The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Minty-Fresh™.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2010. That’s about 3 full 747s.

In 2010, there was 1 new post, growing the total archive of this blog to 10 posts. There were 7 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 2mb.

The busiest day of the year was July 1st with 28 views. The most popular post that day was Mexico on the Eve of Revolution or Civil War.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were obama-scandal-exposed.co.cc, networkaztlan.com, zzsst.co.cc, statistics.bestproceed.com, and search.conduit.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for eldy bratt, eagle and condor, john trudell, eagle condor, and 2012 film.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Mexico on the Eve of Revolution or Civil War December 2006

The Road – A Metaphor for the Collapse of Capitalism, and Why We Need to “Keep Hope Alive” January 2010

Native American Culture in the Light of Revolutionary Possibilities July 2008

A CALL TO CREATE A NEW CIVILIZATION IN OUR AMERICAS August 2006
4 comments

About Aguilahombre January 2006

The Road, is a movie based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy.
Like all movies, it reflects the times and the context of our current society. In this case, the collapse of capitalism as the dominant force in the U.S. and the world.

The current unregulated Global Capitalism, has little regard for the long term survival of the environment, and fights any and all attempts to deal with environmental destruction, including global warming — whatever gets in the way of short term profits, even if it means the death of millions and the biosphere itself. In the movie, the Catastrophe/Collapse, is presented as a kind of nuclear winter, (without the radioactivity). We can only speculate that this was from. McCarthy mentions in a interview with the Wall St. Journal, “The last time the caldera in Yellowstone blew, the entire North American continent was under about a foot of ash.”

It is told through the eyes of a middle class white family and reflects the narrow view of Mr. McCarthy as a while middle class male in current society. This family is apolitical and has few connections other than friends who are said to “have died” in the initial Catastrophe, which is not explained or examined in any detail. This is in keeping with the current period, when explanations of the current collapse are not examined or explained in any real depth by the mainstream media, whether liberal or conservative.

The family— a father, mother and their young son— are left to fend for themselves as one nuclear family, which quickly breaks down as the mother chooses to kill herself rather than “just survive”. The man, taking on the role of protector of his son, is armed only with two bullets, which he will use to kill his son and then himself, if they are cornered by the cannibal gangs that roam the land. These cannibals are depicted as bands of armed ‘good ole boys’. They, not being middle class like the protagonists, have become like the Donner party. They don’t not “carry the fire”, which is a code for being ‘civilized’, and therefore can and even must be killed by the protagonist.

Their situation is seen as a zero sum game —for anyone to live, someone must die. It is an extreme example of the fundamentals of capitalism, which also sees the world as zero sum game—for the rich to get richer, the poor must get poorer (or die)— in a kind of dog eat dog extreme competition for the remaining resources left.

It also harks back to the extreme individualism of frontier times, when every one was armed with six shooters (the father carries one) and whoever was most ruthless or had the most weapons won out.

The one black man in the film, only carries a knife, and is basically sentenced to death by hyperthermia (all of his clothes are taken at gunpoint) by the father, for theft. His son pleads for the man’s life, saying he was just hungry, but the father tells him that he must be ruthless, as they would have died without the blankets and food the man had taken. The father later relents, and leaves the black man’s clothes in a pile on the road and the son puts a single can of food on it. But we never find out if the man gets them back.

The father says that he “carries the fire”, but his actions speak louder than words. He does not try to reach out to the black man, who is clearly not a cannibal or murderer (even when he had the chance, he did not kill the boy) and offer to share with him. In times of crisis, everyone has something to offer, it may knowledge of how to better survive, where resources are, etc.

But in this bleak story, no one can be trusted, and therefore no one can become a friend or ally.

As a Native person, I know that tribal people shared with strangers who did not threaten them, and would rather starve together, rather than eat each other. This is represented in a book about a young Native boy and a white man, lost in the Artic wilderness. The boy would hunt and always share equally with the white man. But the white man hid food from the boy and eventually the boy died from starvation. The white man survived and did not feel shame for what he did.

The boy in the movie still retains his humanity, which says that all must share and help each other. The father, shaped by the ruthless ethos of capitalist society, sees all others as potential enemies trying to take from them. He only shows some sympathy for an older, almost blind white man, who they meet on the road. He shares a meal with the man, but he does not allow the old man to travel with them, despite his son’s wishes. He does not even allow his son to hold the old man’s hand.

