This is an umbrella statement that we know will evolve as #OccupyVancouver

grows and flourishes. Our demands and our dreams are not limited to this

statement as we have many ideas and solutions. However, this statement

represents a basic starting point and a common basis of unity for those

who gathered at the General Assembly and who plan on gathering on October

15th at 10 am at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

1. We acknowledge that Occupy Vancouver is taking place on Unceded Coast

Salish Territories.

2. We come together across our diverse experiences to find creative ways

to transform the unequal, unfair, and growing disparity in the

distribution of power and wealth in our city and around the globe. We come

together to challenge corporatism and corporate greed; systemic

inequality; militarization; environmental destruction; erosion of civil

liberties and democratic rights; and lack of access to basic human needs

including water, healthcare, education, childcare, shelter, and food. We

seek economic security, genuine equality, and the protection of the

environment for all.

3. We are inspired and in solidarity with global movements including those

across the Middle East, Europe, and the Occupy Wall Street / Occupy

Together movement in over 1000 cities in North America.

4. We are committed to an inclusive and welcoming space, to addressing

issues of oppression and discrimination, and to creating an environment

where all the 99% can be heard and can meaningfully participate. We are

also committed to safeguarding our collective well-being – including

safety from interpersonal violence and any potential police violence.

http://www.lostiempos.com/diario/actualidad/nacional/20100729/onu-reconoce-el-agua-como-“derecho-humano”_82641_156964.html

This is an article about how Bolivia presented a proposal to the UN that water be a Human Right. It’s very interesting because throughout the world, the privatization of water, lack of access to water, and the pollution of water are all growing issues. However, many developed states did abstain from the resolution so it will be interesting to see if this has an influence in the long run.

Perú realiza el primer encuentro de comunidades – CNNMéxico.com.

One of the issues that are commonly repeated in the history of the refugees is the need to prove that they are persecuted. Often, testimonies are not enough, for the “reasonable fear” that they are supposed to demonstrate needs to be validated through documents, or what the lawyer in the article calls “third party evidence.” So, not only does one has to endure the circumstances that compelled one to leave, one has to leave in such a way that enough evidence is gather for one’s refugee status to be granted. The later has a few implications. First, people without a strong enough knowledge of the legal and political system will not qualify for the status, because they would have not had the fore thought of collecting the third party evidence that is required. So rather than any person being persecuted, the structure of and the way in which the refugee system works, caters to a certain population that is instructed enough to know what the system requires from them, but also certain premeditation to know what is it that they are going to do with their lives, unless of course, they are a famous case.

Precisely for those points mentioned about I have decided to post on the story of the Colombian women who are being deported.

Chapter 1 in this book, an article by Rodolfo Stavenhagen, outlines the changing relationship between indigenous populations in Latin America and the state. Outlining some historical background and touching on issues ranging from Human Rights to ethnic/cultural tensions. 

Inevitability as a Latin American, the cruelties committed against our indigenous populations during the colonization process of this “new world” have been part of our history and have marked the way our societies still operate nowadays.  We know about them, we have read about them. However, I don’t recall ever reading such poignant and devastating details of atrocities carried out by the Spaniards like in the piece of Las Casas.   What a heart-stopping account of vicious acts. His first-hand observations went straight to my heart, and I found myself having a hard time finishing the article.  To think that over 12 million Indians perished only in la Hispaniola without any logical justification beyond power or greed is unacceptable, and no proper form of justice has ever been given to these communities. It is worth noting that Christopher Columbus brought with him a bunch of criminals to conquer the area, prisoners, not the brightest minds, and these deliquents showed no mercy to a population that opened their arms and helped their visitors with the greatest of all innocence.  Las Casas  tried hard to counter the “savage” and “wild” image often given to the locals  (as justification for the horrors) by describing their gentle and naïve ways, therefore accentuating the injustices committed in the name of the  queen and Christianity. He was brave enough to admit that in the name of Christianity, suffering was greatly inflicted. He tried to explain to the crown that Indigenous people started associating Christianity with brutality and the message was getting lost in an ocean of unnecessary blood, a strategy to appeal to their sense I presume. I wonder how our region would look like now, and how our dynamics with the world would be like, if the “new world” had been discovered by a different group of people or not discovered at all. You can easily see how Latin America became a paradise for natural resources extraction from that point on (gold, gold, gold) for the developed world, which still constitutes our main source of income in the region still today.

The region somehow internalized the idea that we could only sustain ourselves economically through the trade of raw materials thanks to the colonization, rather than inventing or manufacturing our own products from our own resources.

