A CALL TO CREATE A NEW CIVILIZATION IN OUR AMERICAS
INTRODUCTION
My name is Roberto Mendoza. My mother’s people, the Muscogee Nation were removed from our ancestral homelands in Georgia to what is now Oklahoma. My father’s family is Chicano—part of the great Diaspora of Mexicans to the U.S. after the Mexican Revolution. I have participated in the Native American movement, the anti-war, Chicano, Bioregional and Green Movements. My experiences as a worker, political activist, student, father, now grandfather, has molded my political and social views.
As a mixed Native and Chicano man, I have long thought about the future of my two peoples. Native people do not have power of numbers but we have the basic spiritual core that all Americans need. Chicano/Latino people now have the numbers but need to reconnect to their indigenous spirituality in order to really move in a powerful way. I believe that our future lies first in merging our struggles first with that of indigenous people all up and down the Western Hemisphere, then with all the other peoples who live here.
I call this the vision of the Eagle-Quetzal-Condor—making all people in the Western Hemisphere truly indigenous, with a deep love and connection to the many bioregions that make up Turtle Island/Abya Yala, based on the story of the Eagle-Quetzal-Condor, an ancient legend that I have adapted to this new time.
I am also here to remind us of the Iroquois or Hau de no see no people’s Basic Call to Consciousness, which comes from an ancient, yet contemporary Native nation.
And finally I am here to issue a Call for Rainbow Warriors, as Betina Martinez wrote in the Preface to her book, De Coloris Means All of Us:
…the legend continues with all the races and religions banding together against the disaster. Under the symbol of the rainbow they spread the great wisdom of living in harmony with each other and with all the creations of the world. “Those who teach this will be the Warriors of the Rainbow,” …Armed only with the truth, after a great struggle they will bring an end to the destruction. Eventually they will save life itself.”
All of these ideas can be found in my on-line blog: Eagle-Quetzal-Condor. aguilahombre.wordpress.com
WHY THE EAGLE-QUETZAL-CONDOR?
Because these three great birds symbolize the spiritual heights from which we want to look at the Western Hemisphere—that of the Indigenous peoples of the North, Central and South America. At the Encuentro, the First Continental Meeting of Indigenous Peoples on the 500 Years of Indian Resistance, held in Quito, Ecuador in 1992, an ancient prophecy was retold:
Many thousands of years ago the Eagle of the North and the Condor of the South joined their tears to form Central America, concentrating their wisdom on that small piece of earth. Indian nations developed there oriented to the laws of Nature. Those nations passed through great trials, and were eventually split and dispersed into the four directions. Prophets instructed the elders to maintain the traditions during the dispersal, and to search for their paths to liberation. Every five centuries the life of the nations would be nourished and renewed. For our time period, the beginning of liberation would be symbolized by this prophesy: “When Condor of the South and the Eagle of the North come together again, the union of their tears will heal the wounds of the Indian peoples and fortify their spirit, body and thought. A new generation will spring forth who will reach out their hands to end oppression, exploitation and injustice, and will write the word liberty in the sky.”
John Curl, in his 1993 article, ‘The Dance of the Condor’ talks about this meeting from a Euro-American perspective:
“Perhaps it is time for us to grow up and face the historic realities of the European invasion of the Americas in all its pain, time for us to turn to a new mythology, based on truth instead of lies…In looking for new myths, where is there to turn but backwards, to the very oldest stories of our hemisphere. Here in the Americas (or in Abya-Yala, as they say in the Andes), perhaps our greatest hope for a livable future lies in the joining of the Condor’s and Eagle’s tears.”
“I think our civilization has not yet made its peace with this continent: we are on it but not yet of it. We are not yet indigenous. To become indigenous people, European-Americans must first make our peace with history and with the Indian people. What has been lost in the European-American version of liberty, is community. We have gained mobility but have paid the price of rootlessness.”
