Miguel Angel Sandoval
The title of this note is a salsa song, performed by the Caracas Boy’s. You can search for it on you tube. Don’t be scared ahead of time. But the point is that it is a topic that I have heard for many years and that has its origin in the structural racism of a country like ours. It is fear, fear, panic of the other, of the unknown, which confronts us with our worst feelings and actions. The first time I heard this was in a conversation with one of the first guerrillas born in Alta Verapaz, who jokingly said, you’ll see the day he comes with the thousands of mountain Indians; They are going to die of fear, and he laughed at the occurrence.
The issue of racism has already been widely debated in our country, although it has not been overcome. In the most diverse ways it is exposed, talked about, analyzed or discussed in forums, in the academy, but hidden fear always appears. It is, perhaps, the fear of behavior maintained for centuries and that along with property and estates is also inherited. It may be a widespread feeling of guilt, since many of the assets and estates are the product of the dispossession of the indigenous people, although in this note that is not the topic. It is irrational and is present in the simplest acts of life, as well as in the most complex ones.
I remember now that not many years ago, Irma Alicia Velásquez, a Quezaltecan intellectual and fellow columnist at elPeriódico, was ordered to leave a brewery because her presence was not liked by its owners, much less by its employees. Finally, the brewing company had to apologize to Irma Alicia. Just like these many examples. But not that dimension that I am interested in addressing, but racism in political terms, which is now present in our country.
One of the initial issues is that, by dint of discussing it, and because it is considered a topic that is politically incorrect, no one assumes it. Some out of shame or shame, others to appear to have a different form of conduct than that historically maintained in our country. In a book he left an idea of the strength he has. “Racist me?” is the title and addresses the way in which racism is expressed in the different orders of daily life.
But finally, racism continues to live among us, firm and strong, although in recent times less acute and subjected to tests that leave no one indifferent. Although they do not leave their comfort zone, they do not fail to perceive that racism received a mortal blow since the indigenous uprising of October 2 began. From one day to the next, the idea was planted among many people that on this occasion the solution to the post-election crisis could only be at the call of the organized indigenous authorities, whose best representation in the imagination of ordinary people is the 48 cantons of Totonicapán or the indigenous mayor’s office of Sololá. There had been a change in the perception of many social groups of the role of the country’s indigenous peoples and authorities.
On this occasion we saw the leaders of the indigenous peoples assume the defense of democracy, of the rule of law, of respect for the popular vote that they wanted and want to withhold, by those who make up the corrupt pact, which is nothing more than the old oligarchy and its casual allies, to milk public finances and do all business under the protection of the power they have managed to build.
While the organizations that historically represented the power of lives and property, made a scandalous silence, because they could not take on the denunciation of what they themselves had built for years and years. It is the breakdown of the constructed building and which Marta Casaus reveals very well in her book Lineage and Racism. In that context, not even the political parties financed by the threads of economic, political or other power were sufficient, nor were they interested, to oppose the fraud that was wanted to be promoted.
The recurring idea of the saying that “here come the Indians” showed that it was just part of the fear, of guilt, but it was not real. It was one of those ideological-cultural constructions, to keep racism and distrust towards the other current, latent, alive. It was always about the creation of the other as an enemy, as different from us, but especially dangerous because finally, according to the old ideas of conquest and colony, it was not known if they were human or if they had a soul. Of course all of this covered up by lies, fallacies, and more lies.
With the arrival of thousands of people from indigenous peoples, to settle in the capital and assume leadership in the fight for democracy and respect for the electoral results, which their old institutions have not been capable of, we are faced with a new reality. . It is the beginning of the destruction of the colonial edifice, and of all the assertions originating from the lack of legitimacy of the dominant discourse in Guatemalan society. With the city painted with native peoples who reclaim the indigenous culture, the ancestral organization, a worldview that has been lost elsewhere.
So the old idea that the Indians come here was defeated, in short, by life, by facts, by realities. There was nothing more than a democratic struggle led by the indigenous authorities. The university students accompanied, whether popular or not so popular neighborhoods like Vista Hermosa, but very popular like the markets of the capital, which broadly joined in this defense of democracy. And no one to express anything foreign or outside of the respect that was essential.
Although of course, there was no shortage of expressions that were “varnished” with political and ideological analysis, from the figures most identified as conservatives, right-wing, or fascists, who imagined everything to bring racism to light, because that was nothing more than the supposed analysis of the participation of the people with their authorities in the mobilization in defense of democracy.
Among progressive figures or simply considered democratic, an idea circulated in the air: how long the Indians would last in their protest (it’s already been like 50 days in a row). And then the idea that they were not going to last that long. Others dedicated themselves to saying that the indigenous people came by force, and dedicated themselves to giving examples, putting crude individualism as a paradigm before trying to understand the vision of collective and community democracy of the peoples who participated in the protests for attempted fraud and defense of democracy.
Others dedicated themselves to searching by all means for the rivers of dollars that were coming because the protest was not genuine, but was part of a sinister project of the United States. Thus the indigenous people were manipulated by Uncle Sam’s agenda. At this moment, the existence of the NGOs that were the ones that financed, those that gave cocowash to the indigenous people who did not know they did it, etc. were once again taken out of the trunk of intolerance. And of course, there was no shortage of people who said that he was the ace in the hole of Semilla and Bernardo Arévalo, etc., etc.
As I said, these “analysts” did everything possible to demonstrate that the indigenous people and authorities were spending foreign money liberally and therefore national sovereignty had to be defended and a lot of nonsense. But those thoughtful analysts never walked around the sit-in in front of the MP and realized that much of the food logistics came from the hands of volunteers, from contributions from ordinary people who arrived with a basket of bread, a pot of coffee, tamales or chuchitos, or with your hands to help serve the food
As I pointed out in my article Historical-political reflections from a bird’s eye view, I said that historically the sectors of power, urban, political or whatever, had left aside the indigenous peoples, in the midst of the indifference of half the world, while Now, the people and their authorities stood up for everyone and said: never again Guatemala without us. It is something for which we should feel doubly grateful.
But, in addition, through facts and the attitude of respect observed, they made thousands and thousands realize the fraud that political parties are (some exceptions) and they also made us see democracy as an empty discourse from the power and drew our attention to the community democracy that is experienced in the country’s indigenous communities. Since then, an extended debate about what books or academia do not tell us: direct, community democracy.
In other words, the indigenous peoples occupied the capital, or parts of it, and it was with the support of the people, with the certainty that they were defending our interests, our rights, and that they had not come to steal our assets and our properties, that they did not come for revenge, that they did not come to seek revenge, and that they were not going to attack the “good families.” All that was buried. We enter a new era.
