Translated by Andy Barton
Eduardo Madroñal Pedraza (Madrid, 1951) is a pedagogical advisor, author of poetry, writer of articles, member of the National Platform for the Constitutional Protection of Pensions (Mesa Estatal por el Blindaje de las Pensiones-MERP), member of Zero Budget Cuts (Recortes Cero) and activist of Unificación Comunista de España (UCE) Author of : Prosas y otros versos (2012), Versos y otras prosas (ed. Contrabando, 2014) and Anomalías (ed. Contrabando, 2018).
“From the deepest basements to the highest attics, it was possible to admire different regions and traditions superposed over one other, societies in various states of existence that slotted in and out of each other like a global chest of drawers” (Benito Pérez Galdós in Los ayacuchos)
A spectre haunts the consciousness of world’s Hispanic communities. It is the spectre of their own identity. Meanwhile, united in holy alliance, the world’s imperialist powers crow out in unison: “the blame for your underdevelopment lies with Felipe II.” From Wall Street to the French intellectual left-wing, stopping by the German radicals along the way, all tirelessly repeat that “Spanish colonisation, with the repercussions of its fanatism and intransigence, its greed and its sheer idleness, its arbitrariness and its despotism, is the root of all your current ills”.
Which city in the Spanish-speaking world with a sense of self worth does not have its own museum dedicated to the Spanish Inquisition to demonstrate the supposedly undeniable truth that it is all Felipe II’s fault? How many seemingly lucid minds in the Hispanic world are not plagued by the plaintive “if only we were Anglo-Saxons”?
After nearly two centuries of Anglophone-led division and exploitation of Ibero-American nations, including wars, annexations, interventions, invasions, “Panamization” and “Pinochetization”, an unbelievable, incredibly ambitious exercise in subverting the collective memory and alienating individual consciousnesses is currently underway. Its goal is to ensure that Hispanic nations renounce their shared history, their common cultural universe, their blood, family and ancestral ties, in a word, their own existence, to become mere spectres in search of a fate of exploitation, looting and destruction, a fate which the indigenous people of North America know better than anyone.
This reality has two consequences: firstly, the identity and unity of Hispanic nations is highlighted by the great imperialist powers as a force to be controlled and neutralised; secondly, as a reaction to the first consequence, it is now time for Hispanic nations to reconstruct and expose, both to the light of day and to the entire world, their own history, a history read from objective facts and data, grounded in reality. In short, a rigorous and accurate reading of our history, not the version of history that suits General Motors.
We need an objective, materialist vision of what we are and how we arrived at this point, starting with the social classes and their struggles. May this exercise reveal and shine a light on the enormous potential of what we could be. The task of writing the history of Hispanic nations is a prerequisite for us to freely decide our destiny.
This revolutionary undertaking is as relevant today as over. The sharp edges of an externally imposed imperial past, paid in fire and blood just like all others, are used to generate divisions and confrontations between Hispanic nations, something that always benefits the powers that have dominated these nations from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for centuries. We must forge a unified, revolutionary mass that uses individual differences and plurality to reposition each member of the Hispanic world so that, in the face of the USAmerican hegemon that causes so much suffering for Ibero-America, as well as Spain and Portugal, we may defend our own interests and freely decide our destiny.
The shaping of today’s USA
Two centuries of USAmerican interventions in the Hispanic world
In 1984, a bilateral commission in the U.S. Congress and Senate produced a lengthy report about the situation in Central America. It was overseen by Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state during the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford presidencies and the architect of USAmerican foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. From his executive role in the White House, Kissinger was the ‘mastermind’ behind the coup d’état and subsequent repression by Pinochet in Chile, as well as the military junta in Argentina, both initiated as part of Operation Condor, a transnational terror enterprise that banded together pro-American fascist regimes in the Southern Cone and/or provoked genocide to annihilate revolutionary groups.
In the report, Kissinger blamed the extant social inequality in the region on its Spanish cultural inheritance. He claimed: “During the three centuries of Spanish colonial domination, the Central American political system was authoritarian; the economy was extractive and mercantilist; society was elitist… and both the Church and the education system reinforced the authoritarian system. The colonial period did not provide the opportunity for autonomous government either; the vast indigenous population was never integrated into political life in the colonies.”
In 1984, the year of the “Kissinger report”, Ronald Reagan was U.S. president. Under Washington’s command, a bloody genocide was wrought upon Guatemala, resulting in more than 200,000 deaths; the CIA instigated terrorist attacks against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which were later condemned by the International Criminal Court; and the U.S. also supplied weapons to paramilitary groups and the army in El Salvador, which were duly used to impose a reign of terror.
