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    To Live Among Broken Men: Theorizing Rape and Incest

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    Originally Published at the Hampton Institute, a proletarian thinktank, on July 26, 2016.

    On April 9th, Ronald Savage rocked the hip hop world with his testimony about the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of Zulu Nation founder, Afrika Bambaataa. Initially, the Zulu Nation dismissed the allegations “as nothing more than a continuation of the decades long HIP HOP COINTELPRO campaign to discredit and destroy the Universal Zulu Nation.” However, as more survivors of Bambaataa’s abuse emerged, the momentum shifted. It was clear that Bambaataa had abused children, other leaders had covered up for him and that a thorough investigation and process of healing was necessary.

    While many people are understandably shocked that sexual abuse could penetrate the inner-most circles of pioneering Zulu Nation, this is also an opportunity for our communities to reflect on just how commonplace sexual abuse, incest, pedophilia and rape is.

    The May 21st gang-rape of a 16-year-old girl in Brazil by 33 men and Brock Turner’s rape of a 23-year old woman behind a dumpster at Stanford University are the latest high-profile examples of the everyday terror exercised against women.

    Ronald Savage’s story, my family’s story, my story and so many other stories of survival highlight the need for a Marxist historical interpretation of sexual violence & incest. Marxism — the painstaking, socio-economic investigative method — does away with the vacuous theory that sick, depraved abusers are merely an aberration of the human spirit. The wide prevalence of sexual violence speaks volumes about the criminal, decadent nature of capitalism. There is a specific system that engenders the widespread abuse of women and children. The facts speak for themselves-one in four girls will be sexually abused before they turn 18 years old and one in five women will be raped at some point in their lives.[1] 40-60% of Black women are abused before they reach 18.3% of men report they were raped.

    A political orientation towards sexual violence and trauma reveals that it is the product of a specific, temporal confluence of factors. The dialectical materialist method, a profound examination of the deep-seated causes of a social phenomenon, explains why sexual violence and incest are both widely prevalent and inevitable under capitalism.

    This article will examine the connections between poverty, patriarchy, rape and incest both in my own life and family and in the writing of organic intellectuals and community leaders who have honestly grappled with this urgent issue.

    My Story

    I am a survivor of sexual abuse. Two different AAU basketball coaches, Jim Tavares and Jack McMahon, whose teams I played on, were known pedophiles. A 1999 Sports Illustrated article, “Every Parent’s Nightmare,” outlined the sexual abuse that hundreds of us survived at the hands of Jim Tavares.

    Tavares preyed upon me and other young boys who came from poor homes where there was only one parent trying to make ends meet. He gained access to our homes by giving us money and taking us on trips across the U.S. to play in national Junior Olympic AAU championships. If I had a father or a family with money, I would not have been an easy prey.

    Just as the marksman knows how to hunt and snipe, the molester knows how to prey on children and attack.

    There is no need for me to repeat the details as the article outlines Tavares’ pattern of abuse. Predictably, the authors, William Nack and Don Yaeger treat Tavares and the other coaches as society’s outliers, extremely demented individuals who went astray. This article argues a different perspective — that rape and incest are inevitable and predictable products of a specific social system that we have the power to unmask, confront and overcome.

    Theorizing Rape and Incest

    I was raised by woman warriors. Many of the women in my family survived horrific episodes of rape, incest and sexual terrorism which I have written on elsewhere. From my earliest memories, I felt the pain and trauma of my mother, my sisters, aunts, grandmother and other women in my family seethe through my own being. Why did my loved ones and I endure degrading, sadistic abuse? Their scars and my own have been formative in my story. With no strong male role models, I was mentored by the pain and survival of women. All of the suffering they experienced and survived made me question from an early age the source of so much horror.

    Sexual violence is bigger than Afrika Bambaataa, the priests convicted of child molestation within the Catholic church and the sexual violence that occurred within my own family. Sexual violence is an endemic, society-wide phenomenon that we must tackle and resist with a broad, revolutionary approach if we want to spare our children from the trauma so many of us survived.

    My family of mixed Irish, Scottish, English and Finish roots was not unique in terms of the intensity of what we survived. As I discovered through my travels to other continents, hearts, islands and memories, there are survivors of rape and incest spread across the world. The U.S. has the thirteenth highest rate of rape in the world.[2] My family, then, was not an exception, but rather the very incarnation of larger social forces at work.

    A critical view of rape and incest challenges the widespread view that men intrinsically act like “pigs” and “dogs.” No one can dispute that many of us men act like pigs and dogs, but what explains the pigicization or dogification of male behavior?

    Feminist sociologist Maria Mies explains that “human sex and sexuality have never been purely crude biological affairs. ‘Human nature’ has always been social and historical. Sex is as much a cultural and historical category as gender is” (Patriarchy and Accumulation 23). In more proletarian terms, men are not born as piglets but are rather pigified-or groomed to be pigs-over time. The inverse is also true; we can fight to undo patriarchal socialization and create a safer, healthier world to raise our children in. It is this political orientation towards sexual trauma that guides our work as revolutionaries. We fight for another world not just because of the pain of the present but because of the infinite promise of the future.

    Scarred Children

    The social scientist seeks to unearth the nature of the childhood that the rapist / molester experienced. A baby is not born a rapist or a sadist. The mainstream media’s dominant perspective that rapists are biologically-flawed, unredeemable sociopaths projects a pessimistic view of humanity. While there may be individual examples of perpetrators who were biologically or mentally engineered towards violence, this is a rare exception and not the rule.

    According to Family Violence Interventions for the Justice System, men who witnessed their fathers’ violence are 10 times more likely to engage in spouse abuse in later adulthood than boys from non-violent homes.[3]

    Men who commit brutal violations of children’s inner-sanctity most often experienced this violence themselves as children. They internalized their own skewed view of themselves and the world. They never knew what it meant to be complete, integral, loved or healthy. Broken from an early age, if not in the period of gestation, they learned to reproduce the insidiousness. Buried in their own self-torment and self-hatred, they struck out against what was most precious and vulnerable around them, children and women. Deprivation begat deprivation.

    A system of patriarchy shapes the behavior of the rapist who shows an utter disregard for the humanity of women. The potent combination of poverty and patriarchy mold the acting out of the self-depreciation in a particular way. Having never known inner peace, the impoverished and unhealthy psyche annihilates the peace closest to it. Only a thorough exploration of the violator’s childhood and formative years can begin to connect the missing dots.

    Broken Men

    In addition to being criminal and perverse, sexual violence against children, women and men is a self-effacing behavior. To subject a defenseless child or woman to sexual abuse is the work of a broken man. The question before us is what overarching forces convert so many men into vile, demented creatures, who carry contempt for life itself in their fractured hearts?

    Black Panther Soledad Prison Field Marshal, George Jackson asserted before white supremacy: “You will never count me among the broken men!”

    A 25-year-old sociologist — with a PhD earned in the streets of LA and the prison cells of San Quentin — Jackson theorized about the outward reflexes of the broken man. Informed by a keen understanding of the wanton ruthlessness that surrounded him in America’s internal colonies (ghettos) and prisons, Jackson refused to become ensnared in the trap that pitted Black on Black, man against woman, and oppressed against oppressed.

    In Soledad Brother, Jackson charted the source of the broken reflexes — petty fights, alcoholism, rape and murder. From solitary confinement, within an 8-by-12 foot prison cell, Jackson sought to dominate the insidiousness so that it did not dominate him.

    Like another great anti-colonial thinker, Frantz Fanon, who was writing in the same time period in Algeria, Jackson observed how his contemporaries acted out their trauma in reactionary ways because of their conditioning and precisely because they were deprived of a penetrating, revolutionary understanding of social reality.

    The Political Economy of Rape, Part I: The Abuser

    It is only in the social laboratory of intense class exploitation and misogyny that so many rapists can be called into existence. My analysis is not an attempt to justify Bambaataa’s abuse nor apologize for the rapist but rather an effort to explore the malignant social forces that call so many rapists into existence.

    In such a profoundly patriarchal society, different social-psychological forces act on men and women’s psyches. Men are expected to be protectors and breadwinners. But what happens when their whole world — and with it their entire self-image — has been obliterated by material reality?

    Too many men — conditioned by misogyny and deprived of employment and dignity — are broken men. In their deranged psyches, formed in the crucible of a materialist and patriarchal society, they seek to assert and insert themselves in twisted ways as “men” in a society that rejected and emasculated them. The inability to live up to their socially contrived ideals renders them depressed and broken.

    Women in oppressed communities are hit the hardest by rape. Some 34.1% of Native American women have been raped. The next highest percentage was among mixed race women, 24.4% of whom reported being raped.[4] Incapable at this historical juncture of articulating their social rage in a revolutionary direction, the oppressed misdirect their fury in reactionary ways.

    Rape is about power. Rape is one demented form of misdirected vengeance in which the oppressed assert power when they have lost control over their surroundings. Soldiers, under stress of battle, also often become ruthless perpetrators of rape, or gang rape, while pillaging the wealth of the conquered.[5] Alcohol and drugs — the traditional opiates of the oppressed — further distort reality, ensuring the stunting of proactive, revolutionary sentiments.

    The Origin of Patriarchy

    Two questions now confront us: what is the nature of the dog-eat-dog, patriarchal rat race that defines everyday working-class survival and how did we arrive at this point?

    Bourgeois science argues that sexism and racism are inevitable. Because they see these learned behaviors as a product of man’s nature, they seek to convince everyone that these systems of domination have always existed.

    History proves otherwise, debunking the prevailing ideas of the historical defeatists.

    Friedrich Engel’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State documents the existence of matriarchal societies for thousands of years. Thoroughly researching what he calls “primitive communist societies,” Engels shows that for the bulk of the human timeline, women were in positions of power in the family and community.

    One prominent example was in the Taíno culture of Quisqueya, what is today Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The warrioress and cacica (chief), Anacaona, went off to battle and led resistance against the Spanish invaders, with her partner, Caonabo, taking charge of the home and raising the children. In 1503, upon capture she was publicly executed because she refused clemency in exchange for being the concubine of one of her captors. The Spanish colonizers were determined to eradicate the leaders of any resistance to their double enslavement of Native and African women.

    Marxists pinpoint the emergence of private property, surplus and profits — or class society — as the origin of patriarchy. The origins of rape, incest and violence against women are the result of what Engels called the “world historic defeat” of women. With the development of private property and “the right” to inheritance, the son was elevated above the daughter as the heir to the estate. Just as the enslaved of the colonized countries existed as chattel property for the colonizers, women too were converted into their property; the masters and lords could do as they wanted with “their” women.

    Under feudalism, the lord’s “droit de seigneur” empowered him to take a “serf’s wife” into his bed before she married and slept with her husband for the first time. In other words, the lord was allowed to rape the daughters and mothers of the exploited class because they were his property. This “droit” or “right” also entitled the lord of the estate to prey on peasant girls and to violate their virginity whenever he chose. This was often ceremoniously witnessed by male members of the court who were powerless to intervene.[6]

    Social Systems Theory

    Every social system merits its own analysis but feudalism, slavery and capitalism share these predominate features: 1) the sanctity of private property 2) the prioritization of profits over human dignity and 3) the relegation of women to a position of the slave’s slave in the productive process.

    Where does patriarchy fit into this exploitive economic base?

    Maria Mies’ Patriarchy and Accumulation tracks how for centuries women’s unpaid, invisible work enabled the massive theft of the surplus labor of the wage earner. The productive process rested on the exploitation of the workers’ labor which was not possible without the wife’s behind-the-scenes toil. The woman then was the serf’s serf, the slave’s slave and the wage laborer’s laborer.

    To dig up the historical roots of the monstrous epidemic of rape and incest in the U.S. context requires a profound historical reckoning with one of its original sins — slavery.

    The Legacy of Slavery

    Through the dehumanization of Blackness, the slavocracy justified infinite predations upon the bodies of Black women and Black men.

    The entire slave quarters were at the disposal of the slave traders and masters. The Portuguese slavers built their castles with a master bedroom that had two doors leading to two corridors. One corridor led to the slave quarters, where there was an army of slaves at the master’s sexual disposal. The other corridor led to confession, where the slavers asked their priests and their gods for forgiveness for their acts, before committing the next round of transgressions.

    W.E.B. Du Bois’ masterpiece Black Reconstruction in America captured the white Southerners’ attitude toward the Black man and woman. In order to capture the dehumanization process, Du Bois cited a visiting German sociologist, Carl Schurz, who was hired by President Andrew Johnson to study the South: “Men who are honorable in their dealings with their white neighbors, will cheat a Negro without feeling a single twinge of their honor. To kill a Negro, they do not deem murder; to debauch a Negro woman, they do not think fornication; to take the property away from a Negro, they do not consider robbery.”[7] In his gripping sociological portrait of the antebellum South, Du Bois breached theunbreachable and spoke the unspeakable: “Southerners who had suckled food from black breasts vied with each other in fornication with Black women, and even in beastly incest. They took the name of their fathers in vain to seduce their own sisters. Nothing-nothing that Black folk did or said or thought or sang was sacred” (p.125).

    The very essence of slavery was the breaking of the Black mind, body and soul.

    A culture of white rape of Black women — hiding behind its antithesis, the publicly-flaunted, genteel South and morally-robust Bible Belt — has traversed centuries. The myth of the “Black rapist” was used to mask the identity of America’s original rapists — a wealthy class of roughly 60,000 white slave owners. The myth of the Black rapist served to deflect focus away from the slave master’s abuse of Black and white women and funnel mass discontent into “populist” campaigns, such as lynching and state executions. Society was mobilized in pursuit of “the boogeyman” while the true boogeyman held the noose.

    Describing the typical slave master, Du Bois wrote: “Sexually they were lawless, protecting elaborately and flattering the virginity of a small class of women of their social clan, and keeping at command millions of poor women of the two laboring groups [Black and white] of the South” (p. 35).

    Lawrence Konner’s remaking of Alex Haley’s Roots in June 2016 served as a vivid reminder that the slave owning class used rape as a weapon against the Black family.

    Slavery birthed patterns of rape and incest that our society has yet to heal from.

    Rape and Brokenness in Beloved

    Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a gripping account of the twin terrors of sexual violence and slavery.[8] A cursory examination of the central characters of Beloved reveals the wanton, white supremacist terror unleashed on Black America.

    Halle and Paul D represent generations of Black men pinned down and broken by slavery. Sexual violence against Black men, women and children was one of slavery’s preferred weapons “to break” their slaves.

    Halle was Sethe’s partner and father of her children. After witnessing a gang of white men rape his wife, Sethe, and then drink her breast milk, Halle went crazy. Feeling powerless, he disappeared for ever from the family unit because what “he saw go on in that barn that day broke him like a twig” (68).

    Paul D, Sethe’s friend, confidante and a fellow slave, alludes to a rape he suffered on the Sweet Home plantation: “Saying more might push them [Sethe and Paul D] both to a place they couldn’t get back from. He [Paul D] would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lids rusted shut. He would not pry it loose now in front of this sweet sturdy woman, for if she got a whiff of the contents it would shame him” (73).

    The scars from the whip, tattooed onto Sethe’s back, form a chokecherry tree, symbolizing the slave experience. The barefoot, poor white woman Amy who helps Sethe deliver her fourth child, Denver, describes the scar: “A trunk — it’s red and split wide open, full of sap, and this here’s the parting for the branches. You got plenty of branches. Leaves, too, look like, and dern [darn] if these ain’t blossoms. Tiny little cherry blossoms, just as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom” (79). According to Morrison’s’ poignant metaphor, “the fire on her back” is the Black nation, which despite the indescribable abuse, is strong and full of life, giving birth to future generations who will carry the scars but resolutely confront the slave master’s terror.

    Slavery and rape pushed Morrison’s characters to extremes. When the slavecatchers came to abduct Sethe’s four children and sell them out of state, Sethe resisted the only way she could. As she breastfed her youngest daughter, Denver, she simultaneously beat her other daughter, Beloved, to death, to save her from the horrors of slavery. Her two young boys and Denver were soaked in their sister’s blood and only survived the grueling scene because of the intervention of another slave.

    Toni Morrison recreated these tormenting images in order to bring slavery alive for the reader. Without understanding this original sin, little else can be understood in the American narrative.

    Historical Trauma

    Dr. Joy Degruy Leary explored the effects of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome on generations of African Americans.[9] The slave system was a breeding ground for incest within the slave quarters, as well. Upsetting the traditions and stability of the family, slavery disempowered the husband figure and humiliated the father figure. Slavery was crafted to make the oppressed internalize a sense of shame and humiliation.

