For Caicos Máximo Ba Tiul
The title of this text is due to a discussion we have with friends, with whom we have analyzed and discussed the different reactions that have appeared in different corporate media, both written, digital and radio such as Noti7, TN23, Channel 11, Radio Sonora, Canal Antigua, Guatevisión, Prensa Libre, Siglo XXI, Nuestro Diario, Radio Sonora, among others, and in articles, essays by academics from different houses of study and academic units in the country, about the demonstrations that are leading, today, the indigenous authorities throughout the country.
As Manuel Castells says in his book “Communication and Power”, that “communicating is sharing meanings through the exchange of information” and today when we find ourselves faced with a communication system with totally advanced technology, like what is presented to us in this “ digital era”, communication as a process is “defined by the technology that uses the characteristics of the senders and receivers of the information, their cultural codes of reference, their communication protocols and the scope of the process.”
In this sense, whoever sends the message first lacks information and is loaded with hatred, racism and discrimination. He abusively tries to interpret Others who are different from him or her, with the categories learned and apprehended under his own prejudices and stereotypes ((1) Video | Facebook). Wanting to make the Others define themselves as the sender wants ((846) Ancestrales – YouTube) and having as references supposed scholars, who rather than solving the problem, turn it into a jumble of concepts that not even they themselves know what they are talking about ((846) Republican Pulse | Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela wants to avoid the participation of M… – YouTube2:02:13).
This reminds us of writings such as those of Estuardo Zapeta (Guatemala: Of living Indians… – by Estuardo Zapeta, published in HACER Latin American News), who since the signing of the peace, infiltrated in Mayan organizations, brought by the American embassy, dedicated himself to discrediting the process that was carried out in the peace agreements and eating and living from this process. Or Pedro Trujillo, a Spanish police officer, who arrives in Guatemala and later appears as a journalist and columnist for Prensa Libre, a commentator for Con Criteria and who in each intervention “does not stop exuding hatred and racism” against indigenous peoples, such as He did so in his opinion article called Indigenous justice!, published in Prensa Librecurious but between Zapeta and Trujillo, there was always flattery (Guatemala: Pedro Trujillo – by Estuardo Zapeta, published in HACER Latin American News)as often happens among those who rant against the unknown.
Thus we could mention many detractors of indigenous peoples. And that is not new, since the time of the arrival of the Spanish, there were already these types of discussions, some in favor and others against the native peoples. Some argued about whether they had a soul and others did not, whether or not it was viable to wage war on them. For example, the historic discussions between Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria. The discussions between Hernán Cortez and Pedro de Alvarado, after the latter burned down the main temple. So we could mention many examples. Or what happened in the Cold War, when priests in the heat of the Second Vatican Council, Conferences of Medellín and Puebla, decided to radicalize their “preferential option for the poor”, against others, who said that it was not necessary to go to that extreme. .
But well, returning to the present, the movement that the indigenous peoples and their authorities developed, in these last 30 days, has once again uncovered “toads, snakes, scorpions”, which, distilling their hatred and racism, have allowed the development of anti-communist and racist speeches. To such a point that, as I said in one of my last interviews ((1) Facebook), that they fail to understand that these manifestations even surpassed Western conceptual categories, which are learned in universities and do not consider the indigenous peoples, Mayans, Kichwas, Guaraníes, Mapuches, among others, capable of creating their own categories. Because those who do not understand people only think that concepts can come from scholars or desk intellectuals and for that reason, they see our epistemologies as an error (The tremendous mistake of calling indigenous organizations ancestral – Prensa Digital (247prensadigital.com).
When we had supposedly overcome racist discourses in the academy, this historical and important event for Guatemala, which disrupted the spaces supposedly intended only for white oligarchs and creoles, made it appear again and was disseminated by the media, which spread the discourse of the elites, as Van Dijk said in his book: Racism and Elite Discourse. In this sense, we discovered again that, “frequently, both the text and the speech of political, corporate, academic, educational and media elites preformulate stereotypes and prejudices” about different Others. Furthermore, he wants to legitimize “ethnic situations, they legitimize elite discrimination, and in this way, they contribute to manufacturing an ethnic consensus and maintaining the predominance of the white elite in society.”
And that is why, gradually distilling their “hate”, they see the Others as incapable of creating their own ways of saying and presenting things and of presenting themselves as they want and how they really are and not as the elites want to present them. And that is why they are surprised and deny that thousands of indigenous people with their own symbols, with their own epistemological categories, flood the spaces that were intended for white people. Without them realizing it, these who were ignored, arrived to never leave. They came to say that if they leave it is because “millions and more” will return.