In this movie, the only people organized and cooperating, are the cannibal gangs, who are mostly white and male. There are no scenes of people organized to help each other and other strangers, especially people of color. I could see Native people going back to tribal ways of sharing and helping those alone or weaker than themselves. That is part of our culture values, which hopefully have not been totally destroyed by assimilation to capitalist society. I could even see groups of white anarchist and Rainbow Family hippie types really “keeping the fire” in such times. But in this collapse scenario, it seems that people were not forewarned and therefore were not prepared or organized to prepare for collapse. Unlike the movie, there are groups trying to warn us and organize for the Collapse — the Transition Town movement, the World Social Forum, the Anti-Globalization movement, The Fourth World and many others in the U.S. and around the world.

Without these options, the movie’s protagonist is left with just a stubborn will to survive, based on his love for his son. It is a noble and caring passion, shown beautifully by Viggo Mortensen, as the father. But it ultimately futile and tragic, as the father dies at the end, with only his son to mourn him. His son, whose humanity is still mostly intact, gets to reach out to another man and his family, and we hope that they survive. But if what is told in the movie is true, that all the animals and most of the plants have died, then basically no human could survive in the long run.

This is the final bleak message — we will all die, miserable and basically alone— and only the love of nuclear families for each other, can possibly postpone this tragic end of humanity. As Cormac himself said in the Journal interview: “There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed,” … “The notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom.” To his mind, such thinking will only lead to a kind of communist totalitarianism. It is rooted in the Western Frontier mentality, which admires the manly, gun toting ‘freedom’ of the cowboy, who needs no one and trusts only his six shooter. We Native people know that mentality all too well and have lived under its consequences since the colonizing of Turtle Island. McCarthy won a Pulitzer Prize for the book. Likewise Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, while sending more troops to Afghanistan. Same difference.

I would like to compare the movie to another tragic road movie, Fellini’s ‘La Strada”, (The Road, in Italian). In it, the protagonist, Zampano, a traveling ‘strong man’, buys a simple peasant girl, Gelsomina, from a poor family, as a helper. He abuses and ignores her, but she decides that her mission in life is to love him. He kills a man who is kind to her and eventually abandons her. Finally, after drinking heavilly in her home town, he goes looking for her and finds out that she has died. He too, ends up on a beach, crying uncontrollably, realizing too late that Gelsomina was the only person who ever loved him. La Strada has a tragic beauty, and excellent acting. So does The Road, but it’s message is ultimately reflective of the warlike death culture of capitalism ‘there is no alternative, so suck it up get used to it’.

Zampano represents the early ethos of pre-global capitalism, where one could buy and exploit another human being, using money and brute force.

He ends up alive, but alone, in a kind of living alcoholic death, with his “fire” extinguished by the sexism and individualism which thrived under the brutal culture of capitalism. Zampano’s individual world collapses in the beach sand, while the whole world collapses in The Road, leaving the boy (the “angel”) the only symbol of a small possible hope for the future.

The Road is reflective of McCarthy’s isolation from the many millions, who see the Catastrophe/Collapse coming, and are speaking out and organizing to “keep the Fire of humanity” from being extinguished by the dying system of Global Capitalism. They and I believe that “Another World is Possible”. We need movies that show a more hopeful scenario for humankind. One that helps us to see the power of people cooperating, not competing, as we reach out to larger circles of people, despite race, class, gender and sexual orientation. As Sitting Bull said, “Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children”. This, of course, would be futile, even foolish, for McCarthy.

Nevertheless, I want to begin a Salon in Tulsa, which we can dialog among the different ethnic groups in the city; where we can think together to organize and prepare for a new society, based on love for the Earth and all its inhabitants, cooperation and caring for all, not just our nuclear families, as capitalist society collapses around us. I would like to see if this can bring out leadership talents, that could be used to start a multi-cultural, multi-class newsletter for this area, and maybe even a movement. We need to keep the flame of hope, cooperation and caring alive, even as the dominant society tells us that it is hopeless or “There is no alternative”.

— “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it is the only thing that
ever has.” ~ Margaret Meade ~

I would like to start in the New Year, January or February, 2010. You can email me at: quetzalhombre”at”gmail.com. Roberto Mendoza

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
— Anne Frank

—the modern world-system is in structural crisis, and we have entered an ‘age of transition’—a period of bifurcation and chaos… We need to stop assuming what the better (not the perfect) society will be like. We need to discuss it, outline it, experiment with alternative structures to realize it …
—Immanuel Wallerstein, New Revolts Against the System

—’Another World is Possible’, slogan of the World Social Forum.

The Party’s Over, made it clear that Peak Oil is basically here and that there is no escape from rising fossil fuel price rises that will cause modern industrial society to collapse because it will run head on into Capitalism’s iron rule  — Grow or Die.