    Men, women and children were packed into barns and stables unfit for human existence. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglas described the barbarism he was born into in Baltimore, Maryland.[10] Deprived of space and privacy and unable to clothe their children, the masters packed multiple families into shacks, without mattresses, blankets or adequate clothing. Slavery was a vortex of bestiality that spiraled out of control destroying human connections.[11]

    Unable to stand down the oppressor, the emasculated slave — the trapped lion — projected his hatred towards those at home.[12] Sexual transgressions were the reincarnated transgressions of the master, once again unleashed on the double victims, Black women and children.

    This historical trauma set in motion by a four-century long reign of terror reappears in families today. The conventional wisdom and oft-repeated, racist claim that “slavery occurred so long ago and Black people should just get over it” is designed to disconnect the terror of the past with the terror of the present. Sethe, Baby Suggs, Beloved and Toni Morrison’s other characters remind us that the legacy of slavery lives within, and part of that legacy is sexual trauma.

    History offers context for the harrowing fact that 40-60% of Black women are sexually abused before they are 18. Failure to spiritually and consciously come to terms with the historical trauma damns the present fighters to wallow, unconsciously or semi-consciously, in the past. This is an apt metaphor for the survivor of sexual violence, whose only way out of the trauma, is through it.

    From Chattel Slavery to Wage Slavery

    The enslavement of Africans in the Americas was one branch of the patriarchal system Engels denounced and the most vicious reenactment of boss-worker relations which played out in other social systems. Slavery was America’s original sin, upon which the descendant systems of exploitation were based.

    The heir to slavery, capitalism — through its disempowerment of women — continues to be a breeding ground of sexual violence.

    The following formula synthesizes the reproduction of the class system and the cycle it sets in motion. An exploitative economic base (i.e. serfdom, slavery, industrial and extractive capitalism) gives birth to internalized discord, self-hatred and a distorted sense of identity among the exploited, leading to the acute need to numb and escape (i.e. alcoholism) which is intertwined with violence projected outward and acted out at home, resulting in the victimization of the next generation, which grows up damned by both the exploitative economic base and a demoralizing family environment.

    This exploitative economic base and internalized oppression again sets in motion a cycle that repeats itself with individualized symptoms that are reflective of the same disease.

    The Political Economy of Rape, Part II: The Abused

    The disempowerment of women is both economic and psychological and transcends national borders. Rape has a specific economic, not geographic, terrain. Not unique to the U.S., the dominant economic model — patriarchal capitalism — produces dependency.

    Because housework is not compensated, the mother figure finds herself trapped.

    Deprived of an empowering education, self-esteem and social and economic rights, many oppressed women cannot see beyond their immediate environs. The coterminous forces of women’s oppression feed off one another, trapping women and children within the male-dominated, misogynist household.

    Testimony

    The testimonies and writing of organic intellectuals struggling against patriarchy and capitalism highlight the fact that the political economy of rape traverses national boundaries.

    A scene from Germinal, Émile Zola’s epic novel, captures the power dynamics within the miner’s home. Half-starved and still sullen from the coal mines, the protagonist, Maheu arrived from the bowels of the earth demanding his dinner and sex. Showing total disregard for his wife, Maneude’s humanity, he bends her over, raping her in front of the children, as they prepare to bathe in a basin. This scene from a French mining family’s home was a snapshot of the twin evils of capitalism and patriarchy that have acted upon women for centuries.

    In Don’t Be Afraid Gringo, Elvira Alvarado described the typical social existence of the Honduran campesina (peasant woman). In her testimony, Elvira provides poignant snapshots of the cruel social terrain where patriarchy and economic disempowerment produce violence against women and children. Like the French miner a century before, the banana plantation worker existed to produce surplus value for transnational business. The housewife in the plantation worker family produced the conditions necessary for the exploitation of the wage laborer. She was doubly exploited. For both the boss and the sub-oppressor, for 365 days a year, it was open season on women like Elvira Alvarado.

    Describing her everyday routine, Alvarado explained that she worked the land and attended to her husband and eight children: “Even when we go to sleep, we don’t get to rest. If the babies wake up crying, we have to go take care of them — give them the breast if they’re still breastfeeding — give them medicine if they’re sick. And if our husbands want to make love, if they get the urge, then it’s back to work again. The next morning, we’re up before the sun, while our husbands are still sleeping” (p. 52). Robbed of autonomy in both spheres of her life, Alvarado existed to produce for the oppressor and sub-oppressor.

    Enraged by his powerlessness, Elivira’s husband subconsciously recreated his exploitation lower down on the social hierarchy where his violence had no repercussions. The state’s monopoly of violence ensured that his humiliation had no positive, externalized revolutionary social outlet. Meanwhile, he was socially sanctioned to drink himself into oblivion and lash out at home. Family was the private domain where the exploiteds’ pent-up anger crystalized. Having learned well from his boss, he recreated the violence onto his wife and children, the only social figures disempowered enough to tolerate the wanton abuse.

    What the husband considered sex or “his marital right,” constitutes rape for many women like Elvira Alvarado. Her words deliver the point home: “I’ve heard that there are men and women who make love in all different ways, but we campesinos don’t know anything about these different positions. We do it the same all the time — the man gets on the woman and goes up and down, up and down and that’s it. Sometimes the woman feels pleasure and sometimes she doesn’t. We don’t have any privacy either, because our houses are usually one big room so we have to wait until everyone is asleep and then do it very quietly. We just push down our underpants and pull them back up again” (47). For the Honduran housewife, sex, like cooking and cleaning, was a chore or an obligation. Stripped of her self-determination, both the home and the wider society were a forcing house of male domination.

    ‘Stay in Your place’

    Employing the same literary genre as Elvira Alvarado, the Bolivian mining activist, Domitila Barrios de Chúngara, wrote Let me Speak! The Testimony of Domitila A Woman of the Bolivian Mines.[13]

    Her autobiography deepens our understanding of patriarchy as a weapon to divide the miners. The misnamed “barzolas” were working class women employed by the mining bosses as reactionary shock troops to attack and humiliate the miners’ wives.[14] When the Housewife Committee refused to stay quiet and confined in their homes and came into the streets to protest, the “barzola” shock troops threw tomatoes at them, accused them of sleeping around and physically attacked them.

    The disempowerment of the Housewives’ Committee was the disempowerment of the working class. Preoccupied with secondary contradictions, the exploited protagonists — the miners — lost sight of the primary contradiction between labor and capital. Blind before the oppressor’s strategy to keep them in their confinement, they prevented the fruition of class unity. The divide and conquer strategy sought to confine women to the home, “shame” them and stunt their ability to make world-historic change.

    “Women hold up half the sky” but when they are held back, the entire working class is confined to a social inferno. Capitalism and patriarchy have a codependent relationship; they feed off one another. The crushing of one hierarchical system necessitates the overthrow of its twin.

    Women’s liberation is humanity’s liberation.

    The Role of Class

    Centuries of state-sanctioned and state-enforced rape established a legacy that continues to play out today.

    Angela Davis’ Women, Race and Class looks at the triple burden Black women confronted the span of American history.[15] Davis examined the rampant sexual abuse committed by white male employers within the home against Black women forced by poverty into domestic labor. How many bosses, supervisors, sex tourists and other men in high positions still believe they have unfettered access to Black and Brown women’s bodies?

    There is also sexual abuse in other layers of class society. Daughters and sons of rich families have survived sexual trauma. The widespread occurrence across class divides illustrates the omnipotence of sexism under capitalism. A rich woman may also find herself psychologically stuck. In contrast to a working-class woman, she may possess the economic resources to flee but may face the judgement of her family who will threaten to “cut her off” if she dares to forge her own independence. Raised to be pretty and thin, some upper class women may not possess the skills to move on. Patriarchy is pervasive and even privileged women — who from an outside perspective appear to have it all — struggle within their gilded cages.

    A Culture of Impunity

    In addition to raising the rapist, capitalism offers the rapist free reign.

    The story of the anonymous young woman who was drugged and raped behind a dumpster at Standford is chilling. Although her rapist, Brock Turner was caught and found guilty by a jury, a judge only gave him six months in jail because “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.”[16]

    Turner’s light sentence is not the exception. Factoring in unreported rapes, only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail; 15 out of 16 will walk free.[17] Every 107 seconds a woman is raped in the U.S. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, twenty million women in the United States have been raped. The study asserts that the number could be three times as high because only 1/3 of sexual assaults are reported.[18] There is no accountability. There are no popular reprisals. In too many cases, no one dares confront the perpetrator. Often, the sadist moves from one generation to the next.

    In my own abuse case, when I was 16, I contacted the Plymouth county District Attorney’s office in 1997 to file a report. It was four years after the abuse. The DA said he had 73 similar complaints against the basketball coach, Jim Tavares. After hearing my statement, the public official concluded, for at least the 74th time, that he “did not have conclusive proof” to put Jim Tavares back away in jail.

    Capitalist society, from the U.S. to Brazil is, in essence, a school of unchecked patriarchy and pedophilia.

    On May 21st on this year, a 16-year-old Brazilian girl was gang-raped by 33 men, some of whom then went on social media to boast about their acts. It is tragic that it took such a heinous case to re-highlight the rape culture that threatens every Brazilian woman.

    In Brazil, the statistics are even more deplorable than in the U.S. According to the Brazilian women’s organization, Rio de Paz, every 72 hours, 420 women are raped in Brazil.[19]

    The liberal observer remains shocked at the harrowing rape statistics while failing to realize the very cause of the horror; a depraved system can only produce depravity. Incest and rape are not natural or inevitable phenomena, but rather symptomatic of the current economic and social order. Token efforts to raise awareness among children about their rights and to facilitate violence prevention workshops are important in the short run but will do little to erase the overall problem. An end to the suffering requires a systematic overhaul of existing class relations.

    Denial Is Complicity

    There is another rung in the social inferno that is oppression to which we must descend in order to more fully understand the plight of the survivor.

    There are other social actors who become complicit in the crimes spawned by a criminal system. Many mothers — too traumatized to stare the truth in its eyes — became indirect apologists for the offender, giving cover to the crimes with their silence. Feeling powerless before the crime of the century, too many times they have internalized and projected their own subconscious guilt and self-hatred onto the victims. Instead of appearing on the historical stage as the ultimate defenders of their daughters, how many mothers have appeared as collaborators of the crime?

    Silence, reproduced between generations, extends the lease life of the pain. Silence within the family is collusion. Denial is collusion. Covering up is collusion.

    Sapphire’s novel Push, brought to the cinema in the 2009 film Precious, graphically documented the complex relationships that resulted from incest.[20] Sixteen year-old Claireece “Precious” Jones is pregnant with her father’s second child. The heartbreaking novel examined how Precious’ mother, Mary, instead of protecting and defending her daughter from her rapist husband, Carl, turned the blame on her daughter. Precious was the object of her mother’s scorn. Stripped of a childhood and her parents’ affection, Precious had to learn to navigate society on her own.

    The mothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles who looked the other way were knee-deep in the swamp of insidiousness. Patriarchy pervaded their lives; more concerned with protecting the reputation of the family before the good town-folks, they sacrificed their children’s health and happiness — their childhoods — so they could keep smiling at church on Sundays. They too were deeply affected by patriarchy and rape culture. Converted into silent bystanders, enablers and perpetuators of the insidiousness, they ignored the truth and blamed the victim. They too were broken; the illusion of an “American dream” was worth more to them than truth and redemption.

    Internalized Blame

    When we paint the entire sorry portrait, we see the convergence of the different social-emotional factors acting on the survivors. Overwhelmed by the insidiousness, the matriarch escapes into booze or god. The primary witnesses often subconsciously rewrite history. Denial buries the dagger deeper into the chest of the abused. Searching for acceptance and validation, they find blame and hatred.

    Unable to externalize their anger; the pain consumes the survivor, resulting in the cyclization of the insidiousness i.e. heroin, addiction, cutting, anorexia, morbid obesity, alcohol etc. Every form of self-injurious behavior is an agonized cry for help.

    Heroin, bulimia and other self-loathing behaviors are a giant middle finger to America; no one ever cared about me, so why should I care about myself? Heroin and bulimia are rebellions devoid of direction and grit, a quest without a compass.

    Robbed of support from the patriarchal society, the survivor slips into self-torment. Nince Inch Nails’ lyrics, famously covered by Johnny Cash, capture the “Hurt:”

    I hurt myself today To see if I still feel I focus on the pain The only thing that’s real The needle tears a hole The old familiar sting Try to kill it all away But I remember everything.
    What have I become? My sweetest friend Everyone I know goes away In the end. And you could have it all My empire of dirt I will let you down I will make you hurt.

    The Somali writer, Warsan Shire writes: “Not everyone is okay with living like an open wound. But the thing about open wounds is that, well, you aren’t ignoring it. You’re healing; the fresh air can get to it. It’s honest. You aren’t hiding who you are. You aren’t rotting.”

    The suppression of pain is ineffective because pain will only find other outlets. We, survivors, can run and escape all the way to the grave but until we cough up all of the pain, there can be no thorough-going healing. Silence is not an option. Some form of therapy is necessary to help survivors understand the roots of their self-harm and to find meaning in an alienating society.

    Ronald Savage and other survivors of abuse are heroes. Protectors of future generations, the survivors fought to overcome “the shame” patriarchy imposed on them and tell their stories.

    Digging up and speaking the pain is the first step but it cannot happen without outside support. Because class society seeks to atomize and isolate the survivor, there must be an effort to collectivize our pain in a supportive, conscious community setting. There are 12 step programs and support groups called Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous and Incest Survivors Anonymous. There are also research-validated treatments such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that are effective for assisting those whose trauma has led to severely self-harming or suicidal behavior. These methods help the survivor see things differently and not blame themselves. Healing occurs when the survivor recognizes that they are good and beautiful and let’s go of the poisonous negative thoughts and low self-esteem that the abuser and patriarchy have instilled within them.

    As I argued in an article on trauma, addiction and capitalism, a survivor who is able to theoretically grasp the hell-hole they were born into, begins to empower themselves to turn on the class system, the source of their trauma. A revolutionary’s work is to provide a political orientation towards trauma. If overcoming fear and denial is the individualized part of healing, revolutionary organizing against the monster, responsible for the crimes of the century, is the collective part of healing.

    Therapy, support groups and the party, working together, all play their role in helping the survivor rise up on the society that violated them.

    Our Responsibility

    Afrika Bambaataa was a pioneering hip hop voice who resisted injustice and capitalism, but this did not mean that he was beyond all of its insidiousness — patriarchy, white supremacy and homophobia.

    On June 1st, 2016, Julien Terrell, cofounder of The Renaissance Zulu Chapter 64, issued the following statement condemning the covering up of Bambaataa’s sexual violence against teenage boys and announcing the chapter’s separation from the traditional Zulu Nation: “Many have said that Bambaataa’s accomplishments in hip hop should not be included in the critique of his so called personal life. I say that any so called political and cultural commitment that does not transfer to your personal actions is NOT a commitment at all. It’s nothing but talk and the time for putting ego aside has come. He [Bambaataa] is still lying but there is space for humility and compassion that the victims have offered despite the pain he caused. I hope those that are close to him support him in stepping to the allegations with integrity. That is what this culture is supposed to represent.”

    As revolutionaries and community leaders, we all carry the social baggage of the old world and must hold one another accountable for our actions. As Terrell explains, we have a responsibility to uproot and go to war with all of the contradictions, less they chaotically spill out and hurt others.

    Socialism is Healing

    Experiments in rehabilitation in the U.S. are limited today because of the “lock them up and throw away the key” strategy of the state. In a transformed society, the abuser would undergo isolation, therapy, rehabilitation and slow reintegration. Reconciliation would involve the recounting of their own childhoods and the social crimes they went on to commit. There is no healing in denial. Anything short of a full, public admission and acceptance falls short of justice.

    In a socialist society, inherited with all of social baggage of capitalism it will take generations to do away with all of the wicked inheritance — white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, individualism, consumerism etc. As the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and other socialist societies can attest, in a new world born of the old — with all of the birth marks of wickedness and depravity — there will be no shortage of challenges for nations reborn.

    The ruling class vilifies these human experiments in social re-organization in order to contain our dreams and ground our visions, less we conceive of emancipation from the current social disorder. The unofficial religion of the U.S. today is anti-communism, for this very reason.

