before. [They reach those positions] through their own struggle, not through the authority of the EZLN.   Bogado: Do you have any message for [people] in the United States, particularly for Chicanos and Latinos?   Marcos: Well, what we've seen while we've been passing through as we're getting the word out--we've passed through Chiapas, through Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Campeche, Tabasco, and we've started in Veracruz--in all parts we've seen this pain from the people at the bottom--[people who have] part of themselves on the other side. They feel it's not a product of destiny, or of bad luck, nor from a tourist interest like the Mexican government says. Instead, it is part of this process of suffering that is imposed on us. They feel, and we feel it also along with them, that one part of them is far away and is outside, and that part is our men and women of Latino descent, or of Mexican descent, or Mexicans that have to cross the border--that are over there.   That's why, since the beginning, when the Sixth Declaration was proposed, it was said that the Mexicans that were on the other side were not part of the Internationals, the Intercontinental; instead they are part of The Other Campaign. We want to say to you: now that we're going to be in Ciudad Juarez first, and then in Tijuana, that you join us at the border, and let's have a reunion: we have a reunion planned only with people from the Other side, one in Juarez, the Other in Tijuana, to hear your struggle.   Like we say, the approach of the Sixth is [to ask]: Who are we? Where are we? What do we want to do? We know there are a lot of people that sympathize with the Sixth Declaration and with The Other Campaign. And we want to insist to them, now through your media outlet, that this is their place, this place right next to those of us who are on this side.   That which has provoked pain from the border, which signifies death, marginalization, apartheid of some kind or another--we have to construct, and break that border with a bridge of struggle, of dignity. The Other Campaign can be that space. No one will speak for them, no one will speak for the Mexicanos or Mexicanas or the Chicanos on the other side, instead, they will construct their own space, defend it, speak for themselves, explain the reasons why they are there, the difficulties that they face, and what they have been able to construct as rebelliousness and resistance on that other side--and that we will see each other there in Juarez and Tijuana.   Aura Bogado is a news anchor with Free Speech Radio. mailto:kunumi@yahoo.com ---------------------------------------------------- On an Altar of Dust: Lessons from the Farm by Juan Santos She thinks, “This is all we need: Land and community. It doesn’t matter what we believe, or what our differences are; if we can listen, the land itself will teach us what we need to know.” farm_altar_by_marcus.jpg At the base of the tree, on an altar of dust, blaze some 100 veladoras, glass encased devotional candles with images of La Guadalupe, La Reina de Las Americas, of the santos and of Jesus; of a Mexica woman, half flesh / half skeleton, giving birth to life and death. A basket of dried kernels of maiz is placed near a set of handprints in the dust. The scent of sage swirls in the air, a man sings softly in Nahuatl, his drum throbbing quietly, a child beside him. In the dust, Black man kneels his forehead to the Earth; a Chicano man smudges him; he cups the smoke to his heart. The brown man presses a kernel of corn into his palm; the black man encloses it in prayer. In the dust, a half melted candle has tipped and fallen, its wax spilling over and capturing a leaf at its tip like a new flame, a green flame of life, of chlorophyll and fire, a new synthesis of earth, hope and living things. A woman, also Black, comes and re-lights all the candles that have gone out. Every veladora that can burn is ablaze. A young Chicana says she doesn’t know if there are warrants out for her or not, but her circle of danzantes has prayed, encircling her, and she knows in her heart what she must do, and that no matter what happens, she is safe. A white woman calls her friend on her cell: she has an obligation tomorrow to lead a circle of lesbian artists. Should she stay? Can she abandon them; they have only so much time to prepare for what they will be doing; can she go to jail today - on this day - when so many are counting on her? Before the night is over she will slip into her tent for a few hours of sleep: the morning brings what it will. A man stands agitated on the sidewalk; he is needed here, he says, he cannot let people down; he is a refugee, seeking political asylum. If they arrest him he will be deported – rendered – tortured, probably killed. He cannot decide. In the darkness, tables, chairs, garbage cans and sawhorses have been strewn to block the pathways between the garden plots of the South Central Farm. A woman and a man sit in a tree, vowing not to return to the Earth until this place is free. At night they are all but invisible through the leaves. Outside the fence they keep vigil, the patrols with their two way radios and la bisabuela – a great-grandmother in an old kitchen chair on the sidewalk. She sings, while a young woman strums her small guitar. La abuelita, hair all white and grey, tells the young woman next to her, “With God we can do this: with God we are strong.” All night there are rumors. Something is about to change. “Go out and do what you can tonight, we need people to come at night and celebrate. We’ll talk, we’ll have food. Sunday we’ll have music. Now we are here, inside the fence, we have done all we can do” says a Farm leader. “We are here,” he says, meaning here, under siege. And so I have written this: We are here, and alive. We belong to this land, all of us who come here to touch it are touched by it, and we are claimed by it, together. ----------------------------------------------------   Tierra y Vida: The Prophecies of our Elders and Ancestors     Indigenous spiritual elders and priests tell us that we live in the most dangerous of times. These are the times the Hopi Elders have called the Time of Purification.  These are the days approaching that most famous period of the Mayan calendar called 2012, and another less often discussed prophecy the Mayan priests call Year Zero.  We are urgently called, by figures like Chief Arvol Looking Horse, to take responsibility for the fate of Mother Earth, for our precious animal brothers and sisters, the fish, the birds, butterflies, trees, and all living beings.     Hopi Elder Thomas Banyacya with Mexica drummer.   With the Mayan and Mexica codices in hand, the Hopi Elders warned us in the 1990s of their grave concerns about martial law and the potential for mass starvation.   Western scientists like James Lovelock, who originated the Gaia Theory – the scientific theory that Mother Earth acts as a living conscious being, warns in his latest book that we have passed the point of no return on global warming, the point at which it runs away uncontrollably, with unimaginable consequences.    Other scientists point to the rate of mass extinction.  Species are becoming extinct at a rate 120,000 times the norm. 250 million years ago roughly 90% of all living creatures died.  Only one large land animal remained. Scientists call it "the Great Dying.” It was caused by global warming.   NASA says “Trees, plants, lizards, proto-mammals, insects, fish, mollusks, and microbes -- all were nearly wiped out. Roughly 9 in 10 marine species and 7 in 10 land species vanished. Life on our planet almost came to an end.”   Futurists warn that we are at the verge of an event they call "The Singularity,” a point at which the exponential increase in the rate of technological change becomes so rapid that is completely beyond the capacity of the ruling elites to predict or control the direction of social change or its environmental and human impacts.   As you read this, industrial society is depleting oil at such a rate that soon over half of it will be gone.  What will be left will be harder to discover and harder to pump, and increasingly scarce. Prices are predicted to skyrocket until economies, even whole societies, collapse.  War over the remaining pockets of oil has already begun.    Pentagon planners say it will be joined by wars over rapidly diminishing sources of clean water and over land that will still be able to grow crops in the wake of the devastating impacts of industrial agriculture and skyrocketing populations as the carrying capacity of Earth is exceeded and mass starvation becomes the norm.   These wars will be fought with weapons of mass destruction and will require the imposition of draconian systems of social control. Already such forces are in motion, pushing for the concentration of power in the hands of the US president, pushing for theocracy, and for mass deportations of Mexicans, Central Americans and other people of indigenous descent.   The Hopi Elders say we live in a condition called Koyannisqatsi – “Life out of Balance, a way of life that calls for another way of living.”   Hopi Elder Dan Katchongva said, “We have teachings and prophecies informing us that we must be alert for the signs and omens which will come about to give us courage and strength to stand on our beliefs. Blood will flow. Our hair and our clothing will be scattered upon the earth. Nature will speak to us with its mighty breath of wind. There will be earthquakes and floods causing great disasters, changes in the seasons and in the weather, disappearance of wildlife, and famine in different forms. There will be gradual corruption and confusion among the leaders and the people all over the world, and wars will come about like powerful winds. All of this has been planned from the beginning of creation.”   Chief Arvol Looking Horse has told us,   “This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the Great Myth of Progress and Development that ruled the last millennium.   To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth, falls the responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction.          We have come to a time and place of great urgency.          The fate of future generations rests in our hands.          We must understand the two ways we are free to follow, as we choose the positive way or the negative way.. the spiritual way or the material way.          It's our own choice--each of ours and all of ours.          You yourself are the one who must decide.   You alone-and only you--can make this crucial choice.          Whatever you decide is what you'll be, to walk in honor or to dishonor your relatives.          You can't escape the consequences of your own decision.          On your decision depends the fate of the entire World. You must decide. You can't avoid it.          Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.          Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger?          Know that you yourself are essential to this World.          Believe that!          Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You yourself are desperately needed to save the soul of this World.          “Did you think you were put here for something less? In a Sacred Hoop of Life, where there is no beginning and no ending!”   For these reasons the Aztlan Mexica Nation Harmony Circle has founded a project called Tierra y Vida, Land and Life, or Techqua Ikachi in the Hopi language, and in Nahuatl - Tlalli auh Yolitzli.   The Aztlan Mexica Nation, in founding Tierra y Vida, acknowledges the depth of the crisis we face, and seeks to fully understand its nature, integrate its meaning, and find the means to act - to help preserve and restore the Sacred Balance of Life - and to help soften the blows for all living beings. We will prepare for what is to come, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.   As the Confederation of Indigenous Elders and Priests of the Americas, led by Mayan Elder Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj , tells us:   "The time of warning, passive resistance and conformity is already past. All of us are now confronted with an enormous challenge: Survival.”   For more information write Tierra_y_Vida@Mexica.net   ---------------------------------------------------- The Border on our Backs By Roberto Rodriguez "Ya Basta! IKUALI! As is said at the rallies: Nosotros no somos ilegales ni inmigrantes. Somos de este continente. We are neither illegal nor even immigrants. Tojuan Titehuaxkalo Panin Pacha Mama." Look up the word Mexican or Central American in any U.S. political dictionary and you will find these definitions: 1) people who are illegal, or are treated as such, no matter how long they've been living in this country; 2) the nation's number one threat to homeland security; 3) people who do the jobs no Americans want and who threaten the American Way of Life; 4) as a result of extremist politicians, the nation's favorite  scapegoats; and 5) people, who due to vicious anti-immigrant hysteria, are prone to become Democrats. By next year, there may be two new entries: 6) Peoples who carry the border on their backs, and 7) peoples not afraid to stand up for their rights. Who could have predicted that millions of peoples would be taking to the streets nationwide to protest draconian immigration bills that call for the building of Berlin-style walls, more migra, massive repatriations, the criminalization of human beings and the creation of a new anti-family apartheid-style Bracero or Guest Worker  program? Beyond the bills, the protests are actually about asserting the right - virtually a cry -- to be treated as full human beings. How long was this community supposed to remain in silence? Perhaps it is racial/cultural fatigue. Let's not pretend that this hysteria is not about race, color and dehumanization. It's not even anti-immigrant or even anti-Latino/Hispanic bigotry. It's the exploitation of a deep-seated fear and loathing of Mexicans and Central Americans by shameless politicians. Why? Because of what our color represents. Otherwise, how and why do government agents single us out at lines, borders and internal checkpoints? Otherwise, why do dragnet immigrant raids always target brown peoples? Why is all the hate and vilification directed at brown peoples and the southern border? Otherwise, why are these politicians also not bothered by the millions of Canadians, Europeans or Russians who overstay their visas (No one should hate them either). Just what does brown represent in this country? Shall we delude ourselves like the Census Bureau and pretend that we're actually White? Or should we simply stop speaking our languages, stop eating our own foods and stop identifying with our home countries of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, etc. In other words, we're Ok if we stop being who we are - if we culturally deport ourselves and conduct auto ethnic cleansing campaigns (we're also Ok if we fight their illegal permanent wars). And yet, there's that small matter of our red-brown skin. Just what could it possibly represent? A reminder? Memory? Might it be our thousands-of-years old Indigenous cultures -- the ones that were supposedly obliterated -- the ones we were supposed to reject? We deny the nopal no longer. We know full well we're not on foreign soil, but on Indian lands (Were we supposed to forget that too?) So there's no going back. If anything, we are back. The whole continent, the whole earth - which our ancestors have traversed for thousands of years -- is our mother. Meanwhile, we watch Congress and the president do a dance about not pardoning or not granting amnesty to those who've been remanded to live in shadows. Sinverguenzas! Just who precisely needs to be pardoned? Those who are exploited and who've been here forever, or those who've been complicit in our dehumanization? Through all this, we've been baited into fighting with African Americans, American Indians, Asians, Mexican Americans, and poor and white middle class workers - because Mexicans supposedly steal their jobs and are ruining the quality of life. The truth is, American Indians, African Americans and Asians should be at the head of our protests - for it is they and their struggles against dehumanization that we draw inspiration from. But in the end, it is those who allow extremists to speak in their name, who must also step forward and tell their representatives that a society divided into legal and illegal human beings is no longer acceptable. Every cell in our bodies tells us this. And the  unprecedented protests have created the consciousness that a two-tiered society - the definition of apartheid - is intolerable. A flawed bill will pass - many bills will pass -- yet some sectors of the population will continue to view and treat Mexicans/Central Americans as illegal, unwanted and subhuman. But enough. Ya Basta! IKUALI! As is said at the rallies: Nosotros no somos ilegales ni inmigrantes. Somos de este continente. We are neither illegal nor even immigrants. Tojuan Titehuaxkalo Panin Pacha Mama. © Column of the Americas 2006 * We can be reached at: 608-238-3161 or XColumn@gmail.com or Column of the Americas, PO BOX 5093 Madison WI 53705. Our bilingual columns are posted at: http://hometown.aol.com/xcolumn/myhomepage/ * For a copy of our trilingual Amoxtli San Ce Tojuan documentary, Cantos Al Sexto Sol and the Mud People, or more info re future screenings  contact us at: XColumn@gmail.com 608-238-3161 or go to: http://hometown.aol.com/aztlanahuac/myhomepage/index.html ----------------------------------------------------   Intro: The LA Times recently issued a deadly editorial attack on the South Central Farm, justifying the destruction of the land and the community, overtly using the theme of “property rights” to do so. Such assessments cannot be allowed to hold sway. Too much is at stake, for all of us.   A Magic So Strong: The South Central Farm Must Live By Juan Santos   "Having now a collective name, we discovered that death shrinks, and ends up small on us. The worst death, that of oblivion, flees so that the memory of our dead will never be buried together with their bones. We have now a collective name and our pain has shelter. Now we are larger than death..." - the Zapatistas, Chiapas, March 12, 1995   ___________     He was a real estate developer and a politician. He had been a high ranking soldier, and the Natives named him “Town Destroyer” for his practice of razing their population centers and burning their crops so the land could be taken by the colonizers, especially by the wealthy – the land speculators themselves.   His other name was Washington.   Washington: Town Destroyer.   Laws, treaties, and one’s solemn word meant nothing to the men who seized the land and murdered and starved its former inhabitants. The wealthy men who burned the villages and crops weren’t, shall we say, “nice.”   Their spiritual and cultural descendants aren’t nice either.   The Los Angeles Times tells us in a recent editorial that it would be “nice” to keep the nation’s largest urban community garden, LA’s South Central Farm. They admit to the Farm’s beauty in the midst of the urban devastation of the South Central ghetto. They admit that the farmers have made their plots into a “special, almost magical place.”   They admit it the way the English colonizers admitted the “Red Man’s Nobility” – as something that had to be destroyed in the interest of “progress.”   “There are lots of things that would be nice,” the Times opines, “but the land belongs,” they claim, to a real estate developer, “and he has every right to kick out those who have been squatting there…”   The Mexican Indian hero Emiliano Zapata had a different idea – that the land belongs to those who work it.   On that premise, a premise Zapata paid for with his life, communal lands called ejidos developed in Mexico, protected by its constitution. That is, until NAFTA. Since then some six million indigenous farmers have been driven from the land, often at the point of a gun. They were driven out in the name of profit and progress to starve, to make their way in the lost cities of Mexico, to the alienated ghettos and barrios of LA.   But here, at the South Central Farm, Mayan farmers gave new life to ancient heirloom seeds, a rebirth and renewal of a heritage of that has continued, uninterrupted, for thousand of years; since the time before; since the ants taught Quetzalcoatl to grow corn. With others, these farmers grew corn and community.   The LA Times wants them driven out again.   “No magic is so strong,” they say, “that it erases a land owner’s right to his property or its fair value.”   The LA Times is looking for its Town Destroyer, for someone to burn the crops and destroy the people.   The Times wants them driven out like Indians everywhere – from the land – to the cities, and then, at last, even from there. It wants them “disappeared.”   This is the Times’ rationalization for their stand – they imply, using a journalistic sleight of hand, that the courts awarded multi-millionaire real estate developer Ralph Horowitz the right to the land.   Unfortunately for the Times, the court did no such thing. The court, instead, gave explicit permission to the LA City Council to violate the Los Angeles City Charter in order to award the land to Horowitz, if it saw fit to do so.   The Times’ impulse is to honor a corrupt back-room “gentlemen’s agreement.” Anything and everything is for sale – including the City Charter. This pretense of “justice” rationalizes the Times’ community-killing instinct.   Remember; “Laws, treaties, and one’s solemn word meant nothing to the men who seized the land and murdered and starved its former inhabitants. The wealthy men who burned the villages and crops weren’t ‘nice.’”   They were, like the Times, killing communities – or, if you prefer, committing various forms of genocide.   For the farmers themselves race and genocide aren’t the core issue – Life is - and they don’t want to be distracted from Life.   The Farm is a community, as independent journalist Leslie Radford has noted, “where plants and people grow.”   The Times says it’s time for the Farmers to go.   The world itself is on the verge of destruction and ecological collapse as a result of such “logic.”    Under this logic, “Progress” is spelled “Profit.” Profit means death. Under this system, there is no right to eat; the food is locked away – there is no right to live. Not for the animals, not for humans. There is only one right; the right, as the Hopi Elders put it, to profit at the expense of all life.   The Town Destoyer’s system is destroying Life - destroying us - everywhere on the planet, and here in Los Angeles its next intended victim is the South Central Farmers.   The Times’ editorial, “Los Angeles Gothic,” is subtitled “The Value of Property.”   It’s time they learn a different lesson: The Value of Life.   It’s time we all learned the lesson of the South Central Farm.   It’s time to replant the magic: everywhere on Earth.     __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________   To support the South Central Farmers go to _______________________ The LA Times editorial can be viewed at http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-ed-farm11mar11,1,2576899.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california   Juan Santos can be reached at JuanSantos@Mexica.net     -30- ----------------------------------------------------   Immigration, Genocide and the Demonic by Chicomozteca   Burbank / Home Depot Labor Center Protest brings the depth of the minutemen’s racist sickness to the fore     “… as Terence Des Pres once pointed out with regard to the Nazi’s attempted mass extermination of Europe's Jews, "demonic” seems a better word than "insane" to characterize genocidal behavior. [He noted that] "insanity is without firm structure, not predictable, something you cannot depend upon."  And while "what went on in the [Nazi] killing centers was highly organized and very dependable indeed," thereby not qualifying as insanity, at least according to Des Pres’ informal definition, "the dedication of life's energies to the production of death is a demonic principal of the first degree."  David Stannard, American Holocaust       As Danza Cauhtemoc began to dance, to offer their prayers in motion; as their drums rolled like machine gun fire echoing in the streets; as the counter-protestors cheered their arrival and the magic and spirit they have brought to countless demonstrations in Los Angeles over the course of many years, Minutemen and SOS members with cameras began to circle in, one by one, near to them. Counter-protestors did all in their power to block the racist’s cameras, sensing the lewd spirit within and behind the act.   Predictably, which is to say demoniacally, SOSers found a way to defile the ancient native spiritual traditions of the conquered subjects of Euro-imperialism, just as they had done months before in attacking the Danzas Indigenas monument in Baldwin Park. They added a degrading soundtrack to a video of the danzantes they were able to take from across the street, and created a vicious, demeaning, racist label for the sacred dance.   The minutemen sought out the danzantes the way a mentally ill Social Darwinist might have sought out a "witch doctor” - in order to mock and disparage them. They came like vultures; like someone entering a dank theater for kiddie porn or a snuff film.    This elemental and fundamental fear and hatred of the Other, the titillation at its “strangeness,” the demented need to distance oneself from natural power, from color, from movement, from the body itself, is the endemic visceral sickness spoken of by Wilhelm Reich in his "Mass Psychology of Fascism,” his guidebook to the psychic nature of the civilized evil called Nazism.   It is this cultural psychology that led the Conquistadores to hang and burn Indians suspected of “heathenism” in groups of 13, in "honor" of Jesus and the 12 disciples. The same sickness led the European settlers who slaughtered a peaceful Cheyenne encampment at Sand Creek in Colorado to scalp the vulvas of native women and hang them on their saddle horns. It led US soldiers in Viet Nam to sever the ears and fingers of the "Gooks” they killed in what they called "Indian Country.” This same cultural impulse makes the SOSers call their opposition “Goons.” This impulse, when acted upon, has a name.   That name is genocide.   A sick fascination, an obsession with degrading the “Other” is the psychic compulsion, the very thing-in-itself-from which genocide arises. Racism as an attitude and genocide as an action are simply two sides of the same demented coin, two points on a single continuum, the beginning and end points of a deadly circle.   There can be no question that for the sick men who carried it out, the scalping of native women’s vulvas was “funny.” Some stretched the fetishes around the crowns of their hats. They laughed.   They laughed the way children were taught to laugh when singing “Three little, two little, one little Indian,” and for the same reason. What can be made ridiculous or giddy can be distanced. What can be distanced can be killed. In the end, there are “No little Indian boys.”   SOSers created another such ditty to degrade the sacred dances of the Mexican People. Behind a video of the danzantes they ran the music to “Turkey in the Straw.” They called the sacred danza “The Chicken Dance” and the danzantes “Chicken Dancers.” An SOSer who calls himself “Border Raven” suggested adding animal sounds to the soundtrack. “I’mwithya” posted the lyrics to a children’s song about chickens, saying “This should be the song for the AZTEC DANCERS!”   (boy) I say Cock-a-doodle-doodle-doo (girl) I say cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck (both) We can do the chicken dance         I know you'll like it too     A thug calling himself Cazamigrante (Migrant Hunter) wrote:   “But if the Chicken Dancers are going to become protest regulars, we should either get a bunch of folks to dress up in El pollo Loco chicken suits, or maybe get a bunch of guys to dress up like Colonel Sanders…” In the demonic logic of racism, to degrade the other is to equate the other with oneself – with the secret evaluation of oneself that one hides from oneself. It is to project what is “evil” in oneself, what cannot be faced, onto the Other. The “demon” demonizes the Other – reduces, limits and frames the Other within the same parameters of obsessive hatred and degradation that define the limits of the “demon’s” own awareness.   The Other can be allowed no existence beyond the limits of an imagination seething with self hatred.   The “demon” cannot see what it is not, and having contempt, but not compassion for or understanding of itself, it can have no such feelings for others.   Cazamigrante wants to dress up in his own “chicken suit”, wants to reduce the Other to a mirror image of his own self contempt. Or better yet, to become a parody of a slaveholder – a Colonel Sanders - a parody, a mockery with the power to kill, an evil clown with a necklace of severed ears and fingers; like Colonel Sanders, a professional butcher.   The Hopi have a word for those with such a mentality – the powaqa. A powaqa is a sorcerer, one said to further his or her own life by stealing the hearts of others.   According to Godfrey Reggio, maker of the films Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Noqoyqatsi,  “…a Powaqa is a black magician—a person who eats the life of another person in order to advance his or her life. The modus operandi as it were of a Powaqa is allurement and seduction. I felt that when you put those words together [Powaqa and qatsi – i.e. “life” or “way of life”] they mean a way of life that consumes another way of life.”   A way of life that consumes another way of life is genocidal, by definition. It is the way of life of the West, the way the minutemen and SOS want so desperately to preserve from the “degrading” presence of Native peoples, who - as SOS puts it in another comment typical of Hitler’s Germany - are turning “America” into a “cesspool.”   All such stigmas and stereotypes, of course, tell a story. They tell a story that justifies the cruel oppression of those who are stigmatized. In the case of Native peoples in the Americas, and in the case of the Jewish people in Germany, that story led to mass death. There is nothing “innocent” here. No one is “just joking.”   It is no “funnier” for “Americans” to ridicule and tell jokes about Native people than for a German to ridicule Jews and tell “Jew jokes.” The meaning, in fact, is exactly the same. It is no different for white Americans to hate people of Native descent than for Germans to hate people of Jewish descent. The meaning, again, is exactly the same.   And it is no different for a white American to want to deport a person of Native descent than for a German to want to deport a Jew.   The SOS / minutemen “joke” at the danzantes expense has a point. The point is to embolden and desensitize those who would round up Mexican people by the millions, deport them, or put them in camps.   The purpose of the joke is to enable these racists to support, for example, pending legislation in Congress that calls for all undocumented migrants to be declared felons - just as Jews had to wear a yellow star, and just as “stateless” people had to wear a blue triangle under Hitler.   These “Americans” cannot admit that they are repeating the tales and way of life of their own ancestors. To see it would be to admit the correspondences of history, to shine light on the shadow, to admit to the practice of genocide.   The final purpose is to distance themselves and others from the human meaning of their actions. By dehumanizing the danzantes, and, by extension, all Native people, SOS and the minutemen are up to nothing new. What “American,” after all, has ever worried about wringing the neck of a chicken – or any other “sub-human.”   The sub-human, for such people, cannot be sacred, nor can the culture or spiritual practices of the sub-human be sacred. To admit of the sacred is to admit the common humanity of one’s intended victim.   And that is the one thing the powaqa and the white American ubermensch can never do.   http://media.putfile.com/Chicken-Dance26   http://www.saveourstate.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=7322&hl=chicken+dance   http://www.kiddyhouse.com/Farm/Chicken/Chickensong.html   http://www.ilovewavs.com/Effects/Animals/Rstr01.wav http://www.ilovewavs.com/Effects/Animals/Rstr02.wav http://www.grsites.com/sounds/18791905/misc/misc332.wav http://www.ilovewavs.com/Effects/Animals/Turkey02.wav http://la.indymedia.org/news/hidden.php?id=145190%23145205 http://www.saveourstate.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=7357&hl=chicken+dance ---------------------------------------------------- A Nation of Colonists and Race Laws By Juan Santos You hear it everywhere. Even from Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, author of the vicious anti-migrant legislation that has polarized the US. “We are a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws,” he says. And like almost everyone else, he’s got it wrong. The original Europeans in what is now the US were not immigrants, but colonists. And the US is not a nation of immigrants - it is a white colonial settler state, like South Africa under Apartheid, the former Rhodesia, Australia and Israel. And like those states the US has always operated on a sometimes hidden, sometimes overt system of Apartheid. Like those places, the US is a nation of colonists – and race laws. It is a place where white colonists arrived, seized the land, and dispossessed, exterminated or attempted to exclude the original “non-white” peoples – all of them. They did so at the point of a gun - by open terror and genocide, which was the precursor and the necessary pre-condition of European “immigration.” And, of course, they didn’t only use guns and overt terror. Where “necessary,” they operated by “law.” Let me prove the point. It’s simple. We all know the facts. In the US, Native Americans were dispossessed, subjected to mass murder, and locked on separate, Apartheid-style “reservations.” So it stands today. Africans were enslaved, and once “freed,” they were subjected first to Jim Crow, then, when that proved no longer advisable, Jim Crow was transformed into the mass terror of mass incarceration and permanent Apartheid-style ghetto-ization. So it stands today. The Indian nation of Mexico was conquered in a racist war of aggression by the US in 1848. The only debate in the days of “Manifest Destiny” was not whether to seize Mexican / Indian land, only how much of it to seize, and what to do to keep the Mexicans out of what had been stolen. Two choices were before them. These were the terms of the debate: take the whole nation and lock the people on reservations, or take as much land – with as few Mexicans – as possible. Thus the border was established through a race war, through brute and overtly racist violence. The border is an Apartheid Wall. So it stands today. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. The Act claimed that “the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory” of the US – the same racist rhetoric used today against other Brown people. Like HR4377, the current notorious immigration bill, the Chinese Exclusion Act made it illegal for “any Chinese laborer to come, or… to remain within the United States.” So it stands today. Only the immediate target of the law has changed. Every group the US has sought to eliminate or exclude has been a people of color. The logic is simple. Allow entry or citizenship for those who can be “assimilated” into the colonists’ culture – those who can become loyal colonists themselves – and exclude the “Other” - those who are the targets of colonialism – those whose land, cultures, bodies and souls must be sacrificed for the colonists to remain dominant and for their system to function. Immigration law has always been race law in the US. As far back as 1790 the Federal government ruled that the right to become a naturalized citizen was reserved to "free white persons." So it remained until 1952. Until then the Supreme Court repeatedly determined exactly which migrants might be considered “free” and “white,” as applicants of various ethnic backgrounds sought to become citizens. Today, “The Nation of Immigrants” theme is struck to avoid the historical and cultural truth. Europeans – who could be assimilated to colonial culture – were allowed entrance en masse. But there was a “stark division,” as Haney Lopez reminds us, based on skin color. “This stark division necessarily also carried important connotations regarding, for example, agency, moral authority, intelligence, and belonging,” he writes. “To be unfit for naturalization--that is, to be non-White--implied a certain degeneracy of intellect, morals, self-restraint, and political values; to be suited for citizenship--to be White--suggested moral maturity, self assurance, personal independence, and political sophistication.” In other words, those “unfit” for citizenship were the colonized. The description Lopez offers for the “unfit” matches precisely the characteristics ascribed to colonized peoples by European imperialists and settlers for hundreds of years. It also matches the racist stereotypes offered today of immigrants from areas south of the US border with Mexico, who Congressman Sensenbrenner has referred to as degenerate “alien gang members terrorizing communities.” But the racial subtext around immigration is not a subtext. It is the text itself. Before Europe could “immigrate,” someone else had to be removed. Before there was land to settle it must be stolen. Before anyone could be “free and white” someone else had to be “non-white” – and enslaved. Before “Americans” could become “Americans,” “Latin Americans” – who are overwhelmingly Original Americans – had to become something else – “Latinos,” “Hispanic,” the not-Native – the Alien. The Illegal Alien. In a stunning bit of triple think the Natives, who knew no borders, became “Aliens,” while Europeans became “Americans,” and “Americans” became “Natives,” while the Original Americans became “foreign” infiltrators and lawbreakers bent on who-knows-what brand of “terrorism” against “innocent” colonists, or if you prefer, “Americans.” Or “Settlers.” Or is it “Afrikaaners.” Take your pick. The Six Nations Confederation - the Iroquois, or Hau De No Sau Nee - wrote in their classic Basic Call to Consciousness that colonialism means “to be controlled from afar,” that “colonialism is the process by which we are systematically confused,” and that confusion is “an agent of control.” Like this. “We are a nation of immigrants, and laws.” But sometimes someone slips, forgets the double talk, and makes the agenda clear. They don’t mean for us to overhear, but they can’t help themselves. In his mercilessly racist article Are We Really a Nation of Immigrants?, Lawrence Auster slips. He writes, “…throughout its history the United States has been a member of Western civilization—in religion overwhelmingly Christian… in race… overwhelmingly white, in language English. Why shouldn’t those little historical facts be at least as important in determining our immigration policy as the pseudo-fact that we’re all ‘descended from immigrants?’” (FrontPagemagazine.com). Auster, and David Horowitz’ Front Page Magazine, want one thing; they know what it is, and they’re willing to tell you. They want a white nation. They slipped. The many who write diatribes and hate mail on the theme of “What part of ILLEGAL don’t you UNDERSTAND?!” also slip. We understand “illegal” perfectly well. Conquest of territory in wars of aggression is illegal under international law. The US occupation of most Native land and all of the occupied sections of Mexico is illegal. The presence of the conquering people, the usurpation of the land itself is illegal. The colonists themselves are illegal aliens. But, for the Right, it’s not really about some imaginary adherence to a just, neutral system of “law.” It’s about race law and white privilege. And race law, codified on paper or not, is deeply codified in white people’s expectations about their place in society, and some of them are getting dangerously edgy about having “their” land – their turf – stepped on by Brown people. On the web site of the anti-Mexican hate group Save Our State, a correspondent calling themselves “USA Today” writes: “To be honest we are heading for a Balkinization and a racial cleansing I know its not politicly correct to say so but I think lots of folks see it coming and I'll bet the vast majority of Americans would have no problem with genocide as a last resort to save this country , Usually when you back somebody into a corner they will defend themselves by any means ........get it ? Does this sound like something you would hear the nazis say? sure it is but I spend lots of time scanning the forums and blogs and its coming from normal , everyday people that are just about fed up with the whole mess. I know a large number of Germans didn't agree with hitler but they didn't exactly act against him either. Just keep pushing and pretty soon you'll find the American people in a corner. On that day, Beware.” People who think like this are the social, cultural and political base of politicians like Jim Sensenbrenner. They are classic colonists, with the colonizer’s outlook. For them, mere “immigration” is impossible. Their “forefathers” conquered the