In this period in our history we can see that in Central America, in the Mayan bioregion, which includes not only Chiapas in Mexico but also Guatemala, a powerful unifying force has arisen among the Indigenous and Mestizo peoples there, the Zapatista movement and its army the EZLN. For this reason I feel compelled to include the Quetzal Bird, sacred to the Mayan people in this area, as the third great bird of the Western Hemisphere. The Zapatistas arose to confront the North American Free Trade Agreement, (NAFTA) which marked the end of all land rights in Mexico and the end of the way of life of millions of indigenous farmers—and sent the Quetzal Bird up to guide the Eagle and the Condor to their rendezvous with destiny.
In this new Millennium, the leadership of this hemispheric movement is coming out of the Indigenous people of Central America. Subcomandante Marcos and Mayan Noble Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu have inspired us to speak out, for a new Movimento from El Norte. In the Monday, March 12, 2001 issue of the Los Angeles Times, and I quote: The rebel leader, who, like the majority of Mexicans, is of mixed Indian and Spanish blood, emphasized the richness of the nation’s rainbow of cultures, calling out the names of many of the Indian groups. “What they fear is that there is no more ‘you’ and ‘us,’ because we are all the color of the earth,” Marcos said.
In Bolivia, the Indigenous people have embarked on a revolutionary path to reclaim their natural resources, including water and natural gas from the rapacious grasp of multinational corporations. Evo Morales, the first indigenous president there in 500 years, has allied with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and his Bolivarian movement and with Fidel Castro and the Cuban people. Their struggle is the clearest rejection of capitalist globalization and the IMF’s neoliberal policies in the hemisphere.
A BASIC CALL TO CONSCIOUSNESS
A Basic Call to Consciousness, The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World, was first delivered in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1977. It says in part:
… the Hau de no sau nee (Iroqouis) position is derived from a philosophy which sees The People with historical roots which extend back tens of thousands of years. It is a geological kind of perspective, which sees modern man as an infant, occupying a very short space of time in an incredibly long spectrum. It is the perspective of the oldest elder looking into the affairs of a young child and seeing that he is committing incredibly destructive folly…
The traditional Native peoples hold the key to the reversal of the processes in Western Civilization, which hold the promise of unimaginable future suffering and destruction. Spiritualism is the highest form of political consciousness. And we, the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, are among the worlds surviving proprietors of that kind of consciousness. We are here to impart that message.
The early Christian settlers from Europe came with their vision for our lands, which was based on what Daniel Quinn described in, Beyond Civilization:
“The meme we brought with us to the New World was nothing new…Ours is the one RIGHT way for people to live and everyone should live like us.
Before being cultivated, this land was merely going to waste…The natives were letting it go to waste, and by taking it away from them [the natives] and putting it to the plow, they were performing holy work.”
Elizabeth Satouris, in her article, http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/Articles/survival.html
The Survival Path, put it this way:
“Nature, according to John Locke, the principal philosopher architect of this tradition, has no value in itself, gaining value only when transformed by industrial man.
Small community societies of indigenous and traditional peoples survived in health for many thousands of years without overpopulating because they were composed of living systems in balance with their environments; industrial society, by contrast, threatens its own extinction within a few hundred years of existence because it has created overpopulation and has violated most principles of living systems.
… the role of science is to study nature objectively—as though from outside—by reducing this machinery to its parts; to understand it so that human society can gain control over it and exploit it for human purposes.”
To indigenous people, the earth, land and life are all sacred. All beings in it are related and interdependent and all had value because they were expression of the Creator, not just as a way to accumulate wealth and power. People could take from Mother Nature to survive, but this relationship was based on reciprocity, in which humans were expected to give back to Nature. It was based on honoring and respecting Mother Earth never taking more than you need—greed was not a value in tribal cultures. Neither Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedism, Capitalism nor Marxism holds the Earth and all living things sacred. This is the primary dividing line between Indigenous tribal values and the dominant religions and worldviews of the present.
In the U.S., it is clear that the so-called American Dream is just a nightmare—of overwork, poverty of life and spirit, war, destruction of community and of Nature. It is time to begin building the foundations of a new American civilization, based on the values and life ways of the original indigenous people of this Western Hemisphere, but also including the best values of all the peoples who currently live here, with or without documents. We cannot go back to ancient tribal ways, but we can go forward to a new tribal society based on renewable energy, respect for the Earth and smaller scaled nations that agree to live peaceable and harmoniously with their neighbors, both the human, animal and plant nations.
WAR ABROAD AND AT HOME
The most aggressive and destructive ideology is of course Global Capitalism. Its aggressive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine are creating chaos, violence, destruction and genocide in the Middle East and South Asia, which could spin out of control into a new global war.
Just as decline in U.S. (and therefore also Israeli) power is causing a militaristic lashing out against the Muslim world externally, internally it causing a lashing out against so-called ‘illegal aliens’, who just happen to me brown skinned indigenous/mestizos from the South of the so-called border. Armed right-wing militias like the ‘Minutemen’ are a prelude to what in Iraq is called ‘the Salvador Option’—in other words: death squads. Just these as these death squads of militiamen are creating civil war in Iraq, the Minutemen and other Patriot militias are sowing the seeds of civil war here in the U.S.
A SLEEPING GIANT IS AWAKENING!
The tremendous explosion of marches and school walkouts in Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago, heralds the rise of a new civil/human rights movement among undocumented workers and their allies. In Max Blumental’s March article in The Huffington Post, I quote:
“I have just returned from the largest, most energized demonstration I have ever witnessed in my life. Over 500,000 people filled the streets of downtown Los Angeles to march against HR 4437, a bill authored by Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner (heir to the Kotex fortune) which would turn 11 million undocumented immigrants into felons, punish anyone guilty of providing them assistance, and construct an iron wall between the US and Mexico.
The rally reached a crescendo as thousands of demonstrators lined the walls and bridges above the 101 freeway waving flags and cheering while an endless parade of cars and trucks blasted their horns in support. It was the sound of a sleeping giant awakening.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/sensenbrenner-awakens-a-s_b_17894.html
The recent huge marches for the rights of immigrant workers are only the beginning of a broad movement for human and civil rights for these workers and their families. Undocumented workers in the U.S. along with black workers are part of a huge internal colony that is used for cheap labor and as scapegoats for white nationalists resentment.
We need to organize educational forums—a decolonization process—in which we become conscious that we are a part of a Western hemisphere indigenous movement. This movimiento will be the basis for new Civil/Human rights movement of the 21’s century, and if it can rise to the challenge to become more spiritually indigenous, can lead all of the other races here in a revolutionary movement to re-civilize America. Our shared love for the land (Kanata/Aztlan/Turtle Island) will dissolve these artificial borders.
ALLIANCE WITH AFRICAN-AMERICANS IS KEY
We need to align this movement with the black movement, especially its youth and mixed blood component. They are also part of an internal colony that needs to regain consciousness of its power and its need for allies. White liberals and progressive Jews were their old allies, but they have been compromised by their fear of the resurgent Right and the Israeli lobby. African Americans need to reach out to the immigrant rights and Chicano/Latino movements in order to make any real progress toward liberation. The white nationalists scapegoat them too, especially around the issues of crime, gangs and welfare. Their young men by the millions are also packed into the prisons along with Native and Latino young men.
If we can ally with them, it can send a powerful current of hope that could revitalize their movement. Elements of Jessie Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, with its emphasis on multicultural organizing could be reclaimed in this new period. Plus the grass roots organizing and multiracial leadership of the movements around the Boggs Center (to rebuild, redefine, respirit Detroit from the ground up—Detroit Summer) is a place where this alliance building could begin to take place. If only blacks and Latinos join together, we could remake this nation.
But to create a new civilization out of the ashes of the old, we need to reach out to all the different races (including European-Americans) of the hemisphere.
LET US BEGIN A NEW DIALOG BASED ON MUTUAL RESPECT AND TRUTH
I want to invite you to join in a much-needed dialog about creating a new civilization here in the Americas. I want you to consider what it means for ourselves to transcend the limitations of a settler state formed on the theft of the land of the Indigenous people and the labor of black slaves.
To be fair, the American Constitution was an advance in the direction of democratic ideals, especially in its latter amendments, where blacks, women, non-property owners and Native Americans were finally included. But it is important that we have a clear-eyed view of our past history. The truth, however painful, needs to be acknowledged before we can make a clear break with the past – this Nation was founded as a racist settler state. This is necessary in order for us to clear our minds and hearts and spirits for the new transformative struggles ahead.
Native people have been trying for generations to get white Americans to respect the Earth and to realize that all living things are connected (ecology). From the beginning we welcomed the first settlers and helped them in their early attempts to survive. The Iroquois Nation invited Ben Franklin to their governmental deliberations and inspired the early revolutionaries to adapt recall and referendum as tools to curb the power of elected leaders. We showed them examples of public servants, who served only for the respect and honor of their peers, never for money or personal gain.
In the last few decades scientists have confirmed through the study of living systems that everything is connected, even global weather patterns and human use of fossil fuels. Our voices were lost in the clamor to conquer nature and produce the vast amounts of mostly unneeded consumer goods. The U.S. in its latest incarnation as Empire, has become beholden to giant multinationals plus cheap foreign labor and credit from China.
Sensing the end, neoconservative and fundamentalist Christians seized control of the Executive branch of government through an electoral coup during the Bush years and tried desperately to hang on to their status of “full spectrum dominance” by threatening any nation that tries to match the U.S. in economic or military power. This new cult of preemptive war and “the clash of civilizations” threatened the peace of the world and may even lead to civil war in the U.S.
Now the Obama administration, dominated by old Clinton advisors and appointees, has raised the peoples hopes, only to be dashed by his lack of a radical vision and his constant accommodation to corporate power and the rising clamor of the Astro turfed ‘Tea Baggers’ and ‘Town Hall shouters’ of the far right.
In 1992 some Euro-Americans started to face the truth about the past 500 years of ‘Columbusism’. But all Euro-Americans need to grieve for the psychic wounds that they have suffered since then—for the lost connection to whole communities of people living in ghettoes and barrios just across their cities; for the lost connection to the animal and plant nations; for the loss of their indigenous spiritual cultures like Wicca and Goddess worship.
A CALL FOR RAINBOW WARRIORS
Lastly, this is also a call for Rainbow Warriors, united under the banner of the Eagle-Quetzal-Condor. It is a call for warriors of all ages, races, genders and sexual orientation, to first defend our living places, our democratic liberties, and our Mother Earth. It is a call to listen to the wisdom of our elders, to be inspired by the words of fire from our poets and writers/prophets and to take heart from the energy and hope of our youth/juventad. It is a call not only to defend, but also to create – from energy, ideas and dialogue- the revolutionary process of transforming our civilization from a deadly corporate empire to a life affirming, democratic movement in Our America.
We do need love, organization, fresh ideas, commitment, and bravery in the face of blind patriotism. We can join together the passion and energy of youth, the organizing experience and love of parents and the wisdom and vision of the grandparents/elders. Marcos says the Zapatistas do not seek to seize power like traditional guerillas, but instead, pursue “a revolution to make a revolution possible”—opening a space for dialogue within civil society on how to re-conceive the world. Let us re-conceive Civilization here, first by creating the dialog/consultas here that opens space for a cultural, spiritual revolution in the Western Hemisphere.
Under the banner of the Eagle-Quetzal–Condor, we Warriors of the Rainbow can create a new indigenous Earth based civilization for all who live in Turtle Island/Abya Yala. For a place where the Eagle, Quetzal and the Condor can look down from their great heights and no longer feel the need to cry, but to exult in the fresh air of justice and liberation.