    From the perspective of the extractors of surplus value, what has to be protected is not the right of a little girl to a childhood but their own unfettered access to profits. The anonymous survivor of rape at Stanford, the 16-year-old Brazilian girl, Ronald Savage and all of the nameless survivors — caught in the crosshairs of patriarchy and exploitation — demonstrate the urgency to organize for the toppling of the capitalist system.

    Dr. Martin Luther King called for “a revolution in our nation’s priorities.” A socialist society would immediately and decisively intervene to halt and reverse the monstrous patterns of incest and rape.

    Towards a Culture of Women’s Liberation

    What would a world based on freedom — as opposed to necessity — look like? There is no way to predict the future but we can assert that it will not look anything like the degradation — what Engel’s called “pre-history” — that today’s oppressed communities and families confront.

    In a healthy future, crystal meth, domestic abuse, and trauma itself will be remnants of a dark, distant past from which we will have emerged.

    The goal then is to convert our current society into a school of women’s liberation.

    Society’s superstructure must be torn up from the roots and reorganized to concretely confront the scourge of misogyny. The advertising industry sexually objectifies women. Viacom, General Electric and the entire mass media produce music and videos based on chauvinist caricatures of women as objects, shallow gossips, video vixens, hoes, thots and gold-diggers. Many actors in capitalist, consumer society are guilty in playing a role in the reproduction of rape culture. They cannot be let off the hook.

    Socialist society will project empowering reference points through billboards, education, TV and social media.

    In Cuba, where class relations are organized differently, the incidence of such crimes against women and children is far less common. After 1959, Cuba outlawed the exploitation of women in advertising. Housing, education, transportation, health care and a job were guaranteed social and economic rights. A society that had ceased to be a patriarchal, dog-eat-dog world took the bite out of the dog.

    Though we can only make conjectures about the future, we can be sure that it will look nothing like this hell-on-earth that exists today.

    Only a new, socialist society can provide real healing and in the words of martyred Irish revolutionary, Bobby Sands: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” We fight so that no little child or adult ever again has to live with what Ronald Savage and all survivors live with — the pulsating scars of incest, abuse and rape buried beneath their skin.


    Thank you to Emmanuella Odilis and all of the anonymous fighters for the feedback, edits and support. As the tears and truths emerge, the words and strength stream fourth…


    This was originally published at Liberation School.


    Notes

    [1] “Statistics about Sexual Violence.” National Sexual Violence Resource Center. 2015.

    [2] Chemaly, Soraya. “50 Actual Facts about Rape.” Huffington Post. December 8th, 2014.

    [3] 1993.

    [4] National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence against Women Survey. 1998.

    [5] It is not uncommon for cops to use their batons to violently penetrate their captives. This has nothing to do with homosexuality, but are rather acts of aggression, power and contempt.

    [6] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s well-known opera Marriage of Figaro is about precisely this, peasants and servants, in the early dawn of the revolutionary movement in France, conspiring and outsmarting a philandering count who sought to prey upon the young women of an Italian village.

    [7] Page 136. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1935.

    [8] New York: Penguin. 1987.

    [9] DeGruy, Joy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Uptone Press, 2005.

    [10] Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston: 1845.

    [1] Frederick Douglas’ testimony conjured up images of what Haitian families endure today in exile in the Dominican Republic. According to my research living and organizing within the Haitian communities of the D.R., the results are eerily similar with women and children twice victimized – by a system of anti-Haitianismo and by the alienated male sub-oppressors within the exploited Haitian community.

    [12] There is a reactionary, “nationalist” trend that posits that Black men are damaged because they were not allowed to play a “traditional” patriarchal role. This chauvinist position submits that the solution is to allow the Black male to assume their “proper” place as patriarchal protectors. It should be stated that patriarchal “protection” in any class society, including pre-colonized Africa, has its own antithesis of rape and abuse.

    [13] Originally published in Spanish as Si Me Permiten Hablar. New York: Monthly Review Press. 1978.

    [14] This group expropriated the name of Maria Barzola, an Aymara activist assassinated in 1951 by the Bolivian government.

    [15]On the plantation, Black women were at the same time domestic, breeder and field slave. As she picked cotton, tobacco or sugar, she laid her baby down beside her just out of arm’s reach. Still reeling from the pain of childbirth, she was forced to contribute to the productive process. She was thrice enslaved.

    [16] Fantz, Ashley. Outrage over 6-month sentence for Brock Turner in Stanford rape case. CNN. June 7, 2016.

    [17] Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) calculation based on US Department of Justice 2010 Statistics.

    [18] “Raising Awareness about Sexual Abuse Facts and Statistics. U.S. Department of Justice.

    [19] Bearak, Max. “Women’s Underwear Strewn on beach in Rio to protest Brazil’s rape culture.” The Washington Post. June 8th, 2016.

    [20] Vintage. 1997.

    COHA in Haiti: Reporting on the Serious Political and Social Crisis

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    Originally Published to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs on February 22, 2021

    COHA’s Senior Research Fellow, professor Danny Shaw, opens a window to the mass movement in Haiti which is demanding President Jovenel Moïse step down and cease rule by decree.

    Demonstrators are also calling for the release of political prisoners, the restoration of the Supreme Court justices, Police Inspector General and other opposition figures who have been fired, and an end to U.S., United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS) intervention on behalf of foreign interests in their country.

    A broad convergence of opposition parties and social movements maintain that Moïse’s term in office ended on February 7, 2021, while Moïse argues his mandate continues for another year and seeks to hold a referendum on a new constitution this April. It is doubtful, however, that such a referendum can garner democratic legitimacy given the prevailing corruption of constituted power in Haiti.

    There has been scarce mainstream media coverage of the protests that have brought thousands of Haitians to the streets day after day, week after week, despite the mounting human rights abuses perpetrated by Haitian police and their allied gangs. Danny Shaw, brings critical light to the ongoing struggle for democracy in Haiti.

    Photo-Gallery: a Country that Demands Democracy and Non-Intervention

    [Credit Photos: Danny Shaw]

    Video Analysis by Professor Danny Shaw, from Port-au-Prince, Haiti

    El muro dominicano del antihaitianismo mantiene viva a la desigualdad colonial

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    Originally Published to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs on April 1, 2021

    Como los palestinos en Israel y los inmigrantes latinos, asiáticos y musulmanes en los Estados Unidos, los haitianos en la República Dominicana son menospreciados, acosados y maltratados en todos los niveles.

    Expulsados de su tierra por siglos de neo colonialismo y explotación, oficialmente 751,080 haitianos llaman a la República Dominicana su país. Esto constituye el 7.3% de la población oficial. Existen otros cientos de miles de haitianos considerados  “ilegales” y que no aparecen en ninguna estadística.

    El “antihaitianismo” o racismo antihaitiano, no es más que otro síntoma evidente de la mentalidad de las élites económicas y políticas de la República Dominicana.

    Este artículo resaltará las dimensiones ideológicas, históricas y políticas del antihaitianismo para mostrar cómo el Estado dominicano, cuyas políticas recuerdan al “apartheid”,  tiene un marcado interés en acosar a la población haitiana y convertirla en chivo expiatorio.

    “Mejorar la raza”

    Durante décadas, la población dominicana ha sido impregnada de propaganda, intensa o sutil, denigrando la negrura y la “haitianidad”, considerando despectivamente a los haitianos como “los otros”. Uno de los legados del trujillismo y el balaguerismo fue la hispanofilia, es decir, la exaltación de la herencia española, que también es una forma de exaltar lo que es blanco y europeo.

    Algunos ejemplos de anti haitianismo “casual”: algunos padres dominicanos amenazan en broma a sus hijos con meterlos en un saco y entregarlos al “haitiano del costal” si se comportan mal. A los haitianos se les acusa de robar animales y hasta niños para sacrificarlos. En los medios de comunicación, los haitianos son identificados con los conceptos del hambre, las enfermedades infecciosas, las revueltas políticas y la “brujería”.

    Imbuidos de cierto mito de superioridad cultural y racial, gran cantidad de dominicanos le han dado la espalda al idioma, a la historia y a la cultura haitianos. Hablar de “pelo bueno” y de “mejorar la raza” casándose con alguien de piel más clara sigue siendo común.

    Los educadores populares de grupos como Acción Afro-Dominicana y Agenda Solidaridad trabajan arduamente para reeducar la población dominicana sobre la realidad haitiana y promueven la conciencia sobre lo dañino de la histeria contra Haití.

    Ideólogos del odio

    Los presidentes dominicanos Danilo Medina (2012-2020) y Luis Abinader (desde agosto de 2020 hasta el presente) han invertido recursos sustanciales en la persecución de los haitianos que han venido a la República Dominicana. Estos presidentes han asumido las mismas prácticas de sus predecesores desde los tiempos de Trujillo.

    Puestos de chequeo militares  se establecen cada ciertas millas en la ruta hacia el interior de la República Dominicana. Los registros del transporte público por el Ejército Nacional sirven para humillar públicamente a los haitianos migrantes y recordarles su estatus de visitantes indeseados. Los militares dominicanos provocan intencionalmente a los haitianos revisándoles agresivamente sus pertenencias, burlándose de su idioma, de su vestimenta y del color de su piel, y obligándolos a pagar multas ridículas. La policía del Estado dominicano ha convertido el cruce de la frontera y los viajes al interior en un negocio alimentado por los sobornos y la corrupción. Los guardias más agresivos llevan a cabo deportaciones y maltratos ilegales si los haitianos no ceden ante la extorsión. La retórica sobre la necesidad de patrullaje contra el tráfico de drogas, armas y haitianos  “ilegales” sirve como eterna justificación para estas agresiones.

    Hasta ciudadanos dominicanos contribuyen a esta persecución. Un sábado en la tarde, retornando en un autobús desde el poblado fronterizo de Jimaní, el autor de este análisis fue testigo de cómo un joven haitiano fue obligado a pasar del frente al fondo del autobús acusado de “tener grajo”, o “mal olor” del cuerpo. Un grupo de dominicanos abanicaban sus narices con las manos queriendo indicar que él no podía sentarse cerca de ellos. Al hombre se le negó el derecho de tomar un asiento vacío en un viaje de ocho horas.

    Contrariamente, a la población dominicana se le educa para ser servil y obediente ante los turistas alemanes, españoles, italianos y estadounidenses. Lo irónico es que entonces el “grajo” de los blancos occidentales es una idea “sin base” y no una tendencia asociada a alguna identidad étnica.

    La cuestión del “grajo” no es más que un elemento de un acentuado temor hacia los haitianos que va contra la naturaleza humilde de la vasta mayoría de los dominicanos y afianza su rol como portadores de un racismo “necesario”. “Necesario” porque mientras los haitianos sean considerados subhumanos, pueden ser explotados con mayor facilidad. El racismo proporciona el manto encubridor y la justificación de la súper explotación.

    “La desmemorización” (el olvido histórico)

    El Estado dominicano ha asumido el rol principal en encasillar, estereotipar y culpabilizar a la comunidad haitiana. La principal figura detrás del antihaitianismo fue el ex presidente Joaquín Balaguer, quien dedicó sus talentos intelectuales y literarios a difamar a los haitianos. En su libro “La isla al revés”, Balaguer pisotea vulgarmente la dignidad de los haitianos, culpándolos de manera absurda por la propagación de enfermedades venéreas a través de la República Dominicana, entre otras cosas. Balaguer alimenta la paranoia histórica de la sociedad dominicana de que los haitianos tratarán de nuevo de unificar los dos países bajo un gobierno como sucedió desde 1822 a 1844. Un recuento inexacto de la historia dominicana bajo el régimen militar haitiano se utiliza todavía hoy para avivar la histeria antihaitiana. En realidad, la ocupación haitiana liberó a los esclavos dominicanos y rompió el monopolio de la tierra y la salud impuesto por el poder colonial español y la Iglesia Católica. En palabras del Dr. Silvio Torres-Saillant, “muchos dominicanos marginados vivían mejor con la unificación que como estaban antes bajo el gobierno español”[1].

    Cualquier mención de la ocupación haitiana en la República Dominicana empieza con el la historia absurda de brutales soldados haitianos lanzando niños al aire para apuñalarlos en el aire con sus machetes al caer. Debe organizarse una resistencia a esta distorsionada memoria histórica para rescatar la historia de solidaridad entre los pueblos dominicano y haitiano. Haití nunca colonizó a la República Dominicana. Este período de 22 años merece un examen histórico intenso.

    ¿Qué hay detrás del muro?

    Mientras el pueblo haitiano se levantaba en 2021 contra la dictadura y el neocolonialismo, el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores dominicano, Roberto Álvarez, anunció que el país se embarcaba en la construcción de un muro de 118 millas en su frontera con Haití. En su discurso anual sobre el Estado de la Unión en 2021, el presidente Luis Abinader exaltó el muro sin mencionar en ningún momento la lucha histórica en que está inmerso el pueblo haitiano. El costo estimado supera los 100 millones de dólares. En el año de una pandemia en la que el turismo, la construcción y las remesas han sufrido graves golpes, es difícil creer que esta es la prioridad económica del gobierno dominicano.

    Estas mismas voces del consenso gobernante, que finge preocupación sobre el bienestar de “la Nación dominicana”, callan cuando se trata de la clase millonaria que es la que verdaderamente dirige el país nación. Las familias gobernantes como los Corripio, Bonetti y Vicini controlan miles de millones de dólares en inversiones en las áreas centrales de la economía dominicana, como la construcción, el turismo, el cacao, la energía y las telecomunicaciones.

    Según Oxfam, hay 265 millonarios en la República Dominicana. Para dar una idea de lo que significa ser millonario en un país afectado por una extendida pobreza y exclusión, un dominicano del 20% más pobre del país tendría que trabajar 214 años para poder ganar lo que uno de los 265 millonarios dominicanos gana en un mes. El estudio concluye que la riqueza acumulada de estas 265 personas equivale a 13 veces la inversión pública anual en educación, 17 veces la inversión pública en salud o 49% del PIB. Motivados por el oportunismo político, arribistas de extrema derecha como Joaquín Balaguer, Vinicio Castillo y Pelegrín Castillo han atacado Haití permanentemente.

    El pueblo haitiano ha sido tomado durante mucho tiempo como el niño más fácil de azotar en la República Dominicana. Se les culpa de muchas cosas, entre las que están enfermedades, el desempleo y la crisis sociales. Si no fuera por esas válvulas de escape, los actores políticos que han desarrollado estas narrativas hubieran tenido que inventarse otro enemigo o confrontar la dinámica estructural de clases y las desigualdades en la Región del Caribe. Ambas naciones no necesitan un muro. Necesitan puentes de solidaridad económica, educativa y diplomática. El papel del pueblo dominicano es construir estos puentes y completar la revolución inconclusa por la que lucharon y murieron las Hermanas Mirabal, Caamaño, Mamá Tingó, Orlando Martínez y otros tantos.

    Fuentes

    [1] Tomado de una intervención en una conferencia sobre la independencia dominicana llamada “Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial & Educational Center”, en el Alto Manhattan, en 2016.

    Anti-Haitianism Diverts Dominicans from their Real Problems

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    Originally Published to Haiti Liberte on April 7, 2021

    Haitians in the Dominican Republic are demeaned, harassed, and victimized in both mundane and extraordinary ways, just like Palestinians in Israel or Latino, Asian, and Muslim immigrants in the U.S..

    Pushed out of their homeland by the economic consequences of coups d’états, import dumping, and super-exploitation, officially 751,080 Haitians call the Dominican Republic home. This is 7.3% of the DR’s official population. There are hundreds of thousands of other Haitians who are deemed “illegal” and do not appear in statistics.

    “Antihaitianismo,” or anti-Haitian racism, is but one glaring symptom of the Dominican elites’ mind-set, and their state, whose policies resemble apartheid, has a vested interest in persecuting and scapegoating Haitians in the DR and even their Dominican offspring.

     “To Improve the Race”

    For decades, the Dominican people have been bombarded with both intense and subtle propaganda denigrating “Haitianidad” (being Haitian, often equated with being Black). Both dictator Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961) and his protégé Joaquín Balaguer (periodically president from 1960-1996) depicted Haitians as “the other” and were hispanophiles, exalting Spanish heritage and culture – that is, being white and European.

    Military checkpoints line the routes from the Haitian border towards the DR’s interior.

    As an example of “casual” anti-Haitianism, some Dominican parents jokingly threaten to send their kids in a sack to a Haitian bogeyman if they misbehave. Haitians are accused of stealing animals, or even children, and sacrificing them. In popular lore and the mass media, Haitians are identified with hunger, infectious disease, political turmoil, and “black magic.”