land, so those coming here must be out to “re-conquer” the land – to take it back from them. These are the true inheritors of the American Dream, a dream which, for the colonized, has been nothing but a nightmare. They intend to defend that nightmare – no matter what it takes. That’s what “immigration reform” and “immigration control” are really all about. Colonialism. And the race laws that defend it. ---------------------------------------------------- The Border War Comes Home Our Lives are on the Line By JUAN SANTOS He looked squarely into my eyes. "So, you see what's coming," he said. I was speaking with one of the core leaders of the movement for migrant's rights, and had laid before him a sketch of a plan of resistance for the nation's barrios, for the protection of people from the mass raids and mass deportations that will result from new anti-migrant legislation being birthed in Washington. "This is the calm before the storm; they're going to make it tough," Professor Armando Navarro had told LA's La Opinion. "They're talking about raids, deportations. In every barrio we have to organize migrant defense committees, and get ready for civil disobedience." The meeting we had just attended unanimously called for the rejection of the so-called Hagel-Martinez "compromise" in the US Senate, under which as many as 7 million migrants could face deportation. Such a compromise would then have to be "reconciled" with House bill 4437, an even more extreme measure inspired by supporters of the ultra-Right and the racist shock troops called the Minutemen. The House bill calls for the universal deportation of every woman, child and man in the country without papers, for an utterly devastating depopulation -an ethnic cleansing - of the barrio, and the destruction of much of its cultural and economic life. The difference between the bills under consideration is the difference between partial and virtually complete ethnic cleansing, and any "compromise" between such measures will not change the racist and quasi-genocidal nature of the result. A "compromise" can only mean the deportation of millions and the legal stigmatization and terrorization of millions more. Under international law, ethnic cleansing means the expulsion from a territory of one ethnic group by another, and pertains to official policies aimed at the forcible removal of a targeted group. The crime is considered a form of forced emigration, deportation and genocide. International law recognizes ethnic cleansing as a crime against humanity when carried out in a time of literal warfare. The US war on migrants is the moral equivalent of ethnic cleansing. It is a crime against humanity. Fittingly, the Bush administration has flatly stated its intent to make "enforcement" the cutting edge of its new approach to migrants, and to prove the point it recently initiated the largest single mass arrest of migrants in US history, and put a severe new focus on penalizing employers, as well. Bush has already deported more people than any other president in U.S. history. Since he took office ICE has deported some 150,000 migrants a year and had deported 881,478 people through 2005, figures that do not include, for example, the 1.2 million people who were arrested at the U.S.-Mexican border itself last year. Now, in his Monday night speech, Bush has promised to fulfill one of the Minutemen's most draconian hopes ­ turning the border into a green zone, a quasi-military zone occupied by forces of the National Guard, backed by a super high tech "virtual" wall - ­ a wall more deadly, and more effective, than a mere fence. And, in apparent defiance of the Posse Comitatus Act ­ which forbids the use of military troops within US borders - the House recently passed legislation that, according to the Pentagon, "gives authority to the Defense Department to assign military members to assist Homeland Security organizations in preventing the entry of terrorists, drug traffickers and illegal aliens into the United States" Migrant deaths at the border are expected to skyrocket, and the State is already building mass detention centers for migrants. Bush claims he's not "militarizing" the border. His claim will mean nothing to the dead and the incarcerated. Every version of the so-called "immigration reform laws" now under renewed consideration in Washington also authorizes and pays local police to act as immigration agents and to oversee the deportation of those they arrest, effectively adding a permanent quasi-military force of 650,000 for "internal enforcement" of immigration laws. This is an example of the "middle ground" on migrants trumpeted by the US's white colonial ruling elite: the state will combine mass raids with the slow process of day by day racial profiling to eliminate the migrant population. According to an ICE plan called Operation Engame, they mean to deport every "deportable" migrant by the year 2012. In his Monday speech Bush said migrants are "beyond the reach and protection of American law." Indeed, he means to get them in his grasp, but their "protection" is nowhere on the agenda. The plan is to control and terrorize the migrants who will remain in the US, and to incarcerate and deport the rest. When that much is achieved, the ruling elites will find themselves in a comfortable position to continuously exploit the labor of a subjugated, highly controlled and vulnerable ethnic under-caste, and they will have provided themselves with the kind of ethnic scapegoat essential to the development of a new US-style fascism. False Hopes The hopes of millions of migrants have been ignited by the recent wave of protests, and by the hope that white America will find them ­ with their white t-shirts and American flags -acceptable, tolerable, even welcome. The shock will be immense. Migrants will learn in a brutal fashion that the concern of America's elite has never had anything to do with surrender, white shirts, white dreams, or any other indication of who, as people, migrants might be or wish to be. The only concern of the ruling elites is their own need for migrants as exploitable workers ­ like the slave master of the Old South they need their workers. There is another motive as well: today's elites also fear the very people they need - just like any slave master. The fear is compounded by the knowledge that today's master is not only an exploiter, he is also a usurper: the land he thrives on was stolen from the very people he degrades and dehumanizes with the epithet "illegal." And it's not just Republicans and open white racists who are afraid. It's many "liberals," too. Ed Schultz, the liberal talk show host, recently offered two factors as a bottom line on why migrants should stay: "the economy needs them" and "they can make trouble." The fear is so intense that, because of our mass protests, the worst elements of the Sensenbrenner bill ­ HR4437 ­ were momentarily derailed as different elements of the ruling class scrambled and bickered among themselves to determine who will have the final say - to determine who among them can assure the needs of their economy while averting the threat that migrants represent to them all. With every passing day, with every demonstration, with each child who prays each night that her parents can come out from the shadow of the stigma of being hunted and despised, with each heartbeat of rising hope, the noose around the neck of the ruling class gets just a little tighter; the options contract. With each day, each hour, the danger for the ruling elites of crushing the life and death expectations of migrants grows exponentially. Politically correct or not, every American flag carried in the recent mass demonstrations represents a rising, fluttering expectation, a sea of expectations whose depths promise shipwreck for the State, when, as it must, it betrays the promise of "freedom" and racial "equality." The crushing of those expectations could lead directly to rebellion in the streets, following the example of the recent rebellion of migrants in France, and of the African American rebellions of the 1960s. When Martin Luther King was overcome, when he lay dead of an assassin's bullet in Memphis, a hundred cities burned across the nation. They burned because it had become clear to the African American people that after more than a decade of struggle nothing fundamental in the structure of oppression had changed, that the changes that occurred had been mere surface changes, compromises, like the Hagel-Martinez bill today, aimed at silencing them, not at transforming the conditions of their lives or the oppression that afflicted them. The ruling elites have not forgotten for a moment the mass rebellion in Los Angeles of 1992. Migrant neighborhoods were a focal point of intense uprisings; the unity between Black and Brown was as palpably intense as the flames that engulfed the city ­ and utterly terrifying to all of those whose daily task is to keep us down. As if to underscore the point, police were all but invisible in the recent pro-migrant marches in downtown LA ­ although over a million of us were in the streets. But in Pico Union, where another million marched, riot squads were visible everywhere, even until past midnight. Pico Union was a storm center of the LA rebellion. Half of those arrested in that period were Brown. Is it any wonder, then, that the rulers have taken pause for thought about just how far they dare to go in the war on immigrants? Sensenbrenner went too far with HR4437 ­ he awakened the threat. Now they must gauge a thing all but impossible to gauge: just how far is too far? No one on either side of the equation knows the answer to that question. One thing at least is clear ­ no one in the white mainstream is going to come to the support of migrants unless migrants themselves stop wrapping themselves in the flag of the oppressor, and dare to stand up to oppression and unless they are willing to polarize the nation against their persecutors and defiantly challenge their racism. At the same time our demands must be made clear and millions must be challenged to re-think their prejudices. That's exactly how the Black movement for freedom did it, and nothing less will do. The "problem," as one writer recently put it, isn't at the border; the problem isn't with immigration ­ it's that migrants are being persecuted. And voting won't change that, no matter what the "We Are America" coalition claims. A