I see three areas that Korten’s book has not addressed clearly enough:

1.) One is on the necessity of finding a way to heal society’s hurts, so that we do not fall back into the trap of Internalized Oppression, which keeps us locked into seeking victims to blame for our anger, disappointment and frustration, when we cannot find the true source of our oppression. This weakness is manipulated  relentlessly and skillfully by Empire and its main actors, government and globalized corporations, to keep us divided and at each others throats. It is the old and well perfected strategy of Divide and Conquer, using the tools of racism, sexism, homophobia and classism. Until we understand this dynamic clearly, we will not be able to build the unity and trust that is the foundation for a successful movement for social justice.

One tool for healing old hurts is practiced by the Co-counseling community. This is done in a peer community that helps individuals to recognize negative patterns that have developed because of old undischarged hurts. But it also recognizes that hurts can have a communal and ethnic base coming out of colonialism and the oppressions of Empire on entire nations.

2.) The other is how not moving into Restorative Justice from Retributive Justice, has kept revolutionary movements and governments locked into creating internal enemies (“class enemies”, “Kulaks”, bourgeois intellectuals”, etc) which are then thrown into prisons, Gulags, Re-Education Camps, etc. Revolutionary movements and People’s Governments morph into Dictatorships of the Proletariats, Leninist Vanguard Parties and other authoritarian, top down and undemocratic ruling edifices which just create a left version of what Korten calls Empire.

Restorative Justice, based in communities, not governments, starts out with the basic belief that all people are good underneath their patterns, and the way to deal with people who are hurting each other through ‘criminal’ acts, is not through violence and punishment (an eye for and eye) and isolation from society (except as a last resort) but a process of healing and restoration of trust and responsibility within the community.  If this process is integral to communities, especially as it relates to young people, society can deal with breakdowns of trust and harmony before they get too severe. Tribal and Indigenous people practiced forms of restorative justice that negated the need for police, prisons and a standing army.

In the modern world, beginning with South Africa under Nelson Mandela, a form of restorative justice was tried in their Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Despite some criticisms, it was considered mainly a good thing and many other countries have tried variations on it.

Retributive Justice, arising out of old patterns of allowing only the State to mete out punishment and isolation, is used in a top down manner to create law and order, so that the State and Empire can continue their oppressive control of society for the benefit of wealthy elites. This Oligarchy uses  the Criminal Justice System (Police and Courts), to repress dissent domestically. The Military (basically organized violence and legalized murder)  uses  Armed Force  to conquer, colonize and confiscate the resources of weaker nations. Even so called Revolutionary Governments are still locked into this old paradigm, which eventually causes their people to no longer support them or believe in their ideology. The Soviet Union is a prime example of a Revolutionary Government that morphed into a undemocratic Empire, and eventually collapsed when enough people withdrew their energy and support from it. The same thing could happen here, especially if Obama is unable to extricate himself and his government from the  control of the Oligarchy.

3.)  The third area that was not addressed fully was the role of Indigenous and Latino people would play in this Great Turning, especially in the Western Hemisphere.

It is my firm belief that Indigenous people need to take leadership in this movement. We are the original link to the this hemisphere — the First Nations — whose Earth centered values have been reminding the newcomers to this land of our role as stewards and spiritual firekeepers since time immemorial. We need to step up to our role as Elder Brothers and Sisters and adapt our Origin stories and Prophesies  to serve the needs of our people in the 21st Century. This would include understanding the role of Internalized Oppression in keeping us divided and demoralized, not only from our own peoples, but from our allies among the Latinos who are mostly indigenous. In reality, they are more than allies, they are our brothers in sisters in the struggle to protect Pachamama/Mother Earth.

Native people still own large amounts of land that could be taken out of control of the BIA and could be the basis for many organic farms or Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms. Such farms could greatly contribute toward healing our people from the ravages of Diabetes and cancer causing Industrial Agriculture. We could also ally ourselves with African American and Latino farms and farmworkers to create a powerful source of Food Security during times of crisis like the present. One such initiative is in Oklahoma, the Mvskoke Food Security Initiative (MFSI).

Most of our tribal land that is currently leased to non-tribal ranchers and farmers, but if we can ally with organic and permaculture based organizations and farmers nationwide, we could tip the balance away from Factory Farms and Chemical based food and fertilizers.

All in all, I highly recommend reading The Great Turning. I suggest that we also use the resources of David Korten’s People Centered Development Forum.

Roberto Mendoza

This is the edited text of a speech I gave at the Cultural Workers Conference, February, 1975, in San Francisco. This picture is the drawing I did for a mural on the Wounded Knee occupation that was painted on a wall of the San Francisco Indian Center on 16th and Valencia in 1975.

