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All of this started 513 years ago…

STOP MANIPULATING US CARAJU* … !!!

By: Ivan Ignacio

Please allow me to express in a very natural manner what we feel on this day October 12th, that makes us remember of what has been the start of the most awkward, terrible humiliations and atrocities known in the entire history of humanity, in this part of the planet baptized Latin America by the “holy church” . The bleeding and suffering of so may Nations during more than five centuries now got our longtime-hidden roots to gush forth, with fibers and energies of a rebellion that will never bow down.

We, the First Nations, have never ceased to show and to demonstrate to the entire world that we have been facing and keep facing series of atrocities committed against us. They tried to make us believe that the arrival of the white man meant the meeting of two cultures and for that reason, they declared October 12^th to be the “Day of the Race”, a fallacious idea they keep insisting on our kids with in the schools.

They also tried to make us swallow it has been a Conquest, and a lot of writers still prop it up. They forget what really is a conquest, a process in which the conqueror is trying to seduce the other, who always resists up to the moment he accepts and becomes conquered; in that case, a fraternal encounter of cultures is possible. But when came these bearded men, we did not resist them, to the contrary we welcomed them and treated them of the best manner like any real host, thinking that effectively there was a possibility of a real cultural interchange.

But this never happened, they misinterpreted us, they though us to be animals without souls, just a little superior to the llama, and they submitted us to the most salvage treatments and hate that nowadays subsists in new, more subtle versions. They violated our mothers, sisters, daughters, they tried to exterminate us, they imposed a foreign language on us when they decided that after all we should attend school, they imposed on us a barbarian religion, destructed our sacred temples, they imposed bastard laws on us, they perversely extracted our gold, silver, natural resources, they brought us vices such as alcohol, drugs, prostitution, laziness, they brought us contagious and mortal diseases of every kind, they changed our  Native names and clothes for others occidental ones, even their music squeezed in.

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, this has been no Conquest, simply its been an abominable invasion, by the means of which they “domesticated” us trying to erase our culture and identity. Now they sophisticated they method, they chose new ways to maintain this system of domination and slavery, they changed their shirts and colors to make us think there has been revolutions.

Indeed, when things got not that good for them, the children and stepchildren of the Spaniards decided to expulse their progenitors in the name of Independence, in collaboration with the Church. They fabricated supposed heroes and liberators, they definitely erased us from the map. They created States-nations no matter where, they named them according to they taste: Colombia has the name of the first colonizator Critobal Columbus, Venezuela is the Small Venice, Bolivia comes from the name of its supposed liberator Simon Bolivar, etc… not only do they invented new flags, new national anthems, but they also appropriated some of our sacred symbols like the Condor and the Eagle.

Later these Republics became part of the so-called “Third World”, they fought internally between Left and Right without ever getting out of the occidentalism: from one part they tried to colonize us ideologically (the communists) and for other part they colonize us financially and commercially (capitalism). The invasion of our souls also passed by the spiritual colonization, the cross and bible found in the saber and the gun its most precious allies. And us, those without territories, those of the Fourth World, kept being ignored and submitted.

Now then, the instruments of domination of the old colonialism, like the sword and the holy Inquisition, have been changed by the so-called modernity, development and  globalization. With them they pretend to erase the borders to serve the pervert interests of the powerful, of the multinational companies, using the label of Free Trade. Nowadays the supreme gods of the new colonialism  are the IMF, World Bank, WTO, FTAA, etc, and their abettors like the United Nations Organization, American States Organization, etc. They gave birth to critical levels of corruption, immorality and immoderate greed we see nowadays. And the shameless abuses of the environment are sufficient to cause the illness of our sacred Mother Earth and Father Cosmos.

However, there still are a lot of things we do not understand, the political occidental system has destructed our traditional forms of organization, and everywhere we are divided  by the creation of indigenous Political Parties. The strategy of division, the best and oldest method known to submit one, keeps us prisoners. The spiritual colonization’s lapidations almost got through with what was left of our self-esteem and pride of being Natives.

In the process, we are confused by malicious and opportunist currents. They come talking us of supposed and possible religious syncretisms so we keep reading their bible and keep going to the church or religious sects, our youth is being seduced and still more confused by esoteric, alienating currents inoffensively called “New Age”.  The Anglican Church in Toronto, Canada, since 6 years ago, putted the name of one of our most important and sacred ceremony, Inti Raymi, to his Latino-American Church party,  without even consideration or respecting the sacred and spiritual meaning of this celebration to us. And there is a lot of people trying to convince us of the existence and possibility of a cultural globalization.

Not that much time ago, we have been amazed to hear about  a series of events in various Latino-American countries bearing the odd name of “The Latino-American Natives: for a world including all the worlds”, organized by the “Cultural Centre Casa Elizalde”, from Spain. The reference made to “Latino-American Natives” is for us quite an offense, because we simply are not "Latino-Americans", we are cultures and Nations completely different. Likewise, we have been hearing of how the pretend to assimilate us by coining awkward terms merging our sacred names with colonial ones, such as the new fancy “Pachamérica”. It has been a long time we assumed our continent’s name to be Abya-Yala, and we will not accept it to be substituted for another identity-lacking term. We look in the same way to the bolivarian movement trying, in a desperate creole-ladino attempt, to make us swallow their unexisting ideology. Soon we will not be surprised to hear about the creation of "Latino-American Ayllus", or "Bolivarian Suyus" or whatever else they may invent.

So Please, stop manipulating us, Caraju* ! We the children of First Nations are rising our voice, we will not keep being the useful idiots doing whatever you always wanted us to. We will not accept either the internal colonialisms. The silence and passivity time ended with the arrival of the Pachakuti Era. We are Nations with dignity and we claim our territories, we are millenarian civilizations for the healing of the Planet.

¡¡¡ Jallalla !!!

*Caraju! Interjection used in Latin America to express a strong determination and readiness to take up a challenge.

Native Heroes history