Disaster in Zimbabwe: Cyclone Idai, Climate Change, and Capitalism's Assault on the Global South

By Mafa Kwanisai Mafa

About a month ago Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique were devastated by a tropical cyclone which has been described as one of the worst disasters ever to strike the southern hemisphere. Approximately 2.6 million people were affected in the three countries. Cyclone Idai hit the Mozambican port city of Beira with winds up to 170km/ph., it then proceeded into inland Zimbabwe and Malawi, flattening buildings and took more than 1000 people and others unaccounted for across the countries. Torrential rainfall washed away road networks in Zimbabwe. The United Nations called it possibly the worst ever weather-related disaster to hit the southern hemisphere.

Western capitalists are largely at blame for climatic changes that cause natural and environmental disasters. Poverty, which is a result of the diabolic and pernicious economic sanctions, as well as a natural byproduct of global capitalism, has resulted in poor and weak structures which do not withstand the heavy winds and storms.

The economic prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank has forced countries like Zimbabwe to reduce their budgets on social services as governments are forced to impress and attract investors in line with the neoliberal path. Things like sanitation, emergency services, and disease-outbreak prevention are poorly resourced and often times lead to unnecessary loss of life. From the statistics of past natural disasters in poor counties like Haiti, and impoverished cities like New Orleans, these factors lead to high death tolls compared to well-resourced sectors in the western world. The Civil Protection Unit of Zimbabwe had developed the National Flood Plan Management framework; however, because of depleted resources caused by IMF and World-Bank intervention, was not fully implemented. Very little of the nation's budget is allocated for disaster management, as determined by the needs of capitalism's pursuit of profit.

The Donald Trump Administration and EU have extended their sanctions on Zimbabwe despite its reforms and capitulation to neoliberal dictates in the form of austerity measures. This means that Zimbabwe must brace for further economic turmoil because of the renewal of sanctions. To further exacerbate the situation, Zimbabwe is facing drought and trying to recover from the gory effects of tropical cyclone Idai, which has killed many and displaced thousands. The entire infrastructure of Zimbabwe is now in ruin. If Zimbabwe was not under sanctions, its response to Cyclone Idai could have been much better. Destruction could have been avoided; lives could have been saved. Like every nation under US sanctions, Zimbabwe is experiencing failing healthcare, dwindling government coffers, failed service delivery, and food and basics shortages. In a similar situation, Iran took the US to the International Court of Justice in October 2018 and the ICJ ruled that the US must stop restricting medical and basic supplies to Iran. What is the impact of the ICJ ruling on Zimbabwe's medical system?

Tropical cyclone Idai brings vital lessons: it's a stark reminder of the deadly effects of greenhouse effect. A hotter world means more damaging cyclones because they draw their energy from the oceans. The hotter the ocean, the more powerful and devastating the cyclones have become. Hotter oceans and melting ice caps also mean a rise in ocean levels, which means cyclones spin faster, do more damage, and have more energy to get into the interior. The governments that have the power and resources to effect change, like the US, are failing to take climate change seriously. Governments who would like to effect change remain impotent due to global capitalism's demands. It is a threat to humanity and its environment.

The Global Connection

The inequalities within the poor global south are caused by the capitalist economic systems of the rich North. The legacy of colonialism and apartheid still manifest in most of the African and third world countries, and this has adversely hampered human and economic development. The poor and the working class in these countries are suffering the most from climate change and must push for climate justice. The global North are the biggest culprits in environmental degradation and carbon emissions; thus, are responsible for creating an environment ripe for natural disasters.

The rich countries have technology of early warning systems and disaster management and preparedness. It is only the poor countries like Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Mozambique who bear the brunt of the effects of natural disasters, with the biggest number of casualties. Western capitalism must give poor nations debt relief and allow them to chart their economic path using their own natural resources, which in many cases exist in abundance. Zimbabwe at independence adopted the Rhodesian debt whose money was used kill the black people in their quest for freedom and self-determination. South Africa also adopted the Apartheid debt which it is still paying up to this day - a debt whose money was used to oppress butcher them with impunity.

With so many resources at their disposal, countries throughout the global south would be able to redistribute their wealth equally for putting up flood defenses, social services, and investing in appropriate technology. Humanitarian assistance has been a curse to African development - a trojan horse used to push through capitalist austerity. African countries have the capacity to stand on their own if they are allowed to chart their independent path. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which is assessing the damage on food crops, estimates that about 200,000 Zimbabweans will need urgent food aid for the next three months. Most of the food aid which is provided on humanitarian grounds is genetically modified and poses a serious health risk to the local people.

The US military is contemplating sending rescue teams to Mozambique; however, this is not trusted since they are butchering people all over the world in unprovoked wars. Most countries are suffering and millions dying through the US's direct or proxy wars and economic sanctions. Mozambique is wary and considering denying them entry into their country, despite desperate times.

Because of the rapacious nature of the capitalist economic system, which has no regard for nature or human life, we are now confronted with an environmental crisis that threatens to undermine the basis of civilization and survival of human species. There is now a global consensus that the emission of greenhouse gases is caused by use of fossil fuels which global capitalism has relied upon as the main source of energy supply. Global temperatures are precariously rising.

China is now the biggest player in the global capitalist economy and it has overtaken the US as the biggest carbon emission emitter. China and US combined account for 40% of the global emissions of carbon dioxide worldwide. If the levels of emission do not subside, the world will experience more extreme floods, droughts and storms, disappearance of the Arctic ice cap, dramatic cuts in food yields, and the drying out of the Amazon rainforest. Notwithstanding all the looming catastrophe world gas and coal production is surging.

Capitalism is the Cause

The root cause of the climate change is capitalism, an economic system that thrives on exploitation of human beings and the natural environment. The world, if it is to survive, needs an alternative system that values social equity, justice, and environmental sustainability. Humanity and the natural environment are under threat because of the capitalist system, which is based on private ownership of the means of production. Overproduction and waste are endemic. The crisis of humankind requires putting an end to capitalism. Capitalism is only concerned about profit.

The great danger today, with the way in which these environmentalist topics are being addressed, is that they are being used with a short-term political objectives in mind. Many researchers and scientists are reaching a conclusion that there is a tendency towards climate warming. More organisations and political parties are being formed on the pretext of fighting against global warming without any practical result. There is a deliberate diversion away from the real polluters by asking citizens to be responsible and make them understand that they must take care by throwing plastic materials into different waste bins and that they should stop buying cotton buds from supermarkets because they are terrible source of pollution. A systemic issue is being individualized, in true capitalist fashion. And it is a smokescreen.

Capitalists pollute billions of tonnes of oil into the China Sea, while a citizen throws three cotton buds into the wrong bin. Are we really going to save this planet through these everyday actions? It is a claptrap. While many politicians, world leaders, and big corporations speak about the future effects of climate change, poor and impoverished nations are already struggling to battle the consequences of rising global temperatures. They speak as if it's a future problem, but its already here and happening throughout the global south. It's only a matter of time before it hits the north.

The world's poor are not causing the problem, but they bear the brunt of climate change. They are suffering from drought and suffer in worsening storms because they cannot afford to build houses that can withstand storms or escape to higher ground. Governments encourage citizens to do "one green action a day" but ordinary citizens are not the root cause of climate change. Extreme weather disasters are becoming more prevalent around the world, be it Zimbabwe or elsewhere. Capitalism is the culprit. Let's save our environment and nature from global capitalism.

Boricuas Seek Support for Protecting Indigenous Sites: Threats to Bateyes in Jayuya highlight need for community vigilance

By Liliana Taboas Cruz

On the morning of Friday 18th of January 2019, a call on social media was made by visiting Boricua archaeologist Dr. Isabel Rivera-Collazo asking for urgent help in protecting an archaeological site in Jayuya. The site, known as Bateyes Sonadero and Muntaner, is located in the Barrio Jauca in Jayuya. According to records at the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (ICP), is known to contain a batey (Caribbean ceremonial plaza and ball court, outlined with stones which include monoliths), remnants of a village, ceramics, and lithic material. Archeologist who reported the land movements on site, Adalberto Alvarado, told local press "Ese yacimiento era de uno de los yacimientos que tenia menos impacto en el pueblo" (This archaeological site was one of the less impacted sites in the area.). Alvarado had been inspecting the known batey sites following hurricane Maria. The owner of the property used heavy machinery to clear land for agricultural purposes. In Puerto Rico, land removal requires permits to protect archaeological sites. The owner did not have proper permits to comply with the 112 law. Though the ongoing threat had been reported earlier in the week through formal channels, it wasn't until that Friday morning that the owner forced the archaeologists off the property and started the land removal despite warnings of the illegality of his actions. It was at this point that the social media call was made by Dr. Isabel Rivera-Collazo, who pleaded with the Institute of Culture and the general public to intercede.

The call was answered by many native Puerto Rican and indigenous activists. Personal visits were made by a local Boricua archaeology students to the ICP office in Old San Juan, who informed that archaeologist Dr. Carlos Perez, head of the archaeology office at the ICP, would visit the Jayuya site that Friday evening. Since then the ICP representatives have assured that the destruction has been delayed, though claiming the severity of the removal was still unclear. Their investigation is ongoing.

In Jayuya, local indigenous elder and activist Margarita Kukuya informs that the damage to the site has been extensive and "devastating," describing a scene where batey stones are pushed into a nearby river, while others piled up and broken with debris from the land clearing. This particular site had been the subject of study in 2007 by Dr. Yasha N. Rodriguez Melendez as part of her doctoral thesis. She wrote, "Bateys are endangered and their study becomes increasingly difficult as fewer of them remain." Yasha described bateys as "a permanent structure that has become part of the landscape and visibly identifies a space as different from the rest." These statements only reinforce what indigenous communities have tirelessly expressed. These sites, having immense cultural value and significance, need to be protected and should remain undisturbed.

Indigenous activists have used this opportunity to highlight the need for community vigilance of archaeological sites which have immense historic, social, cultural, and spiritual value to Boricua People, Caribbean Indigenous Peoples, and as Global Patrimony. The need for further education to generate more public awareness and pride in these important historical sites is critical to their preservation. For Caribbean Indigenous Peoples these sites represent the presence of their ancestors and connection to their traditional lands and should remain undisturbed. For archaeologists, the invaluable information contained in these places are completely destroyed with any disturbance and represent a loss of cultural and historic knowledge for the people of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and the world. For local Boricua, as well as those in the diaspora, these sites are meant to be cared for and protected for future generations.

Indigenous Puerto Ricans do not belong to any federally-recognized tribe, they remain as part of the hundreds of non-recognized tribes and indigenous peoples in the United States, despite the US adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, which, among many others, includes the right of self-determination. Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico are currently facing one the of worst political, economic, and humanitarian crises in modern times, dealing with a colonial government, an imposed control board, the whims of the federal government, and a debt negotiation where they have no say. The austerity measures being imposed to pay for the debt (parts of which are already being declared illegal) directly affect healthcare, education, natural resources, energy production, pensions, and security. These issues took a turn for the worse after hurricane Maria hit the island in September 2017, causing the death of over 3,000 people and the exodus of hundreds of thousands in a single year.

Caribbean Indigenous Peoples and all living in Puerto Rico deserve better than this. This call is for URGENT support and assistance to those organizing to protect their sacred sites and cultural patrimony, as well as highlight the need for education that includes indigenous perspectives, methodologies, and philosophies that generate the social consciousness needed to protect these sites as a united community.

Let the ICP know you support indigenous participation and perspectives when it comes to access, protection, and management of sacred sites, as well as to demand the strict application of Puerto Rico's laws that protect archaeological sites so that they may be respectfully enjoyed and studied by future generations. The Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena can be reached by calling (787) 724-0700.

Let your local representative know you support a just recovery for Puerto Rico, reject the undemocratic federal control board created by PROMESA, and support a full audit of the debt of Puerto Rico, a US colony.

If you wish to support the indigenous coalition, Pueblo Indigena Taino Unido, created to address these issues, please contact vigilantesboricuas@gmail.com for further information.

Lili, Jibaro-Boricua/Taino

Cupey, Boriquen

I humbly present these words to all those willing to receive them. Seguimos.

The Violence of Dogmatic Pacifism

By Gregory Stevens

"Violence means working for 40 years, getting miserable wages and wondering if you ever get to retire…

Violence means state bonds, robbed pension funds and the stock market fraud…

Violence means unemployment, temporary employment….

Violence means work "accidents"…

Violence means being driven sick because of hard work…

Violence means consuming psych-drugs and vitamin s in order to cope with exhausting working hours…

Violence means working for money to buy medicines in order to fix your labor power commodity…

Violence means dying on ready-made beds in horrible hospitals, when you can't afford bribing."

- Proletarians from occupied headquarters of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE), Athens, December 2008

I was once a hardcore Christian pacifist who would justify non-violence in the face of rape, robbery, military occupation, police violence, or systemic racist violence. I have read much of the literature, attended and taught pacifist trainings/conferences/events, and have previously been one to publicly shame more militant tactics. As my political work has transitioned from liberal policy activism to revolutionary organizing (lead by and for the oppressed, working toward collective liberation) I have learned more historically-nuanced notions of violence, non-violence, and self-defense. I have come to think dogmatic Christian pacifism can be extremely dangerous and violent to oppressed human and non-human peoples.

One of the first things done in religious debates about pacifism is proof-texting verses from the Bible, picking verses (usually out of context) to prove one/your vision over the other. If we hold a more complex and nuanced version of our faith stories we recognize the goodness and the vast diversity, often contradictory, in biblical narratives and Church traditions. Much like the diversity of gospel accounts shows us the diversity of the early Church, the diversity of revolutionary tactics within our biblical stories and faithful traditions can help us shape our contemporary movements through a diversity of tactics. Rather than assume one way of thinking is right for all times and all places, no matter the context or people involved, we are better off using a diversity of tactics in our goal of our collective salvation from sin (aka our collective liberation from oppression). We need every tool in the box, we need all sorts of tactics available, and we need a great multiplicity of strategies if we want to win in taking down the capitalist, imperialist, hetero-patriarchal system destroying planetary life.

I do not think the world will ever be, or has ever been, a world without violence. Violence is a broad word with many different meanings. I am using the term violence in a very general sense when I suggest that the world will never be a place without some forms of violence. An indigenous Elder of mine teaches this in relation to rain: just the right amount of rain creates new and thriving life, too much rain and life is violently swept away. When the hungry tiger pounces on an antelope, digging their sharp teeth into the flesh to kill for nourishment, violence erupts for life to maintain living. When a glacier cracks and crumbles down into the fishing villages of the far northern regions, entire communities can be lost to the tidal waves and impact of the moving mountains of ice. When a fire takes over a forest, burning down trees and decaying plant matter to ashes, nutrients flood the soil and stronger rays of sun can then reach the forest floor providing more ingredients for new life to flourish.

Mother Earth is not a dogmatic pacifist, she uses violence to transform the world. It's not always Her favorite tool, but it sometimes is; it doesn't seem to be Her ultimate philosophy but a tactic within Her larger strategy for survival.