I would like to give a little history of Native American culture because I think our culture provides a link with the history of this land. I think most people know that Native American people have a very close relationship with the land. We have lived here for thousands of years, living off the land, with hunting, fishing and some farming. Our culture grew out of this relationship to the land and was an expression of our unity with the Natural World.

In this period of our people, we had many ceremonies every year all across the country and even across North and South America. These followed a fairly slow rhythm, because the only thing that changed our ways were like changes in Nature, which is usually very slow.

At about the time that Europeans started coming over to this land, changes began to be introduced fairly fast, especially as the people who began to call themselves ‘Americans’ began to spread out over the West, where most of our tribes were concentrated. They began deliberately destroying our way of life, in order to take over the land. They destroyed the buffalo, which was the center of the Plains tribes lifestyle, in order to destroy them.

When they could not completely physically destroy us, they then tried to assimilate us. They put us on reservations and in government boarding schools where we were forbidden to speak our languages — they forbid us to perform our ceremonies, to relate to our spiritual ways and literally drove our culture underground. So at that period in our history, any attempt to keep our culture, would become an act of resistance.

The government tried to destroy our culture because it realized that culture keeps alive the spirit of the people and enables them to remember what life was like before colonization.

For many years after this policy of forcibly attacking our culture, it began to stagnate and much of our languages were lost. Slowly we had to adjust to these changes, especially in Oklahoma, where a lot of Eastern and some Western tribes were forcibly removed from their land and forced to live in close proximity to each other in Indian Territory.

But in the fifties, after the Second World War, a change began to happen. Tribes started exchanging different cultural experiences, started singing each other songs and adopting parts of each other’s ceremonies, especially the sweat lodge. One result of this interchange was the ‘49er’, a traditional song with something added, which was the English language. English was understood by all the tribes by then, and for them to communicate more fully in intertribal powwows, they started making up songs in English, but still using the drum and traditional singing styles. The songs usually dealt with what was going on at the time—like drinking, trying to get girl friends and driving one-eyed Fords from one powwow to another—like the Blues in a way.

By the 50′s and 60’s, I think our people were beginning to be influenced by the so-called ‘youth culture’. Rock and roll songs, folk songs, people like Buffy St. Marie were finally able to reach a mass audience. Rock groups like Redbone and Xit started coming out and speaking about our history of colonization

My long time friend, Eldy Bratt on Alcatraz. She was originally from Peru.

Richard Oakes, a young Mohawk college student, was the leader of the occupation of Alcatraz, in San Francisco, 1969.

That was about the time of Alcatraz. The occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco by Indians of All Tribes signaled the rebirth of the spirit of our people. The Traditional movement at that time became very strong. There were some traditional people like Mad Bear Anderson, going from reservation to reservation, tribe to tribe, very quietly, without much publicity, holding powwows and singing the old songs and reviving the old ceremonies, teaching the young people who had not be taught by the elders. A lot of our people, especially our young people, felt that was a good thing. It gave them a new pride and a new hope. This was the time when a lot of struggles were just beginning, Alcatraz, Pit River and the Fishing Rights struggle in the Pacific Northwest.

I think the turning point of all this came at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which was a much more serious struggle—we were facing massacre by the U.S. Government again. It showed us that the Government had not changed much since the original massacre in 1890, that it was still ready to commit genocide.

At Wounded Knee, as other tribes, Chicanos, Vietnam Vets against the war and other revolutionaries stood with the Lakota and American Indian Movement occupiers, we began to look at our culture in the light of revolutionary possibilities. We began to see that revolutionary ideas could create a powerful unity among our people and all oppressed people. This unity could lead to our liberation and the freedom of our culture and to allow us to regain control over our destiny.

We want to emphasize the positive aspects of our traditions, and we have many positive values, like balance, love for our Mother Earth and cooperation as opposed to greed. Our societies thrived by working together collectively. It was democratic—everyone had a right to speak at the councils. It was based on common ownership of the land and equal sharing of the benefits of the land. We need to hang on to these values against the destructive cultural imperialism of the U.S. Government.

We must also look at any aspect of our culture that tends to hold back our struggles. Any aspect that tends to pit one tribe against another, or that says that Indians only are the greatest race in the world. We want to struggle against any aspect that tries to put women below men. We want to struggle against any aspect of our culture that emphasizes too much mysticism over reality, especially the current harsh reality that we have to live with now.