Nevertheless, according to the report, the root of all conflict in Central America lay in the period of Spanish colonisation! What we are witnessing is the current most lethal assassin in the world inciting us to divert our attention to barbarities carried out by people who are already dead, with the objective of maintaining its own impunity to commit further crimes.
As members of the Hispanic world, it is our job, and our job alone, to settle scores over the events that occurred between 1492 and 1823. But the 'historical memory' we are trying to recover lies elsewhere: it is the memory of two centuries of USAmerican intervention, aggression and looting in Ibero-America, the very same that Washington, the common enemy of Madrid as much as Buenos Aires, is doing its utmost to bury.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Thomas Jefferson, one of the 'founding fathers' of the United States, stated that “America [although he was really just referring to the United States] has a hemisphere to itself”. This was the cornerstone of an imperialist project that would continue to spread its tendrils across the 19th century.
The first step was to eliminate, physically, the irksome presence of natives. George Washington, the first president of the U.S., ordered the invasion of the land inhabited by the Iroquois. His orders were clear: “The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more…The country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed.” Andrew Jackson, another of the 'totemic ' U.S. presidents during its infancy, defended the idea that “the Cherokee nation must be exterminated” and that it is “expedient to kill indigenous women to avoid them reproducing”.
In 1823, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams, the fifth and sixth U.S. presidents, concocted what would become known to history as the “Monroe doctrine”. Summed up in a single sentence: “America for Americans”… from the North, that is. In 1845, to start a war with Mexico and steal half of its land, John L. O’Sullivan published an article entitled “Annexation”, claiming that it was the United States’ “manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of [its] yearly multiplying millions”. It borrowed from the 'doctrine of predestination', the backbone of the most reactionary Calvinist puritanism, which aided the imperialist expansion. In 1995, Josiah Strong wrote: “[The Anglo-Saxon race] is destined to dispossess many weaker ones, assimilate others, and mould of the remainder until... it has Anglo-Saxonised mankind.”
“Dispossess, assimilate and mould”. Is there a better description of the programme that U.S. hegemony today attempts to impose to ‘Anglo-Saxonise’ and submit the entire planet to its domination?
The intervention and expansion of U.S. imperialism has followed the same guiding path: to impose political domination, converting formerly independent countries into de facto colonies, and to protect and develop the exploitative interests of huge USAmerican multinational companies. However, this project has always come up against the same problem: the impossibility of erasing the Hispanic world and its people’s fight for their independence.
In the first stage, United States’ borders were extended by annihilation, invasion and theft: a planned annihilation of the indigenous tribes to extend capitalism’s playground to the west, and the invasion of Mexico to steal more than half of its territory.
In its second stage, from the end of the 1900’s until 1930, Central America and the Caribbean were the main battleground, and the order of the day was annexation or unrestrained military intervention by the U.S. army. Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines or Guam were dismembered and annexed by the United States, while military occupations took place in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. This resulted in the creation of the 'banana republics', which must face up to mass popular revolts, such as the one led by Augusto Sandino in Nicaragua. All fall to U.S. suppression tactics, but they nevertheless leave behind a seed that will grow and bloom in the future.
The third and final stage saw U.S. expansion head South, with the most powerful U.S. corporations picking up the slack (Ford, General Motors, ITT, General Electric, etc.). The superpower’s domination over the state and the local oligarchies in Hispanic countries, much more complete than before, allows the U.S. to intervene ‘from within’, through coups d’état, political readjustments or the installing of fascist dictatorships.
However, this period also witnessed qualitative advances in the Hispanic nations’ and people’s battles and resistance. The foundations of projects by anti-imperialist national bourgeoisies emerge to counter U.S. domination: Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado in Peru, Salvador Allende in Chile, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and João Goulart in Brazil. Revolutionary parties and organisations grow in strength and make advances, from the workers movement to communist groups. In 1959, the triumph of the Cuban Revolution comes as a hammer blow to U.S. interests and a jolt of hope that propels the fight of Ibero-American nations forward.
“England has bought the death our cotton industry on the cheap, ridding itself, in the simplest way possible, of a fierce competitor… Who will govern in Spain? … In reality, the British ambassador, aided by the rabble of ayacuchos*.”
Translator's Note
*As with the name of the
book, Los ayacuchos, the word is a reference to the Praetorian Guard of
the Spanish general and colonial governor Baldomero Espartero, which supposedly
fought for him in the Battle of Ayacucho, the defining battle of the Spanish
American wars of independence. In reality, few of these ayacuchos fought
in the battle. It is one of many moments in Benito Pérez Galdós’ book that
contrasts the written history of Hispanic independence with the reality of what
happened.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire