By Ollantay Itzamná |
79 years ago, university students and sectors of the middle class, with national awareness and desire to modernize the country, nuclearized the so-called National Revolution of 1944.
It was the second liberal revolution in the history of anti-indigenous Creole Guatemala. The first expressly defenestrated by the North American government (1954) on the Continent.
Remember that in the first Liberal Revolution (1871) Rufino Barrios stripped the indigenous people of all the communal lands to give them to the new farmers. In the second Nationalist Liberal Revolution (1944) all lands became property of the State.
In neither of the two revolutions was there land for indigenous people, much less were the indigenous people considered as subjects of rights. These did not legally exist for the racist State. Until the 90s, to promote the thriving folk tourism industry, they constitutionally began to exist as cultural reproducers or museum pieces. But, taking care that they did not become sociopolitical subjects.
What difference is there between the social effervescence of October 20, 1944 and that of 2023?
Subjects
In 2023, the political subject that brings together the social effervescence is the Semilla political party, promoted and assiduous in the United States, made up of the urban middle class that sees with “concern” that the racist nation state is falling (eaten by corruption), because it is one of its main sources of employment. Corruption was a constant, no matter which side was in government.
Unlike October 1944, now, they are indigenous people and peasants who put their bodies and their hunger to “defend the democracy that favors Semilla.” On that occasion, they were university students, who years later were annihilated biologically and politically. This is a difference between both “revolutions”, but both “mobilized social subjects” are in the same subjective conditions (only support for the ladino to raise or maintain his business from the racist State).
In 2023, unlike 1944, the North American Embassy, the USAID, the OAS, together with the oligarchic side obedient to Washington, are the main interested parties in ensuring that the idea of the “October Revolution of 2023” penetrates the collective subconscious of the Guatemalanness. USAID finances many projects of the 48 Cantons, of the NGOs that partner with Semilla… they are in the published reports.
Demands
The current demand that brings together the mobilized popular sectors is: “that the three public officials who are “disobedient” to Washington RESIGN. In 1944, the demand was: structural changes to modernize the nation state. To achieve this, the creation of its own state companies, public services, nationalization of land, etc. was undertaken.
Currently, the mobilized popular sectors have no horizon for change, other than the replacement of public officials to revitalize the racist state apparatus lethal to indigenous peoples. Neither 48 Cantons, nor the Indigenous Mayor’s Office of Sololá, demand self-determination of the peoples, a Plurinational State or a Plurinational Constituent Assembly. With this, both the new aspirational political elite and the middle class are happy, because it is a guarantee for their stability as a class.
Horizons
In 1944, the revolutionary nuclei were clear about their horizon of emancipation and self-determination as a country and as a State. For this reason, they reorganized the legal system of the State, they made the State a central economic actor to support the process of change, they bet on university autonomy to forge the new modern subject that makes these changes possible. This is what made the US/OAS extremely uncomfortable, which is why they overturned said process in 1954.
In 2023, no matter how many multicolored crowds the sectors mobilized in the streets, the horizon is to continue handing over everything to the racist national bosses and the Empire so that they continue to step even harder on indigenous people, peasants and the impoverished middle classes.
Did you hear any slogans in the streets now, against the oil companies that they owe more than 5 billion dollars in royalties and taxes to the State? Perhaps you read on a banner denouncing the US for promoting the 1954 Coup d’état, or for the massacres of Palestinian children, or for inoculating Guatemalan prisoners with syphilis,…? No. This revolution is theater made in the USA in complicity with those obedient and obedient to Washington.
Ollantay Itzamna. Defender of the Rights of Mother Earth and Human Rights from Abya Yala.