Now I want to speak some about what we call prophesies and visions—these are old, old legends, but they have survived and gained new force because they emphasize some of the more positive aspects of our culture. For instance, the prophesy of the Warriors of the Rainbow. This is a legend about a new breed or type of people, that would struggle to bring unity, not only to Indian people, but to all people. The rainbow has long been a symbol to Native American people, and a positive symbol to many indigenous people. Now I know that the rainbow is a symbol of revolution in this country also. I thing there might even be a connection between the rainbow of , say, the Weather Underground and that of the Warriors of the Rainbow. Black Elk himself speaks of a flaming rainbow in the book of his great vision. I one part of his vision there is singing—“Look, a new nation is coming.” I use the rainbow in my artwork too, and the idea that a new American nation is coming.

At this stage in our struggle we are trying to regain our destiny, to make our own history and a new culture based on the best of our old, to carry us forward. When Black Elk said that the nation’s hoop was broken, he was talking about the destruction from imperialism. And I think that what we are trying to do is rebuild, rebuild that broken hoop of our nations and to link that hoop with other people’s hoops so that it will extend all around the world—in revolution.

Our people are the original link that connects all of you to the Western Hemisphere. Our culture and our history is the link to the overall history and culture of this land. We invite all people to join us as real Native Americans in a new revolutionary society for this Turtle Island, now known as America.

As we look at our communities across the U.S. we see deep problems and hopeful possibilities, especially among our youth. The scourge of poverty, drugs and crime have torn apart families, killed and incarcerated too many of our youth and raised the level of gang violence in our neighborhoods/barrios. A ruling class policy of massive criminalization, through the ‘Drug Wars’, of our young people has led to incarceration/warehousing unprecedented in scope. This policy has created a vicious cycle of recidivism and led to massive physical and sexual abuse in the prisons and jails. In addition, the criminal war in Iraq has also killed and wounded too many of our youth, who were caught up in the ‘poverty draft’. Thousands of our young people have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, injured, brutalized and suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

A new twist in the governments war on youth of color is to treat gangs as real or potential ‘terrorist’ organizations. The viciousness of the U.S. and Salvadorian governments campaign against the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang has shown how the ruling elites and opinion makers try to create new internal enemies to justify their increasingly oppressive laws and new prisons. In El Salvador, the only alternative offered to imprisoned gang members is fundamentalist Christianity.

All of our movements have slipped back from the high points of the Civil Rights and Liberation movements of the previous decades. African-Americans, under fierce FBI/CIA COINTELPRO wars that destroyed Malcom X, Fred Hampton, Huey Newton and Martin Luther King, have had their youth recolonized by the internalized racism and sexism of gangsta rap (“nigga, bitch, ho”) and the materialist glitter of ‘bling’, ‘pimp my ride’. This gangsta subculture has also spread its colonizing effects to Latin, Asian and Native gangs.

A few years ago Native gang culture exploded. It is a new phenomenon, far from the committed AIM/Wounded Knee liberation struggles. It has even spread to rural reservations and communities, along with crystal meth and crack cocaine.

The whole gang culture of oppressed youth of color contains the seed of a positive future, if we do not give up on them. Through a process of restorative justice, we could begin a healing process in our communities that could lead them to decolonize their minds and spirits. In addition, we need to them offer a new form of community service, where they could become the Warriors of the Rainbow that Betita Martinez spoke of in the introduction to her book, De Colores Means All of Us.

The energy and enthusiasm of young people are still seeking more positive outlets. despite a campaign of cooptation to keep them seeking materialist solutions from the ruling elites capitalist advertising system, and to keep them divided by race and class in competition for diminishing jobs, careers and status, they are still looking for an uplifting vision.

We need to develop new spiritual healing ceremonies as a way to recapture our youth from the deadly oppressor culture. Where they could let go of the hurts that set up negative patterns of acting out. Where they could see that they could begin a new transformative journey along the Red Road. Then they could redeem and transform themselves through community service by joining a new Rainbow Warriors movement. Going beyond warrior societies to a new social, political and cultural movement that includes Chican@s mixed bloods and anyone committed to defend the Earth and Pachamama. Rainbows Warriors would accept leadership from the wise elders and would be accountable to the whole community and Nation. They would give leadership roles to women and be in service to the people, not their rulers.

In the coming decades of the breakdown of Empire, we will need access to alternative food supplies—community gardens, organic farms and food coops. We will need our own self-defense security services, project oriented popular educational centers, indigenous arts and cultural centers, etc. We will need to create these community based restorative/transformative justice projects in every community, barrio and reservation in this country.