vote in November ­ and face it, most migrants simply aren't eligible to vote ­ will change nothing for the child whose mother or father is deported today. Even if the Democrats win in November, there is absolutely no guarantee that they will take up the question of immigration anew. No. The harsh reality is that the Democrats have supported extremely draconian anti-migrant measures in their willingness to "compromise" with the overtly fascistic elements of the Republican Party. The "compromise" already accepted by the Democrats includes mass deportations of up to several million people, the indefinite detention of migrants without due process, the treatment of minor offenses as "aggravated felonies" which would trigger harsh mandatory detention and deportation, and of course, unleashing the police as migrant hunters in a program of daily terror against our communities. When the matter goes to the House/ Senate reconciliation committee, it can only get worse. The Democrats are no more likely to repeal the war on migrants than they have been willing to reverse their criminal support for the unjust colonial war of occupation against Iraq. They will not relent unless we leave them no choice, unless, like the forces of resistance in other places and other times, we make the political price of continuing the war on migrants too high. The Ultimate Showdown The National Immigrant Solidarity Network says it clearly. "This is a critical moment for the immigrant struggle." "We should brace ourselves," they say, "for the ultimate showdown of the immigrant struggle soon, and we should mobilize ourselves quickly to respond to the racist anti-immigrant xenophobia that will go down." The group is calling for emergency community meetings to strategize rapid response to a possible nationwide crackdown or attack on immigrants. No matter what the rulers do, short of a general legalization, they will present our people with unbearable choices, with an unimaginable grief of separation; with the mass destruction of what is most sacred to us; our families and communities. Will we allow the rulers of America to deport our children, 2/3 of whom are citizens of their nation? Will we allow them to force us to leave our children behind? Will we let our children live in fear that their parents may not come home from work? That they will disappear? At what point will the grief, fear and rage become unbearable, and uncontainable? At what point must we say "¡Ya Basta!" ? Flying the American flag has disarmed us. It is not our willingness to live by the rules that impresses the slave master ­ his entire regime is designed to ensure our compliance. What impresses him is our potential to awaken, to shatter the framework, to throw away the "rules". Flying the US flag means we don't understand the ruthless nature of our enemies; it means a basic and unconscious allegiance to the idea of getting ahead and doing so on the backs of others, an unconscious allegiance to and imitation of the very foundations of the oppressor's outlook and his control of us, and an implicit acceptance of his colonial rule over stolen land and subjugated peoples. Our enemies want to split our allegiances, they want us to grasp at individual chances for "acceptance" and "freedom," and to ignore the well being of our people as a whole. That, after all, is the real "American Dream" ­ private wealth and well being on the backs of other, subjugated peoples. But we can no longer leave the fate of our children in their hands. We cannot allow our families to be shattered and our dreams to be crushed. We must refuse to live any longer in the shadows, refuse to live under slavery in any form. It is time to take matters into our own hands, to do once more what every migrant has already done just by crossing the border ­ make the decision to live, to survive together, no matter what they throw at us. Let them deal with the ramifications of attempting mass repression against a people in resistance here, while they face a similar problem overseas. Let them worry about alienating Latin America and their European partners in war and conquest. Let them worry about permanently alienating the millions ­ Black and White - who already support us, and who understand that the powers that be are taking the nation toward fascism. Let them worry what will happen when they invade our barrios and workplaces in mass raids. Let them worry while we organize; while we create mass networks of direct action and resistance. Let us truly follow the example of the Black Civil Rights Movement and of the Black Power Movement that followed it. The Black movement of the 1950s and 60s was a resistance movement, one that both obeyed the law, and which, through civil disobedience and other strategies, broke the law, as necessary, in obedience to a Higher Law. Black people of that era laid their lives on the line for their freedom. We can do no less. Let us put the slogan to the test: ¡Un Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido! Si, se puede. Juan Santos is an editor and writer in Los Angeles. He can be reached at JuanSantos@Mexica.net ----------------------------------------------------   In the Spirit of the Ancestors: Reconciling Post Tribal Stress Disorder by Patrisia Gonzales Patzin (Nahuatl for Venerable Medicine): a monthly feature on indigenous medicine Column of the Americas  May 1, 2006     I once heard an Ojibwa woman tell a group of Chicanos working on indigenous liberation that our ancestors did what they had to, to survive.     Our indigenous ancestors survived by passing as Mexicans or mestizos, or being defined away as mestizos by governments. And many married mestizos. As a result, the Mexican community is a pan indigenous community comprised of native peoples of both Mexico and North America. Indigeneity became private and individualized in families. They survived by hiding the indigenous knowledge so deeply that some of us could no longer recognize it. Some were taught to forget and to fear and disconnect from our place in the natural world and the power of nature within our own hands. There was no need for the Inquisition once forced conversion could be regulated by the community itself. Choctaw scholar Karina Walters says that part of historical trauma was established through forced conversion and separating people away from their original instructions, the ancestral agreements and covenants about how to treat each other and how to honor their responsibilities to the natural world.   I believe that among those defined as mestizos many suffer from PTSD or Post Tribal Stress Disorder. I use this term to refer to the suffering and afflictions that result from de-Indianization. Invariably, there is someone who remembers in their family that they are Indian. Or they will recount how one of their grandparents told them to never forget, "we are Indian." But like historical trauma, not all suffer the soul wound of de-Indianization.   Part of their historical trauma is the void where there should be remembrance of the names of our ancestors and nations. They are the other disappeared of the Americas, by the processes of social control. Some argue that mestizos are like a brown clay pot, emptied of a native spirit that was claimed by impositions. Others argue mestizos indigenized Spanish culture and that it is, in fact, only a shallow topsoil that covers indigenous Mexico, which is indigenous in the spaces also claimed as mestizo or urban. We are another kind of Indian that does not fit into the current boxes on identity.   Many scholars concur that Mesoamerica's indigenous legacy remains in traditional agriculture and Mexican traditional medicine - and protective factors against disconnection. Zapata asserted that the land belongs to those who work it -- Mexicans still work the land and have relationships with this natural world. But many are taught to deny their Indianness, to even hate it. A Kickapoo elder once recounted to me how a group of Mexican kids in Coahuilla, Mexico, got mad when he proclaimed to them, "you're Indian."   Those people identified as mestizo, Hispanic, or Latino suffer from a particular kind of historical trauma. They are told that they are both the oppressed and the oppressor. Many Mexicans are largely Indian by heritage and do not descend from Spanish colonialists, and when they do, it may be through rape or forced marriage, such as with one of my Kickapoo grandmothers. It is hard to determine who is the we/they, who of the relatives were/are the mestizos who benefited from controlling the Indian. The Mexican (read Bolivian, Ecuadorian etc.) community has been in a constant process of de-Indianization and each family has its own particular relationship to that process.   In my work, I identify some symptoms of PTSD: 1.Anehlos -- a feeling of longing and that something is missing. 2. Cracked mirror --a feeling that something wants to break through, or break open and that your sight is refracted from cracks in perception, with some parts distorted and others clear. 3. Rejection -- feeling rejected by Latinos and mestizos as being too Indian and by some Native Americans as almost or maybe Indian, but then again not really (while others welcome you as cousins, brothers or sisters.) 4. Loss-mourning the loss of ancestors, nations and the spiritual teachings that were wrested away and in which you had no say or control. Fortunately, there are numerous native elders working with, or in, these communities as people resist de-Indianization, particularly the more recent indigenous migrants from the southern hemisphere. Some people argue that mestizos and Latinos should accept their historical conditions, that they have no right to renew or strengthen their indigeneity. Yet, that goes against the spirit of self-determination. If we could hear them speak in the spirit world, would they not ask for their children to return? to fight? to renew knowledge in the spirit of their ancestors? To do otherwise, is to accept colonization, something no community, native or not, can justify as an acceptable human condition. To proclaim their Indianness, someone once said, is the biggest paradigm shift since the Spanish debated whether Indians had souls.    2006 Column of the Americas   XColumn@gmail.com - 608-238-3161 or Column of the Americas, PO BOX 5093 Madison WI 53705.   