To claim a completely pure dogmatic pacifism goes against the patterns we see in the world around us. Pacifism becomes a fundamentalist religion or ideology rather than one of many tools within our revolutionary strategies. It is important that we begin to see non-violence or non-resistance as a tactic within a diversity of strategies; it is not the only answer but one very useful answer to very specific historical moments. Non-violence is not dogmatic pacifism, non-violence does not need to be universalized as an ideology for all times, places, and circumstances as in pacifism. The militant non-violent tactics used by some of the civil rights movement (boycotts and sit-ins) have shown that some non-violent tactics can be successful. The militant self-defense tactics used by others within the larger liberation movements (Black Panthers, Young Lords, UHURU etc.) were also proven successful. Neither would have been as successful without the other.

Capitalist Violence

To claim some sort of purist pacifism as the only way forward is also illogical for those who live, move, and have their being within the capitalist world economy. Central to Marx's critique of the capitalist system was the inherent violence of private property, centralization of wealth, worker alienation, and vast hierarchies of domination. Through the ownership of other humans, water, air, and land; the pillaging of global lands for resource extraction; the centralization of property ownership within the hands of the few; and the endless pursuit of 'infinite growth' on a finite planet, life itself is being violently destroyed. With billionaires and millionaires centralizing their wealth and power, strengthening and broadening the gap between the rich and the poor, extreme acts of violence run amuck in society: rampant impoverishment, and no or terrible access to healthcare, food, education, shelter etc. While capitalist pacifists sit rich and pretty, a majority of the world suffers immeasurably.

The capitalist system thrives on the racialization of peoples and their subjugation to colonial power through extreme violence. The capitalist economy thrives on war for oil, land, monopoly-imperialist power, and for the many markets opened up through the production and sales of millions of high-tech weapons. To claim a pacifist existence of non-violence is to assume your life is not actively executing violence on the world through the very social systems those who claim such lofty ideals benefit from.

It is white middle-class pacifists who do not experience capitalist violence in the disproportionate way black, brown, differently able, queer, trans, mothering/care-giving, migrant, female, and religiously diverse people experience daily. It is these same middle-class pacifists who greatly benefit from the violence enacted by the state and corporate business forces on Earth and peoples around the world. They experience health, wealth, and property; they experience the abundance of food, shelter, and access to the excesses of capitalism but they do so on the backs of the global south and the middle east. It is these white middle-class dogmatic "peace police" who scream and yell at people defending themselves from state violence, telling them they are immoral and violent. In this way, they stand directly in the way of someone seeking their own liberation.

Writing in his personal journal about the rise of fascism in Germany, George Orwell mused, "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one.… others imagine that one can somehow "overcome" the German army by lying on one's back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.… Despotic governments can stand "moral force" till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force" (emphasis added).

Pacifist capitalists are extremely violent and can even be regarded as home-grown terrorists, as they are committing senseless acts of violence by perpetuating a state of extreme inequality through violent relations of domination, hierarchy, alienation, and exploitation. They project this violent privilege onto the impoverished, the working class, and other radical organizers who seek to defend themselves from the extreme violence of a capitalist society. Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks to this problem among political leaders, "When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con." ( "Nonviolence as Compliance" in the Atlantic )

A key to understanding this problem lies within the social location of many pacifists. The free-market, private ownership of property, elected governmental officials, and the legal system itself have all been managed by and for white people (often white Christian men). When all of these systems do not work in your favor and when they do not protect you but are in fact a great source of the violence you face, then your political actions focus on ending these systems of death, if not just defending yourself from their violence. This is exactly why disenfranchised people do not always choose "civility" as their response to liberal violence. The state defines "civility" and their "civilization" - they chose to define their civil state through genocide, colonization, imperialism, slavery, inequality, etc. Civility is the problem.

Revolutionary Resistance, Diversity of Tactics, and Liberation

People of color, trans people, and folx with differing abilities know this, and have been leading struggles with diverse tactics for a very long time. In an article posted on April 26, 2015 on the Radical Faggot blog , Benji Hart writes, "Calling them uncivilized and encouraging them to mind the Constitution is racist, [sexists, ableist] and as an argument fails to ground itself not only in the violent political reality in which black, [trans, and differently abled] people find themselves but also in our centuries-long tradition of resistance - one that has taught effective strategies for militancy and direct action to virtually every other current movement for justice."

In reaping the benefits of violence and then subjecting oppressed peoples to violence so they cannot escape their oppression, you not only thrive off their perpetual suffering, but you take away the ability to claim dignity and self-determination. It is extremely violent to push pacifism on those who exist under the heaviest of boots of capitalist and colonial exploitation when you greatly benefit from the exploits of capitalist and colonial violence.

The colonizer tells the colonized not to defend themselves.

The rapist tells the raped not to defend themselves.

The attacker tells the attacked not to defend themselves.

The murderer tells the victim not to defend themselves.

The slave owner tells the slave not to defend themselves.

The civilized tells the savage not to defend themselves.

The pacifist tells the oppressed not to defend themselves.

The revolutionary joins the colonized, raped, attacked, victim, slave, savage, and oppressed in solidarity; together they seek collective liberation. It is "precisely marginalized groups utilizing these tactics - poor women of color defending their right to land and housing, trans* street workers and indigenous peoples fighting back against murder and violence; black and brown struggles against white supremacist violence - that have waged the most powerful and successful uprisings in US history." (from an April 2012 pamphlet written for Occupy Oakland, Who is Oakland? ).

It is often argued that by offering your own life in martyrdom, the violence of the state will be exposed when the state or armed forces act in violence against you for all to see, and then put an end to once and for all. This is terrible logic, especially if applied to every context in all of history. We should not expect someone to die or not defend themselves in abusive and violent situations so that the violence of their actions can be exposed, somehow convincing others not to be violent in the same way.

Jesus was nailed to a cross and Caesar didn't have a change of heart in the face of such oppressive brutality. He celebrated.

Black and Brown people were lynched, and white supremacists didn't have a change of heart in the face of such oppressive brutality. The community celebrated.

Violence is exposed all the time, and nothing is done about it. How many videos of police murdering unarmed teenagers do state officials need (or do liberals need) to watch before they realize their violence and magically chose to stop it via a change of heart? How would that even make sense coming from an institution founded just after slavery to harass, watch, and catch non-white former slaves? The very same legal system that didn't have a change of heart in the face of violent white supremacy but rather created an entire white supremacist billion-dollar business: the prison industrial complex.

White feminist theologians in the 1960's critiqued the idea of "sacrificial living" as the mission of their faith-filled lives. It was being forced upon them by liberal theologians of the day: the highest calling is kenotic, sacrifice, emptying oneself for thy neighbor. The white cis male liberal theologians making these claims on the bodies of women did not consider the thousands of ways women are already subjected to capitalist hetero patriarchy, especially the unpaid reproductive labor it takes to produce such a society. This critique was later enhanced in the 1970s by revolutionary black feminists in the Combahee River Collective who first wrote about intersectionality: "The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face."

This narrative of sacrificing one's life to the powers and principalities also assumes that the upper class, the capitalist class, and the exploiting classes will suddenly choose to sacrifice their wealth, power, and privilege in order to liberate the masses who have (at their own expense and for their own survival) produced all of their wealth, power, and privilege. Not only does this idea take autonomy away from the oppressed, continuing the elitist narrative that the oppressed are uneducated filthy savages, but it also supports oppressive violence through demanding non-resistance in hopes of revealing the brutality of oppression to the oppressor.

Here's another example: A man breaks into a woman's house with a knife and has intention to rape, rob, and kill her. As a pacifist she chooses not to use a gun to defend herself. Rather, she creatively tells him that his ways are unjust, that there is another way of living, and that compassion is the way of truth; she hopes that her rape and murder will be a shining example of compassion and courage - she offers her own life as a sacrifice to show him that his ways are unjust, that he should change his ways, that he should rape, rob, and murder people no more. She hopes to convert his heart along the way, through her sacrifice she hopes he will repent.

It's also absolutely absurd to think a woman who fights or kills a rapist, becomes like the rapist. Colonized Indigenous and African peoples forced into slavery did not become like their slave owning colonizers when they violently rebelled, resisted, revolted, and rioted. The Jewish people who killed or fought the Nazis trying to exterminate their people, did not become like the Nazis. Using violence against those who exploit, oppress, and abuse you does not make you like them. Reality is more complex than dogmatic pacifism allows.

Don't Speak Truth to Power; Destroy Power

If someone is suffering and experiencing oppression, we should act to stop the violence and not hope that timely bureaucratic answers of policy reform will actually do anything to alleviate suffering and fight injustice. Wasn't it the elite classes and their bureaucrats who created the very legal system that attempts to make extremely complex realities into black-and-white situations for "educated" judges to dictate someone's future?

Most people in the world are already experiencing violence and are not defending themselves; most people are not acting violently in direct confrontation with their abusers, and these hoped-for non-responses have not motivated liberals or conservatives into action. Slavery did not end because all the salves were full of hope or because they were pacifists. Slavery was abolished because of slave revolts, organized rebellions, and armed underground rail roads like the one Harriet Tubman led thousands to freedom through. Slave abolitionist, Frederick Douglas , speaks so eloquently to these ideas in his 1857 speech delivered on the 23rd anniversary of the West India Emancipation:

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

Liberal dogmatic pacifism is one of the most effective tools of violence used by the State to keep marginal and oppressed communities from rising up, restoring their dignity, and protecting themselves from further abuse through liberatory communal armed self-defense.

What then does it mean to love your enemy? Does it mean you continue to allow you enemy to attack you? Is it loving to allow someone to attack you, to bomb you, to exploit you, to oppress you - is that really what Jesus and the early church were getting at?

"Love your enemy" does not mean: stay in an abusive relationship, take the abuse because it's good and holy. If such an abusive relationship is complexified and organized on a mass scale why would the logic of resistance be any different? Why is the abuse of the state or of right wing fascists any different than the abuse of a spouse? It absolutely seems more intense, it seems more organized, it seems more brutal - and if anything, it doesn't seem to be worthy of our acceptance. We should always defend ourselves and others from oppression. Why would we accept the abuse as if pacifism is more righteous? Ending the abuse and setting each other free is far more righteous.

When experiencing oppressive violence, it is important to remember that our struggle is a struggle for life itself. We are not struggling for voter recognition or policy reforms, we are not assuming life is good and just needs a few adjustments; we are struggling because our very existence depends upon it. The 13th trans woman to be murdered in 2018 was killed on July 10th; the police have killed 446 people so far this year (1,147 people in 2017); the military has dropped thousands of more bombs than ever before, murdering record breaking numbers of people and places; over 1,200 children have literally been lost by the federal government; white supremacists were directly responsible for 18 out of 24 US extremist-related deaths in 2017; and over 200 species go extinct every single day amidst apocalyptic ecological conditions that are ultimately leading to our very own species' extinction.

There is no time to wait for oppressors to stop oppressing us, as if one day they will wake up to their extremely violent ways. This is exactly what the plantation owner would hope their slaves believed. We must choose life, and we must choose to defend ourselves, our communities, and our ecosystems from colonization, industrialization, state formations, and coercive social control. To live for life is to live in opposition to capitalism and the violence it perpetuates on the world around. We do not advocate revolution because we hope to see our tendencies win the day, but because we seek the flourishing of planetary life.

Liberatory self-defense is a far greater framing than dogmatic pacifism as it encourages dignity, self-determination, and participation in the shaping of a new world beyond appealing to "representative" authorities to pass less abusive policies. When these politicians do make decisions for the masses they create more bureaucracy and make it possible to define and categorize more bodies, and thus further discriminate, oppress, and define our bodies through legal definitions. Under the rules of pacifism, the oppressors win, they always hold the bargaining power, and they always decide who gets the goods and who gets nailed to a cross.

Liberatory, Community, Armed Self-Defense

Scott Crow's recent anthology, Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense , explores liberatory, armed, community self-defense as a tactic within a larger revolutionary strategy through theoretical reflections and historical studies. He and the various other author-activists make it very clear that the armed component of any self-defense strategy should never become the center (or we risk becoming standing militaries). Rather power is sought to be shared and equalized as best as possible, thus distinguishing armed self-defense from armed terrorist, armed insurrection, armed military organizations, armed guerilla armies, or armed law enforcement. Crow writes, "The liberatory framework is built on anarchist principles of mutual aid (cooperation), direct action (taking action without waiting on the approval of the authorities), solidarity (recognizing that the well-being of disparate groups is tied together) and collective autonomy (community self-determination)."

Crow goes on to say that this form of liberatory self-defense is not to be used to seize permanent power, or that arms are to be used as the first resource for self-defense but should be taken up only "after other forms of conflict resolution have been exhausted." This isn't about revolutionary vanguardism or storming the white house with guns. This is about self-defense from literal Nazis who have been murdering, mass shooting, and assaulting people at record-breaking numbers in the past few years (Rest in Power Heather Heyer ).

It should be noted that Crow's brand of liberatory, community, armed self-defense differs from other forms of armed action in two main ways: the first is that it is organized but temporary, "people can train in firearms tactics and safety individually or together but would be called on more like a volunteer fire department - only when need and in response to specific circumstances" (9). The second, and probably most distinct and important element of liberatory, community, armed self-defense (as used historically by groups like the Zapatistas, those fighting in the Rojava revolution, and the Black Panther Party from the 1960's), is power-sharing and egalitarian principles incorporated into the ethics of the group and its culture well before conflict is engaged (9). Unlike, for instance, right-wing militias (anti-immigration patrols of the Minutemen Militia, or the racist Algiers Point Militia that patrolled New Orleans after Katrina), who have nothing to do with collective liberation. "These militias are built on racist beliefs, conspiracy theories, and a macho culture where the strongest or loudest is the leader. They are typically organized in military type hierarchies with no real accountability to the people in civil society and the communities they operate within" (9).

Another key component to the tactics of self-defense is dual power which is about both resisting and creating. The resistance is toward exploitation and oppression, the creation is toward "developing other initiatives toward autonomy and liberation as part of other efforts in self-sufficiency and self-determination." This model is about creating a better world, much like the Black Panther breakfast program did when they stopped waiting around for white governing officials and started to feed their own communities' kids, so they might succeed in school and life generally. Self-defense isn't merely about being armed, but about building networks and infrastructure of people powered mutual aid. The Church institution has muddled this but in many ways has a strong people powered infrastructure: when you get sick, the care team will drop off some dinner; when you have a baby, just about everyone in the church is willing to hold, play with, or baby sit your child as needed; and if you total your car in an accident, someone in the church offers to drive you places or gives you their grandma's old car. How might we use this infrastructure in more radical ways with more revolutionary purposes? How might we use this infrastructure to establish the Queerdom of God in the US Empire?

Conclusion

What I hope to have accomplished with this article is to expose some of the more basic and less nuanced notions that are often used by dogmatic pacifists who refuse to engage radical critiques of their ideas. These dogmatic pacifists keep themselves in their privileged existence, waving the finger of judgment at both lumpen and proletariat communities that choose dignity through emancipatory self-defense. In relation to violence within our movements, our tactics, and our overall philosophies, it is important we continue to ask tough questions. Here are some really great questions to ask in thinking about violence in our direct actions:

• Are we harming state and private property, or are we harming people, communities, and natural resources? Is the result of our action disrupting state and corporate violence, or creating collateral damage that more oppressed people will have to deal with (i.e., Black families and business owners, cleaning staff, etc.)? Are we mimicking state violence by harming people and the environment, or are we harming state property in ways that can stop or slow violence? Are we demonizing systems or people?

• Who is in the vicinity? Are we doing harm to people around us as we act? Is there a possibility of violence for those who are not the intended targets of our action? Are we forcing people to be involved in an action who many not want to be, or who are not ready?

• Who is involved in the action? Are people involved in our action consensually, or simply because they are in the vicinity? Have we created ways for people of all abilities who may not want to be present to leave? Are we being strategic about location and placement of bodies? If there are violent repercussions for our actions, who will be facing them? [1]

In conclusion, some more thoughts from Scott Crow on forming organized, liberatory, community, armed self-defense:

• Many questions remain, including those concerning organization, tactical considerations, the coercive power inherent in firearms, accountability to the community being defended and to the broader social movement, and ultimately, one hopes, the process of demilitarization. For example: Do defensive engagements have to remain geographically isolated? Are small affinity groups the best formations for power-sharing and broad mobilization? How do we create cultures of support for those who engage in defensive armed conflict, especially with respect to historically oppressed people's right to defend themselves? What do those engagements of support look like? Additionally, there are many tactical considerations and questions to be discussed and debated to avoid replicating the dominant gun culture. How do we keep arms training from becoming the central focus, whether from habit, culture, or romanticization?

Further Reading and Research

Akinyele Omowale Umoja - We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

Charles E. Cobb - This Nonviolent Stuff′ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

Cindy Milstein (editor) - Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism

CrimthInc - The illegitimacy of Violence, The Violence of Legitimacy

Derick Jensen - Endgame (Volume 1 and 2)

Francis Dupuis-Deri - Who's Afraid of the Black Bloc?: Anarchy in Action Around the World

Franz Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth

Kristian Williams - Fire the Cops!

Scott Crow - Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense

William Meyer - Nonviolence and Its Violent Consequences

Notes

[1] https://radfag.com/2015/04/26/in-support-of-baltimore-or-smashing-police-cars-is-logical-political-strategy/

Melting the Ambiguity and Power of ICE

By Canyon Ryan

In less than a week, the people of the world have forced the President of the United States of America to no longer allow detained immigrants to intentionally be separated from their family members. Such an inhumane practice has been permitted at more than 400 detention facilities supervised by ICE agents in the United States.

What this piece aims to do is delineate ICE as an organization and provide a critical analysis of U.S. foreign-policy initiatives, the proposed solution to the ICE facility attention, and an honest call to action.

ICE: Its History and Functions

When discussing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), there is an ambiguity in consideration to its foundation. We know that ICE is the problem, but what is ICE?

ICE was born in 2003, in accordance with the Homeland Security Act of 2002 following the events of September 11, 2001. Since, ICE has become the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, the second largest body of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the second largest "criminal investigative agency" in the U.S. (trailing the FBI). There are more than 20,000 ICE employees in over 400 offices in the U.S. and in 46 countries abroad.

ICE has two primary arms: Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). Each are equally important.

There are approximately 6,500 HSI agents. HSI agents have the authority to enforce the Immigration and Nationality Act ( Title 8 ), U.S. Customs Laws ( Title 19 ), general federal crimes ( Title 18 ), Controlled Substances Act ( Title 21 ), as well as Titles 5, 6, 12, 22, 26, 28, 31, 46, 49, and 50 of the U.S. Code .

The HSI agents are to investigate national-security threats such as human rights violations, human trafficking, drug trafficking, document and benefit fraud, transnational gang activity, cash smuggling, money laundering, and the like.

Their international offices are used to combat transnational criminal activities and work with governments abroad to prevent such activities from entering the U.S. This policy framework can be considered something similar to the "National Security States" used in Central America to repress what was then considered a communist infiltration, known as the supposed "Real Terror Network". Today, we must keep in mind that we've passed the "end of history". Communism is out, terrorism is in. With terrorism at the frontline is bred the dehumanization of the migrants, no longer the Reds. The war on communism has morphed into the war on terror; and ICE, with its HSI agents, are spearheading this new war.

There are other functions of the HSI, but this synopsis should do. Next, we will investigate the ERO.

The ERO are the ones primarily responsible for the current national spotlight. Their function is to capture illegal immigrants and assure their removal from the U.S. In the time between this removal, the families being expedited are held in government and "charity-sponsored" detention camps, or in the case of the Brownsville Detention facility in Texas, a shelled-out Walmart.

The ERO has been strengthened by the Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g) , which allows ICE to cooperate with state and local law enforcement agencies. In doing such, it authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to also work with state and local law enforcement agencies, permitting officers to perform immigration law enforcement functions. As such, ICE provides these law enforcement officers with the training to identify, process, and detain immigrants.

In detainment, the so-called aliens are placed in the detention centers (similar to jails) mentioned above. Something very important to note here is that, as of 2009, the U.S. Congress has mandated that ICE detention centers must have at least 34,000 people confined each night. Thus, by law and similar to prisons again, there is a requirement (quota) for detention.

Between 2003 and 2007, 107 people died in ICE custody. The New York Times reported that in some cases officials used their supervisory roles to cover up evidence of mistreatment and avoid media coverage of "substandard care or abuse". Between 2010 and 2017, The Intercept reported that 1,224 sexual assault complaints had been made in ICE detention facilities, with only 3% being investigated.

U.S. Foreign Policy: Fighting "Terrorism" with Terrorism

Considering the youth of ICE as an agency, as well the timing of its inception, ICE is undoubtedly a component of the "war on terror." Created by the Bush administration, emphasized and vastly expanded by the Obama administration, and now mushrooming under the Trump administration, we must recognize that ICE is part of a much larger conglomerate. While it is ICE that is attracting much attention, it is not just ICE that we should call into question. Its purpose is to refuse all "aliens" who are "infesting" the U.S., but it is simply a bullet in the gun.

We must see this segment of the government as piece of their new war against the people of the world. The wars that the U.S. have escalated abroad, causing mass refugee migration crises in Central America, the Middle East, and Africa, are primarily responsible for such successions. With the rise of climate change as well, we will soon have a world unstable to support current and expected living standards.

Clearly then, ICE's purpose is to fend off migrants and refugees developed from the wars promoted by the US's other militaristic forces. Last year, people were worried about Syrian refugees flooding the states. Today, the focus is back on the Mexican border. In the future, expect further crises in Africa. HSI operates abroad, they are the international eyes for the ERO. Working with both foreign and domestic law agencies, ICE has created in less than two decades a global force of supervision and detention.

This analysis goes along with the U.S. Commission on National Security which stated , "In the new era, sharp distinctions between `foreign' and `domestic' no longer apply." Accordingly, former President Barack Obama noted , "there is no distinction between homeland and national security". The importance here lies in the conundrum considering that U.S. foreign policy initiatives have been disastrous, for the soldiers sent abroad, for the world in general, and for democracy as a whole. The same values the U.S. government claims to represent in every war it initiates are those which it refuses to allow develop without its supervision, and what ICE and the quotes above illustrate is that the leaders of our country are very aware of their dwindling control over the masses, and specifically who the masses are that they must control. But this conundrum posed appears common knowledge, thus we begin to ponder why we keep making the same mistakes?

Simply put: the U.S. is the producer of terror. It is the producer of terror abroad and thus the engineer of the very terrorism it aims to fight. This is not the result of stupidity. This is its purpose. Such social stratification is ideal for the ruling class. If they can decimate countries abroad, they can go in and offer their assistance. This assistance of course comes with loans. Those loans of course come with interest. Yes, the U.S. is the most indebted nation, but it also makes its money by indebting other nations! These are not mistakes, they're markets.

The terrorism that the U.S. has promoted in the overthrow of governments in Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Haití, Greece, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and so on, is on a scale never seen in history. This is what the U.S., as the main facilitator of the global capitalist system, strives for. The U.S. just passed a $716 billion defense budget. The U.S. allowed the Pentagon to misplace $21 trillion in 17 years. Across the world, the U.S. has promoted right-wing, ultra-conservative, authoritarian regimes, reaping the benefits while the workers of these countries are murdered and forced to live at starvation wages. Even today, the U.S. operates with approximately 75% of the world's dictatorships. Our policy is not democracy, it is detention. Thus, the same military that caused many to flee their homelands is now being asked to detain them at home.

A quick historical contextualization of the "Mexican immigrant crisis" is needed. The U.S. under President James K. Polk went to war with Mexico over territory and conquered 525,000 acres of land in 1848. Afterwards, the Native Mexicans, now Americans, were exterminated by a California state-sponsored genocide that massacred over 80% of their population. Come 1914, the U.S. intervened after the Mexican Revolution, toppling the government in order to protect its imperial interests in Mexico's oil, mines, and railroads, which were predominantly owned by USAmericans. In 1938, after discussions of reparations which were not paid to Mexico after the U.S. invasion, Mexico decided it would nationalize its oil reserves. Consequently, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided not to imperialistically intervene, though during the great depression the U.S. did expel between 400,000-2,000,000 Mexicans from the U.S. (60% of who were birthright citizens). In 1982, during the world oil crisis, the nearly 150% drop in oil's worth meant that Mexico's foreign debt more than doubled . This foreign debt was owed to the U.S.-sponsored World Bank. And after NAFTA passed in 1994, Mexico's government became so reliant on the U.S. that now over 88% of its exports go directly to its neighbor, the U.S.

NAFTA has made it more difficult for Mexican workers to organize, thus wages have plummeted and corruption has run wild in the country. This is perfect for the neocolonial empire as it creates an austere society, with money coming from the top to colonialists, who then protect those giving them money if threatened. By destabilizing Mexico, they allow the society to fight itself at the bottom, while the corrupted officials remain floating above the general public.

What CIA-trained forces did during Operation Condor in Central America has passed. The Japanese internment camps during World War II were temporary. But what they have being built now, these ICE detention facilities, they are here to stay. They are here to stay unless we stand up and fight back against such terror. We cannot become desensitized to these detention facilities, as we have with the creation of a military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, and the slaying of innocent young black men. We must fight.

Trump's Solution: A Crumb to the Beggars

President Trump recently signed an Executive Order that will no longer allow families to be separated unless criminal laws say otherwise. For this, I have seen liberal praise. We must reject such gains as "wins". Such an order goes along with another liberal argument I've seen that separating families in the detention facilities is morally wrong. Yes, indeed it is. But so is the blanket detention of non-violent immigrants. So is the containment, isolation, entrapment, and debilitation of so-called aliens. The liberal "resistance" seemingly wants us to settle for allowing them to be in cages so long as they are together in these cages.

What this Executive Order does not do is mend the separation that has already taken place. Moreover, it seeks to indefinitely detain these families-- calling for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to file a request in court to change the settlement in Flores v Reno. What's more, it calls for families to be detained at military facilities, as well. The same military that has brutalized the world, trained torturers, tortured others themselves, and killed on mass scale, is now being called upon to "care for" detained immigrants. This is a scary revelation. The average citizen cannot just walk on to military facility grounds. We cannot walk into jails for inspection, let alone military facilities. What they hid before, they will hide again.

Such detainment facilities are beyond just immoral, they are abhorrent. They are heinously inhumane and such institutions should not exist anywhere. There are borders today, yes. There are laws and rules, and there are important procedures in place to protect our citizens from potential terrorists. This, however, does not require the detention and deportation of all "illegal" families. In fact, prior to 2012, such a notion was not only unheard of, it was structurally impractical.

Our Solution: A Call to Action

The protest-blockade against the ICE facility in Portland, Oregon is unprecedented. Here, protesters have effectively shut down and ICE detention facility by sheer will of the human body. They blockaded the garages so that ICE vehicles could not exit. For a while, ICE employees even could not exit the facility. Eventually police were called in to escort them out of the building.

Such direct action should set as a reminder that we the people have the power. In numbers, when organized, we have the potential to shut down each facility in the U.S. Approximately 1,000 citizens surrounded the building, the garage, and even ICE employee's cars (provoking the police to arrest one demonstrator) in Portland. These protestors were so effective that the ICE center was actually shut down indefinitely, due to security concerns!

These protests were against Trump's separating of families. What is important is not allowing this Executive Order to calm the fire. We must fight ICE at every step, we must melt ICE. Starting with preventative care, we can help our immigrant communities know their rights by circulating literature on how to defend from ICE raids. It is also important that we verify when ICE is in the neighborhood and document it. We owe gratitude to Sam Lavigne, who doxxed the Linkedin profiles of the majority of people working as ICE agents. We now we know who our enemy is. We have the locations of ICE detention facilities (via ICE's own website), we know where they are stationed. What happened in Portland can just as easily happen in any US city!

We must take a stand. Times are ripe, people are awakened to the monstrosities of this administration because it is Trump, and because it is Trump it is profitable for the media to "uncover." The capitalists only think of money, not the substance. And this substance is accidentally revolutionizing our country. Come an economic collapse, which we are due for as it's been 10 years since the 2008 recession, the honest Left should and will be ready. We must begin organizing and fighting now, and it starts against ICE.

Liberation Theologies: Decolonizing the Masters' Tool

By Gregory Stevens

On August 21st, 1831 Baptist preacher, Nat Turner, lead one of the largest slave insurrections in the history of the United States. In an explosion of prophetic and apocalyptic rage, Turner overthrew his legal owners ruling by fighting back, killing the elite colonial slave-owning families who had subjugated his life to a hell on Earth. With more than 70 other liberated slaves, Turner's insurrectionary self-defense sparked brutal repression from local white vigilante militias and the State. After six weeks of freedom, he was caught and brought back to Southampton County, Virginia to be put on trial; his revolutionary actions were recorded by white lawyer, Thomas R. Gray, later titled, The Confessions of Nat Turner.

And on the 12th of May, 1828, I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first! (Gray)

Being Born into slavery as the chattel property of Benjamin Turner, Nat or Nathaniel (the Hebrew meaning, "gift from god") Turner inherited two conflicting yet syncretized versions of religious expression; the first, and most obvious, being his Christian identity as a Baptist preacher, sharing the religion of his slave masters (he was bought and sold between 4 legal owners); the second, being his Mother Nancy's African folk-traditions brought directly over in the year 1799 when she was purchased by a Methodist slave owner. Further in his recorded confession he details multiple mystical experiences: talking to spirits, having flash backs to previous lives, practicing divination through tree leaves, and deciphering hieroglyphic characters all of which direct his passion toward revolt. In an act of religious syncretism Turner used knowledges from Baptist Christianity (individual freedom and soul freedom), the Hebrew prophets (histories of prophetic witness), and past-life ancestral mysticism (possibly informed by indigenous African traditions) to act upon his direct liberation from slavery. In this way Turner used the religious tool of his master and the indigenous traditions brought over from Africa by his Mother to subvert and challenge the legal slave-system for collective emancipation. For Turner, God had judged the materiality of slavery as demonic and condemned the institution to exorcism; it was God who actively directed him through revelation, signs, scriptures, visions, and dreams to defend himself from slavery. Turner embraced the counter-violence of God against slavery and dehumanization, igniting violent insurrection to advance the Kingdom principles of freedom, equality, liberation, justice, and salvation for the common good. "It was not motivated by hatred, racism, fanaticism, or evil. His revolutionary violence was the self-defense of the oppressed slave and God's counterviolence against the inherent barbarism and violence of slavery" (Lampley 3).