Then we need to unite Native and Latino youth under a common struggle for Indigenous human rights from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. A strong Native Youth Movement has developed recently in Canada and the U.S., especially in Vancouver and the British Columbia, First Nations struggles. But it needs to acknowledge that our Chicano and Latino brothers and sisters are also indigenous and are equal partners in our liberation struggle in the Americas.

And we need to spread this model to our allies in the African-American, Asian-American and European-American communities.

The danger lies in forces that would use the rise of militant gang based organizations to create sectarian militias that would only protect their turf on a larger scale. This could grow out of, for example, the Bloods and Crips uniting in Los Angeles as a way to confront the much larger Latino gangs.

Amongst Muslim and Arab communities, their youth could be drawn into jihad gangs inspired by Al Queda, which would make the whole community a target for Homeland Security. Another possibility would be the formation of militias modeled on Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite community based movement.

Hopefully, they would take the best from them and leave the worst, from the internalized of sexism of fundamentalist Islam and the dependence on outside forces. But if we in the Indigenous community could successfully create workable models of restorative justice that reintegrates our youth into our communities, then the Muslims communities in North American might be convinced to follow suit, using the best of Islamic culture.

The collapse of ruling class consensus around the War in Iraq is leading to demoralization and a possible civil war in the U.S. This was alluded to in Immanuel Wallerstein’s recent commentary, “The Tiger at Bay: Scary Times Ahead”. http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/192en.htm

Carol Swain in her 2002 book, The New White Nationalism in America , writes:

White nationalism is “the next logical stage for identity politics in America,… making the United States “increasingly at risk of large-scale racial conflict unprecedented in our nation’s history.” The most powerful stimulus to such white nativism will be the cultural and linguistic threats whites see from the expanding power of Hispanics in U.S. society.

Johann Galtung, in his January 28, 2004 essay — On the Coming Decline and Fall of the US Empire , also talked about the possibility of civil war arising out of the cancellation of the next Presidential election: But the other nations in the USA, the Inuits, Hawai’ians, First Nations, Chicanos, African Americans, could be pitted against the Anglo-Saxon, Southern Baptist, militarized Deep South, now in command. Hopefully they will not create an emergency to cancel elections they may not win.

If civil war does eventually break out, we need to have recaptured our youth, or they could easily end up in sectarian militias, with white youth joining racist, neo-Nazi militias’; Native youth joining ‘warrior societies’ and Chicano youth joining ‘Aztlan’ or ‘Mexica’ militias. Ethnic militias, each fighting to defend their ‘turf’, with a winner-take-all mindset is not what we need to achieve true liberation for all of our different nations and communities. We need to raise out struggle to a new level and create a new movement whose weapons are effective organizing, creative strategies and tactics, new forms of expression and communication, and a deep love for Mother Earth/Pachamama.

Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas best expressed the organizing bias of the new movements: “The movement has no future if its future is military. If the EZLN [Zapatistas] perpetuates itself as an armed military structure, it is headed for failure. Failure as an alternative set of ideas, an alternative attitude to the world. The worst that could happen to it apart from that, would be for it to come to power and install itself there as a revolutionary army.”

The scenario of warring ethnic militias or ‘revolutionary’ armies battling for supremacy and State power does not have to happen, but we need to seriously brainstorm on how to best welcome and honor our youth by giving them a positive role to play in the liberation of our communities and Nation. Their energy, creativity and courage are greatly needed as we face the chaos and violence of a crumbling U.S. Empire. Galtung predicted the fall of the Soviet empire, and predicts the fall of the U.S. empire in as little as 15 years from now. We need to recreate our new revolutionary Indigenous movement as soon as possible.

This is 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 nations, and finally our Mother Earth. It is a call to defend our ancient heritages, starting from Turtle Island, Aztlan, Pacha Mama – to all the different races whose blood has intermingled with ours, our mestizaje/mixed bloods. 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 to create –­– from energy, ideas and dialog – the revolutionary process of transforming our civilization from a deadly corporate empire to a life affirming, democratic community of Indigenous and Bioregional Nations in the Western Hemisphere.

All my relations.

This is an article I wrote for the Free News in Portland, ME in December, 2006.

On Dec. 12, there was a presentation by Professor George Caffentzis at the USM Law School, called The Next Mexican Revolution? Oaxaca’s insurrection, Obrador’s “Parallel Government” and the Zapatista’s “Other Campaign”. There were approximately 25 people there. Prof. Caffentzis has a group (Mainers for Democracy in Mexico) that involves students and faculty to support the Zapatistas, some of whom spoke also.