    Imbued with a certain myth of their cultural and racial superiority (although many have African ancestry), most Dominicans have turned their backs on Haitian language, history, and culture. Talk about “good hair” and “improving the race” by marrying someone lighter-skinned is common.

    Popular educators from groups like Acción Afro-Dominicana and Agenda Solidaridad work hard to reeducate Dominicans about the Haitian reality and raise awareness of the absurdity and danger of anti-Haitian hysteria.

    Ideologues of Hate

    Dominican Presidents Danilo Medina (2012-2020) and Luis Abinader (August 2020 to the present) have invested substantial financial and human resources into persecuting Haitians who came to the Dominican Republic. These presidents have engaged in the same practices as their predecessors dating back to Trujillo.

    Military checkpoints, one every few miles, line the routes from the Haitian border towards the DR’s interior. National Guard searches of public transportation serve to publicly humiliate Haitian migrants and remind them of their status as unwanted visitors. The Dominican military aggressively searches through Haitians’ luggage and merchandise, mocking their language, dress, and skin color, and demanding that they pay ridiculous fines. Dominican state police have converted crossing the border and traveling into the interior into a business based on bribes. The most aggressive guards carry out illegal deportations and beatings if Haitians do not give in to extortion. Rhetoric about the need to patrol for Haitian arms, drug traffickers, and “illegals” serves as the eternal justification for this aggressivity.

    Former president Joaquín Balaguer was a leading ideologue of anti-Haitianism.

    Even Dominican citizens sometimes contribute to this persecution. One Sunday afternoon on a bus returning from the border town of Jimani, I witnessed a young Haitian man being forced from the front to the back of a bus on the charge that he had “el grajo,” or body odor. Dominican passengers waved their hands in front of their noses as if to say that he could not sit close to them. The man was robbed of his right to take the seat he wanted for an eight-hour bus trip.

    In counterpoint, Dominicans are trained to be respectful, servile, and obedient to German, Spanish, Italian, and North American tourists. As long as Haitians are viewed as sub-human, they can more effectively be exploited. Racism provides the cloak and justification for their super-exploitation.

    “La desmemorización” (The Removal of Historical Memory)

    The Dominican state apparatus has assumed the leading role in labeling, stereotyping, and scapegoating the Haitian community. One of the foremost ideologues behind anti-Haitianism was Balaguer, who dedicated his intellectual and literary talents to defaming Haitians. In his book “La isla al revés” (The Island of Dreams), he stomps on the dignity of Haitians, absurdly blaming them for the spread of venereal diseases across the Dominican Republic, among other things. (Prostitution is common in the DR, with its tourist-based economy.) Balaguer stoked Dominican society’s historical paranoia that Haitians will try once again to unify the two countries under one government, as happened from 1822 to 1844. False historical accounts of Haitian rule are still used today to whip up anti-Haitian hysteria. In truth, the Haitian occupation brought freedom to Dominican slaves and broke up the monopoly of land and wealth by the Spanish colonists and Catholic Church. In the words of Dr. Silvio Torres-Saillant, “many marginalized Dominicans lived better with the unification than they did before under Spanish rule.”[1]

    Any mention today of the 22 years during which the neighboring nations were united provokes wild tales of vicious Haitian soldiers throwing children into the air and chopping them up with their machetes as they fell. There must be resistance to and deep historical  reexamination of this distorted historical memory to rescue the Dominican and Haitian people’s history of solidarity. Haiti never “colonized” the Dominican Republic.

    What is Behind the Wall?

    As the Haitian people continue to rise up in 2021 against dictatorship and neocolonialism, the Dominican Foreign Minister, Roberto Álvarez, announced that his country has embarked on the construction of a 118-mile wall along its border with Haiti. In his annual 2021 State of the Union address, President Luis Abinader lauded the wall without mentioning once the historic struggle the Haitian people are engaged in. The estimated cost is over $100 million dollars. In the grips of a pandemic, where tourism, construction, and remittances have taken a serious hit, it is shocking that this is Dominican government’s economic priority.

    These same mouthpieces of the ruling consensus, who feign concern about the welfare of “the Dominican nation,” are silent when it comes to the class of millionaires who are the nation’s true masters. Ruling families like the Corripios, Bonettis, and Vicinis control over a billion dollars of investments in the central sectors of the Dominican economy like construction, tourism, cacao, energy, and telecommunications.

    Dominican police scuffling with Dominicans of Haitian descent in June 2015. Even Dominicans born of Haitian immigrant parents are subject to persecution. Photo: Nehemías Alvino/Diario Libre

    According to Oxfam, there are 265 millionaires in the Dominican Republic. To give a sense of what it means to be a millionaire in a country affected by widespread poverty and exclusion, a Dominican from the poorest 20% of the country would have to work 214 years to be able to earn what one of the 265 Dominican millionaires earns in a month. The study concludes: “The accumulated wealth of these 265 people is equivalent to 13 times the annual public investment in education, 17 times the public investment in health, or 49% of GDP.” Motivated by political opportunism, far-right careerists like Joaquín Balaguer, Vinicio Castillo, and Pelegrín Castillo have constantly attacked Haiti.

    The Haitian people have long been blamed for many things in the Dominican Republic, including disease, unemployment, and social crises. The political actors who nurture these narratives do not want to address the gross class divide in the nation. Haitians provide the perfect diversion and scapegoat.

    The two nations do not need a wall; they need economic, educational, and diplomatic bridges of solidarity. When the Haitian and Dominican people build these bridges, it will complete the unfinished revolution that the Mirabal sisters, Caamaño, Mamá Tingó, Orlando Martinez, and so many other Dominican revolutionaries fought and died for.

    Danny Shaw teaches at the City University of New York and lived from 1997 to 2001 in the Dominican Republic, where he visits often.

    Sources

    [1] From a speech at a conference on Dominican Independence at The Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial & Educational Center in Uptown Manhattan in 2016.

    “Black Spartacus” Sheds New Light on Toussaint Louverture’s Life

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    Originally Published in Haiti Liberte on May 19, 2021, A Review of “Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture” by Sudhir Hazareesingh.

    Author Sudhir Hazareesingh is a native of the Indian ocean island and former French colony of Mauritius, once known as Ile de France. Drawing upon a lifetime of research in the French, British, and American archives, the Oxford scholar and expert on French history unearths primary sources and correspondence (untapped until now) which provide a deeper look at the legendary anti-slavery figure Toussaint Louverture and his worldview.

    Black Spartacus is a rigorous history of Toussaint’s undying spirit and prodigious work for his people’s emancipation. A stranger to sleep and personal comfort, everyday the former-slave-turned-general and leader of a burgeoning nation dictated and wrote 200 letters to allies and enemies alike, covered 120 miles on horseback and convened meetings with dozens of leaders and their communities (213). The first chapter examines his coming of age as a slave on the Breda plantation, from which he received his slave name, and the influence Catholicism and vodou had on him. He later earned his name Louverture, meaning “The Opening,” on the battlefield inspired by “one of the most revered vodou deities, Papa Legba, the spirit of the crossroads; a popular kreyòl chant at the beginning of ritual ceremonies was ‘Papa Legba, open the gates for me.’” (43)

    The middle chapters cover his time as “a general in the Spanish auxiliary army [where] he commanded a force of 4,000 men, as a French general who defeated the English invasion of San Domingue, and his writing of the 1801 constitution which outlawed slavery on the island for eternity.” (58) A diplomat, he had to maneuver between warring empires with superior armies and navies hell-bent on re-enslaving “the pearl of the Antilles.” Hazareesingh evaluates his role in the June 1799 “War of Knives” against André Rigaud and the Generals of Color (the “mulattos”). Supported by the British through their colonial administration in Jamaica, this intermediary class sought to wipe out the white planters and re-enslave the Blacks. Thoroughly opposed to “the relentless ethnic cleansing,” Louverture dreamed of and fought for a San Domingue for all classes. While protecting the lives of the white propertied class, he returned to rally his base on the plantations with his rallying cry: “I took up arms so that you may be free… and like you I was once a slave.” The battered, oppressed masses of former slaves were always his true source of power.

    Toussaint Louverture dreamed of and fought for a San Domingue for all classes.

    All books on the Haitian revolution must be held up to C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. The 1938 classic of the historical materialist method continues to be the magisterial account of how the masses of Haitian slaves mobilized themselves into a people’s army and blow by blow, setback after setback, treachery after treachery, massacre after massacre, defeated Napoleon’s murderous French empire.

    Hazareesingh’s main critique is that James gives too much credit to French Republicanism’s influence on Toussaint. Yet throughout the 427-page book, the author himself constantly reminds the reader of Toussaint’s loyalty to France. Both James and Hazareesingh agree on the essential components of Toussaint’s personality: he was “incorruptible,” a devout Catholic, a stickler for military order and social etiquette, and never forgot his roots. (193)

    An admirer of French culture, language, and history, Toussaint felt San Domingue could never make it on its own. Toussaint had a type of neocolonial view that the Mauritian author interrogates. Without returning the former slaves to a bondage they so violently feared, the reader may be surprised to know that their very liberator bound them to the plantations in order to continue producing the enormous wealth of the past decades and centuries. The workers in return received one fourth of their harvest. Aware of the brutal, dehumanizing effects of the slave system, he saw the plantation economy as a necessary evil until the formerly enslaved people could build up their own economy and culture. He saw France as the indispensable mother country that would instill this “Republican” spirit in “her children.”

    Surrounded by assassination plots and having been deceived from all sides, Toussaint “was extremely reluctant to communicate his intentions even to his leading military officers, or to share power with them in any meaningful way.” (291) Again, the Haitian general did not have the insights of future revolutionary cadre. Amilcar Cabral’s maxim: “Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories…” was all too relevant. The cultivateurs (former slaves) must have wondered why their shining prince disciplined them while giving free reign to the colons (the white planters and former slave owners). It was as if Toussaint thought he could win over the antagonistic classes and wish away a class conflict based on the enslavement of millions of abducted Africans.

    While in retrospect we can call Toussaint idealistic it is important to remember he did not have the advantage of drawing on the 1917 Soviet revolution, the 1949 Chinese Revolution, the Vietnamese’s popular resistance to French and then U.S. imperialism, or the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Unlike Makandal, Dessalines, Capois La Mort, his own adopted nephew Moïse (whom he ultimately executed), and other Haitian generals of the people’s war, Louverture was not willing to go all the way. Hazareesingh contrasts the Makandalist vs. Louverturian vision for Haiti. Ultimately, Dessalines was the man for the historical job of carrying the Makandalist project to its ultimate No Sellout, No compromise conclusion. The scorched earth strategy of “Koupe tèt Boule kay” (Cut off [the masters’] heads Burn down their mansions) was all the invading troops could understand. As 20,000 of General Leclerc’s soldiers occupied Cap Haitian in the north, Dessalines and his generals burned down the entire city and retreated to the mountains so that the invaders would have no base to call home.

    While “his capacity to straddle divides across the ideological spectrum” within the anti-colonial camp was a great asset, it was also his hamartia, or flaw fatale (357). Like James, Hazareesingh shows how Toussaint, even as he died away in a dungeon at the infamous French Fort de Joux in 1803, never lost hope that colonial France would live up to the 1789 creed of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.” Louverture remained a true Jacobin as France devolved again into a slave-holding empire. While revolutionary leadership through the ages will continue to debate whether his “non-racialist” view of humanity and progress was correct, they surely agree that his faith in his class and colonial enemies was his downfall. (39)

    In a polemic with apologists for colonialism, the Guyanese revolutionary Walter Rodney states the conclusion that Toussaint’s unbounding faith in human nature never allowed him to reach:

    “They [defenders of colonialism] would then urge that another issue to be resolved is how much Europeans did for Africans, and that it is necessary to draw up a ‘balance sheet of colonialism’. On that balance sheet, they place both the ‘credits’ and the ‘debits’, and quite often conclude that the good outweighed the bad… It is our contention that this is completely false. Colonialism had only one hand — it was a one-armed bandit.” (205)

    Toussaint’s tragic fate reconfirmed that two classes, with entirely antagonistic class interests, could not coexist. Napoleon’s deception, kidnapping, torture, imprisonment, and murder of Toussaint was a most undignified ending for the most upright of men.

    Hazareesingh’s final chapter, “A Universal Hero,” examines the vast array of tributes dedicated to the Haitian people’s general from future revolutions to the art, film, literature, and theater of future generations across the world. Facing death in a prison cell in 1954 Fidel Castro wrote that the Cuban revolutionaries were inspired “to revolutionize Cuba from top to bottom by the insurrection of Black slaves in Haiti, at a time when Napoleon was imitating Caesar, France resembled Rome, and the soul of Spartacus was reborn in Toussaint Louverture.”

    Black Spartacus is a motivating read, and its examination of letters and documents from the Haitian revolution complements the foundational work of C.L.R. James.

    Dominican Wall of Anti-Haitianism Keeps Neocolonial Inequity Alive

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    Originally Published to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs on March 29, 2021

    Like Palestinians in Israel and Latino, Asian and Muslim immigrants in the U.S., Haitians in the Dominican Republic are demeaned, harassed, and victimized in both extraordinary and mundane ways.

    Pushed out of their homeland by centuries of neo-colonialism and exploitation, officially 751,080 Haitians call the Dominican Republic home. This is 7.3% of the official population. There are hundreds of thousands of other Haitians who are deemed “illegal” and do not appear in any statistics.

    “Antihaitianismo,” or anti-Haitian racism, is but one glaring symptom of the economic and political elites’ mind-set in the Dominican Republic.

    This article will highlight the ideological, historical and political dimensions of  anti-Haitianism to show how the Dominican state, whose policies are reminiscent of apartheid, has a vested interest in harassing and scapegoating the Haitian population.

    “To Improve the Race”

    For decades, the Dominican people have been flooded with both intense and subtle propaganda denigrating Blackness and “Haitianidad,” depicting Hatians as “the other.” One of the pillars of the ideological legacy of Trujillismo and Balaguerismo was hispanophile, that is the exaltation of  Spanish heritage, which is also a way to celebrate what is white and European.

    Here are a few examples of “casual” anti-Haitianism. Some Dominican parents jokingly threaten to send their kids in a sack to a Haitian boogeyman if they misbehave. Haitians are accused of stealing animals, or even children, and sacrificing them. In the mass media, Haitians are identified with hunger, infectious disease, political turmoil, and “black magic.”

    Imbued with a certain myth of their cultural and racial superiority, too many Dominicans have turned their backs on the Haitian language, history, and culture. Talk about “good hair” and “improving the race” by marrying someone lighter-skinned remains common.

    Popular educators from groups like Acción Afro-Dominicana and Agenda Solidaridad work hard to reeducate the Dominican population about the Haitian reality and raise awareness of the dangers of anti-Haitian hysteria.

    Ideologues of Hate

    Dominican Presidents Danilo Medina (2012-2020) and Luis Abinader (August 2020 to the present) have invested substantial financial and human resources into persecuting Haitians who came to the Dominican Republic. These presidents have engaged in the same practices as their predecessors dating back to Trujillo.

    Military checkpoints, one every few miles, line the route towards the interior of the Dominican Republic. National Guard searches of public transportation serve to publicly humiliate Haitian migrants and remind them of their status as unwanted visitors. The Dominican military intentionally provokes Haitians by aggressively searching through their belongings, mocking their language, dress, and skin color, and demanding that they pay ridiculous fines. Dominican state police have converted crossing the border and traveling into the interior into a business fueled by bribes and corruption. The most aggressive guards carry out illegal deportations and beatings if Haitians do not give in to extortion. Rhetoric about the need to patrol for Haitian arms, drug traffickers, and “illegals” serves as the eternal justification for this aggression.

    Even Dominican citizens sometimes contribute to this persecution. One Sunday afternoon on a bus returning from the border town of Jimani, the author of this analysis witnessed a young Haitian man being forced from the front to the back of the bus on the charge that he had “el grajo,” or body odor. A group of Dominicans waved their hands in front of their noses as if to say that he could not sit close to them. The man was robbed of his right to take an empty seat on an eight-hour bus trip.

    In counterpoint, the Dominican population is trained to be servile and obedient to German, Spanish, Italian and North American tourists. White Western “grajo” is an afterthought and not a bias permanently attached to one’s ethnic identity.

    The dynamics of “el grajo” is just one element of an aggressive fear of Haitians that goes against the humble nature of the vast majority of people and secures their role as the carriers of a “necessary” racism. “Necessary” because as long as Haitians are viewed as sub-human, they can more effectively be exploited. Racism provides the cloak and justification for their super-exploitation.

    “La desmemorización” (The Historical Forgetting)

    The Dominican state apparatus has assumed the leading role in labeling, stereotyping, and scapegoating the Haitian community. The principal figure behind  anti-Haitianism was former president Joaquín Balaguer, who dedicated his intellectual and literary talents to defaming Haitians. In his book “La isla al revés,” Balaguer stomps vulgarly on the dignity of Haitians, absurdly blaming them for the spread of venereal diseases across the Dominican Republic, among other things. He plays on Dominican society’s historical paranoia that Haitians will try once again to unify the two countries under one government as happened from 1822 to 1844. Inaccurate recounting of Dominican history under Haitian military rule is still used today to whip up anti-Haitian hysteria. In truth, the Haitian occupation brought freedom to Dominican slaves and broke up the monopolization of land and wealth by the colonial Spanish power and the Catholic Church. In the words of Dr. Silvio Torres-Saillant, “many marginalized Dominicans lived better with the unification than they did before under Spanish rule.”[1]

    Any mention of the Haitian occupation today in the Dominican Republic begins with a wild tale of vicious Haitian soldiers throwing children into the air and chopping them up with their machetes as they fell. There must be a resistance to this distorted historical memory to rescue the Dominican and Haitian people’s history of solidarity. Haiti never colonized the Dominican Republic. This 22-year period deserves intense historical examination.

    What is Behind the Wall?

    As the Haitian people rise up in 2021 against dictatorship and neocolonialism, the Dominican Minister of Foreign Relations, Roberto Álvarez, announced that his country has embarked on the construction of a 118 mile wall on its border with Haiti. In his annual 2021 State of the Union address, president Luis Abinader lauded the wall without mentioning once the historic struggle the Haitian people are engaged in. The estimated cost is over $100 million dollars. In the year of a pandemic, where tourism, construction and remittances have taken a serious hit, it is hard to believe that this is the economic priority of the Dominican government.

    These same mouthpieces of the ruling consensus, who feign concern about the welfare of “the Dominican nation,” are silent when it comes to the millionaire class that are the true masters of the nation. Ruling families like the Corripios, Bonettis and Vicinis control some billion dollars of investments in the central arteries of the Dominican economy like construction, tourism, cacao, energy, and tele-communications.

    According to Oxfam, there are 265 millionaires in the Dominican Republic. To give a sense of what it means to be a millionaire in a country affected by widespread poverty and exclusion, a Dominican from the poorest 20% of the country would have to work 214 years to be able to earn what one of the 265 Dominican millionaires earns in a month. The study concludes: “The accumulated wealth of these 265 people is equivalent to 13 times the annual public investment in education, 17 times the public investment in health, or 49% of GDP.” Motivated by political opportunism, far-right careerists like Joaquín Balaguer, Vinicio Castillo, and Pelegrín Castillo have constantly attacked Haiti.

    The Haitian people have long served as the easiest whipping boy in the Dominican Republic. They are blamed for many things, including disease, unemployment, and social crises. If it were not for these ideological escape valves, the political actors who develop these narratives would have to invent another enemy or confront the structural dynamics of gross class and national inequalities in the Caribbean region. The two nations do not need a wall; they need economic, educational, and diplomatic bridges of solidarity. It is the role of the Dominican people to build these bridges and complete the unfinished revolution that the Mirabal sisters, Caamaño, Mamá Tingó, Orlando Martinez, and so many others fought and died for…

    Sources

    [1] From a speech at a conference on Dominican Independence at The Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial & Educational Center in Uptown Manhattan in 2016.

    Grenada: 38 Years after a Triple Assassination, the Short-Lived Revolution still Inspires

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    Originally Published on the Council on Hemispheric Affairs on October 25, 2021

    On October 25th, 1983, 7,300 U.S. troops, accompanied by U.S.-trained soldiers of CARICOM countries calling themselves “The Caribbean Peace Force,” invaded the tiny island of Grenada. This October marks the 38th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of the land of Julien Fedon, Jacqueline Creft, Maurice Bishop and the 110,000 people of Grenada. What lessons can we learn from the four-and-a half-year revolution? In a hemisphere on fire, with chronic social unrest and anti-imperialism on full display from the streets of Medellin to Mexico City, where does Grenada line up in the Global Class Struggle in the 21st century?

    The Revo

    On March 13th 1979, the leaders of the New Jewel Movement overthrew Eric Gairy, widely seen as being pro-imperialist, setting in motion one of the great revolutionary experiments in Caribbean history. Those who lived through the 1979 to 1983 Grenadian Revolution were forever transformed.

    Grenadian Professor of Political Science Wendy Grenade from the University of West Indies charts some of the gains made during the short period: “Raising levels of social consciousness; building a national ethos that encouraged a sense of community; organising agrarian reform to benefit small farmers and farm workers; promoting literacy and adult education; fostering child and youth development; enacting legislation to promote gender justice; constructing low income housing and launching house repair programmes; improving physical infrastructure and in particular the construction of an international airport; providing an environment that encouraged popular democracy through Parish and Zonal Councils etc.”[1] Slogans and billboards emblazoned the country’s landscape: “Never Too Old to Learn,” “Education is Production Too,” “Every Worker a Learner,” and “Women, Committed to Economic Construction.”[2]

    Angela Davis captured what “the revo” meant to the Black nation within the U.S.: “The experiences that I’ve had here in Grenada have confirmed in a very powerful way where we are headed, what the future of the entire planet ought to look like – this beautiful, powerful militant revolution.”[3] The chief spokesperson of the revolution, Maurice Bishop, famously came to New York City in June 1983 inspiring a crowd of thousands of African-Americans and anti-imperialists as he detailed his people’s achievements.[4]

    Glen “Pharoah” Samuel was a middle-school pupil at the time and was part of a crowd of students who raced to save Maurice Bishop, Jacqueline Creft and other revolutionary leaders from execution at Fort George.[5] Sitting down in a neighborhood bodega, he explained Grenada’s role in the global class struggle known as “The Cold War:”

    “As a Black, English-speaking country very close to America, imagine America has a population of over 42 million Afro Black Americans; obviously they understand our swag because we are all Black people, African people. So Ronald Reagan feared the situation and we had just finished our international airport which was sponsored by Cuba and the Soviet Union.”

    Internationalist educator Chris Searle’s book Grenada Morning: A Memoir of the “Revo” details the accomplishments of the revolution in overcoming a history of colonial and neocolonial servitude and degradation. Gerhard Dilger of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation studied the revolutionary contributions of poets and calypso singers from 1979 to 1983.[6] Dr. Horace Campbell’s Rasta and Resistance highlights the participation of the Rastafari community, long oppressed under the Gairy dictatorship, in the Revolutionary People’s Government and Army.

    All of Grenada was ablaze with the flames of revolutionary optimism, unity and growth.

    Dr. Terence Marryshow remembers the Grenadian and Cuban resisters and martyrs of the 1983 U.S. invasion (Photo Credit: Danny Shaw/COHA)

    The Invasion: An Attempt to Kill Hope

    Alarmed at the existence of another workers’ state in Washington’s “backyard,” Ronald Reagan and the U.S. foreign policy establishment were hellbent on overthrowing the four-and-a-half-year revolution.

    Internationalist scholar Carlos Martínez artfully captures the U.S. campaign of psychological warfare and saber rattling. In 1981, Reagan mobilized over 120,000 troops, 250 warships and 1,000 aircraft to Vieques, an island that is part of Puerto Rico, for a mock invasion.[7] They code-named the operation “Amber and the Amberines” because Grenada’s official name is Grenada and the Grenadines, as it includes the two smaller islands of Carriacou and Petit Martinique. U.S. intelligence worked overtime to monitor the cracks in the revolutionary leadership and create divisions in order to exploit them, ultimately leading to the assasination of the revolution’s top leadership. Eighteen civilians were killed when the U.S. Navy bombed a hospital for patients with mental challenges. 24 Cuban construction workers were murdered.[8]

    It was David vs Goliath but David stood up to the invasion. Maurice Bishop sounded the battle cry: “This land is ours, every square inch of its soil is ours, every grain of sand is ours, every nutmeg pod is ours, every beautiful young Pioneer who walks on this land is ours. It is our responsibility and ours alone, to fight to defend our homeland.”[9] The break in the top leadership of the New Jewel Movement and Reagan’s accusation that 600 American medical students were in danger, provided the humanitarian cover for the illegal assault on a people’s democracy.

    The U.S. military project then helped prop up a pro-U.S. power structure that sought to dismantle the very memory of the revolution. Artist Suelin Low Chew Tung writes that “images of the revolution[ary] years were deliberately erased from the landscape … Three decades later, as far as local visual art records are concerned, it is as if the Grenada Revolution never happened.”[10] It was apparent that this generation feels disconnected from Grenada’s definitive break with neo-colonialism. To many youth, it appeared this was ancient history. How many Grenadians born after 1983 fully comprehended that their small homeland inspired the world?

    The Washington Examiner, owned by right-wing billionaire Philip Anschutz, captures how U.S. ruling circles viewed military action against Grenada as a strategic, easy victory after defeat in Vietnam and Iran. In an editorial on September 12, 2021, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute advocated for a Grenada-like invasion to shore up respect for America after the humiliating defeat of the U.S. in Afghanistan: “Where and under what circumstances might a future commander in chief send troops to draw a new red line for America’s enemies?”[11] He ominously ends the article warning: “There will be a new Grenada; the question to ponder is where and when.”

    The Blackout: Liquidating Memory

    On August 26th 2021, this writer sat down with Dr. Terence Marryshow, Captain of the People’s Revolutionary Army responsible for the personal security of Maurice Bishop and NJM leadership, former political leader of the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement (MBPM) and grandson of T.A. Marryshow, the father of the West Indian Federation. He elaborated on Pan-Caribbeanism in Grenada today.[12] “Caribbean leaders today are not pursuing this goal as vigorously as they ought to in the interests of the people of the Caribbean. The problem is many of them are not willing to give up that lofty position that they hold. During the period of the revolution there was certainly a great effort with the People’s Revolutionary Government led by Maurice Bishop to forge that kind of Caribbean integration. But with his demise there is no real voice out there [in Grenada] championing that cause. Today leaders are hardly concerned with that. Yes we do have CARICOM which in the final analysis is really a talk shop because nothing like concrete decisions and progress for the people  comes out of it.”

    In an extensive interview, the Cuban-trained physician stated that “concerning teaching on the revolution in the schools there is a  complete blackout. There is a concerted effort not to speak about it except for groups like The Maurice Bishop and October 19th Martyrs Foundation, the Grenadian Cuba Friendship Society and the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement. But there is no space on the [mainstream school] curriculum today for teaching anything about that revolutionary period.”

    A soldier of the People’s Revolutionary Army, nicknamed Salt, who chose to remain anonymous and only wanted his nickname published, remembered what it meant to stand up to the hegemon of the north. He remembered the Center for Popular Education, his own exposure to critical Marxist texts and the day the call came from his superior officers to prepare to defend the country. Speaking on censorship today, Salt explained: “The educators are not documenting anything and are not teaching our young people about the progress the revolution made.”

    To add insult to injury, the invaders and new rulers of Grenada disappeared the bodies of the key New Jewel Movement leaders. Local community leaders showed me where the invaders and their underlings disappeared Maurice’s Bishop’s body.[13] Bishop’s mother Alimenta captured the horror of not knowing where her son’s body was.[14] Having already lived through her husband’s murder at the hands of Eric Gairy and the same U.S.-backed state machinery, she stated that, “I could go to the grave and say this is the spot where my husband is buried, but I can’t say that for my son.” This was what Grenadians remember as the triple assassination of their revolution.

    Which Way Forward?

    In 2019, the Venezuela government published a bilingual tribute to Maurice Bishop and the October martyrs in the Correo del Alba. Unpublished testimonies of dozens of cadres and combatants of the revolutionary process express how it brought Grenada closer to Africa and all oppressed nations, and set Grenada on a path to defiant participation in CELAC, ALBA, and PetroCaribe.[15] Today Grenada is charting a path of friendly relations both with imperialism and the blockaded Bolivarian nations attempting to emerge from centuries of colonialism and decades of U.S. hybrid war. What is clear is that the Grenadian Revolution was an example for the world that the colonized can stand up, organize and win.

    Sources

    [1] Invent the Future. “The Legacy of the Grenadian Revolution Lives On.” March 13, 2014.

    https://invent-the-future.org/2014/03/legacy-of-the-grenadian-revolution/embed/#?secret=9yP2qBlqKG

    [2] ESPIONART. ”The Billboard Art of Revolutionary Grenada.” October 30, 2018. https://espionart.com/2018/10/30/the-billboard-art-of-revolutionary-grenada/

    [3] Black Perspectives. “The House on Coco Road”: A New Film on Family, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Grenada.” May 2, 2017.

    https://www.aaihs.org/the-house-on-coco-road-a-new-film-on-family-race-and-u-s-intervention-in-grenada

    [4] YouTube. Maurice Bishop Speaks. March 7th, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7MtydR-fiI&t=1586s

    [5] August 24th, 2021. https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1430142177997475854?s=20

    [6] Gerhard Dilger. Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut. August 14, 2019. “WE DOIN WE OWN TING!” REVOLUTION AND LITERATURE IN GRENADA.” https://publications.iai.spk-berlin.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/Document_derivate_00002178/BIA_046_217_244.pdf;jsessionid=085580D208A5C7146C9B1FF715BC9470

    [7] Invent the Future. “The Legacy of the Grenadian Revolution Lives On.” March 13, 2014.

    https://invent-the-future.org/2014/03/legacy-of-the-grenadian-revolution/embed/#?secret=9yP2qBlqKG

    [8] NPR. ”Grenada’s Nobody’s Backyard.”January 29, 2021. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1021236625

    [9] Maurice Bishop. MAURICE BISHOP SPEAKS. The Grenada Revolution and Its Overthrow, 1979–83. Pathfinder Press.

    [10] Suelin Low Chew Tung. Social and Economic Studies. “Painting the Grenada Revolution.” September-December 2013. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24384484

    [11] Michael Rubin. Washington Examiner. “After the humiliation of Afghanistan, where and when will we see a new Grenada?” September 12, 2021

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/after-the-humiliation-of-afghanistan-where-and-when-will-we-see-a-new-grenada

    [12] Interview with the author. August 30, 2021. https://www.instagram.com/tv/CTOJoC2onSM/?utm_medium=copy_link

    [13] Interview with the author. August 22, 2021. https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1429589886349238273?s=21

    [14] Now Grenada. “Alimenta Bishop Is To Be Honoured By Government”

    August 27, 2013. https://www.nowgrenada.com/2013/08/alimenta-bishop-is-to-be-honoured-by-government/

    [15] Correo del Alba. May 29, 2020. https://twitter.com/correodelalba/status/1266405415459393538?s=20

    Colombia’s new President, Gustavo Petro:  What does this Historic Leftist Victory Mean for a Continent in Revolt? 

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    Originally Published to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs on June 21, 2022

    On August 7th a new left of center government will take power in Colombia. Many questions remain to be answered but one thing is clear: this historic election marks a break with a long Colombian history of State violence and monolithic conservatism.

    On June 19, Gustavo Petro beat his rival, the businessman Rodolfo Hernández, by a margin of 50.44% to 47.03%, after 100% of the country’s polling stations reported their results.[1] Both his opponent and current president Iván Duque recognized the results, congratulating Petro.[2]

    Despite an information war and decades of violence against the left, over 11 million Colombians successfully mobilized and voted for the historic change.[3] La Unión Patriótica (UP) was one leftist political party that suffered from this political genocide. Over 5,000 UP leaders were assassinated, including Bernardo Jaramillo, the UP presidential candidate in 1990, along with 21 lawmakers, 70 local councilors and 11 mayors. It is this reality of state and paramilitary violence that has long earned Colombia the infamous designation as the most dangerous place on earth for union leaders and journalists. Human Rights Watch and the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) have documented the hundreds of assassinations and dozens of massacres that occur in Colombia every year.

    A Unified Continental Uprising?