To understand the use of colonial religion as a strategy of liberation it is important to understand the severity of oppression and the overwhelming violence that colonialism brings to a people. The psychological, emotional, physical, spiritual, and social distress brought on by slavery creates an existence defined by perpetual trauma, abuse, and objectification. The opium of the masses loses its mind/body-numbing affects in the face of endless violence against black and brown bodies and becomes the methamphetamine advancing insurrectionary resistance.

The structural repercussions exacerbate conditions of trauma on a local and global scale through what Anibal Quijano theorizes as, the coloniality of power. Quijano argues that the development of the colonial project begins with the fabricated notion of race as a "supposedly different biological structure that placed some in a natural situation of inferiority to others" (533). The conquered and dominated peoples of Africa and the Americas were racialized as "other;" they were "situated in a natural position of inferiority and, as a result, their phenotypic traits as well as their cultural features were considered inferior" ultimately determining racialized categorizations as the "fundamental criterion for the distribution of the world, population into ranks, places, and roles in the new societies structure of power" (Quijano 535). With the development of newly racialized historical identities, a foundation was created for the global structuring of social roles, geohistorical places, and the unequal planetary phenomenon of transmodernity (Mignolo 57). This social hierarchy of racialized bodies and knowledges forms the crucible of eurocentrism, modernist epistemologies, and the Westernizing project of the North through a coloniality of power that also controls the labor force, the means and lands of production, and the flow of capital itself. In this Western expansion, ideas from the colonized peoples were expropriated or ignored, often stripped of their ability to be re/produced from below. This equates to the destruction of cultures through the racialization, alienation, and commodification of peoples. Resistance lead to the hanging, burning, and murdering of millions of people for the promotion of an "evolved, modern, and civilized" society (it was an evolved, modern, and civilized Methodist pastor who first bought Nat Turner). "The expansion of Western capitalism" Coloniality theorist Walter Mignolo writes, "implied the expansion of Western epistemology in all its ramifications, from the instrumental reason that went along capitalism and the industrial revolution, to the theories of the state, to the criticism of both capitalism and the state" (59). This Western supremacy was crafted in suppressing other- and non-scientific forms of knowledges, and was especially suppressive to the subaltern social groups whose social practices were informed by such alternative epistemologies (Santos ix). Portuguese scholar Boaventura de Sousa Santos sees the suppression of indigenous peoples of the Americas and of the African slaves as a form of epistemicide - the other side of genocide. The epistemological foundation that the global world capitalist economy is structured on is the imperial ordering of knowledges with the North at the top and the South at the bottom. This North/South divide is metaphorical and geographical in Santos' use, consisting of systems of visible and invisible distinctions that have material and cognitive ramifications. "The invisible distinctions are established through radical lines that divide social reality into two realms;" in the creation of "the other" as inferior, "the other side of the line vanishes as reality, becomes nonexistent, and is indeed produced nonexistent" (Santos 118). This non-existence is a radical exclusion, deeming all that is produced by the other as inferior, incomprehensible, and unworthy of serious consideration. Thinking from above abyssal-line, from the North, is the foundation on which modern theologies, sciences, and everyday societies are situated and are therefore in need of radical uprooting, decolonizing, and re-envisioning.

The cognitive supremacy of the Western expansion chose Christianity as its divine right to domination. The Christianity of the Spanish Empire used Theologies of Domination to "disseminate a characteristic ideology through all segments of society, propounding a set of fundamental values and principles which, while expressed in terms of lofty abstraction or eternal truth, nevertheless serves to further the interests of those who hold power" (Lincoln 269). These religions of the status quo replicate and co-produce the ideologies of capitalism: competition, hierarchy, racialization, epistemicide, and patriarchy. If Christianity was the religion of the colonial project, is a decolonial Christianity even possible? Is it possible to develop a Christian theology that subverts, challenges, and decolonizes its recent historical use in crafting the Western expansion of colonialities of power?

Audre Lorde's well-known declaration that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" proves helpful in this integration of the colonial religion of choice. The immensity of the coloniality of power through Western expansion and the development of the United States as a force of global Empire by the blessing of a majority of Christian authorities, institutions, and lay persons alike, brings many to a frightening conclusion: "if the master's tools cannot be appropriated then, in an age where our capitalist masters claim ownership over everything, only resignation is possible." Do we give up on our faith and spiritual tradition forfeiting our theologies to colonial powers as we seek material emancipation? Do we give up on our Christianities as the masters' tool to colonize, modernize, and under-develop most of the world? Or do we use the masters' tool against the masters by re-shaping the tool itself, after all it was the Hebrew prophet Isaiah who wrote, "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks" (2:4)?

The masters did not pluck their tool out of an ahistorical revelation but co-opted the religiosity of Christ-followers (the pejorative 'Christian' translated directly) to transform the world by thinking-with religion to bless their oppressive colonial project. Lorde was not making her argument to squash revolutionary determination, but rather attempting to articulate a similar message to that of the decolonial project that is attempting to open epistemology up to other ways of knowing and being, as valid, and co-equals in the production of our various worlds. Speaking from her experience as a black lesbian feminist, she refused to replicate the modes of racist patriarchal white-feminisms that honored her oppression through their ambivalence toward the continuing colonial project.

The question remains, can our Christianities be used as a tool to destroy the masters' house? Activist and co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, Michael White, complicates our answer with this insight: "If we learn anything from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's exceptional, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, it should be that the dominant powers appropriated from us first." He uses the example of war, which most associate as a tool of the master, to demonstrate his point, "based on anthropological, archeological and philosophical evidence, they hold that warfare was originally developed by nomadic anti-State forces and was only later appropriated and turned against its developers" (White).

Christian theology has not always been a colonial project. Based on anthropological, archeological, and philosophical evidence, Christian theology began in Roman Occupied Palestine, from within a peasant's movement inaugurating the Commonwealth of God in direct confrontation to the Kingdom of Caesar. It would be a mistake to think we could reverse 1700 years of Christian world-making to discover a pure first century form, rather early Christinaities are a reminder that the "masters' tools" have not always been in the hands of the masters, he stole them.

The convoluted histories of Christianity defy the simplistic conclusion that the entire tradition is a product of the coloniality of power. Exilic, resistant, and silenced voices have glittered Christian theological praxis for its entire history. And in the same way "religion" seems impossible to define, Christianity can be equally difficult "not only because its constituent elements and relationships are historically specific, but because that definition is itself the historical product of discursive processes" (Asad 29). If we take Talal Asad's critique of religion seriously, we must refute any notion of a monoculture of theological discourse and seek to resurrect the various historical elements of Christianities worth saving. In this way, our theological reflections can reclaim stolen tools, blending cultural and social multiplicities that defy the homogeneity of dominant culture, and forming something altogether new. For liberal theologians, this kind of syncretism is often rejected as "cafeteria style" consumer religion, but for the colonized, syncretism is their mode of survival. By reclaiming and recreating the masters' tool the possibilities of collective liberation are opened wide.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui troubles indigenous notions of identity by theorizing hybridity as a potent mixture of coexisting multiplicities of cultural difference that do not collapse in on one another but "antagonize and complement each other" each giving the other a possibility to "reproduce itself from the depths of the past and relates to others in contentious ways" (Cusicanqui 105). Theology from below is not a sterile mule without an ability to reproduce, but a motley trinity of indigeneity, de/coloniality, and critical theory with the ability to birth something quite different "merg[ing] features of its ancestors in harmonic and as yet unknown blend[s]" (Cusicanqui 105). This decolonial hybridity, a mixing of knowledges that are not limited by their original logics, is a defining character of Liberation Theology, for it is the reclaiming of our stolen tools for the purpose of emancipation/salvation.

In the 1960s the redemption of the Christian tradition was attempted again by using the masters' tool for emancipatory soteriology. Liberation Theology birthed out of the historical struggles of epistemicide and genocides in the Global South (Gustavo Gutierrez), and from persons within the heart of the United States empire who were racialized others and deemed inferior (James Cone). This mixology of Marxism, (de)colonial theologies, and indigenous traditions for the sake of liberatory emancipation created an entirely new decolonial theological discourse. The shift Liberation Theology brought to the larger conversation was a much stronger reflection on the matrix of material conditions creating poverty and dependence on capitalist economic social formations. It was Karl Marx's social and critical theories, along with the Marxist guerilla movements birthed out of the early 20th century, that greatly influenced the priests and theologians expressing theologies of material soteriology from below. The liberatory theologies developed by Latin American and Black American scholar-activists of the radical 60's were syncretic for the sake of survival, the oppressed were also using the master's tools without replicating the masters' epistemic coloniality.

Theologians of the North, those above the abyssal line, were debating classical philosophical ideas about the Kantian "priority of concepts versus things," while ignoring the structural and physical violence brought to marginal communities around the globe (Cone 56). Theologies of material soteriology interested a colonized people, for what was 'real' for them was the very presence of oppression and the dire to end the brutality. The problems of the auction block, Jim Crow Laws, Neoliberal developmentalism, and the prison industrial complex will not be solved through philosophical and theological debates void of the materiality of demonized peoples' intersecting oppressions. In this way liberation theologies break from dominant colonial discourses on Christianity by embracing radical subjectivity and rejecting theology as a universal Western language that never spoke with oppressed peoples, only down to them (or completely ignored them all together). Reflecting on theological epistemicide Lampley writes, "Euro-American and European theologies have tried historically to claim objectivity and universality while black theology and other liberation theologies have exposed their Eurocentric tendencies and worldview" (33). Christian theologies that do not rupture the colonial suppression of alternative knowledge production continue to reproduce the logics that uphold world-systems of planetary devastation and should be discarded to the fires of Hell.

Black Liberation Theology in the United States emerged alongside Latin American Liberation theology as a way for black Americans to assert their dignity as God's beloved and fight for their freedom and self-determination. In the same ways academics and activists have ignored the Global South they have ignored Liberation Theologies birthed out of the colonial distress of life on the margins of empire. The father of Black Liberation theology, James Cone [1], argues black Americans have been systematically ignored and removed from legitimacy, their oppression and marginalized ignored by liberal protestants and Catholics alike leading to a Liberation Theology as a rupture within the abyssal line of colonial theologies. Cone writes,

Whites debated the validity of infant baptism or the issue of predestination and free will; blacks recited biblical stories about God leading the Israelites from Egyptian bondage,…White thought on the Christian view of salvation was largely "spiritual" and sometimes "rational," but usually separated from the concrete struggle of freedom in this world (Cone 54).

Black Theology uncovers the "structures and forms of the black experience," creating emancipatory theologies through "the thought forms of the black experience itself" (Cone 17). Black Liberation Theologies, much like the decolonial project of subaltern studies/activism, arises out of alternative epistemological formations centered on the experience of blackness, the experience of dehumanization, the experience of the Global South. The theological discourse of the North, of the West, and of Liberal academia centered on the White experience and White logical systems re/produces the colonial subject.

There is a striking similarity between the oppressed racialized communities in the Unites States with those below the abyssal line in the Global South fighting for cognitive and social justice, fighting to be heard, to be recognized, and to be validated. Blackness is produced through modernity, it is created and shaped by coloniality. Whiteness in Cone's context is the colonial project as expressed in the United States, the racialized ideas of the West - where everyone has to look, think, and act the same. Whiteness is for Cone the capitalist economic structure and way of organizing society into slaves and owners, producers of knowledges and those subjected to them. The creation of emancipatory knowledges from the black experience, was and is the purpose of Black Liberation Theologies. This too is the purpose of decolonization and the only hope for Christian theology if it is to matter today.

As a product of decoloniality, Liberation Theologies are "undertaken by the oppressed people themselves" and stem "from the values proper to these people," that is, the logics and grammars of anti-capitalist decolonial world making through which a "true cultural revolution comes about" (Gutierrez 91). We see this in the life of the Baptist revolutionary Nat Turner, his rejection of the theologies that bless racialization, colonialism, and economies of slavery; we also see it in his recreated theological imaginary emerging from his direct experience of all three. He reclaimed the stolen tool of Christian religiosity to remove the nails driven through his life and climb off the cross of coloniality. A hundred years later Liberation Theologies are attempting to further this work: these alternative ways of knowing and shaping the god-world-relationship reject the myth of progress and the myth of historical evolution into a modern state of abundance. Locating the site of hermeneutical reflection for decolonial theology in the experience of colonized bodies necessitates this rejection. Out of a motley mixology of theological, social, and critical knowledges from below a strategy for liberation and revolution emerges without replicating the logics of the colonial masters. Theo-knowledges birthed out of liberatory struggles can and do refuse to replicate the masters' use of tools. The tool of religion in general, and decolonial Christianity in particular, can be used to articulate an egalitarian, life-affirming, ecological society, one that stands in direct contrast to the religious tool used to develop the coloniality of power. In this reshaping, the masters' stolen tools used for domination are queered for collective and self-determined decolonial liberation.

This originally appeared on Gregory's blog .

Works Cited

Asad, Talal. 2009. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

Cusicanqui, Silvia Rivera. 2012.

Cusicanqui, Silvia Rivera. 2012. "Ch'ixinakax Utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization." . South Atlantic Quarterly. 111 (1): 95-109.

Cone, James H. 1975. God of the Oppressed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Gutierrez, Gustavo. 1979. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation. London: SCM Press.

Gray, Thomas R.; Turner, Nat; and Royster, Paul (Depositor), "The Confessions of Nat Turner" (1831). Electronic Texts in American Studies. 15. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/15

Lampley, K. 2016. Theological Account of Nat Turner: Christianity, Violence, and Theology . New York City: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lincoln B. 1985. Notes Toward a Theory of Religion and Revolution. In: Lincoln B. (eds) Religion, Rebellion, Revolution. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mignolo, Walter. 2002. "The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference." South Atlantic Quarterly. 101 (1): 57-96.

Quijano, Anibal, and Michael Ennis. 2000. "Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America." Nepantla: Views from South. 1 (3): 533-580.

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2008. Another Knowledge is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies. London: Verso.

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2016. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. New York: Routledge.

White, Michael. The Wisdom of Audre Lorde. Web. https://www.micahmwhite.com/on-the-masters-tools/

Notes

[1] James Cone passed away on April 28, 2018 just five days before the presentation of this paper. I am forever indebted to his work. May he rest in Black Power.

The Colonial Roots and Legacy of the Latinx/Hispanic Labels: A Historical Analysis

By Valerie Reynoso

An influx of immigrants throughout the decades as well as centuries of colonialism has resulted in a heterogeneous population in the US composed of different ethnic groups and races. This diversity among US residents has also sparked debate on whether or not the fastest-growing pan-ethnic group in the country, Hispanic/Latinx, is a race. In a larger context, the question that will be answered in this piece is how the labels Latinx/Hispanic are colonial, what are the roots, and how do their political implications differ in Latin America versus the US. Exploring the history and politics surrounding the labels is purposeful and of importance because readers will gain an anti-colonial perspective, and likely previously unknown knowledge, on the development of said terms and implications in the Americas. In a majority of published writing and especially those within the West, the terms Latinx/Hispanic are seldom acknowledged in regards to how they reinforce colonialism and how their socializations differ depending on what region of the world one is observing.

Given the lack of information provided on the pan-ethnic group Latinx/Hispanic, many persons in the US do not know much on the subject and have misinformed preconceptions based primarily on ethnic stereotypes and mainstream media portrayals of said group. Being provided with a detailed analysis of Spanish, French, and Portuguese colonialism in the Americas, and the racial hierarchies that were established as a result of that in said regions, is necessary to deconstruct and decolonize these terms. In this paper I argue that in the US, Latinx/Hispanic is treated as a homogenous group and often times as a race, when it is not; and the roots of the terms as well as the developments of capitalism and Latin-European imperialism in what is now known as Latin America are proof as to why that is.

Using historical instances such as the codification of institutional racism in 15th-Century Spain, the idea of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) as a result of this, and the development of the casta system in the American colonies of the Iberian Peninsula, it will be proven that racism is a European conception and that the creation of the terms Latinx/Hispanic are informed by that through Iberian imperialism. Another idea that will be demonstrated is that the term Latin refers to those from the predominately Catholic countries where Latin-based languages originated and which colonized the Americas, where the non-white colonized subjects of these regions would then be referred to as Latin as well.

In regards to the chronological order of this paper, I will start off by discussing Iberian colonization of the Americas, focusing on Spanish imperialism, and how racism was first institutionally codified in Spain during the 15th Century, which was then followed by Spanish invasion and ravaging of the Americas and Africa. I will then follow with discussing the idea of limpieza de sangre and how this idea is based in white-supremacist ideology and was used as a tool to institutionalize anti-Black racism when the conquistadores invaded the Americas. Moreover, I will analyze the racial and class hierarchies established by the Iberian colonizers as well as the racial categories they created, which include the subsequent formation of the terms Latinx/Hispanic, what they mean, and the groups they include. Following this, I will examine the division of the North-American continent between the US and Mexico given the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which resulted in the US annexation of Aztlan territory, and how this act deepened apartheid conditions among the Americas which resultantly informed the ways in which the terms Latinx/Hispanic are constructed. I will conclude the paper by talking about how constructs of race differ in the US versus Latin America due to all the historical instances I mentioned above as well as opposing viewpoints and why they are ahistorical and factually incorrect.

Origins of Institutional Racism in 15th-Century Spain

The racist and imperialist circumstances that shaped the Latinx/Hispanic label cannot be deconstructed without first addressing the origins of Iberian colonization of the Americas, the institutionalization of racism in Spain, and how these built the racial hierarchies in Latin America that are still in place today. Along with chattel slavery of Africans, whose free and cheap forced labor would be used to construct the system of capitalism for the benefit of European Crowns, and which in part was used to codify racism, European imperialism was the other significant factor that was complicit in this. Moreover, racism was first institutionalized in Spain in 1449 by rebels in Toledo, Spain, who published an edict that became known as the first set of racially discriminatory laws. This edict, along with the Spanish classification and marginalization of Jews, paved the way for the development of anti-Black racism informed by the white-supremacist ideals of Eurocentric Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the origins of the idea of biological race with the popularization of Spanish limpieza de sangre.

Limpieza de sangre as an expression was popularized in the 16th Century; however, at the time it denoted the idea that blood was central to the formation of one's character since it circulates throughout the body. Limpieza attained its white-supremacist connotation in the mid-16th Century with blood purity restrictions being imposed in Spanish archdioceses and churches. Likewise, limpieza became a central tenant in the foundation of anti-Black racism with the birth of Iberian imperialism of the Americas, enslavement of Africans, and expansion of plantation agriculture beginning in the 1440s when Iberia became involved in the slave trade of Africans. In 1552, the Spanish Crown mandated that Iberian settlers in the Americas provide evidence of limpieza, so Spain could spread "purity" throughout its colonies while Portugal did the same in Brazil. In the American colonies of Iberia, limpieza served to indicate a lack of Black blood and of Jewish blood; however, it was mostly used as a colonial tool to enforce anti-Black racism through the justification of chattel slavery of Africans and the establishment of the racial casta system. Limpieza in the Americas was modeled from the Spanish system and used to systemically prohibit Black people from civil, religious, and many commercial occupations (Gorsky, Jeffrey).

Foundation of Spanish Casta System through Limpieza de Sangre

In The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race, Charles Hirschman explicates that the racist beliefs of the European settlers is evident in the systems founded in nations they colonized, such as their racial categorizations in censuses and racial identities through limpieza. White-supremacist ideologies and constructs of race became a new foundation in the societies of colonized peoples despite these ideas having originated in Western nations (Hirschman). Due to this, the formation of the terms Latinx/Hispanic are also informed by the white-supremacist institutions that are still intact in Latin America to this day. Along with anti-Black racism and racial stratification, limpieza also played a key role in the formation of the Spanish casta system that was used to racially categorize Iberians and their descendants, as well as the Black and Native peoples they colonized and exploited throughout the Americas. Casta means "lineage, breed or race" in numerous Iberian dialects and stems from the Latin "castus," which is a term that suggests the encouragement of "white racial purity."

Castas was an Iberian term used in the 17th-18th Centuries to label the multiracial people of their colonies. Casta ideology functioned simultaneously with the structure of grouping built upon assimilation and proximity to Hispanic culture, which differentiated gente de razón (people with rationale), which were Spaniards and colonized peoples who assimilated into their culture, and gente sin razón (people without rationale), which were Black and Native peoples who maintained their tribal affiliations and pre-colonial cultures independent from Iberia (Native Heritage Project, "Las Castas - Spanish Racial Classifications").

The Spanish Casta System

Las castas was a socioeconomic and racial classification system founded in the 18th Century in the Spanish colonies within the Americas and included 16 racial casta combinations. The multiracial offspring of the Iberian settlers who mated with or coerced the Native and African women in the Americas became known as castas. The casta system was influenced by the belief that the birth, skin color, racial and ethnic origins of a person determined their value and character and permeated every aspect of life in the Americas, not just socioeconomically speaking. The Spanish colonial state and Church demanded more taxes and tribute payments from the lower socioeconomic racial castas who were the Black and Native peoples not mixed with Iberian blood. The prime categories of the casta system were: Peninsulars, who were the Spaniard settlers who were born in the Iberian Peninsula and settled in the Americas; Criollos, who were the Spaniard descendants who were born in the Americas; Indios, who were the pure Amerindians; Negros, who were the pure African descendants; Mestizos, who were the Spanish and Native mixed people; Castizos, who were the Spanish and Native mixed peoples predominantly of Iberian ancestry and sometimes had enough proximity to whiteness to be racialized as criollo; Pardos, who were those of mixed Spanish, African, and Native descents; Zambos, who were of mixed African and Native descents; and Mulatos, who were of mixed African and Spanish descents (Native Heritage Project, "Las Castas - Spanish Racial Classifications"). People in the Americas who were colonized by Spain and Portugal existed prior to the creation of the terms Latinx/Hispanic. Their diverse cultures also existed and they were never socialized as a homogenous group in the Iberian colonies and still are not so.

Creation of the Terms Latinx/Hispanic

Latinx/Hispanic are terms of European origin that were then brought to the Americas through imperialist conquests and enforced on non-white populations by colonial means. The denomination Latin was created in Europe in the early 19th Century given the increase of romantic nationalism and racism which prompted Europeans to identify their countries with the languages they spoke. The concept of a Latin race initially referred to nations where Romance languages (Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, French, Italian, etc) originated or were spoken and where the populations were predominately Catholic. The nations and regions that would become known as Latin Europe are Portugal, Spain, Basque Country, Galicia, Catalunya, France and Italy, respectively.

Latin was spread as a label by French intellectuals in the 1830s in reference to those residing in former Iberian colonies in the Americas (Gobat, Michel). This was in part to legitimize French colonial aspirations in the region by persuading people from these regions that they are all members of the Latin race, regardless of whether or not they were European, and that they therefore had proximity to the French as well as a duty to combat US and British expansion in Latin America. In the years of tensions between the US and pre-Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo Mexico, Anglo-Saxons became the standard of whiteness in the US, and non-Anglo Europeans such as the Irish, Italians, and Spaniards were not racialized as white in the US at the time. Criollo elites affiliated the Hispanic race as those in the Americas who shared Iberian culture regardless of race, and Hispano-América was built against former Portuguese colony Brazil (Gobat).

Hispanic refers to cultures and people from Spain as well as people from former Spanish colonies who are identified as having a Spanish culture due to colonialism. Despite this, the cultures of Spanish-speaking Latin Americans are rather a blend of primarily Iberian, Amerindian, and African influences-as well as some Arab influence due to Moorish conquests of Spain during the 13th to 14th Centuries and establishment of Al-Andalus and the Umayaad Caliphate in the Iberian peninsula, stretching through North Africa and the Middle East. Likewise, not all people in what is now known as Latin America identify as having an Hispanic culture, such as Natives, who the colonizers would refer to as gente sin razón due to their continuation of their tribal affiliation and pre-colonial cultures with little Iberian influence, as well as Afro-descendants, such as many Afro-Colombians in regions like Choco, Colombia, who have primarily afro-centric cultures.

Historically White-Supremacist Standards of the Latinx/Hispanic Labels

Criollos and other white settlers in Latin America began to embrace their new identity as the Latin race, among the first to do so being the liberal, Parisian émigrés such as the Chilean Francisco Bilbao, who befriended 1848 French Revolution icon Félicité Robert de Lamennais. Lamennais encouraged Bilbao to advertise the unity of Latin Europe and South America; as a result, the idea of the Latin race rapidly dispersed throughout Latin America and Latin Europe. This concept reached Brazil by the early 1850s, especially seeing that the Brazilian elite yearned for Brazil to become the France of South America, as well as to associate themselves more with Spaniards and their American colonies (Gobat, Michel).

The Latin race was also socialized as an identity that non-white people could be part of if they spoke Spanish or Portuguese and were Catholic, or that they would be excluded all together from by those who associated Latin explicitly with whiteness. For instance, Juan Batista Alberdi was an Argentine intellectual who stated that anyone in the Americas who is not Latin or Anglo-Saxon of European descent only, is a barbarian. To him and others who agreed with him, the Latin race was one founded by and for Latin Europeans and their settler descendants only; one that Native and African descendants could never become part of, despite their forced assimilation into the culture. Alberdi was advocating for a political system in which the "inferior" Natives and mixed-race peoples of Argentina would be eliminated and the white Latin race would dominate in all its hegemony, such as what occurred in the Argentine genocide of the Conquest of the Desert in the 1870s.

These absolutist and white-supremacist views were not unique to Alberdi and other white Argentines who sided with him, as these ideas were common throughout Latin America among criollos and other European settlers (Gobat, Michel). The rise of manifest destiny in the US and strengthened desire of Anglo-Saxons to take over the non-Anglo and therefore, "inferior," races of the region led criollos to view themselves as the Latin race that was under US attack and had to resist US dominion over their colonies. Due to this, many criollo elites felt compelled to embrace the Latin race because they thought that by doing so they would receive help from France, the most powerful Latin power, in resisting US invasions of Latin America. During this time period, the Latin race was constructed against the Protestant Anglo-Saxon race of the US that posed a threat to the criollo elite of the former Iberian colonies; the Latin concept was one that denoted Iberian settlers who wanted to defend their conquered territories against other white settlers in North America (Gobat, Michel).

Latinx/Hispanic is homogenized in the US without any regard to the fact that it is not a race, but instead a colonial term that was built by and for Latin Europeans. It has historically excluded non-white colonial subjects of Latin Europeans, especially if they refuse to assimilate into the cultures of Latin Europeans and convert to Catholicism. Another common misconception is that Latinx/Hispanic people cannot be African simultaneously, which is also false given that a majority of enslaved Africans were taken to Latin America, not the US, and that Brazil has the largest population of Afro-descendants in the world outside of the African continent.

The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Its Influence on Latinx/Hispanic Constructs, and the Perpetuation of Indigenous Erasure

Along with the history of the development of the term, the notion of the Latin race is constructed against indigeneity as well as Blackness, which was reinforced with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo between the US and Mexico. The Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo on February 2nd, 1848 at the city of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Mexican government surrendered to the US on September 1847 following the demise of the Mexican capital, Mexico City, and defeat of the Mexican troops. Peace talks were mediated between chief clerk of the US State Department, Nicholas Trist, and General Winfield Scott-who concluded that Mexico should be treated as a defeated enemy.

Trist and Scott negotiated with a particular delegation of the fallen Mexican government represented primarily by Don Bernardo Couto, Don Miguel Atristain, and Don Luis Gonzaga Cuevas. Trist negotiated a treaty which stated that Mexico should cede to the US its Upper Californian and New Mexican territories, also known as Aztlan. This was also recognized as the Mexican Cession and consisted of what are now the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and portions of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. Mexico had given up territorial rights to Texas and identified the Rio Grande as the US-Mexico border (The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo).

The division of North America via an imperialist treaty in which the US claimed Aztlan created the artificial border between the US and Mexico as well as a division between Natives in the US, whose colonizers were from England, and Natives below the US border, whose colonizers were from Spain. When entering the US by any means, Natives from below the US border are labeled Latin and therefore illegal foreigners in the country, due to their colonizers having been from Latin Europe rather than the UK. The Latin concept was designed to give non-white subjects of Iberian colonialism more proximity to whiteness; to label oppressed peoples of Latin America derivatives of Latin Europeans and Iberians, and therefore not indigenous to the lands they either inhabited prior to European settlement, or were forcefully taken from by Latin Europeans.

The Latin concept also gives criollos and other white settlers in the former Iberian colonies a false sense of indigeneity; that they are the original peoples of the region their conquistador ancestors labeled Latin America, that Spanish and Portuguese languages are native to the Americas, and that dialects of Native languages throughout the region are what is considered foreign. Non-white Latinx/Hispanic people are expected to assimilate into the white standard of the Latin race, especially considering that Latin Americans with lighter skin possess a disproportionate amount of wealth and political power in comparison to their non-white counterparts due to criollo inheritance from their Iberian, colonizing ancestors (Planas, Roque). Given the casta system, the closest one is to the criollo category or any derivative of that, the more one is able to reap material benefits from being racialized as closer to white.

Homogenization of Latinx/Hispanic People in the US Due to Different Constructs of Race in the US

In her article "For Many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture than Color," Mireya Navarro addresses the complexities of Latinx racial and ethnic identities, especially in regards to the US census. She explicates how the race classifications offered by the US census are not satisfactory to many Latin American descendants for numerous reasons; some of these reasons being that they are racialized differently in their home countries, that they are very multiracial and have difficulty drawing fine lines in terms of racial identity, or disconnections they may feel with their cultures if they did not grow up around other Latinx, or if they have a parent who is not of the heritage. On the other hand, Navarro also brings up a portion of Latinx who do not identify as such on the census and just put their race instead.