On January 1, 1994 the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN in Spanish) burst into the consciousness of the world by its armed takeover of several towns and cities in Chiapas, Mexico. They were an indigenous movement that rose up to oppose the beginning of the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) treaty and the degradation of the Constitution of Mexico. Eventually the armed insurrection ended and the Zapatistas said that they did not want to take over state power- “If power is taken, it is not real power.” Then, in their Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, they proposed the “Other Campaign,” in which they would travel to all the states in Mexico to dialog with ordinary people about what did they want to do to change Mexico from below. Subcomandante Marcos said last month that Mexico is “on the eve of a great uprising or a civil war.”

Then, there is the losing Presidential candidate, Lopez Obrador’ of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) and his ‘parallel government’. His supporters camped out in the thousands in the center of Mexico City, vowing to not let the winner, Felipe Calderon of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) take office.

A powerful libratory current is rising among Mexicans. Many intense discussions are going on in Mexico whether to follow Obrador’s ‘Parallel Gov’t” strategy or the Zapatistas “Other Campaign” strategy of mobilizing from the ground up all over Mexico. Friends in Mexico told Prof. Caffentziz that recently the situation has profoundly changed. This great crisis will affect not only Mexicans but also people in the U.S. Even Marcos talked about how this force is growing so much that it can’t even be contained by the country of Mexico, that to the North of the Rio Bravo there exists another Mexico, “one that we are not going to lose.”

Across the Rio Bravo, the largest demonstrations in U.S. history took place in 2006 among Latinos, both documented and undocumented demanding immigration reform that recognized their human rights – hence their slogan, “No Human Being is Illegal!” 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.”

Basically millions of undocumened workers said to the U.S. Congress – “You are not going to pass legislation to make us slaves.” Congress was forced to dump Sensenbrenners bill, recognizing that a powerful movement was rising in the U.S., and that the Latino and immigrant population was not going to take this lying down.

In Mexico, the situation in Qaxaca may be the spark that lights the prairie fire, as it arose almost spontaneously from a teachers strike that, due to brutal governmental and paramilitary attacks turned into a mass insurrection by hundreds of thousands of people from the city and surrounding Indigenous communities. Initially a group of teachers and their supporters camped out in the Zocalo, or center of Oaxaca City demanding a pay raise, better working conditions and help for the poor children who could not afford books and lunches.

On June 17, 2006, the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) a coordinating organization was formed to lead the rising struggle. Recently Federal Preventive Police were sent to clear the square and New York City Indymedia reporter Brad Will was shot and killed by paramilitaries/police. The U.S. Ambassador used his death as a reason to call for more police to establish order. The EZLN has called for worldwide support for APPO as it seeks to oust the corrupt PRI (Partido de Revolución de Mexico) Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.

As the online journal narcosphere.com put it: “…the biggest force responsible for Oaxaca’s poverty is a global economic system bent on eradicating subsistence agriculture, replacing small farms with massive plantations, and turning farmers into low wage factory workers, all in the name of economic efficiency and maximizing profits. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) destroyed Oaxaca’s millennia-old corn growing culture in the 1990′s.”

At present, Nativity activities have caused a lull in activities, but the New Year will surely bring renewed people’s struggles all across Mexico and in the U.S. Southwest. The revolutionary movement in Mexico is inspiring activists in the U.S. into renewed interest in the new networking model and horizontal strategies of the Zapatistas which seek to create another way of doing politics – “from below and to the left.”

While Chicanos and other Latinos will lead the movement in the U.S., all committed activist in the U.S. can help build the movement here in the U.S. Below are some links and materials to help educate ourselves to the struggle in Mexico and inside the “brain of the monster,” as the Zapatistas call the U.S.

http://www.narconews.com

http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com

http://fc.umit.maine.edu/~robert.mendoza/newjournal.htm

http://fbc.binghamton.edu/commentr.htm

http://aztlanrising.com/

http://zapagringo.blogspot.com/

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=18059817

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.

The tremendous explosion of marches in Los Angeles, Dallas and other cities across the U.S. heralds the rise of a new civil/human rights movement among undocumented workers and their allies. Max Blumental’s reported on the Los Angeles march on The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/sensenbrenner-awakens-a-s_b_17894.html 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 … 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.

The past weeks has been nothing less than a political earthquake, comparable to the beginnings of the African-American Civil Rights movement. The rumblings of this new movement are part of a continent wide indigenous awakening, starting among the Native and Inuit peoples and spreading to Mestizos/Chicanos/Cholos and mixed bloods. It will lead to the new Western Hemisphere/Turtle Island/Pacha Mama civilization of the Eagle-Quetzal-Condor.