Simon Rodriguez, one of my biggest heroes and tutor of the America’s liberator Simon Bolivar, expressed an early understanding of economic dependency and lack of nationalism found in Galeano’s piece.  “Let’s invent more,” the great professor would say, among many others progressive visions this emblematic Venezuelan had.  He had a clear idea that we needed to be original to outstand and be independent, not only from physical oppression, but from our beliefs and ideas too. Rodriguez, close friend and ally of Simon Bolivar, witnessed the Libertador’s famous oath that he would liberate all of America from the Spanish Crown, and registered it for history. Bolivar said: “I swear before you; I swear on my parent’s God; I swear on them; I swear on my honor; and I swear on my Motherland; that I won’t give rest to my arm, nor repose to my soul, until I have broken the chains that oppress us by will of the Spanish power.” And Bolivar did not rest until forming La Gran Colombia.

Galeano’s piece was thought provoking and very engaging. At times, I felt as if I was reading tabloids from these times, rather than history, little gossips and untold bits of the story from a very character-driven angle. However, it generated more curiosity than provided explicit information, and I found myself at times goggling personalities mentioned in order to fully understand each passage. Nonetheless, he gave me an interesting historic framework of events that I intend to further research on.

One topic raised in Galeano’s writing, which I found particularly  interesting, was the war between Paraguay and the Triple alliance. While I had heard of this event in passing, I really had no idea how extensive it was until I read this piece.  In looking into it further some sources say that 90% of the Paraguayan population was killed, which is an unthinkable number. That kind of Genocide for control of trading areas is just sickening (although sadly not unheard of elsewhere either).

I also found Sarmiento’s response and justification to be sickly fascinating. I spent a year living in Lujan, Argentina (which is in the Buenos Aires province), and I thought I knew a good bit about Sarmiento because he is championed as a promoter of education and someone who really pushed to modernize Argentina. Additionally, you can’t walk into any new town without finding that ‘Sarmiento’ is the name of at least one main street, so needless to say the name is everywhere. Therefore, it’s incredible to discover that a national hero, who was ‘progressive’, was also such a racist. One difference that people often note in Argentina, as compared to the rest of Latin America, is the lack of racial diversity, especially the lack of anyone from African decent. When I had asked around about this no one really had  a clear answer as to why more diversity wasn’t represented. However, after reading Galeano’s work I suspect that Sarmiento really had an active role to play in the lack of people who aren’t from ‘European’ descent. Even to this day, the general discourse in Argentina seems to be that they are proud to be “the most european” of any Latin American country and I have had some people go so far as to tell me that Argentina is really more part of Europe than it is part of Latin America. This train of thought has become well rooted in certain parts of  the country, and people like Sarmiento seem to have started it off.

Additionally, the section on the war between Buenos Aires and the provinces makes a lot of sense in conjunction with the elitist, european tendencies of the capital. Due to the fact that the provinces are so much more ‘indigenous’ than Buenos Aries.

During the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival I got to see this film, “Tambien la Lluvia”,  which I highly recommend in light of this weeks readings. 

This film makes a powerful statement about the historical progression of indigenous rights in Latin America, forcing us to really think about just how far we’ve come since the conquest - arguably, not very. 

Also, here is a link to the wikipedia page on the Cochabamba Water Protests in Bolivia around which the film revolves: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Cochabamba_protests

Over and above the horrific details of the Spanish Conquista that Bartolome de Las Casas describes in his short account, what I found most thought provoking/frustrating was his Prologue. And this comes back to something we have discussed in class in great detail, basically, it all comes down to this – human injustices committed by and for the state are only addressed by and through the state.

Even after witnessing such vicious atrocities occur in the name of Spain and for the Crown by those conquistadors whose mission was established by the Crown – he had no other choice but to appeal to the Crown to right these wrongs. To point out to the crown the many ways in which the Conquista was being carried out was morally unacceptable, all the while knowing that in the best case scenario they were turning a blind eye to the methods used by the conquistadors and in the worst case scenario the King was not only fully aware of the situation but choosing not to put an end to it and was knowingly granting them “official authority and licence once again to commit their dreadful deeds” (4) [time has come to show that it was obviously the latter].

“I am persuaded that, if Your Highness had been informed of even a few of the excesses which this New World has witnessed, all of them surpassing anything that men hitherto have imagined even in their wildest dreams, Your Highness would not have delayed for even one moment before entreating His Majesty to prevent any repetition of the atrocities which go under the name of ‘conquests’: …”

This same logic underpins all of Human Rights discourse—the ideal that if only we could bring all the injustices to light, spread the word, and put onto paper all those inherent rights that all of humanity is born with, then maybe all states will not only be obligated to put an end to injustices occurring on their soil but also be morally inclined to do so. But this logic is flawed –as we have come to see time and time again throughout history—states and their rulers are not the noblest and most virtuous of beings. The most awful and vicious human rights violations in history have in fact been committed by and for the state and right under the noses of their rulers.