The US census contributes to the identity issues many Latinx/Hispanic people experience because constructs of race and socio-racial categorizations are different in Latin America than in the US. This has created debates in the US regarding whether or not Latinx/Hispanic should officially be considered a race since Fronteras Desk reported that 37 percent of Latinx/Hispanic participants marked that they were "some other race" (Planas, Roque). Despite this, categorizing Latinx/Hispanic would not change the socioeconomic and racial disparities that exist among the pan-ethnic group and the region they come from even if they are homogenized as a single group in the US. In addition to this, racializing Latinx/Hispanic would lump colonized peoples with their Iberian colonizers, which erases the history of Iberian colonialism and ravaging of the Americas and Africa as well as the need for reparations to be given to Native and African descendants who are systemically disenfranchised as a result of the capitalist system that was forced upon them by Latin Europeans.

The Pew Research Center reported that a growing portion of the Latinx/Hispanic population in the US is identifying as white and it is assumed that similar to the Italian and Irish, Latinx/Hispanic could be the next group in the US to become racialized as white. It is also argued that Latinx/Hispanic people chose the white category on government forms that told them the pan-ethnic group is not a race (Liu, Eric). The issue with the assumptions based on the Pew Research Center is that Latinx/Hispanic is not a race and that criollos are white settlers from Spain and Portugal; in other words, Europeans just like British descendants in the US are. Therefore, Criollos labeling themselves as white on documents is not stemming from a desire to be white, but rather from the fact that they are racially white. In contrast to criollos, non-white Latinx/Hispanic people categorizing themselves as white on US government documents may more often be due to Latin-European imperialism and the desirability to be white, which stems from the white-supremacist, capitalist system and las castas that was inflicted upon them.

In 2016, a US appeals court ruled that the pan-ethnic group Latinx/Hispanic is a race under US federal anti-discrimination laws. This was stated after a white man named Christopher Barrella was rejected from a position of police chief in Long Island so the position could be given to a white Hispanic man named Miguel Bermudez instead. Barrella filed a racial discrimination lawsuit in 2012 (Iafolla, Robert), further complicating an already complex and misunderstood history. The issue with US anti-discrimination laws classifying Latinx/Hispanic as a racial category is that it is not a race; members of that group will be racialized and experience discriminations, or lack of, differently as a result of their races. A Latinx/Hispanic of African descent will experience anti-Black racism in legal systems due to them being Black even though they are from a country that was colonized by Iberia. On the other hand, Spaniards directly from Spain are considered Hispanic on the US census, which would imply that the US anti-discriminatory laws would be racializing them as non-white people, which is false because they are white Europeans.

As much as US legal systems and their US-centric understanding of the Latinx/Hispanic pan-ethnicity try to homogenize the group, these efforts will fall apart due to the fact that it is ultimately not a race and not all members of the group are colonized peoples.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the terms Latinx/Hispanic have colonial origins and have been historically used to subjugate peoples who were colonized by Latin Europeans and to force them to assimilate into Latin European cultures. Because of the racial casta system that formed from the colonization of the Americas, whiteness became the standard for Latinx/Hispanic, and those who are not Iberians are obligated to do what they can to gain proximity to whiteness and become as close to criollos as possible. US society doesn't understand this complex history. And as long as the US attempts to homogenize diverse peoples from the Americas through the Latinx/Hispanic label, it will be confronted with contradictions that are exposed when people of that pan-ethnic group experience discriminations based on their races rather than on the fallacy that is the colonial term.

References

Gobat, Michel. "The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race." The American Historical Review, vol. 118, no. 5, 1 Dec. 2013, pp. 1345-1375. Oxford Academic.

Gorsky, Jeffrey. How Racism Was First Officially Codified in 15 th-Century Spain. Atlas Obscura, 22 Dec. 2016.

Hirschman, Charles. "The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race." Population and Development Review, vol. 30, no. 3, Sept. 2004, p. 395. JSTOR.

Iafolla, Robert. 'Hispanic' Is a Race under U.S. Anti-Bias Laws, Court Rules. Reuters, 16 Feb. 2016.

Las Castas - Spanish Racial Classifications. Native Heritage Project, 15 June 2013.

Liu, Eric. Why Are Hispanics Identifying as White? CNN, 30 May 2014.

Navarro, Mireya. For Many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture Than Color. The New York Times , 13 Jan. 2012.

Planas, Roque. "Latino Is Not A Race, Despite The Census Debate." Huffington Post, 17 Jan. 2013.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

What About Kurdistan?

By Daniel Rombro

A people's right to decide their own fate is undeniable. And for the majority of those on the revolutionary left, this principle (referred to as national self-determination) is a fundamental part of liberatory politics. For the last several years, one issue of national liberation has been, generally speaking, in the forefront: Kurdistan. However, to truly understand the Kurdish issue as it exists today, and to develop the correct position one should have on it, we must also understand the origins of the modern Kurdish nation and its political aspirations.

With the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1920, the Kurdish nation was divided by the Great Powers among Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Whereas before the Kurds had been mostly united and receiving somewhat beneficial treatment from the Ottomans, now there was division and persecution.

In Turkey, the Kurdish population was subjected to a state founded on intense nationalistic values, collected in an ideology known as Kemalism (after the nations founder, Kemal Ataturk). Kurds were not even seen as Kurds, but referred to as "Mountain Turks". Their language and cultural traditions were outlawed, all a part of a nationalistic assimilation campaign. Attempted Kurdish uprisings were put down violently.

In the predominantly Arab countries, the Kurdish people were no better off. In Syria, with the rise of the Ba'athist party, and the failure of several attempted uprisings, the Kurdish population had their citizenship systematically revoked, rendering them stateless. As well, the Syrian government initiated a campaign of ethnic cleansing, forcing Kurds off their land and implanting Arabs from the South.

Iraq was much the same story, once the Ba'athists came to power. However, Kurdish revolts in response to discriminatory policies were treated differently. Instead of widespread revocation of citizenship, outright slaughter and ethnic cleansing ensued. From the years 1986 to 1989, Saddam Hussein's government committed countless massacres along with an intense "Arabization" campaign. This offensive, dubbed the Anfal campaign, included the use of chemical weapons, with the most deadly episode being the Halabja massacre. Nearly 5,000 Kurds were murdered by chemical weapons. Estimates for the number of Kurds murdered during the Anfal campaign vary, but numbers are estimated from a low of 50,000 to as high as 150,000.

Finally, there was Iran, where Kurdish organizations were suppressed and Kurds were considered Iranian, but which never quite reached the level of oppression as the Kurdish people endured in neighboring countries, with sporadic on-again off-again small scale Kurdish insurgencies.

Yet in these incredibly difficult times, consciousness still managed to thrive. Two movements of note would arise in two different parts of Kurdistan, representing very different streams of thought. In Iraqi Kurdistan, with a Kurdish populace distinct from the rest of their brothers, the traditional Sorani Kurdish tribal leadership built and led a movement founded on traditional nationalist secular values. This movement became organized into a party known as the Kurdistan Democratic Party. A later split, the more social-democratic-oriented Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the PUK, would go on to challenge the KDP for power and influence. The Kurdistan Democrats oriented themselves towards the West (mainly the U.S. and Western Europe), cooperated with political rivals of Hussein's Iraq, and launched numerous uprisings and guerrilla campaigns, culminating in the establishment of a de facto independent Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

In the northern reaches of Kurdistan, a different kind of movement was being built. Inspired by the Turkish New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, several Kurdish and Turkish adherents of the movement took the newly-cemented position of Kurdistan as an oppressed nation to new levels.

Led by Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdistan Workers Party (or PKK) was established. With a small initial cadre, the PKK initiated an insurgency that began with nothing more than "propaganda of the deed" acts, before culminating into a full-scale war that would engulf the entirety of Turkish Kurdistan. The PKK would grow to become an organization with a strong presence in all four parts of Kurdistan along with the diaspora. However, in 1999, Ocalan was captured in a joint MIT-CIA operation (MIT being the national intelligence agency of Turkey), signaling a new turn in the PKK's political evolution. Negotiations were opened with the Turkish state, reforms implemented, and the electoral process was engaged in by PKK-supporting individuals.

The most notable change came in the ideological realm. While in Prison, Ocalan familiarized himself with the works of a former American anarchist, Murray Bookchin, and his recently-developed social theory of Libertarian Municipalism, among others. Discarding the New Left-inspired and partly Maoist-tinged "Marxism-Leninism" of their past, the party quickly adopted Ocalan's newly-adopted ideology of Democratic Confederalism, which stressed the democratic organization of the people counterposed to the militaristic nation-state.

After decades of both progress and setbacks, the PKK was finally given a chance to begin building their social project. Based on Ocalan's new theories, the Syrian affiliate of the PKK was able to storm into the mayhem of the Syrian civil war, taking control of the primarily Kurdish northern areas (Known as Rojava) from the Assad regime in a mostly peaceful handover.

Syrian Civil War, Da'esh, and Developments in Iraq

Forming a political entity, today named the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, the PYD (the PKK's Syrian affiliate) quickly went to work securing their statelet and implementing Democratic Confederalist values, which included a commitment to ethnic and religious pluralism, women's liberation, and a form of cooperative economics. Yet, for both the PKK and KDP projects, the ability to finally realize their deepest aspirations would only become possible when everything around them began to crumble and burn. In 2014, amidst the Syrian Civil war and a continued armed Iraqi resistance, the region was shaken to its very core. An Iraqi Salafist group, commonly referred to as ISIS, or Da'esh, launched a blitzkrieg style offensive, seizing nearly half of Iraq and, later, half of Syria in a matter of days and weeks.

ISIS declared war on all foreign involvement in the region, along with every other government, religious group, and social strata that didn't fit its image of an ideal fundamentalist caliphate. A wave of reactionary brutality was unleashed against the peoples of the region that was truly heinous. And yet, in the midst of this lightning advance, the Kurds were able to secure their best hope for a bright future.

In Iraq, the KDP/PUK-led forces were able to secure disputed areas between them and the Iraqi government, whose forces collapsed rapidly in the face of Da'esh's offensive. The most notable gain among these areas was the city of Kirkuk, often referred to as the "Kurdish Jerusalem", whose surrounding oil reserves are some of the largest in Iraq.

Syrian Kurdistan was a different story however. Newly established, and without western support, both factors that the KDP/PUK had going for them, the PYD and YPG (the PYD's military arm) were militarily unprepared for what came next. Declaring the Rojava administration to be atheist communists, ISIS launched an offensive into Kurdish-held lands, seizing much territory and culminating in the battle of the city of Kobane, with some observers said was reminiscent of the battle of Stalingrad. As all looked lost, and the defenders of Kobane were pushed to the brink, the tide turned.

With international pressure mounting, the U.S.-led imperialist Coalition, sensing an opportunity to expand their influence in the region, which had previously been maintaining its interests in Iraq, intervened directly in a large scale manner in Syria for the first time. With continuous American air strikes, and an influx of Kurdish volunteers from across the border, the YPG managed to push Da'esh out of Kurdish areas, and then, under the direction and leadership of the Coalition, eventually seized Raqqa, ISIS's self-declared capital, as well as many other Arab-populated areas, effectively spelling the end of Da'esh's territorial rule. Kurdish-held and administered territory was at its peak in modern history, and it looked as though the survival of the existing Kurdish projects was assured. But nothing is ever certain, and Kurdistan was no exception.

In late September 2017, the KRG, the KDP/PUK-led autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region, held a long desired independence referendum. With a participation rate of over 70 percent and a "yes" margin of over 90 percent, the Kurdish people's choice was obviously clear. Despite this, the position of the Iraqi government remained firm, and the government itself threatened harsh consequences if the referendum was held.

The KRG took these threats in stride, hoping that their aid in the war against ISIS and years of Western support would translate into support for an independent Iraqi Kurdistan. Their hopes were misplaced; the Western powers were more concerned with maintaining influence and some semblance of control over a united and federal Iraq. With no fears of foreign government intervention, Iraqi federal forces and Shi'ite militiamen invaded KRG territory several weeks later, routing Kurdish military forces that remained and negotiating for others to withdraw. The disputed areas were secured, Kirkuk lost, and the KRG brought to heel. Any hope for an independent Kurdish nation in Iraq was squashed for the foreseeable future.

Across the border in Syria, their compatriots fared little better. The offensives into ISIS-held lands had pushed far enough west that there seemed to be a distinctly strong chance that Rojava's westernmost outpost, the area around the city of Afrin, would be united with the bulk of land held to its east. This possibility was violently struck down however when the Turkish government, fearing a PKK-linked independent Kurdish entity on its borders, invaded in conjunction with Syrian opposition forces the area around the city of Jarabulus, dashing any immediate hopes for uniting the Kurdish areas. For months, this situation remained static, with brief skirmishes occurring along the Manbij-Jarabulus border area.

On January 18, 2018, however, Turkey finally launched its anticipated offensive into Afrin, after years of blustering. The timing made sense, as the imperialist Coalition was less likely to intervene due to Da'esh being all but defeated. The offensive itself was brutal, with reports of hundreds of civilian casualties, chemical weapon use by Turkish forces, and the enforcement of Sharia law by Syrian rebels, who made up the bulk of the invading manpower.

Afrin remains under Turkish/Syrian rebel occupation, with sporadic unconfirmed reports of Kurdish guerrillas attacking occupying forces. Erdogan, Turkey's president, has threatened to move east into more Kurdish-held territory. Whether he will follow through waits to be seen.

Kurdistan and the Western Left

What is a revolutionary's response to these recent events? What is a revolutionary's response to the wider Kurdish struggle? The radical left is hardly unanimous.

Some, those often guilty of wholehearted unconditional support to anti-Western bourgeois regimes, blow the Kurds off as nothing more than shills, undeserving of nationhood and deserving of whatever abysmal fate eventually befalls them. These leftists, labelling themselves as "anti-imperialist", more often than not forget those basic tenets of revolutionary thought. They point to the horrifically corrupt and nepotistic tribal run regime of Iraq Kurdistan as justification for condemning all Kurds. They argue that since the Iraqi Kurdish authorities are nothing more than a puppet government of the western imperialist powers (which is indeed true) and that the Rojava government has essentially become a base and partner of U.S. imperialism, that any hopes, desires, and fight for nationhood among the Kurdish people only serve to strengthen western imperialism in the region, at the cost of other powers.

To deny a people's right to self-determination, for the notion that this will somehow strengthen western imperialism's hand, is nothing less than coddling the ambitions of the anti-western capitalist powers they hold so dear. To this we must say, did Lenin scream for the Kaiser's victory? Did Luxemburg plead for French soldiers to march into Berlin? One must be against their own nation's imperialism first and foremost, yes! But not at the cost of becoming nothing more than a shill for different capitalist nations' bloody conquests.

At the other end, however, is a crime that is even more unforgivable in the history of the revolutionary movement. Some so called "leftists", seeing the destruction and slaughter that a carefully built up national arsenal can reap on a people, declare their support for imperialist intervention by their own nations! When the Kurds are used as the tools of imperialist powers, seizing Arab areas, infringing on the Arab nation's right to self-determination, they cheer it. "Who cares? It is only reactionaries and murderers whose land they take."