Our bilingual columns are posted at: http://hometown.aol.com/xcolumn/myhomepage/ ---------------------------------------------------- Video Game Genocide by Xiuhcoatl    The recent debate over immigration has nothing to do with terrorism or border security. Immigration “reform” in America is driven by widespread xenophobia, the colonizer’s mentality and plain old racism.   Now, with Minutemen on the border and the President promising National Guard deployment there, anti-Mexican sentiment and reactionary xenophobia in this country has been turned into a video game. “Border Patrol,” developed by neo-Nazi Tom Metzger, puts the player in the role of a hunter/murderer who patrols the border. The objective: “Keep them out…at any cost!” “Them,” means the “wetbacks” trying to cross the border from Mexico.   As if the mere concept of a game that requires you to shoot indigenous migrants were not insulting enough, Metzger identified each character with a common stereotype of Mexican people.   The “Mexican nationalist” holds a Mexican flag and totes two guns as he runs across the river. The “drug smuggler” carries a bag of marijuana on his back. The most offensive target is the “breeder,” a pregnant Mexican woman who lugs two children behind her. In true neo-Nazi fashion, the author exhibits an obvious lack of respect for all women, identifying those who give us life with the label of an animal. In this scene the game credits you with four “kills” – one for the mother, one for each child, and one for the unborn baby.   This “kill them all” mentality isn’t mere fantasy –  it’s Western history relived on a video screen. No game better illustrates the point than “Gun,” set in the American Old West. Colton White, a hunter turned gunslinger, must kill Apache Indians in order to “advance.” As White, you slaughter the Apache people, scalping as many as you can with your “scalping knife.” The message of these games is clear – genocide against indigenous people is still accepted and encouraged in the US.   Since the introduction of movies in the US, indigenous people have been portrayed as villains, savages, rivals of righteous white cowboys against whom anything goes. Today, we see the same relationship in the struggle between the “upright” white police officer and brown skinned gang members. Racism against Indians has always been commonplace, but these “games” take it to new proportions.   The purpose of the games is threefold: as a recruitment tool for hate groups, they portray people of color as sub-human; they serve to desensitize the public and potential recruits to very real crimes against humanity, like mass deportations, hate crimes and mass incarceration; if the people can be numbed to this brutality and convinced that the targets are sub-human, the next step will be one we have seen before – genocide.   Europeans colonists engaged in the wholesale slaughter and enslavement of Indians and of Africans with no remorse. 100 million Native Americans – our ancestors - and 100 million Africans were ultimately killed at the hands of white colonialists and slavers. European culture was desensitized to these atrocities by the dehumanization non-whites. This condition is known as the colonizer’s mentality, and it is recreated, and meant to be recreated, in the mind of everyone playing these “games.”     The neo-Nazi “National Alliance,” creators of the video game Ethnic Cleansing, know this all too well. Ethnic Cleansing encourages you to play a skinhead or a noose-wielding Klan member. You patrol the streets of a city which has been devastated by gangs of “sub-humans.” From the words of the creators, you “run through the ghetto blasting away various blacks and spics.”     Ethnic cleansing in the US is not an implausible course. The government is already building concentration camps for migrants. Soon, the law will allow them stop anybody on the streets with brown skin to ask for proof of citizenship. We have been stripped of our rights by the Patriot Act. The American Indian holocaust is very real; it has endured the test of time, and it continues, both in the real world and in the media. These “games” are nothing but video genocide.   Xiucoatl is webmaster of AztlanRising at http://aztlanrising.com/cms/ He can be reached at    ---------------------------------------------------- Mexica Tlahtolli                         For the Love of our People and the Earth   We are spirit: The World of John Trudell   "We are a spirit, we are a natural part of the earth, and all of our ancestors, all of our relations who have gone to the spirit world, they are here with us. That's power. They will help us. They will help us to see if we are willing to look. We are not separated from them because there's no place to go -- we stay here. This is our place: the earth. This is our mother: we will not go away from our mother.   "And no matter what they ever do to us, no matter how they ever strike at us, we must never become reactionary. The one thing that has always bothered me about revolution, every time I have seen the revolutionary, is they have reacted out of hatred for the oppressor. We must do this for the love of our people.   No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense."         POWER   "We must not become confused and deceived by their illusions. There is no such thing as military power; there is only military terrorism. There is no such thing as economic power; there is only economic exploitation. That is all that it is. They try to program our minds and fool us with these illusions so that we will believe that they hold the power in their hands but they do not.   All they know is how to act in a repressive, brutal way...Power...we are a natural part of the earth. We are an extension of the earth, we are not separate from it. We are a part of it. The earth is our mother. The earth is a spirit and we are an extension of that spirit. We are spirit. We are power. They want us to believe that we have to believe in them and depend upon them and we have to consume these consumer identities and these religious identities and these political identities and these racial identities. They want to separate us from our power. They want to separate us from who we are.     GENOCIDE   "Genocide is just an intellectual way of saying: murder, because we live in a so-called civilized industrialized world, and because this world is allegedly civilized and allegedly has laws, they can't go out and call an act of murder "murder" anymore, so they call it genocide to throw another illusion in our eyes."   RESISTANCE   "We want to be free of a value system that is being imposed on us. We do not want to participate in that value system. We don't want to change that value system. We want to remove it from our lives forever.   "We must never underestimate our enemy. Our enemy is committed against us twenty-four hours a day. They use one hundred percent of their effort to maintain their materialistic status quo. One hundred percent of their effort goes into deceiving us and manipulating us against each other. We have to devote our lives, we have to make our commitment, we have to follow a way of life that says we are going to resist that forever ... a resistance: something that we can pass on as strength to the coming generations."   "A resistance where organizational egos don't get in the way. A resistance where individual egos do not get in the way. A resistance where the infiltrators and the provocateurs and the liars and the betrayers and the traitors, they do not get in the way ... a resistance of consciousness. This is our obligation to the earth. And only by fulfilling our obligation to the earth can we fulfill our obligations to the people. "We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off."   Todos Somos Ramona ---------------------------------------------------- Sunday May 7, 2006: Zapatista Red Alert   Tlazohtla Nicantlacah in Cemanahuac, Beloved Relatives of North/South America,   Como estan, how are you? Here is part of the email that explains what is currently going on in the state of Mexico near Tenochtitlan. The facts are that Wal Mart as a corporate giant is bullying small business and desecrating sacred sites throughout Anahuac. An incident occured in Atenco, Texcoco, whereas local vendors were ordered to leave their own land and of course a conflict had taken place. The militia was called in and as well as the federales who then decided to murder a 10 year old boy and a 30 year old vendor.   Protests at the Mexican Consulate are scheduled Friday May 5, 2006 from 8-9 am, 12-1 pm, and 5-6 pm, as well as with Boycotts and Protests at Wal Mart this Sunday and other dates to be arranged at different locations. We, a collective of Indigenous organizations, met at East Side Cafe last night (5/4/6) and proposed to protest at 17150 E. Gale Ave.., City of Industry, CA  91745 Wal Mart at 12 noon. About 90 Zapatistas were incarcerated over this issue in Atenco, Texcoco, which serve as buffers for the EZLN. The Otra Compania En El Otro Lado, The Other Campaign on the Other Side is therefore put on stand by and the liberation army of the Zapatistas is on red alert.   WHAT:   Protest at Wal Mart in response to Repression, death and brutality of Flower vendors near Mexico City   WHEN:  Sunday May 7th, Noon   WHERE:   17150 E. Gale Ave.., La Puente, CA  91745   COLLECTIVELY SPONSORED BY:  Automous Peoples' Collective, La Otra en el Otro Lado, Harmony Keepers, and more t.b.a.   All My Relations, Eagle Rabbit Purepecha Aztlan Mexica Nation ---------------------------------------------------- Saturday May 6, 2006: Prayer Run Wolakota   FUNDRAISER FOR THE RUN:               WHEN:           saturday, May 6th   from  7:30 – 10:30 pm               WHERE:         Avenue 50 Studio                                                      131 N. Avenue 50                                                      Highland Park, CA 90042                                                      (323)258-1435 or                                                      West Coast Run Coordinator – Olivia Chumacero                                                                      (213) 482-4170           WHAT:   Rough cut video (of 2005 Prayer Run 4 World Peace to South Dakota)                                   Drumming, singing, poetry, hip-hop, & fry bread                                                                      WOLAKOTA YOUTH COUNCIL  & THE ALLIANCE OF NATIVE AMERICANS INVITE YOU TO RUN FOR PEACE TO ALASKA MAY 10TH  -  JUNE 21ST 2006 PRAYER RUN 4 WORLD PEACE OUR VISION IS TO INSTILL HOPE - for we the youth should inherit a healthy planet where we can become elders sometime in the tomorrow. WE THE PEOPLE - of all nations must restore peace, bring harmony, and by example be a new kind of warrior, to battle modern day obstacles. The president of the Wolakota Youth Council, Graci Horn and the volunteers of the Alliance of Native Americans humbly ask you to join us. Both non-profit organizations are committed to serving youth. ---------------------------------------------------- Alianza Indigena presents   "Beginning P'urepecha Language Classes"   Instructor:  Angelica Morales   The P'urepecha language is an Indigenous language from Michoacan, Mexico.  There are many P'urepecha speakers in Mexico today.  Mrs.  Morales is a P'urepecha Indian Women from Michoacan, Mexico and now resides in Orange County.   Every Tuesday - April 25 to May 30, 2006 6pm - 8pm     Location:  Anaheim Independencia Community Center                 10841 Garza Ave.                 Anaheim, CA   Fee:  Monetary Donation    For more information please call:  (714) 758-1990 www.alianzaindigena.org ---------------------------------------------------- 3/29/2006 4:00:00 AM