“…excesses which if no move is made to stop them, will be committed time and time again…” (6)

How can we get away from this? Are declarations on human rights an effective mechanism to halt or prevent states from allowing injustices to occur? How long will it take for the moral codes outlined in human rights discourse to kick in? –can we afford to wait? These excesses have continued to be committed time and time again. Can we rely on states to make the move to stop them through the continuing debates on Human Rights? – I hope so. 

There seems to be something going in the two texts that we were asked to read, namely Las Casas and Galeano that could be connected to a portion of “Society must be defended” a lecture that Michel Foucault gave in the College of France around 1975 at the College of France. There, he talks about the emergence and the role of the counter-history, or the history that is not written for and by the powerful.

Prior to the emergence of this sort of counter-history, what existed was a sovereign history understood as the history of the celebration and glorification of conquest and might, so history was not so much a way of telling, or relating historical facts, but a way of enhancing the power –understood in the traditional sense of the term- of kings, kingdoms and lineages.

Although Foucault is more specific about the functions of this sort of sovereign history, for he talks about the genealogical and memorial sites of the sovereign history, the reason why these two texts seem to connect is because they are telling the other side of the story.  According to Michel Foucault it is with Boulanvilliers “that we go from a history of the established right by telling the story of wars, to a history that continues the war by deciphering the war and the struggle that are going on within all the institutions of right and peace”[1] So in that sense, the two mentioned texts seem to relate to a counter-history that tells the history of the people of Latin America, not necessarily from the point of view of those who directed the conquest, but from a point of view closer to those who endure it.

The focus in the historical account and the relevance of the texts is not meant to serve as an excuse to deviate to the absolute horror of the Conquest, which seems to be the implicit aim of the readings, but to point out how there is an strength in telling those stories, for memory makes people conscious of the wrongs that have and continue being committed in the name of a civilization or an idea.

Although Las Casas text is more direct and specific, for it is a testimony of the injustices that he saw, Galeano’s text is more complex because it seems to connect the history of Latin America to a sort of chronological account that relates what is happening around the world as if telling that not only what happened historically in Latin America is important, but also what happened in the world that directly and indirectly affected Latin America was also important.

This week’s readings focused on human rights abuses in Latin American history. The Las Casas reading was particularly horrifying. I had read this before in a Latin American history class but my memory thankfully blocked out most of it. In the article, Las Casas describes in detail some of the atrocities perpetrated by the Spanish against the indigenous population of Latin America. Las Casas is purposefully graphic in his descriptions, presumably to get a reaction from the crown to try to put an end to the horror in the “New World.” Las Casas describes the aboriginal people as innocent lambs being ravaged by hungry wolves (the Spanish). Las Casas’s descriptions of the indigenous people are often fairly patronizing but considering how dire the situation was, he really had to create a clear dichotomy between the two people, the indigenous people as innocent, loving and peaceful versus the greedy, rapacious, and violent Spaniards. Las Casas believed that it was the crown’s moral imperative to do something about the situation and if nothing was done then God would no longer be on the crown’s side. Strong words in such a fervently religious era. It is interesting that he believed that the king would actually listen to his pleas considering how much the crown actually benefited from the spoils of colonialism. The  book was apparently helpful in passing anti-slavery laws, but one has to wonder if that was because the government actually cared about the plight of the indigenous people or if the government was actually just frightened by the prospect of divine punishment. Also, I wonder if such legislation was actually contrary to the papal bulls that were issued in that era that allowed for the enslavement of people that the Europeans had conquered.

Perhaps because of Las Casas’s religious background or because of the strong religious beliefs of the era, Las Casas often paints the Spanish as “fake” Christians and talks about how the indigenous people were very keen to learn about Christianity. In his mind, the indigenous people were more pious than the sinning Spaniards and therefore were deserving of human rights. He goes as far as saying that God had abandoned the Spanish in Latin America.

I find it particularly sad that it took until university for me to actually hear about such immense atrocities. Everyone has heard about the Conquistadors but no one really talks about the utterly horrific torture they inflicted upon millions of people. This genocide has had an immeasurable impact on the history of Latin America and yet when we talk about genocide we often don’t talk about the Spanish Conquest, only about 20^th century genocide. The atrocities of the Spanish conquest have never been fully redressed in any way; indigenous people are still treated unequally and any indigenous sovereignty movements that spring up are always met with violence. Greed and power unfortunately is the winner in Latin America as indigenous people are still denied basic rights and freedoms. Neoliberalism is the new force of colonialism now, though, as governments celebrate indigenous traditions and historical sites to cash in on tourism while at the same time denying indigenous people rights over their own traditional territories.