These leftists are fools and poor students of history at that. It matters not what reason your own nation's imperialism justifies itself, what matters is that it is indeed imperialism! And if there is one elementary position above all in revolutionary politics, it is that imperialism must be defeated at all costs.

What is counterposed? What is the alternative? First and foremost is that basic principle, sewn into the very fabric of revolutionary politics by Lenin, of national self-determination. Kurdish military forces and political organizations, protecting and representing Kurdish majority areas, must be defended. Kurds have a right to decide their own fate, as an independent nation or otherwise, against all who would oppose them.

When Kurdish soldiers defend Kurdish lands, we raise our voices in support, and will do everything in our power to aid their cause. When Afrin is invaded by Turkish military forces and their cronies, we should all say: Turkey out of Syria, victory to Kurdish forces in self-defense! We say the same if Turkey threatens to move into other Kurdish-populated areas. We say the same if Iraqi forces move into Iraqi Kurdish lands! We call for the defeat of invading forces, we call for support to Iraqi Kurd forces! Yet no political support to the feudal Barzani regime. Kurdish history is one of blood and betrayal, a nation is the least they deserve.

We must also speak up when mistakes are made. When Kurdish forces are used as mercenaries in the service of imperialist agendas, when they host large contingents of imperialist troops, when they sign long-term agreements with imperialist governments (as the Rojava administration has done as well), we must speak up!

When Arab national self-determination is violated, it matters little if the government that dominates them claims to be multi-ethnic and multi-religious when their administration is dominated by Kurds in all aspects. We must voice our opposition to Kurdish complacency and cooperation with imperialism. This is said with the truest hopes for Kurdish nationhood in our hearts, as the closest friends and strongest allies. You will never be free and safe so long as imperialist hands guide your decisions.

The Kurdish nationalist movement faces the utmost danger. Danger of both war and defeat, but also danger of being led astray down paths that put a different sort of chains on their people. While leftists can only do so much, it's important that we are right and correct in our positions according to revolutionary theory and history. We cannot tarnish our past if we hope to build a brighter future.

Daniel Rombro is a revolutionary Marxist who served with the YPG and Turkish comrades in Northern Syria for 6 months, from January to August 2016, in a military capacity.

"Colonialism is a Crime Against Humanity": An Interview with Oscar Lopez Rivera

By Ekim Kilic

Under US law, Puerto Rico is defined as an "unincorporated territory of the United States." The Caribbean Island declared bankruptcy in May 2017 due to public debt. Then, in September 2017, it suffered massive devastation caused by Hurricane Maria. Oscar López Rivera, a pro-independence popular leader of Puerto Rico, gained his freedom during the Obama presidency just before Trump's inauguration. In 1981, he was imprisoned on charges of "conspiracy against the US authority" and sentenced to Marion (Illinois) and ADX Florence (Colorado) prisons in the United States - 35 years of his life, with more than 12 of that spent in solitary confinement. Rivera, a former member of FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation), is called "the Nelson Mandela of the Americas".

Oscar López Rivera stated that the US violates international law as it commits colonialism. We talked with Mr. Rivera on the 20th anniversary of the Jericho Justice Movement, which is a platform for American political prisoners.

What are the economic and social consequences of Puerto Rico being a dependent country, under the US colonization?

Well, the economy of Puerto Rico is terrible. It has been terrible from the moment the United States invaded and occupied Puerto Rico in 1898.We have never been able to develop our own internal market. We have been totally, totally tore exploited. Every penny, every dollar that is made in Puerto Rico comes into the US banks.If I were going to go to a store right now and put my credit card, that money will not stay in Puerto Rico. That money comes directly into a US Bank. Yearly, billions of dollars come out of Puerto Rico. And at the same time, this is whole process of privatizing everything that is owned by the Puerto Rican people, everything that is public, they wanted to privatize it. We lost our telephone company the Puerto Rican telephone company in 1998.It was privatized. Today, the building where people were 24/7 today is an empty building.This is a shell of a building. All those workers who were forced to leave Puerto Rico and come the United States, the only place for they can get a job.The same thing happened with the airport. The same thing happened with the highways. The same thing happened with the hospitals. Today we can say that Puerto Rico's health system is totally a sham. It doesn't exist. Because Puerto Ricans after the hurricane realized how bad how bad the hospital situation in Puerto Rico. The threat is to life of Puerto Ricans, because the health conditions are terrible. So they're faster follow the plight of the Puerto Rican today a colony of The United States. Now, I want to make this point clear: Colonialism is a crime against humanity. Since 1898, United States has been committing that crime against Puerto Ricans.Andwe need a Puerto Rico to be an independent sovereign nation. That's why we want to Puerto Rico to be decolonized.

Why has not Puerto Rico gained its independence yet? What are the factors behind it?

Because the US has been able to repress every movement. I am one of the person who spent 35 years in prison. Because I fight for the independence of Puerto Rico. But historically since 1898, Puerto Ricans have been sent to prison for wanting Puerto Rico to be an independent and sovereign nation since 1898.So for 120 years we have been persecuted, we have been criminalized and we have been sent to prison for wanting Puerto Rico to be an independent and a sovereign nation.

Mr. Rivera, you visited municipalities in Puerto Rico at last week. What did you see? How may you characterize the last situation in Puerto Rico after the hurricane?

The situation in Puerto Rico is probably the worst conditions that we have felt, probably, in the last 70 years. Because the only time there we have a such an experience was when the United States was in the Depression and Puerto Rico suffered the depression three times of what the United States people were suffering here in this country. Because Puerto Rico subjected to real terrible conditions once that the depression happened. And today, the last 20 years, we have been facing the same economic situation, exploitation, exploitation, privatization. And since the hurricane, we have not been able to really get Puerto Rico into a situation that we can say it's livable. There are towns in Puerto Rico with %72 of the population without electricity, the people without water, the people the people who have no homes at all. So those are the conditions facing in Puerto Rico right now.

How has the struggle for independence been affected by events such as the economic crisis, in which the country was declared bankrupt, or the referendum, in which a demand for US statehood was articulated?

First of all, the Congress of the United States passed a law and approved by the Obama administration that they pose this, what is called, fiscal control board.Seven persons, not elected by the Puerto Rican people, not chosen by the Puerto Rican people, but chosen by Washington. Those seven people determine what's going to happen in Puerto Rico. For example in the last 3 or 4 years, we have had probably close to 300 schools close already. These are part of the our school system in Puerto Rico. Last year, 157 public schools were closed in Puerto Rico. The threat right now because they want to close to 300 schools more. They're talking about fire 7000 teachers. If we get that passed into law, we will lose over probably as many as 7000 teachers or more. Probably7000 to 10000 teachers are being threatened right now. Those teachers who we need in order to have an education system in Puerto Rico. That's not the issue that they are concerned. What they want to do is to get a debt, an audacious and criminal debt of 74 billion dollars that the United States government has been complicit in the making on the creation of debt. We have been asking foran audit inorder to know for us, for the Puerto Rican people to know exactly how the money was spent. We have been denied every opportunity, every time that we have gone before the courts, every time that we have asked, we have been told there's not going to be an audit of the debt. Now who are that have the money? Who are the 74 billion dollars went to? We don't know. We would like to know.

Is there any solidarity network in Caribbean between local forces for anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism?

I think in the Caribbean we have Cuba as a model. In South America, we have Venezuela as a model.In Central America, we have Nicaragua as a model.In South America, we have Bolivia as a model.Those are countries that are functioning. And those are countries that no matter how much the United States is trying to do restore their economy and take over their governments. They have been able to survive. And so, I think that we have plenty of examples where countries have been able to come together, to have their own governments, to have less and less interference of the United States. But the United States does not stop to interfere. The people in the countries whether it's Bolivia, whether it is Ecuador, whether is Venezuela, whether is Cuba, the people there are the ones forced the USto not be able to take over their country. They want to take it over. They want to go back to the oligarchies, and go back to domination in their countries in South America that are in most conditions, but the ones that are fighting for their own countries do want that they want a different kind of system, a system that represents the interests of the people, not the interests of the privileged few. Those countries are really moving. And I hope that they will continue to move, and that more and more countries will become just like a system with a system of a political and economic system that responds to the interests of the people, whether it is in Argentina, whether it is in Brazil, whether it is in Uruguay, whether it is in Chile, whether it is in Colombia. Whatever country there is in South America, in Central America, in the Caribbean, every country to have its all power, its all government and the government represents the interests of the people, not like in the case of Puerto Rico where the government of the United States represents the interests of the United States, not the interests of the Puerto Rican people.

One year ago, you gained your freedom. And you were a freedom fighter before, and you are still a freedom fighter. What are your plans or suggestions for the fight for independence of Puerto Rico?

Well, our goal right now is decolonize Puerto Rico. And we're saying is very simple, it's a very simple message. If we love Puerto Rico, if we love our culture, if we love our identity, if we love our way of life, then it behooves us to fight for Puerto Rico and decolonize Puerto Rico. Puerto Rican nation is viable. A Puerto Rican nation can be created and be a very strong nation. We have to work with all to do what we have to. We have human resources. We have the natural resources. We have also the potential for transforming Puerto Rico into the nation that has the potential of it. I believe that we are capable of doing it. We will definitely fight until our last breath to make Puerto Rico the nation that has the potential of being. We haveto fight, we have to struggle. We know that most of all Puerto Ricans love Puerto Rico. And based on the love, we are going to decolonize Puerto Rico.

The United States has been able to get away with doing what he's doing to Puerto Rico. Because the rest of the world sometimes ignores the United States, or sometimes becomes an ally of the United States. So at this particular moment, it should be in the hands of the General Assembly to take a position and stop colonizing Puerto Rico, force the United States government to respect the international law. Because international law says that colonialism is a crime against humanity. And the whole world should be behind Puerto Rico in this issue of the colonization.

This interview was originally published in Evrensel. This version was republished from Red Phoenix .

Which Red Flag is Flying?: Communist and Anarchist Solidarity in Afrin

By Marcel Cartier

As aspiring Sultan Erdogan's assault on the radical democratic experiment in Afrin is repelled by Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen and other nationalities who comprise a diverse, multi-ethnic region, two red flags are now flying at the front lines. One of these is of course of the occupying, fascist Turkish Republic that is fighting alongside Salafist Free Syrian Army (FSA) units, as NATO's second largest army has made common cause with some of the most regressive figures imaginable. The other flag represents a diametrically opposed tendency, that of the international movement of the working-class. This blood-soaked banner of revolution and the sacrifice of the proletarian struggle is held up with pride by the communist internationalists fighting alongside the People's and Women's Protection Units (YPG and YPJ) to defend the sovereignty of Afrin, of Syria, and the revolutionary ideals of the Rojava Revolution.

The Left and Syria's Proxy War

The complexities of Syria's war - now entering into the eighth year of bloodshed and unrelenting agony for the people of this land so connected with the genesis of civilization - have often been extremely challenging to navigate for an outside observer. For those on the radical left, this has been a conflict that has often exposed key differences between tendencies in terms of how to assess not only the region, but the world situation and character of international actors in what has been far more than simply a civil war.

In the initial days of the so-called Syrian 'uprising' in the Spring of 2011, the western left largely assessed events through the lens of optimism in light of the mass protests that had already swept Tunisia and Egypt. The overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, who had seemed untouchable for three decades, galvanized revolutionary forces in the west who were often far too accustomed to the idea that 'doing the impossible' was precisely that - impossible. History seemed to now be proving differently, showing that sometimes decades can be captured in mere days or weeks.

While some Trotskyist groups in the west had initially thrown their weight behind the mainstream 'Syrian Arab' opposition that was grouped around what became the 'Free Syrian Army', communists from more 'orthodox' parties (those who supported or at least defended the Soviet Union and socialist bloc until its final demise in 1991) tended to support the Syrian government and leadership on the basis of the country being a target of regime change attempts by the western imperialist powers, particularly the United States. (An illuminating example of this enduring fixation by Washington on establishing a client regime in Damascus can be seen in aa 1986 article by conservative commentator Daniel Pipes, who referred to Syria as the 'Cuba of the Middle East' due to its support for national liberation movements such as the Palestinian struggle -- what the U.S. would argue was support for 'terrorism').

Although the often bitter arguments that engulfed the western left in light of Syria's descent into war - occurring almost simultaneously with the NATO bombing of Libya and overthrow of the nationalist government of Muammar Gaddafi - led to an even more pronounced fragmentation of an already divided radical movement, it would be inaccurate to say that the dividing line was simply between 'pro Assad' and 'anti-Assad' forces.

At the time, this is how I assessed the situation myself - I refused to see the possibility of any 'third way' that went beyond the limitations of a very narrow dichotomy. This was itself evidence of the western left often having such an obsession with losing that we refuse to see beyond the bounds of what appears to be possible at the present juncture, no matter how limited and oppressive it may be. Daring to imagine has become something so abstract and remote that we cannot even begin to take it seriously.

The possibility of a 'third way' in Syria only became visible to most forces in the western metropoles after the declaration of autonomy in the northern areas of the country by Kurdish revolutionary forces of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in the Spring of 2012. Unlike the 'Arab opposition' that declared Assad the primary enemy of their cause and turned their guns toward Damascus, the so-called self-administration that was formed in the areas known by Kurds as 'Rojava' (for 'west' Kurdistan) declared that it wasn't interested in 'regime change', although it did seek the democratization of the country along federal lines that would give recognition to Syria's multi-ethnic and diverse character. This led to a degree of cooperation with the Syrian state in agreeing de-facto lines of demarcation, with Syrian Arab Army forces pulling back from the areas that fell under the control of the People's and Women's Protection Units (YPG and YPJ) in Aleppo, for instance. In other circumstances, Assad repositioned his forces away from Northern Syria to fight rebels preoccupied with overthrowing his Government. Upon this vacuum left by Assad forces, Kurds announced their own administration body, built on the principles of radical democracy, gender equality and multi-ethnic harmony. Even with the declaration of self-administration, however, it wasn't really until the battle of Kobane in late 2014 that the Kurdish question in Syria emerged on the world stage.

Communists and The Rojava Revolution

During this heroic resistance to the fascism of the so-called Islamic State, a considerably higher degree of attention began to be given to the Kurdish question in Syria by not only the mainstream media, but understandably so by the western left. After all, it was the forces of the YPG and YPJ who espoused the most progressive, leftist politics of all of the military formations operating in the theatre of Syria's war.

Due to the ideology of the Rojava Revolution being linked with the theoretical points espoused by Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan in his 'new paradigm' - among them that the Leninist conception of revolution was outdated and that a 'non-state' system showed the path to a free, dignified and socialist society in the 21st century - this movement was deemed by many Marxist critics to be 'anarchist'. A considerable amount of support began to be given to the Rojava project by western 'libertarian socialists', many hostile to 20 th century socialist revolutions, and even the PKK's original orientation as a Leninist national liberation movement. This often put revolutionary Marxists and Leninists in a knee-jerk position of opposing the Rojava experiment, and often refusing to look into it in any considerable degree of detail.