Sacred Sites, Human Rights march draws 1,200 Grassroots organizations converge at Flagstaff City Hall to voice demands By S.J. Wilson The Observer Photo by S.J. Wilson/Observer Danny Blackgoat (left, with red red bandana) and Kelvin Long (center) join voices with other singers at drums to honor the efforts of the multicultural protest. FLAGSTAFF -- More than 1,200 local Native American activists and their supporters converged on Flagstaff City Hall March 25, bringing with them a strong message. The crowd demanded that Flagstaff rescind a decision to sell wastewater to the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort located on the San Francisco Peaks. Also among protestor's demands was recognition of cultural and sacred rights as well as the decriminalization of border issues between this country and Mexico. The march was held association with the national conference of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (Chicano/a Student Movement of Aztlan or M.E.Ch.A), held the same day at Northern Arizona University. More than eight hundred high school and university students from across the U.S. attended the conference to explore its theme, "Human Rights will not be Denied." Organizations including ECHOES (Educating Communities While Healing and Offering Environmental Support), the Save the Peaks Coalition, Youth of the Peaks, the Black Mesa Water Coalition, Tonatierra (Phoenix), and Aztekayolokalli came together to make these demands. The event opened amid chants of "Are we tired of being poor as people? Yes! Are we tired of having our land stolen? Yes!" as Evon Peter, Arctic Village Chief of the Gwit'chin welcomed everyone to the gathering. Tupac, a representative of Tonatierra, motioned to the building behind him, saying that it was only of a temporary nature. "The sacred sites, like the San Francisco Peaks, are eternal. We need to bring that fact to the thoughts and minds of the colonizers," Tupac said. "We will attain our goals because of the might of our prayers and the strength of our intentions." Another young woman told the gathering that they were involved in ceremony while they walked the streets of Flagstaff in protest. "Chicanos, never be ashamed of who you are," she cried out. The crowd answered with a collective roar. Jaime "Nino" Aguirre of M.E.Ch.A explained his delight with the turnout. "When we started planning this event, they said people would not show up, that people would not unite--that our Chicano people and the indigenous people here are not the same people," Nino said. "They say that we are immigrants, that we are invading the U.S. Hell no! As a people we move, just like every tribe. We move from the north to the south and the east to the west. We make this society work. We're here to stay--get used to it!" Kelvin Long, director of ECHOES, told the gathering that he was proud to stand with them. "Welcome to my home," Long said. "This mountain that we are fighting for is special to me. It's the foundation of who I am. As I stand here, I think about the knowledge passed from generation to generation. I think about all of the knowledge lost because of colonization." Long referred to his visit to Flagstaff City Hall on March 17 where he delivered a petition with more than 3,000 signatures. The petition was signed by people across the United States and other countries such as Thailand and Germany demanding that Flagstaff refuse to sell wastewater to the Snowbowl. "I was told that what I did was illegal," Long said. "I was told that the city of Flagstaff was trying to sell wastewater to make snow. People have been fighting against snowmaking for over 500 years--it's the same struggle over and over but we will survive." Long said that seeing everyone united, and all of the young people involved gave him hope. "People in power are afraid of you because you are young and educated," Long said. "This isn't the only march. Take these words back home with you, tell your friends, tell your family. We need to show love and respect among human beings -- this is the only way this world can continue. We need to stop listening to corporate lies and listen to the elders. We know now that we can march in the streets, we can raise a fist for our rights -- human rights and sacred lands." Peter then introduced Kelly Nez and Kristopher Barney, representing the organization "Youth of the Peaks." "The youth have become an inspiration in uniting people through their culture and tradition," Peter said. "We are the Youth of the Peaks," Nez said. "We speak out for revolution. You are the reason we keep going, why we are fighting the monster of greed. We are standing up for the mountain, for its beauty and magnitude. We are standing up for the grandparents and those who cannot stand up for themselves. We are not giving up until the City of Flagstaff says 'no.'" Barney read a poem that he had written earlier in the week, describing the desecration of sacred sites and land, which when lost will be gone forever, and indigenous ways to bless the harvest and the butchering and to live life in balance. "The land has been raped," Barney read. "It's never enough. What more do you want from us?" Indigenous people, Barney said, were still here, still alive, held together by tradition, fear and dark anger. "There can be no price on the sacred--on who or what you love," Barney concluded. A member of the Tohono O'odham people spoke about his own tribal government's efforts to develop sacred land and how grassroots people defeated the effort. Waehla John represented the Black Mesa Water Coalition, founded several years earlier in support of the efforts of the Black Mesa Trust. "My relatives, it's so beautiful to see you here today," John said. "Water has no boundaries, nor does it read laws. The land is our constitution. The mountain is our constitution. We honor it in our prayers and in our creation stories. All nations have their own creation stories, but the colonial education says we came from the Bering Straight." John explained that her roots were at Black Mesa, where Peabody Coal has taken coal and water from the earth for more than 30 years, for greed and money, goals she likened to the Arizona Snowbowl. "We have to put our foot down," John said. "Is money sacred? No." Miguel Vasquez, an anthropology professor from NAU spoke out against more than 30 immigration bills currently being considered by Arizona legislators. "If these bills become law, it would make it a felony to have a person who crossed the border 'illegally' in your house, to serve them a meal, or to offer them any social services. We [as Americans] were fine about bringing down the Berlin Wall, but we want to put up a wall on the Mexico/U.S. border. People have been crossing this border for 30,000 years--as an anthropologist, I can tell you that with authority. All four of my grandparents came to this country as illegal immigrants." Vasquez pointed out that the U.S. feels free to enter Mexico and other countries and wreak havoc on the economic systems there, but does not want to allow people to come here to make a living. "We have got to make this country understand that we are not a liability, but that we are an asset," Vasquez said. Tupac returned to the mike to point out that Mexican and South American people, like other indigenous people, did not migrate because of economics, but because of the birds, the seasons and the stars. "We travel, we move, but we do not leave," Tupac said. "We leave behind family and shrines, but that's not what the colonizers understand. They say [in the decision supporting snowmaking] that there is no substance to the Hopi, to the Hualapai beliefs. I do not find substance in government built on 500 years of colonization." Danny Blackgoat, son of Roberta Blackgoat [noted Navajo activist against Navajo and Hopi relocation and coal mining] said that he had not planned on speaking, but came mainly because the spirit of his mother brought him to the march. Blackgoat said that he found the efforts of the U.S. government in dividing tribes as well as Latino people very effective, and advised members of the gathering that they needed to see beyond what they were being told by that government. "They are stealing our land and our resources," Blackgoat said. "My mother used to say that coal is the liver of the earth, water is her blood and that uranium was her heart. They are taking these things from us and it hurts. I can't add on more than what has been said here today, but my mother used to say that the might of the military, of the U.S. is because of our [indigenous/Latino and other minority] involvement. The U.S. is the policeman of the world, and they use the power of our human resources. Look at the percentage of minority members in the armed forces on the front lines, and I think you'll be surprised." People from the crowd began reporting on other gatherings held across the country on this same day or just before--three million in L.A., 40,000 thousand in Milwaukee, 40,000 thousand in Denver, 70,000 in Chicago, 2,000 in Seattle--and 15,000 in Mexico City. The message coming out of such protests is strong. Human and sacred rights can no longer be denied.