At the first sign of a headache--an almost inevitable consequence of a lowlander's addiction to the thick air of lesser altitudes--a local fellow of unmistakable indigenous ancestry advised the Geek, chew the coca leaf. The Geek did as told. The man's helpfulness impressed the Geek. Even more the Geek marveled at the adaptability of both physique and culture exhibited for millennia by Los Indios. Not only had they survived, they had triumphed over the rigors of the Andes. While the original inhabitants had not been so victorious over the onslaught of the Spanish and other Europeans, their strength and determination as well as the resilience of the culture hinted strongly that they would not be kept down and marginal forever.
It was with memories of Ecuador's remarkable indigenous population that the Geek was initially open and welcoming to the advent of Ewo Morales, the first elected member of Los Indios to become the country's president. Even the initial linkage between Morales and that most reactionary of South American political leaders, Hugo Chavez, occasioned no more than slight doubts as to Ecuador's future under the new regime. People as obviously survival oriented as the Indian Ecuadorians could not be so suddenly afflicted with a drive to collective suicide as to actually swallow the pap of the Bolivarian Socialists.
President Morales has made Hugo Chavez' crusade against the US his own cause in recent months. His "Peoples" conflab on global warming demonstrated this in many and varied attacks on the US, US imperialism, US capitalism, and assorted other purported sins of North American origin. Assorted Leftists from around the world applauded each and every attack as if it had never been made before. And, as if true.
Morales is far from alone in his antipathy for the US. This unfortunate reality is apparent in an opinion piece in La Hora today. Written by one Roberto Santillian Peralbo, the diatribe is as full of invective as it is deficient in historical accuracy. One can only assume that Sr Peralbo is writing for an audience even more ignorant of some of the basics of both North American and global history than is he.
Take a dekko at it,
It would take all too many words to comment in detail on all the wholesale abuses of history contained in this short essay. The horror in Sr Peralbo's ranting is not that it commits "historicide" in the first degree or even that it mischaracterizes to the point of defamation not only the recently enacted Arizona law regarding illegal aliens as defacto and dejure criminal trespassers but each and every law in each and every country (including Ecuador) which defines citizenship, legal alien residence, and the illegal presence of a foreign immigrant.The ideologues of the empire dreamed that the Anglo Saxons who colonized North America were the “superior race,” to whom God had bestowed the “manifest destiny” so they would govern the “inferior races.” They killed the Indians in a cruel genocide, took away half of Mexico’s territory by force, Arizona included, which just now has passed a criminal law that criminalizes (sic) undocumented migrants. The empire intervened militarily in all the countries south of the Rio Grande.
They created a “model of democracy” and in its name they have committed crimes against humanity by wars and by imposing dictatorships. In the Virginia Declaration, those calling for independence held that all men are born free and equal, except the black slaves, the Indians and women, the Hispanics and the Asians. The United States was formed by immigrants, and became an economic, military and political power thanks to their labor and the theft of brains. When World War II ended, unleashed by Hitler, another one who believed that the Aryan race was superior, it stole or kidnapped tens of German scientists and it became an atomic power.
The United States abhors migrants, and the xenophobia has converted them into criminals. No one is accountable for the deaths of tens of undocumented persons in its jails and hundreds of murdered ones in the deserts of Arizona or Texas. The Arizona Law is pitiless and cruel regarding the “illegals.” It empowers police to detain any person merely due to their appearance. The color of the skin converts persons into criminals. Gigantic absurdity, worthy of the ideological descendants of Nazi-fascism defeated 65 years ago.
How long are the peoples of the world going to tolerate the inhumane imperial decisions?
Sr Peralbo shows an all-too-common fault in all who claim to know history, who declare the untrammeled right to sell their personal (mis)understanding of history to any ill-informed enough to buy the product. That fault, a fatal one, has been found repeatedly in the writings and speech of those who neglect the fundamental responsibility of all who deal in history.
The responsibility was expressed pithily more than a century ago by a German historian, "to tell history as it actually was." Fulfilling this responsibility is not easy. It demands a degree of detachment from the whims and passions of the present moment. It demands the intellectual and moral courage to "tell it as it actually was" and not as one wishes it had been or fears it might have been. It demands risking public opprobrium--and worse--for one cannot be an honest purveyor of honest history and also be socially and politically correct.
It is hard to believe that the post-modernist belief that every person's version of history is as valid as every other person's has penetrated to Quito. It is a falsehood more typically found in New York, Boston, or Washington, D.C. Apparently, Sr Peralbo either has drunk deeply at the elitist wells of academia or he seeks to curry favor with the regime of Ewo Morales.
If it is the latter eventuality, which is the more likely, then it shows that the Ecuadorian version of Bolivarian "Socialism for the Twenty-first Century" has gone the same dark road trod before by dictatorships both current and past, both well remembered for their infamy or deservedly forgotten in their failure. Dictatorships given to the extreme perversion of history exhibited in Sr Peraldo's essay do so because of deep rooted fear.
The fear is simply that they will not remain in power. Regimes which come to power by promising complete equity, total justice, absolute equality, never succeed. History shows that beyond even unreasonable doubt. The inevitable failure to deliver on the grand promises made ultimately spells downfall. The most common resort of the dictatorship--and make no mistake about it, command economies and the squashing of internal "counterrevolutionaries" must become dictatorships--is an appeal to national pride, nationalism in its rawest form coupled with the blaming of all difficulties on an external, necessarily evil, source.
For Sr Peraldo as for Presidents Morales and Chavez, the evil enemy must be the United States. Whether directly or as the portmanteau for capitalism and imperialism, the US must be cast in the role of the Great Evildoer. In pursuit of this any perversion of history is justified. Any lie is made the truth.
The pity and the tragedy in this exercise in fear driven mendacity is that it hurts only the people of the nation. Only the Ecuadorians will finally suffer from the lies and blandishments of Sr Morales--or Sr Peraldo. It matters not to the American people or their state that Sr Peraldo portrays us as fascists, racists, as xenophobic imperialists bent on exploiting and subjugating people everywhere.
We know that these slurs are as far from truth as it is possible to get. Ecuadorians don't enjoy this advantage. They can and will be taken in by the prevarications of Sr Peraldo and other regime apologists. They do not know the truth.
And, it still remains that only as one knows the truth can one be free.
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