However, a substantial number of Turkish communist organisations didn't take such a simplistic approach to the 'democratic confederalism' being offered by the PYD as an alternative to capitalist modernity in Syria and the region. For many of these Turkey-based formations and parties, Rojava was part national liberation movement, part radical, feminist, democratic experiment. Perhaps they didn't see it as explicitly 'socialist', but it was important to engage with and to participate in.

From 2012, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP), until then operating primarily within Turkey's borders, began sending cadres to Rojava to defend the revolution. Among the MLKP fighters who joined the ranks of the YPJ was Ivana Hoffmann, a 19-year old German woman who had joined the party abroad and joined the Kurdish movement's caravan of martyrs when she was killed in March 2015. Ivana's example would serve as the basis for other internationalists to join not only the MLKP, but for the Party to push for the creation of an internationalist organization that would aim to build on the legacy of communists who had flocked to Spain to defend the Republic against Franco's fascism in the late 1930s.

In the summer of 2015, the International Freedom Battalion (IFB) was officially declared at a ceremony in Serekaniye. The show of leftist unity at the announcement of the IFB's formation is an important lesson for revolutionaries across the globe. Groups that had previously been at odds with each other in Turkey now joined hands in struggle. The United Freedom Forces (BOG), itself a coalition of leftist fighters from Turkey that had been declared the previous year, now joined the IFB on the initiative of the MLKP. There wasn't time nor the luxury of ideological squabbles preventing the unity of forces in the face of barbarism. Other groups that joined the IFB included the Turkish Communist Party/Marxist-Leninist (TKP/ML) and its armed wing TiKKO (Workers' and Peasants' Army of Turkey). Beyond the region, communists from Spain played a key role in the IFB's consolidation, with the Reconstruction Comunista (RC) sending cadres to fight in the spirit of solidarity their ancestors in the Spanish Republic knew all too well. This historical link also inspired Marxists from Britain to join the IFB under the banner of the Bob Crow Brigade, paying homage to a major figure in their country's trade union movement.

The Hammer and Sickle on the Frontlines at Afrin

Of course, the level of solidarity expressed with the Rojava Revolution by communists across the world - both in terms of events organized at home, as well as in those actually coming to Syria to be willing to give the ultimate sacrifice - isn't comparable in scope to the tens of thousands who volunteered to fight Francoism. Syria has been a far more complex and divisive war to grasp, on the one hand. On the other, the intervention of major foreign powers into the conflict, especially Russia and the United States, shifted the dynamics of solidarity with the Kurdish-led forces who were spearheading a women's revolution rooted in direct democracy. For many Marxists, military cooperation with the U.S. - 'tactical' or not - meant that at least explicit solidarity with the Rojava experiment was off the table.

However, the Turkish communist groups operating in Rojava seem to have navigated this relationship with great nuance and a spirit of critical solidarity. For sure, the presence of the United States within the borders of Syria is a nuisance at best for the fighters of groups such as the MLKP and TKP/ML. Based on my experiences on the ground in northern Syria, it is fair to say that for many fighters of the YPG and YPJ, that relationship is perceived the same way. However, the communist groups generally take a more critical line toward this cooperation than the Apoists (supporters of Abdullah Ocalan in the PYD and PKK and their umbrella organization, the Union of Kurdish Communities [KCK]).

Almost two weeks into Erdogan's misadventure in Syria, the hollowness of U.S. 'support' for the YPG and YPJ has been made blatantly obvious. This hasn't surprised the Kurdish movement in the least bit, as the writing already appeared on the wall for the U.S. to 'drop' the Kurdish forces after the liberation of Raqqa. Although still cooperating in Deir ez-Zor with the YPG, the tacit approval of Washington for Erdogan's bloody, genocidal incursion into Afrin has spelled out that although the U.S. and YPG may have had mutual, overlapping interests in Syria for the short-term, there was no more of a potential long-term unity that existed as there had been between the Soviet Union and western imperialists who united against Hitler's fascist aggression during the Second World War.

This should reveal to communists around the world that the fight to defend Afrin is a struggle to safeguard the basic principles of the oppressed, and their efforts in establishing an ecological, grassroots, feminist democracy. Marxists should support such a fight and vision of society, even if having some ideological critiques of the model of 'democratic confederalism'.

Fighters from the International Freedom Battalion are now flying the deep crimson flag emblazoned with a hammer and sickle at the frontlines in Afrin. Daring to defy Erdogan's neo-Ottoman aspirations in Rojava as they defied his government's fascistic and assimilationist policies in Turkey and Bakur (northern Kurdistan), Turkey's red militants fight shoulder to shoulder with their YPG, YPG, Syriac Military Council, and other progressive anti-fascist forces.

In an interview with ETHA News Agency, MLKP commander Viyan İsyan described why his Party is taking part in the resistance in Afrin, saying "This revolution is an example to the peoples of the Middle East. Our fundamental duty is to defend the Rojava revolution by any means necessary. The defence of the revolution and its gains will also carry the revolution to the peoples of the Middle East…Defending Afrin is defending honour. Defending Afrin is defending the future. Defending Afrin opens the way for other revolutions…We want them to not surrender to Erdoğan's fascism, we want them to set the streets on fire. We call them to press against the borders of Rojava. Because these borders are unnatural. We call our peoples to action. The resistance of Afrin is a historical resistance. We call on our peoples to uphold this historical resistance…We want it to be known that we will not abandon Afrin. The YPG/YPJ and the people of Afrin will not abandon Afrin. As communists, we will not abandon it. We are here until the end, no matter the cost. Victory will be ours."

Echoing the sentiment expressed by the MLKP, the TKP/ML vowed to crush Turkey's occupation and attempted stifling of the revolution by calling all oppressed people to the ranks of the resistance. In a video message, the Party's military formation TiKKO declared its role in fight against Erdogan, saying "In its attempt to occupy Afrin, the fascist and genocidal Turkish state has shown itself to be the enemy of the oppressed Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen peoples, and the working people as a whole. After being subjected to occupation and massacres by the ISIS fascists, the peoples of Rojava are now undergoing occupation and massacres at hands of the fascist Turkish state with the invading Turkish troops bombing villages and murdering innocent children and civilian workers."

The Critical Need for Internationalist Solidarity

At this moment in which the imperialist powers have made clear that they have no genuine regard for 'democracy', in which their support for NATO's second largest army has trumped any possible semblance of half-hearted support for a Kurdish radical movement that aims to sweep aside capitalism, the left needs to reassess its relationship to the Rojava Revolution.

Communists are taking part in the heroic resistance in Afrin, aiming to protect a society being reshaped along egalitarian lines. The spirit of internationalism which is present in this struggle isn't necessarily one of full ideological unity - there is plenty of struggle taking place within the Rojava Revolution between Apoists, communists, anarchists, and other leftist forces. Where the revolution is headed is being fiercely debated, but in an atmosphere of mutual solidarity and respect, not the hostility and narrow-mindedness that often permeates the leftist environments and movements in Europe and North America. This revolution's vibrancy and richness of diversity is being defended at the frontlines. This result of this struggle will have major ramifications for the future of the international communist movement, and for humanity more generally.

This was originally published at The Region .

Decolonizing Zwarte Piet

By Darryl Barthe

When I arrived in the Netherlands in March of 2016, I was forewarned by a number of colleagues and friends that the Dutch tradition of Zwarte Piet would challenge me. I'd seen the images of Dutchmen in blackface handing out candy while dressed as Harlequins, but I honestly had no idea how it would affect me until my daughter came home from school with a little "golliwog" figure that she had colored that day as a part of Sinterklaas festivities. I'd heard the arguments from Prime Minister Mark Rutte's people: this is a "normal" expression of Dutch culture. I'd also heard the arguments from Geert Wilder's people (who really didn't sound so different from Rutte's people, in this regard): anyone who has a problem with this part of Dutch culture should get out of the Netherlands. [1]

I like haring. I like being able to ride a bike everywhere. I like the fact that cannabis is decriminalized and that prostitutes are organized into labor unions. However, I do not like racist caricatures of African people that inspire my neighbor from Djibouti to keep her child home from school rather than allow him to be subjected to cartoonish representations of black people as brutish, goofy, slaves. This dilemma inspired me to look to the origins of Zwarte Piet to interrogate this narrative of golliwogs being integral to some Dutch people's sense of national identity.

The connections between the Germanic god of Magic, War and Rulership, known variously as "Woten," "Woden," and "Odin," and "St. Nicholas," "Father Christmas," "Sinterklaas," and "Santa Clause" are convincingly documented by a number of scholars. The figure of "Sleipnir," Odin's 8-legged horse, is re-imagined in the English poem "The Night Before Christmas," as "eight tiny reindeer," for example. The All-father's habit of visiting unsuspecting families and testing their hospitality is the reason that American children leave Santa milk and cookies ("koekjes," being the original Dutch word; what Americans call "cookies" are called "biscuits" in the UK) and why Dutch children leave hay or carrots for Sinterklaas' horse. It is ironic that this tradition, grounded in a belief in the transcendent, moral, value of hospitality, should be expressed in blackface, a mode of drama and comedy steeped in a history of racist dehumanization and exploitation.

In the case of the "naughty" children -those who do not show the All-father hospitality-there are a number of re-interpretations of the Old Norse myth which involved Odin, in some way, cursing the offenders. All involve some reinterpretation of the mythical "svartalfar," or "dark elves," who controlled all the minerals under the mountains. So, good children get gold while bad children get coal; good children get presents while bad children get abducted by the dark elves in a manner suggested by the German Christmas tradition of "Krampus," and the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. In the Santa Claus tradition, the svartalfar have been reimagined as "Santa's elves" who leave children lumps of coal in their stockings if they are naughty, as opposed to treats.

The present tradition of Zwarte Piet can be directly traced to the middle of the 19th-century, and a children's book written by Jan Schenkman,Sint Nikolaas en Zijn Knecht ( Saint Nicholas and his Servant). The myths of the svartalfar were submerged in a colonial narrative of servile (yet simultaneously violent and cruel) "Moors" (or, alternatively, "Spaniards") accompanying the aging (white) patriarch, Sinterklaas, to Holland. When Netherlanders don their blackface and pantaloons, the pre-Christian significance of that imagery -a significance that speaks to an older, pre-Romanized, sense of "Dutchness"-is, for the most part, lost on them. What is confounding, however, is the extent to which the racist, colonial, White Supremacist, significance of that imagery is also lost on many Netherlanders, as well.

Dutch identity, today, is only vaguely related to the Batavians, the ancient Germanic tribe that lived at the Rhine Delta during the 1 st Century CE. Even less so is contemporary Dutch identity related to the Chatti, an ancient Germanic tribe of Lower Saxony and Hesse, from whom the Batavians supposedly descended. Rather, contemporary Dutch identity is most often articulated as the collective social and cultural inheritance of 17th century merchant seamen, who traded mostly in spices and flowers.

There is a vague notion that the Dutch played some role in the slave trade, but only rarely is this fact seriously interrogated in the Netherlands where, according to University of Amsterdam Professor Gloria Wekker, "fear and avoidance of the axis of race/ethnicity are dominant" in academic discourses.[2] The Dutch embrace a view of themselves as a tolerant, anti-racist, people despite the glaring, obvious, historical silences surrounding the brutality of Dutch colonialism, the underlying ideology of racism and White Supremacy that fueled that colonial program, and the lingering effects that that history has had on the Dutch people (and, perhaps more to the point, Dutch people of African descent). My Dutch students often recoil in horror and righteous indignation when I relate the bloody, gory, history of racism and lynching in the US; this is in contrast to the looks of surprise and confusion that I get when I tell those same students that the first enslaved Africans brought to the English colonies in North America were brought there by Dutch sailors.

Every year the Dutch legacy of colonialism (and the attendant white Supremacy that justified the Dutch colonial program) is articulated through the "innocent tradition" of Dutch people donning costumes portraying buffoonish images of fat-lipped, Afro-wearing, golliwogs, prancing about goofily, handing out candy. To suggest that this display accomplishes the racist dehumanization of black people can often invite defensiveness from Dutch people who are genuinely horrified at the thought that anyone would ever call them racist. Many Netherlanders - fair-minded, reasonable people, committed to notions of equality and ideologically opposed to racism and prejudicial discrimination-will admit in candid moments that they honestly cannot understand what it is about Zwarte Piet that is so offensive to black people.

The best among the Dutch are willing to allow space for Black people in the Netherlands to explain it to them. Since 2013, there has been a growing movement to discontinue the portrayal of Zwarte Piet. In 2014, the city of Amsterdam decided to discontinue the blackface tradition. In 2015, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged the Netherlands to confront the problem of this national celebration of racist stereotypes, a suggestion the Dutch government took under advisement. Not all Netherlanders are so reasonable, however.

A few weeks ago, pro Zwarte Piet demonstrators blocked a highway, preventing antiracist activists from marching on the city of Dokkum where "traditional" Zwarte Piet celebrations were commencing. Mark Rutte's response to the (illegal blockade) protest was to suggest that children should not be forced to deal with angry Zwarte Piet demonstrators when they were simply out for a little Christmas fun: "Sinterklaas is een mooie traditie, een kinderfeest. Dus laten we met elkaar een beetje normaal doen" ("Sinterklaas is a beautiful tradition, a children's holiday party. So, let's all get together and be a little normal"). [3]

I am certain that Mark Rutte was unaware of the deep irony in his suggestion that racist theater represented Dutch "normality." For the most part, the sort of active, aggressive, racial hatred that exists in colonial contexts (like the US, for example,) does not exist in the Netherlands. At the same time, the racism of the Dutch colonial program was always buttressed by a principle of "white normativity" which posited only white people as people, and which recognized the humanity of non-white people only to the extent that those non-white people resembled (and internalized the value systems of) white people. That principle of white normativity -a passive, unaggressive, racism which even allows for individual kindness and intimacy, including the legendary "black friend," or even the occasional black spouse- defines the parameters of the discourse on race in the Netherlands and that will not change until the Dutch start honestly confronting their own history of racism and colonial violence, and not until the vantages of people of color in the Netherlands are properly integrated into Dutch notions of "normaal."

Notes

[1] See Mark Rutte, "Lees hier de brief van Mark," (VVD.nl, 22 January 2017) https://www.vvd.nl/nieuws/lees-hier-de-brief-van-mark/ (accessed December 23, 2017). See also Ben Winsor, "Wilders prepares law to protect 'Zwarte Piet' holiday blackface," ( SBS.com.au, February 16, 2017) https://www.sbs.com.au/news/wilders-prepares-law-to-protect-zwarte-piet-holiday-blackface (accessed December 23, 2017).

[2] Gloria Wekker, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 52.

[3] "Zwarte Piet supporters close motorway to stop demo as Sinterklass arrives" (DutchNews.nl, November 18, 2017), http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/11/zwarte-piet-supporters-close-motorway-to-stop-demo-as-sinterklaas-arrives-in-dokkum/ (accessed December 23, 2017); "Premier Rutte over Zwarte Piet-discussie: 'Laten we een beetje normaal doen'" ( rtvnoord.nl, November 18, 2017), https://www.rtvnoord.nl/nieuws/186365/Premier-Rutte-over-Zwarte-Piet-discussie-Laten-we-een-beetje-normaal-doen (accessed December 23, 2017).