    Petro is the seventh former leftist guerilla fighter to become president in a Latin American nation, joining Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua,  Dilma Rousseff from Brazil, José Mujica from Uruguay, Salvador Sánchez Cerén from El Salvador, and Fidel and Raúl Castro, from Cuba. However, unlike the others from the list, Petro doesn’t belong to the Bolivarian momentum sweeping across the continent. This outcome of former guerrilla leaders, including Petro, serving their countries as presidents, as well as the recent elections of progressive presidents in Bolivia, Honduras, Mexico, and Argentina, shows clearly the weakness of the neoliberal model that is, so far, incapable of solving the poverty, corruption, hierarchies of domination, and chronic inequality that affects most of the Latin American continent. By electing Petro, the Colombian people are sending a strong message of frustration with a failed model that has brought organized crime, social disparities, chronic violence, a 40% poverty rate and militarization of the public sphere to the lives of millions of citizens.

    Leaders of the Continent Congratulate Petro and Márquez

    Upon hearing the results of the election, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador summarized the long history of violence against the popular sectors of Colombia and concluded: “Today’s triumph can be the end of this tragedy and the horizon for this fraternal and dignified people.”[4] Former president of Brazil, Luis Lula Ignacio da Silva, declared the importance of this victory for South American and third world integration.[5] Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, congratulated Petro stating that “new times can now be envisioned.”[6]  COHA Senior Fellow, Alina Duarte, who has been on the ground in Cali covering the elections, wrote “It is impossible not to feel emotion with the victory of the Colombian people. So many years of war, dispossession and death. Today, a Black woman from Cauca, who was a domestic worker, single mother and defender of the land stands strong against oligarchy. What a beautiful day!”[7]

    Francia Márquez became the first woman and first Afro-Colombian elected as vice-president (credit photo: Iván Castaneira)

    In her acceptance speech Francia Márquez pronounced: “After 214 years we achieved a government of the people, a popular government, of those who have calloused hands, the people who have to walk everywhere, the nobodies of Colombia. We are going to seek reconciliation for this country. We are for dignity and social justice.”[8]

    Petro’s speech followed.[9] With the crowd chanting “libertad,” the president elect called for amnesty for political prisoners, environmental justice and an end to impunity for State actors responsible for the murder of activists. He continued affirming: “It is time to dialogue with the U.S. government to find other ways of understanding one another…without excluding anybody in the Americas.” He concluded by promising to build “a global example of a government of life, of peace, of social justice and environmental justice.”

    Which Way Forward?

    The transition in Colombia, long a U.S. ally in the region, raises major questions about which we can only speculate right now.

    How will the new people’s government orient towards the nine U.S. military bases in Colombia?[10]  And how will the new administration, committed to overcoming corruption, confront the reality that Colombia still is the major planetary producer of cocaine, and the main source of the illegal drug in the U.S.?

    There are also profound political and economic issues that will be decided in the coming days. Like Gabriel Boric in Chile, Pedro Castillo in Peru and Xiomara Castro in Honduras, Petro and Márquez will now have to balance a left or left of center ideology with the reality of a strong, embedded oligarchy that will fiercely resist all but certain anemic social-democratic reforms.[11]

    The new administration will also have to define itself in relation to the Bolivarian cause of regional integration, multipolarity, and sovereignty. Boric has gone out of his way to condemn the Bolivarian camp, and on the largest global stage, at the exclusionary Summit of the Americas. López Obrador and Argentine president Alberto Fernández have been outspoken about building more links with Venezuela and denouncing U.S. unilateral sanctions. Petro seems to be leaning more in the direction of continental unity and a moderate approach to the current wave of progressive administrations, not declaring the U.S. as an enemy but instead trying to change the focus of the relationship to other more innocuous arenas like the environment. Washington seeks to retain its strong influence on Colombia, considering the warm words of congratulations expressed by its Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. Petro’s plan is to limit the oil projects in the country and move to more sustainable resources. However, this will be a main concern for U.S. energy interests, for sure. And it is to be seen how Petro will face the pressure to accommodate the multimillion dollar U.S. private and public security apparatus, including agencies like the DEA, that operate throughout Colombian territory.

    Afro-Colombians and Indigenous Peoples are Now Visible

    At the same time, the movement to which Márquez is accountable voted for Petro because of his commitment to the environment and the historic struggles of Afro-descendant and Indigenous peoples.[12] There is no doubt that Márquez inspired thousands of Colombians from all oppressed sectors of the country, as well as  new young voters, women, and intellectuals who felt moved by this former “housekeeper.” She is the first Black and the first woman ever elected as vice president. But now, the question of the expectations created arises. If the grassroots sees too many compromises with the oligarchy will there be a revolt from within?

    Petro and the Troika of Resistance

    How will Petro relate to Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia? During the campaign, he distanced himself from the Bolivarian camp because in Colombia the vast majority of people have been taught by a  constant barrage of state propaganda that Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba are “failed states” and “dictatorships.” In the immediate aftermath of the election, there is great interest in Washington as well as Caracas on Petro’s posture towards Venezuela. In a recent interview, Petro artfully stopped short of all out support for the movement for a definitive second Latin American emancipation[13] but recognized Maduro as President, anticipating enhanced economic links and “civilized bridges” with Venezuela.[14]

    On the other hand, it is likely that the U.S. establishment and State Department have not pushed back on the outcome of the election precisely because of compromises made by the Petro-Márquez campaign. COHA Senior Analyst, William Camacaro, cautions that “the worst that can occur is to see a coalition of supposedly leftist governments–Chile, Peru and Colombia–joining Washington’s narrative against the Bolivarian revolution.”

    Ending Impunity

    Another major question was raised during the acceptance speeches. Just in the first six months of 2022, 86 social leaders have been murdered by State and paramilitary forces.[15] Last Sunday June 19, shoulder to shoulder with the president and vice-president elect, one of the mothers of the missing students and protestors asked if there will finally be justice for their sons and daughters who have been disappeared.[16] Petro’s ability to put an end to these murders and hold perpetrators accountable will be a major test of his leadership.

    The Petro–Márquez victory was clearly a cause for celebration in the streets of Colombia and in the diaspora.[17] But when the fireworks and parties are over the class tensions in Colombia will still abound. The June 19th victory is a moment pregnant with hope for the most vulnerable sectors who have long fought the political and economic domination of the oligarchs and their foreign backers.  But given the long history of oligarchic rule and political capture of significant parts of the State apparatus by organized crime this is also a historical moment wrought with challenges.[18]

    (Credit photo: Iván Castaneira)

    Sources

    [1] Resultados elecciones Colombia 2022, https://elpais.com/america-colombia/elecciones-presidenciales/2022-06-20/resultados-elecciones-colombia-2022-siga-la-segunda-vuelta-en-vivo.htm; “Former guerrilla wins Colombia’s presidential election, first leftist leader in nation’s history” By Antonio Maria Delgado and Daniela Castro”, https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/colombia/article262685862.html and “Elecciones en Colombia: Gustavo Petro hace historia con su triunfo presidencial”, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/19/espanol/elecciones-colombia-resultados

    [2] https://twitter.com/ivanduque/status/1538649171091234816?s=21&t=Di9BjraLgugUYoghqk_HJQ

    [3] “Elecciones en Colombia: Gustavo Petro hace historia con su triunfo presidencial”, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/19/espanol/elecciones-colombia-resultados

    [4] https://twitter.com/lopezobrador_/status/1538655041203994624

    [5] https://twitter.com/LulaOficial/status/1538659107846213632?s=20&t=yWQojGEvBOAEC9rxKHGOBg

    [6] “Maduro felicita a Gustavo Petro: ‘Nuevos tiempos se avizoran”, https://www.eltiempo.com/mundo/venezuela/gustavo-petro-nicolas-maduro-felicita-al-nuevo-presidente-de-colombia-681464

    [7] https://twitter.com/AlinaDuarte_/status/1538682412963610624?s=20&t=qZub5_HndLrJj2jhYMpHQw

    [8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-tusiZCs8

    [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-tusiZCs8

    [10] “Colombia: Bases militares de Estados Unidos: neocolonialismo e impunidad”, https://soaw.org/colombia-bases-militares-de-estados-unidos-neocolonialismo-e-impunidad

    [11] https://twitter.com/OVargas52/status/1538780873079656448?s=20&t=DZ7boATDa66VeFLRfaXbYw

    [12] https://twitter.com/AlinaDuarte_/status/1538900416330715136?s=20&t=CAiPapdc2MvpzTRz3hLPlw

    [13] The second emancipation refers to the struggle of emancipation from the domination of Latin America by the United States and overcoming the multiple hierarchies of domination that have been imposed over five centuries by colonization, dependency, and most recently the neoliberal regime. This process of liberation involves constructing forms of democracy with popular participation as well as representative governments that prioritize human life in harmony with the biosphere and are held accountable to constituents.The first emancipation refers to independence from Spain and Portugal.

    [14] “Gustavo Petro ganó: ¿Restablecerá relaciones con el Gobierno de  Maduro en Venezuela?”, https://www.wradio.com.co/2022/06/17/si-gana-gustavo-petro-restableceria-relaciones-con-el-gobierno-maduro-en-venezuela/

    [15] “Asciende a 86 cifra de líderes colombianos asesinados en 2022”, https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia-aumento-lideres-asesinados-colombia-20220610-0023.html

    [16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-tusiZCs8

    [17] https://twitter.com/danielalozanocu/status/1538718452348862464?s=20&t=DZ7boATDa66VeFLRfaXbYw

    [18] https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1538690747179929600

    Brazil: More Fascism and Neocolonialism or a Path Back to Self-Determination?

    0

    Originally published from Río de Janeiro, Brazil on September 27, 2022 at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs 

    (The author has changed certain names and details to protect individuals’ privacy.)

    When you arrive in another country, there is nothing more precious than new friends who adopt you, protect you, and teach you about their language, music, culture, and traditions. For an open-minded traveler, ethnographer and anti-imperialist organizer, this new family is more valuable than any air-conditioned hotel,  amount of comfort or money.

    When I moved to Brazil in May of 2003, Binho, Mateuszinho, Thiago and their family and neighborhood crew took me in and put me up in O Morro do Santo Cristo and O Complexo da Penha, the heart of Río de Janeiro’s favelas and drug war. They walked me through the complex landscape of Rio’s corrupt brutal police who shoot first and rarely ask questions later, their violent blitzes (Río slang for stop and frisks), and a maze of morros (ghettos spread across hills) divided between two major paramilitary drug gangs: O Comando Vermelho and O Terceiro Comando (The Red Command and The Third Command).

    Lula meets with “Sports and Democracy for Lula”, September 27th in São Paulo (photo credit: Danny Shaw).

    On the eve of what Steve Bannon is calling the “second most important election in the world,” the October 2nd showdown between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro, I returned to Río nineteen years later.[1] Full of saudades (memories or nostalgia), I surprised the old crew in hopes of getting us all back together.

    Everyday Survival

    What became of my three friends?

    From the outset, it is important to steer the English-speaking reader away from the stereotype that Rio de Janeiro represents Brazil or that my organic contacts represent all of Rio. Only a tiny percentage of favela residents make a living in the drug trade while most families reject lumpen lifestyles and find ways to eke out an income in hostile economic terrain by any means necessary.

    Professor Danny Shaw
    Professor Danny Shaw meeting members of the Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores in Brazil (photo credit: Danny Shaw).

    Binho went to prison in 2004 for an armed robbery of a bakery that left his three partners in crime dead in a shootout with the police in ​​Jacarepaguá. A police officer who responded to the scene said he didn’t pull the trigger because Binho’s face reminded him of his son. The crime of armed robbery, Article 157 of the penal code, afforded Binho four years in Bangu prison. The vibrant 22-year old sustained brain injuries and psychological trauma from beatings from rival gangs. He contracted AIDS and has not been able to access the necessary medications. His wife Ronenete died of AIDS complications four years ago. I sat by his bedside remembering old times, nostalgic of the once cocky, invincible bandido (thug) who mentored me on why in Rio, “você não pode vacilar” (you can’t get caught slipping.)

    Mateuszinho was a low level hustler for the Comando Vermelho, Rio’s largest gang and drug trafficking entity. He was a quick-talking, street smart 24-year old who conversed his way out of every brush with death, laughing it off and embarking upon his next mission. For seven 12-hour shifts per week as a vapor (the highest look out at the top of the morro), he earned $60 (120 reais in 2003) per week. I remember him parading around with other teenagers and young men toting M-16s and other automatic weapons as they protected the open drug operations and patrolled a baile funk, a weekend block party attended by thousands of local residents. With the police in plain view, the CV soldiers fired their weapons into the air in an open show of force sometime after 2 A.M., yelling their signature slogan “É nós.” I tracked down Mateuszinho at the science museum (Museu do Amanhá) where he now works as head of security. He is now one of over 65 million  Brazilians, in an Evangelical church, the fastest growing religion in Brazil, second only to the Catholic Church with 105 million members.[2]

    “O Grito dos Excluídos” march on September 7th against fascism and Bolsonarismo (photo credit: Danny Shaw)

    Rene continues to coordinate Arte Transformadora which serves 476 youth from O Complexo da Penha, 13 favelas spread over 13 hills where landless families first eeked out an existence when slavery was officially “abolished” in 1888.[3] Brazil was the last nation on earth to officially outlaw slavery. Deprived of forty acres and a mule or any type of support or reperations from the state, millions of newly “freed” slaves were left to fend for themselves in a caste society regimented by race and class. Favelas, named after a type of tree native to the Northeast, home to many slaves and migrant laborers who headed South, emerged as the name of these hilltop shantytowns. Rene matter-of-factly talked about identifying and delivering the bodies of youth soldiers of the Comando Vermelho to their families after they were shot down by the UPP (Police Pacifying Unit). Often, the police only allowed him or another community leader to cross police lines to retrieve the bodies. Rene still jokes with hustlers armed with walkie talkies and automatic weapons, children he held in his own arms only a decade before. Arte Transformadora seeks to plant seeds of hope and success in the minds of preteens and teens who may otherwise become cannon fodder for Rio’s drug war.

    Visiting these close friends nearly two decades later gave me deeper insight into the two different directions this South American economic juggernaut might take on October 2nd.

    Lula meets with Evangelical Church on September 9th in São Gonçalo (photo credit: Danny Shaw)

    The Showdown

    156,454,011 Brazilians are eligible to vote next week for the president, 27 governors, 27 senators, 513 Congress people, 1,035 state representatives, and 24 district representatives. 28,274 candidates are squaring off for these positions, representing a vast array of parties, ranging from socialist to far-right.[4]

    Jair Bolsonaro is the incumbent president who won the 2018 presidential election over the Partido dos Trabalhadores’ (PT) Fernando Haddad, due largely to the lawfair and misinformation campaign that had been underway against the PT since it first won executive power in 2003. Bolsonaro has employed Trump-esque tactics, preemptively questioning the integrity of the voting machines. Netlab, a unit at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro,[5] found that YouTube was favoring algorithms that promoted these Bolsonaro myths. Bolsonaro and his fellow senators have a history of denigrating and intimidating journalists.[6] As the presidential campaigns began to heat up, this former Army Artillery Officer is actively trying to get the military further involved in politics[7] and positioned to overturn the decisions of the Electoral Commission[8] to verify the elections if he were to lose. Some analysts are contemplating whether his camp has the power to stage an October coup.[9] More recently, however, Bolsonaro has tried to strike a more conciliatory tone saying “If it’s God’s will, I’ll continue (as president). If not, I’ll pass the (presidential) sash and retire.”[10]

    For the past two weeks Globo, CNN Brasil and the other mouthpieces of the economic and political establishment have published headlines stating that Datafolha polls give Lula 45% of the vote and Bolsonaro 33%.[11] A student of Trumpian tactics, Bolsonaro has for the past four years positioned himself as the victim of “the liberal media” and “fake news.”[12] A military insider and political “outsider,” Bolsonaro has more recently made a list ditch effort to implement populist economic measures to shore up more votes, approving a $7.7 billion dollar stimulus package, which increases cash handouts to struggling families by 50%. According to the same Brazilian study, 61 percent of voters view this eleventh hour move as politically motivated to  cut Lula’s lead in the polls.[13]

    Datafolha’s research lays out the demographics of Brazil’s divided vote:

    50 percent of women are expected to vote for Lula and 27 percent for Bolsonaro. Young people, aged 16 to 24, are twice as likely to vote for Lula. The demographic least likely to vote for Bolsonaro is Black women. Afro-Brazilians in general, and families making less than twice the minimum wage (which is roughly 55 percent of the electorate), are less likely to vote for him. Bolsonaro is leading among white males; and among families making over five times the minimum wage, he polls at 47% to Lula’s 35%.[14]

    According to another Datafolha study, Lula maintains 53 percent of the Catholic vote versus Bolsonaro’s 30 percent.[15] In the case of other religions — such as the Afro-Brazilian candomblé, the PT candidate is polling four times higher than his Liberal Party rival. Lula has a comfortable lead among self-defined atheists, with 60 percent expected to vote for him and 22 percent for the incumbent. Among Evangelical Christians, Bolsonaro’s main base, he is polling at 52 percent. Bolsonaro’s appeal to this sector comes from the fact that he “promotes conservative family values and opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.”[16] The fact that 34 percent of the people in Bolsonaro’s key demographic now say they will vote for Lula is immensely significant. On September 9th, Lula met with members of the Evangelical Church of São Gonçalo on the outskirts of Río and in an emotional appeal laid out why he is the real candidate for those who believe in God and in justice.[17]

    The attempt to build a popular anti-fascist front with more right-leaning and center candidates led Lula to select former São Paulo governor Geraldo Alckman as his running mate. Professor Luis Mergulhāo elucidates why many on the left find Alckman objectionable.[18] Regardless of these valid critiques, seven former Brazilian presidential candidates have come out in support of Lula. His ability to build the largest electoral alliance in the six times he has run for president shows that Lula is an astute political strategist.[19]

    There are other exciting historic races under way as well. Though beyond the scope of this article, it is worth highlighting one such race. Black City Councilwoman Carol Dartora is running under the slogan “Paraná is also ours.”[20] Dartora managed to push through Affirmative Action legislation in the southern Curitiba city government even though 70% of the council men and women were right wing, representing the racist politics that have long dominated the region. She joined Lula at a massive campaign rally on September 18th showing that Brazil’s three Southern states, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, which are a majority European descendent, also have a strong PT base.[21]

    The Lula and Dilma PT Years: Social base and sister organizations

    Brasilwire, a website that closely follows the twists and turns of Brazilian politics through an anti-imperialist lens, offers an overview of the anti-neo-liberal track record of the PT. Between 2003 and the Lawfare coup against President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, the PT helped lift 40 million Brazilians out of poverty,[22] expanded university access for working class and Afro-Brazilian students, granted labor rights to Brazil’s long exploited domestic servants,[23] and stimulated internal production and created a market for nationally manufactured goods.[24] Lula speaks the language of the masses of Brazil, challenging the arrogance and invincibility of the other candidates who represent Brazil’s 0.1 percent. On Sunday, August 27th, in the first nationally televised presidential debate, he stood up to the other candidates who challenged his executive track record, saying “You may not have seen the changes we (the PT) carried out, but your gardeners, your drivers, your bodyguards, and your maids did.”[25] Millions erupted into applause as their Lula spoke truth to power.

    Lula’s social welfare programs did not always bring about structural change, but they did lift millions of Brazilians out of poverty. One of Lula’s stated goals, which he speaks about on the campaign trail, is to ensure every Brazilian is able to eat three meals a day. The PT democratized higher education. According to a World Bank study, in 2002, there were zero students from the poorest 20 percent of the population attending college and only 4 percent of college students came from the poorest 40 percent.[26] Two-and-a-half terms of PT leadership changed this dramatically. By 2015, approximately 15 percent of higher education students were from the two poorest quintile of Brazilian society. For the first time, working-class and Black Brazilians could get that critical university education.

    To further understand the PT’s defense of the poor, we must look at its base and its sister organizations and the work that they do on the frontlines of the class struggle. The true working class base of the PT is the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT).[27] The largest union in South America and fifth largest in the world, the CUT has 7,847,077 dues-paying members and 23,981,044 associated union members.[28] 48 CUT leaders, representing a vast array of trades from public workers to professors, are running in the current elections. Citing the 1988 Brazilian constitution, the CUT writes: “Article number 1 states all power emanates from the people who exercise it through elected representatives or directly in the terms of this constitution.”[29] The Ibitinga, São Paulo-based teacher and CUT Secretary of Administration and Treasury, Ariovaldo de Camargo,[30] lays out a class-based view of these elections: “Bosses pick bosses. Workers vote for workers. We have a wide array of workers before us to vote for.”[31]

    The Movement of Landless Workers, the MST, works closely with the PT and other leftist parties. Since the 1980’s, the MST has mobilized some 370,000 families to carry out 2,500 collective land occupations against latifundios (massive estates held by individuals or corporations).[32] Despite constant threats and attacks from the Military Police, the largest social movement in the history of the hemisphere has liberated 7.5 million hectares of land and set in motion critical education programs, increased agricultural production, cooperatives, and quality health care.

    The National Movement for Struggle for Housing, The MNLM, builds “solidarity in urban spaces, in a unique, organic relationship with the MST. Beyond land, we fight for housing lots, homes, sanitation and the other needs of marginalized populations.”[33] This organization of “squatters” has appropriated homes for thousands of families and set up collectived educational centers and child care.

    Victories by the PT, the Party for Socialism and Liberty (Psol), and the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) would keep space open for such redistribution and reparations to continue. A Bolsonaro victory would heighten the intensity of violence against society’s most vulnerable social actors and social movements.

    Implications for Brazil’s foreign policy

    The Bolsonaro administration has been a firm ally in Washington’s drive against left and left-leaning governments in Latin America, and has distanced Brazil from the cause of regional integration. In stark contrast, a third Lula administration would once again make Brazil a champion of regional independence and integration by playing an active role in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) which Brazil left in 2020, and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) which Brazil left in 2019. Lula would also be a strong advocate for Bolivia’s full membership in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR). And just as Colombian President Gustavo Petro has made amends with the Chavista government of Venezuela, if elected, Lula would cease all hostilities and embrace a cooperative relationship with the Bolivarian Republic. Brazil would play a stronger role in BRICS and the building of a multipolar world. During his presidency, Lula served as an international peace maker trying to help negotiate a “nuclear deal” between the United States and Iran; if elected, he would likely resume efforts to advance world peace.[34]

    Lula’s foreign policy will represent the reintegration of Brazil into the Bolivarian family and further momentum for the progressive transformations underway across the continent from Cochabamba to Caracas to Mexico C/ity.[35] Lula has spoken of building a unifying South American currency, the Sur. At a campaign rally, Lula remembered: “The US was very afraid when I discussed a new currency and Obama called me: ‘Are you trying to create a new currency, a new euro?’. I said, ‘No, I’m just trying to get rid of the US dollar. I’m just trying not to be dependent.’”[36]

    Despite such massive gains against an entrenched economic and political elite, segments of the U.S. “left” have been very critical of the PT.[37] Though the PT has been subject to legitimate critique, Brazil Wire documented how Jacobin, a magazine affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, published 38 articles on Brazil from 2014-2017. All 38 presented a negative view of the PT. A far cry from the more radical policies of other Pink Tide presidents like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, most of the left in Brazil today is united behind electing Lula and other progressive candidates as the next step towards challenging Brazil’s status as a neo colony of the West. Up against such a formidable proto-fascist foe, how important is it for the U.S. left to stand with those most under attack?

    Bolsonarismo: the Militarization of Brazilian Society

    For a country that lived through a two-decade-long military dictatorship from 1964-1984, the specter of the return to a police state is real.  The newspaper A Nova Democracia  conducted a study of “The Super-Salaries of the Generals” that Bolsonaro has worked alongside, inherited, appointed, and promoted.[38]  According to author Gabriel dos Santos, 215 Military Officers receive monthly salaries of R$32,153,77, 30 times more than the minimum wage in Brazil. Other generals such as Vice-president Hamilton Mourão, Augusto Heleno, and former Defense Minister and currentVice-presidential candidate, Walter Souza Braga Netto, have received phantom titles as 4-star marechais (marshalls) and earn a whopping 111.2 thousand reais per month, about 100 times what an everyday worker earns. Bragga gained notoriety when he coordinated the 2014 military occupation of Complexo da Maré, a series of  oppressed communities with a population of over 130,000 in the North Zone of the city of Río de Janeiro.[39]

    Many of these generals oversaw the 2003-2018 United Nations’ Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). 30,000 Brazilian soldiers, led by generals who today occupy high-ranking positions in Bolsonaro’s cabinet, occupied Haiti and contributed to massacres in Cite Soleil, Fort National, and Belè.[40] These same generals returned to play a role in the occupation of Rochinha and other favelas to conduct “a War on Drugs” that reached its zenith with 1,814 official police killings in Rio in 2019.[41]

    Scholar Thiago Sardinha, a specialist on paramilitary groups across Brazil, highlights the training Brazilian military and paramilitary groups have received from both France and the United States.[42] Used for U.S. interventions in Haiti and Central America, the Agency for International Development (AID) has a special department called The Office of Public Security.[43] In Brazil this office  is in charge of training foreign police. Sardinha identifies the reign of terror of both the offical police in São Paulo, Goias and beyond, and the role of paramilitary, extra-official militias which control and collect taxes in many Rio communities.

    Bolsonaro’s rhetoric has led the New York Times to lead with the following headline: The Question Menacing Brazil’s Elections: Coup or No Coup?[44] The president’s camp recently met with Steve Bannon, who repeated the same unproven claims that “Bolsonaro will win unless it is stolen by, guess what, the machines.”[45] Jason Miller, a Senior Trump Strategist, spoke at Brazil’s bicentennial independence day.[46] Bolsonaro, amidst a sea of yellow and green Brazilian flags, turned “the independence day celebrations” in Copacabana, Brazilia, and throughout the country into campaign rallies. He is now under investigation for illegally combining these two events.

    Professor Danny Shaw

    Professor Danny Shaw at Arte Transformadora in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, teaching a boxing workshop (photo credit: Danny Shaw).

    Bolsonarismo: Polarization and the Open Veins of Brazil

    FAIR published a scathing critique of a new documentary BBC and PBS released two weeks before the election which present Bolsonaro as a heroic rags to riches story.[47] While the liberal media has traditionally been at odds with the Trumps, Dutertes, and Bolsonaro, why would the Tories ofEngland and sectors of the U.S. ruling class, particularly business interests, so openly embrace such an odious, graceless figure like Bolsonaro?

    From the perspective of foreign capital Bolsonaro represents unfettered access to the open veins of Brazil, the world’s tenth largest economy with a GDP of 1.8 trillion dollars.[48] Bolsonaros’s party is called the Liberal Party and the Minister of Economy is Paulo Geudes, who was trained in a PhD program at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman in the 1970s. Because Lula, Dilma, and the PT would not go along with the Washington consensus, they had to be removed from power and, in the case of Lula, imprisoned. Lula was cleared of all 26 of the bogus charges.[49]

    The showdown between a former union leader who lost a finger in a São Paulo factory and a career military man who emerged as the mouthpiece of Brazil’s economic and military elites speaks to the deep divisions in Brazilian society.

    Professor Danny Shaw
    Professor Danny Shaw participates at a Conference at the Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica Celso Suckow da Fonseca (CEFET). Photo credit: Danny Shaw.

    The Brazilian Senate approved a 1,100 page report evaluating Bolsonaro’s denial of the COVID-19 pandemic and his disastrous handling of it.[50] Brazil has had the most deaths from COVID, 685,422 in total, after the United States.[51] Despite his disastrous handling of the COVID-19 epidemic, Bolsonarismo has a strong social base. Even a robust win for the PT will not make this base go away overnight. Centuries of white supremacy and class rule have segregated Brazilian society along class, racial, and gender lines.

    Black Brazilians continue to face an epidemic of police violence and systemic discrimination. Journalist Jean Wyllys, Brazil’s second openly gay member of parliament and first gay-rights activist congressman, and translator and activist Julie Wark, summarize the struggles of Black and indigenous Brazilians: “The human and physical destructiveness of capitalism, a system in which pretos (Blacks), whose slave labour was essential toits construction, are very far from the spheres of power, wealth, and decision-making. Rather, they are under the yoke and marginalized. In Brazil, Blacks account for 75.2 percent of the population in the lowest income group whereas 25.4 percent of the general population lives in poverty; A Black person earns only 56.1 cents for every dollar a white person earns; 32.9% of Black people live  below the poverty line ($5.50 per day); while 8.8 percent live in extreme poverty ($1.90 per day).”[52]

    Anti-racist organizers in the U.S. can relate to the situation in Brazil. Just in 2019, Bolsanoro’s first year of governance, 31 activists were murdered for defending their land.[53] There were no convictions against any of the assassins. This is similar to what The Boston Globe calls “vehicle ramming” against Black Lives Matter protestors (The Globe has investigated 139 such hate crimes in the U.S. since the murder of George Floyd).

    On September 8th, a Bolsominion, the slang name for Bolsonaro’s supporters, murdered a Lula supporter after a disagreement overpolitics.[54] These incidents have become more and more common. On September 17th, a group called the “Communist Hunters” warned the PT’s Minas Gerais state lawmaker Andréia de Jesus: “We are going to shoot you in the back like a traitor, Marielle (Franco) awaits you. Viva Ustra.”[55]

    Recovery, Redemption, and Reparations: Which Way Forward?

    I will forever be grateful to Binho, Mateuszinho, and Rene. My dozens of pages of quickly scribbled notes in my pocket notebooks speak to what they taught me. “As viagems formam a juventude,” (Travelling helps define our youth). My greatest tribute to them is helping fight for a world that does not confine our children from O Complexo do Alemão to the Bronx to a suffocating everyday rat-race battle for survival and a shred of dignity.

    In his legendary essay, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown,” James Baldwin wrote “A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.”[56] Capitalism and white supremacy and their inevitable bastard offspring – generational trauma, gangs, drugs, misogyny, prison, and a long list of social ills – guarantee more human suffering and humiliation. Brazil suffers from a crack epidemic and alcoholism that has shattered hundreds of thousands of families. Bolsonarismo deploys rhetoric that enables the most retrograde actors a free reign to enact more violence upon women, the LGBT community, Black Brazilians, and Indigenous communities. What we are witnessing in Brazil is late neocolonialism’s desperate attempts to divide society and scapegoat the most oppressed layers so that society’s overlords can save their own skin.

    While Río de Janeiro is but one small piece of the fabric of a diverse society of 210 million people spread across the world’s most diverse lands in terms of fauna, flora, and animal species, these human stories are a microcosm of the lives and struggles of how many millions of working-class Brazilians?[57]

    Every victory for the Partido dos Trabalhadores, and other progressive parties like the PCdoB and the Psol at the local, state, and federal level–and chiefly, of course, for Lula at the presidential level–brings Brazil and this generation of fighters that much closer to realizing Baldwin’s dream.

    Sources

    [1] ​​Estrategista de Trump, Steve Bannon ecoa Bolsonaro em mentiras sobre urnas eletrônicas”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_3WSn7jOfo

    [2] “Why Brazil’s Bolsonaro is courting evangelicals in the world’s biggest Catholic nation”,

    https://www.wlrn.org/news/2022-08-25/why-brazils-bolsonaro-is-courting-evangelicals-in-the-worlds-biggest-catholic-nation

    [3] Artetransformadora”, https://www.instagram.com/artetransformadora/

    [4] “Eleição este ano terá mais de 28 mil candidatos; veja os números”, https://www12.senado.leg.br/noticias/materias/2022/08/16/eleicao-este-ano-tera-mais-de-28-mil-candidatos-veja-os-numeros

    [5] “YouTube Pushing Pro-Bolsonaro Content To Brazilians, Study Finds”, https://www.brasilwire.com/googles-youtube-platform-pushing-pro-bolsonaro-content-to-brazilians-finds-study/

    [6] TelesurEnglish https://twitter.com/telesurenglish/status/1570236758725480448?s=20&t=uq6NpfuhlvfFuhu1dyBo9g

    [7] “Eleições. Militares poderão colocar Justiça Eleitoral sob suspeita”, https://noticias.uol.com.br/colunas/walter-maierovitch/2022/09/15/eleicao-militares-poderao-colocar-justica-eleitoral-sob-suspeita.htm

    [8] “Brazil Military’s “Parallel Vote Count” Poses Great Risk To Democracy”, https://www.brasilwire.com/militarys-parallel-vote-count-poses-great-risk-to-democracy/

    [9] https://twitter.com/BrianMteleSUR/status/1570114278933274628?s=20&t=uq6NpfuhlvfFuhu1dyBo9g

    [10] “Brazil’s Bolsonaro says he will retire if he loses October vote”,

    https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220913-brazil-s-bolsonaro-says-he-will-retire-if-he-loses-october-vote

    [11] “Pesquisa Datafolha para presidente: Lula tem 45%; e Bolsonaro, 33%”, https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/pesquisa-datafolha-para-presidente-lula-tem-45-e-bolsonaro-33/

    [12] “Mentiras sobre Bolsonaro mostram que ninguém está livre das fake news”, https://www.metropoles.com/brasil/mentiras-sobre-bolsonaro-mostram-que-ninguem-esta-livre-das-fake-news

    [13] “Voters see through Bolsonaro’s Economic Populism, Poll Says”, https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2022/08/04/voters-bolsonaro-economic-populism/

    [14] https://especiaisg1.globo/politica/eleicoes/2022/pesquisas-eleitorais/presidente/1-turno/

    [15] “Datafolha: Lula reage entre evangélicos, e vantagem de Bolsonaro recua sete pontos”, https://extra.globo.com/noticias/politica/datafolha-lula-reage-entre-evangelicos-vantagem-de-bolsonaro-recua-sete-pontos-25573698.html

    [16] “Why Brazil’s Bolsonaro is courting evangelicals in the world’s biggest Catholic nation”, https://www.wlrn.org/news/2022-08-25/why-brazils-bolsonaro-is-courting-evangelicals-in-the-worlds-biggest-catholic-nation

    [17] https://twitter.com/J_LIVRES/status/1568257757370802177?s=20&t=I8QIFmdMpf3WaZg4XQTdQg

    [18] https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ch7oWESJKm0/?igshid=ZjA0NjI3M2I=

    [19]https://twitter.com/telesurenglish/status/1571928719186444289?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

    [20] https://twitter.com/caroldartora13

    [21]https://twitter.com/caroldartora13/status/1571508059423350787?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

    [22] Cerca de 40 milhoes de pessoas ingressaram na classe aponta pesquisa”, https://oglobo.globo.com/economia/cerca-de-40-milhoes-de-pessoas-ingressaram-na-classe-aponta-pesquisa-da-fgv-2756988

    [23] “Dilma assina regulamentação dos direitos das domésticas, diz Planalto”, https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2015/06/dilma-assina-regulamentacao-dos-direitos-das-domesticas-diz-planalto.html

    [24] “Impactos da Redução do Imposto sobre Produtos Industrializados (IPI) de Automóveis”, https://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/stories/PDFs/2009_nt015_agosto_dimac.pdf

    [25] https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1564420901491261441?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

    [26] “The Persistence of Inequity in Brazilian Higher Education: Background Data and Student Performance”, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-69691-7_4

    [27] https://www.cut.org.br/conteudo/breve-historico

    [28] https://www.cut.org.br/conteudo/breve-historico

    [29] “Para lutar por direitos sociais e trabalhistas, CUT lança 49 candidatos no país”, https://www.cut.org.br/noticias/para-lutar-por-direitos-sociais-e-trabalhistas-cut-lanca-48-candidatos-no-pais-54a2

    [30] https://www.cut.org.br/biografia/ariovaldo-de-camargo

    [31] “Para lutar por direitos sociais e trabalhistas, CUT lança 49 candidatos no país”, https://www.cut.org.br/noticias/para-lutar-por-direitos-sociais-e-trabalhistas-cut-lanca-48-candidatos-no-pais-54a2

    [32] “What is the MST?”, https://www.mstbrazil.org/content/what-mst

    [33] https://www.google.com/url?q=https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/48463/1/external_content.pdf&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1664051335228237&usg=AOvVaw2szPCvepnWjzRovz1S2jMu

    [34] “The Most Important Election in the Americas is in Brazil’, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/01/the-most-important-election-in-the-americas-is-in-brazil/

    [35] https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1565127955033907200?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

    [36] https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1561056783191265280?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

    [37] “How The US Left Failed Brasil”, https://www.brasilwire.com/how-the-us-left-failed-brasil/

    [38] Dos Santos, Garbrel. December 2021.

    [39] “Braga Netto, o general que Bolsonaro escolheu como candidato a vice”, https://www.infomoney.com.br/perfil/walter-braga-netto/

    [40] “10 Reasons Why UN Occupation of Haiti Must End”, https://haitiliberte.com/10-reasons-why-un-occupation-of-haiti-must-end/

    [41] “Number of deaths caused by police intervention in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 2003 to 2021”, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1007090/number-deaths-police-intervention-rio-brazil/

    [42] https://revistaopera.com.br/2021/05/07/imperialismo-e-grupos-armados-no-brasil/

    [43] https://revistaopera.com.br/2021/05/07/imperialismo-e-grupos-armados-no-brasil/

    [44] “The Question Menacing Brazil’s Elections: Coup or No Coup?”, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/world/americas/brazil-election-bolsonaro-coup.html

    [45] https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1561319122503213057?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

    [46] https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1567614197667864576?s=20&t=I8QIFmdMpf3WaZg4XQTdQg

    [47] “PBS and BBC Team Up to Misinform About Brazil’s Bolsonaro”, https://fair.org/home/pbs-and-bbc-team-up-to-misinform-about-brazils-bolsonaro/

    [48] “The World’s Largest Economies, 2022”, https://ceoworld.biz/2022/09/05/the-worlds-largest-economies-2022/

    [49] https://twitter.com/BrianMteleSUR/status/1559211263074385921?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

    [50] “The Toll of Bolsonaro’s Disastrous Covid-19 Response”, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/10/27/toll-bolsonaros-disastrous-covid-19-response

    [51] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/countries-where-coronavirus-has-spread/

    [52] “Brazil, Amazon, World: Being Black”, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/21/brazil-amazon-world-being-black/

    [53] “Zero convictions as impunity blocks justice for victims of Brazil’s rural violence”, https://news.mongabay.com/2021/02/zero-convictions-as-impunity-blocks-justice-for-victims-of-brazils-rural-violence/

    [54] “Apoiador de Bolsonaro mata defensor de Lula a facadas em MT após discussão”, https://www.cartacapital.com.br/politica/apoiador-de-bolsonaro-mata-defensor-de-lula-a-facadas-em-mt-apos-discussao/

    [55] https://twitter.com/BrianMteleSUR/status/1571140932136996864?s=20&t=uq6NpfuhlvfFuhu1dyBo9g

    [56] “Fifth Avenue, Uptown”, https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3638/fifth-avenue-uptown/

    [57] “Brasil is not Rio”, https://www.brasilwire.com/brasil-is-not-rio/

    Bolivarian soccer genius–Diego Maradona ¡Presente!

    0

    Originally published on November 26, 2020 with William Camacaro at Council on Hemispheric Affairs

    The fighting peoples of the world lost a humble legend yesterday. Diego Armando Maradona was 60 years old. Arguably the greatest soccer player to ever grace the pitches, the spirited striker combined unparalleled skills in his sport and an unflinching outspokenness before oppression. No other sports figure’s public statements and transformation has equally captured the changing momentum across Latin America.

    The hundreds of thousands of tributes being paid throughout the world portray a particular image: Maradona in close solidarity with the biggest progressive leaders of the social reformist wave embraced by the peoples of Latin America, the so called Pink Tide. In fact, Maradona put to the service of the Bolivarian revolution in Latin America all his fame, his influence, and his skilled legs. He embraced the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Argentina and more, by developing deep friendships with Fidel, Raúl, Lula, Evo, Hugo, Nicolás, Daniel, the Kirchners, and many more.

    Maradona was for the people of South America what Muhammad Ali was for Black America.

    The Falklands War

    Born in Lanús and raised in the oppressed community of Villa Fiorito in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, “the golden kid’s” (pibe de oro) talent from an early age fetched him million dollar contracts first in his homeland and then in Barcelona and Napoli.[1] No stranger to controversy, “the soccer god,” with his rebellious natural hair, was irreverent before elites and defiant to the core. When a Spanish player hurled racist epithets at him because of his indigenous ancestry, Maradona headbutted him leading to a brawl that was broadcast before King Juan Carlos, in front of a hundred thousand fans in the stadium and with half of Spain watching on television.

    Maradona, who was 22 years old at the time, was radicalized by England’s 1982 Falklands War assault on his homeland, known in Latin America as “la guerra de las Malvinas” and “la guerra del Atlántico Sur”. Causing untold agony and trauma, hundreds of soldiers died on both sides and numerous veterans committed suicide for years after. Reagan’s US claimed to be a “mediator” but stayed faithful to their junior colonial partner led by the ultra-conservative Margaret Thatcher.

    This was the backdrop of the 1986 semi final showdown between the two countries, without diplomatic relations, at the World Cup in Mexico City. Argentina was South America and South America was Argentina.

    Maradona’s famous “Hand of God” goal.

    During this fateful match, Maradona famously scored a crafty goal where slow motion highlights show he illegally used his hand to redirect the ball into the English net. When the English team accused him after the game at the press conference of cheating by using his hand, he responded that “sería la mano de dios,” “it must have been the hand of god.”[2] Sports analysts applauded the “picardía” or Argentine cunningness behind the maneuver.[3] The second goal was a miracle of human athletic skill. Maradona made a full sprint, starting on the Argentinian side, far from the English goalkeeper, and clearing a path through a minefield of English defenders, to execute a stunning goal that went down in sports history as “the goal of the century.” [4]

    These heroic acts sealed Diego’s destiny as an enormously popular figure combatting neo-colonialism.

    To beat England in Latin America was to exact revenge on the invading enemy. The soccer field was an extension of the battlefield; the arrogant English were expelled. This was the symbolic recuperation of Argentine and South American dignity.[5]

    “Patria es humanidad” (“The homeland is humanity”)

    Jose Martí wrote that “our homeland is humanity.” The relationship Maradona established with Cuba was the full expression of the Cuban historic leader and poet’s words.

    In 2000, an overweight and beleaguered Maradona travelled to Cuba to treat his drug addiction.[6] Fidel Castro visited him in his worst moments and helped take care of him. The Cuban president  took off his military coat and gave it to the patient. Maradona said he adored Fidel because he was “genuine and cared about human problems that others brushed aside.”[7] The down-and-out “wretched of the earth” was not rejected in Havana; he was accepted, treated like a dignified human being and loved. This moment of healing was another of Maradona’s entry points into the tide of resistance that was flowing across the Americas.

    Jose Marti wrote that “our homeland is humanity.”
    The relationship Maradona established with Cuba
    was the full expression of the Cuban historic leader and poet’s words.

    The same year, Japan denied Maradona a visa because of strict laws barring anybody from the country who had a history with drugs.[8] Today, however, past and present Japanese soccer players pay tribute to Maradona.[9]

    The Frontlines in the Battle of Ideas

    The Argentinian took great pride in the rising of Latin America’s second independence which began on December 6th, 1998 with Hugo Chávez’s electoral victory in Venezuela.

    In 2005, the Frente Amplio’s Tabaré Vázquez received George Bush in Uruguay in a move that was considered a betrayal by his party and the region. Bush was promoting the FTAA, the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.[10] “Free trade” to Maradona and millions of Latin Americans is the freedom of the U.S. and transnational capital to expand its tentacles across more of the continent.

    The Bolivarian Revolution was advancing across Latin America and had recently paid off Argentina’s foreign debt. Hugo Chávez traveled to Argentina to contest the interventionist and free trade agenda of the U.S. leader. La Plata river divided the two countries and the two sides of history. Rising to the historical occasion, with Diego by his side donning a “Stop Bush” t-shirt, the Venezuelan leader famously chanted: “El que no brinca es yankee” (If you don’t jump you’re an imperialist.) Maradona gave credence to Evo Morales’ catch phrase: “the empire stands with the right wing, football stands with the left.”[11]

    This was the battle of ideas Castro spoke of.

    A strong backer of the Pink Tide

    It is perhaps difficult to appreciate Maradona’s greatness in a country whose sports loyalties are divided between baseball, North American football and basketball. In South America and Europe, soccer is king. In Napoli, restaurants have alcoves reserved for hanging religious idols. There beside them is Maradona. The mayor has announced the famed Saint Paul stadium should be renamed after one of the city’s most beloved.[12]

    Rising to the historical occasion, with Diego by his side donning a “Stop Bush” t-shirt, the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez famously chanted: “El que no brinca es yankee” (If you don’t jump you’re an imperialist.)
    And Maradona gave credence to Evo Morales’ catch phrase: “the empire stands with the right wing, football stands with the left.”

    The mainstream press is also remembering the football titan but consciously shying away from his political commitments. Other outlets are accusing Maradona of being anti-American. Like the political leaders he so admired, Maradona never expressed ire towards the people of the United States but rather towards its political elites who thought they were “the county sheriff.”[13]

    Through the years of the Pink Tide, Maradona was a regular on television programs and at rallies with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Daniel Ortega, José “Pepe” Mujica and other anti-imperialist figures of the continent. His tattoos of Ernesto Che Guevara and Fidel Castro brought a new meaning to the phrase “he wore his feelings on his sleeve.” His program “De Zurda” on TeleSUR in 2014 with Víctor Hugo Morales, the famed Uruguayan sportscaster, combined humor, sports analysis and progressive political commentary. Last year, following a coaching win in April, he stated: “I want to dedicate this victory to Nicolás Maduro and all Venezuelans, who are suffering. These Yankees, the sheriffs of the world, think just because they have the world’s biggest bomb they can push us around. But no, not us.”[14]

    Those who had the honor to meet Dieguito remember him as a people’s person who was always accessible. Though he had his own personal struggles, he never wavered in his commitments to elevating the voices of the poor and defending the underdog. Yesterday, on the fourth anniversary of Fidel Castro’s passing, one of his students and admirers joined him in eternity, having left so much for us all to savor and learn from.

    End Notes

    [1] “Los apodos de Maradona: ¿por qué le llamaban Pelusa, Barrilete Cósmico o D10S?”, https://as.com/tikitakas/2020/11/25/portada/1606327193_331660.html

    [2] “PAYBACK Argentina legend Diego Maradona says ‘Hand of God’ goal against England was symbolic revenge’ for the Falklands War”, https://talksport.com/football/559182/argentina-legend-diego-maradona-says-hand-of-god-goal-against-england-revenge-falklands-war/

    [3] “El otro lado de ’La Mano de Dios’ – El mítico gol de Diego Maradona a Inglaterra en México ’86”,

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=ECBSXol6hss%3Ffeature%3Doembed

    [4] “Maradona – Gol del siglo”,

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=jOz2uGMTA2w%3Ffeature%3Doembed

    [5] “PAYBACK Argentina legend Diego Maradona says ‘Hand of God’ goal against England was symbolic revenge’ for the Falklands War”, https://talksport.com/football/559182/argentina-legend-diego-maradona-says-hand-of-god-goal-against-england-revenge-falklands-war/

    [6] “Muere Maradona: la amistad entre el astro argentino y Fidel Castro, dos polémicos íconos de América Latina que murieron el mismo día”, https://www.bbc.com/mundo/deportes-55076777#:~:text=Maradona%20se%20estableci%C3%B3%20en%20Cuba,su%20adicci%C3%B3n%20a%20las%20drogas.

    [7] “Maradona viajó a Cuba para continuar su tratamiento contra las drogas”, https://www.abc.es/deportes/futbol/abci-maradona-viajo-cuba-para-continuar-tratamiento-contra-drogas-200409200300-9623741839090_noticia.html

    [8] “La Copa Europeo-Sudamericana. Maradona, sin visa para ir a Japón”, https://www.lanacion.com.ar/deportes/maradona-sin-visa-para-ir-a-japon-nid42289/

    [9]https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/11/d2d41aaecc08-soccer-past-and-present-japanese-players-pay-tribute-to-maradona.html

    [10] “10,000 protest against Bush”, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/04/usa.argentina

    [11] “EVO MORALES: EL IMPERIO ESTÁ CON LA DERECHA Y EL FÚTBOL CON LA ZURDA”,

    EVO MORALES: EL IMPERIO ESTA CON LA DERECHA Y EL FÚTBOL CON LA ZURDA

    http://elbolivianoenvivo.com/evo-morales-el-imperio-esta-con-la-derecha-y-el-futbol-con-la-zurda/embed/#?secret=WHXAw2IoMu

    [12] “Move over St. Paul: Napoli stadium to be named for Maradona”, https://sports.yahoo.com/naples-mayor-begins-process-rename-095659735.html?guccounter=1

    [13] “After Maradona’s Death, His Opinion of America Resurfaces: ‘I Hate Everything From the U.S.’” https://www.newsweek.com/diego-maradona-death-hated-everything-united-states-1550353

    [14] Anya Parampil, https://twitter.com/anyaparampil/status/1331703333334159360?s=20

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