John Curl, a European-American man went to the First Continental Conference of 500 Years of Indian Resistance in 1992 in Quito, Ecuador. His report back, The Dance of the Condor begins: 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….[land of the Quetzal bird and the Zapatistas]“When the 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.”

This vision is elaborated further in my on line journal: Eagle-Quetzal-Condor:

http://fc.umit.maine.edu/~robert.mendoza/newjournal.htm

We may have a coup by an openly right wing Christian fascistic government in 2008, if it the defeat of the Republican candidate cannot be prevented by fear tactics and vote rigging. This new fascism, if it can direct this hatred against undocumented workers from Mexico, could lead to race/civil war. Samuel Huntington sets the stage for this in his book, The Hispanic Challenge: The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream.

A plausible reaction to the demographic changes …could be the rise of an anti-Hispanic, [really anti-Native] anti-black, and anti-immigrant movement composed largely of white, working- and middle-class males, protesting their job to immigrants and foreign countries, the ‘perversion’ of their culture, and the displacement of their language.

White nationalism is “the next logical stage for identity politics in America,” … making the United States “increasingly at risk of large-scale racial conflict unprecedented in our nation’s history.”
“Such a transformation would not only revolutionize the United States, but it would also have serious consequences for Hispanics, who will be in the United States but not of it…There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English.”

But this Anglo-Protestant dream has never been Indigenous peoples dream.

Actually, the Indian-Dream-in-America was one of harmony and peace with the land and co-existing with all of the elements on Mother Earth. Since the European-Dream-in-America had little to do with peace and harmony, it became a nightmare for Native peoples.
Ramon Lopez-Reyes

While Huntington and his ‘Clash of Civilizations’ ideas speak for the elites of this country, I think that we Native and Chicano people need to follow the example of the Zapatistas. To organize our people as a revolutionary force for democratic change, and to set our goal as nothing less than a new Indigenous based civilization in the Western Hemisphere. The old Anglo-Protestant dream has turned into a nightmare for our people and for all poor and working class people in this hemisphere. It is time to start building a new civilizing movement in the U.S. that will replace it. Young people, poor/working class people of all races—all who also have a great love for this America/Turtle Island—will join us in this great undertaking.

John Curl talks further about the role of European-Americans in this new movement:

“…our civilization has not yet made its peace with this continent: we are on it but not yet of it. 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. “

“… 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…In looking for new myths, where is there to turn but backwards, to the very oldest stories of our hemisphere. Here in America (or in Appia-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.”

Our people will lead this new movement, just like Blacks led the earlier civil rights movement. But we must reach out and makes alliances with other oppressed groups, especially Blacks and Asian Americans. We must also join with the anti-war, anti-globalization and environmental justice movements. Encourage them to take heart in the courage and organization shown in these huge marches. Imagine how large the size of the movement to stop the war in Iraq (and possibly Iran) could be if these movements joined together as allies in a common fight for justice, peace, economic democracy and environmental justice. This is how we can rise above strictly identity politics and become a broad based movement that will create lasting change for the better in the U.S. Si, si puede! Yes, we can!

Bio: I am Native (Muscogee) and Chicano (Spanish/Tarascan/Basque) and have been a writer and political organizer for the Native, Latino, anti-war, Bioregionalist and Green movements for over 35 years. I am currently helping organize a Maine Social forum and starting a new Journal of spiritual politics called: Eagle-Quetzal-Condor. I am also an intern with the Mexico Solidarity Network.
I can be reached at: quetzalhombre<<>>gmail.com

REFLECTIONS ON THE STRUGGLES OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN BIG MOUNTAIN

by Roberto Mendoza

The struggle of Indigenous people at Big Mountain in Arizona to resist forced relocation from their land has deeper significance than even repeal of Public Law 95-351. There are profound issues underlying their struggle to remain on their land and to maintain their traditional way of life–issues that are relevant to all people.

Native people have a name for this continent: we call it “Turtle Island”. The bones of our ancestors lie buried here for countless generations. Our legends and oral histories go back to time immemorial. We have our sacred places on this land, and the spiritual center of this continent is where the Hopi and Dineh (Navajo) people live.

The traditional Hopi people, following their ancient Prophesy, have been waiting patiently for Bahana, the True White Brother/Sister, who would join them in taking care of this, our Mother Earth, and in living in harmony and respect for her. This path of peace, (Hopi means ‘Peaceful People’), of acknowledging the sacredness of Land and Life, is the only way that non-Indians will stop being rootless, alienated occupiers who have wandered far from the graves of their ancestors. To become truly indigenous to this land, non-Indians will have to develop a loving and sacred relationship to this earth, hidden under their cities and concrete highways.

Native people have accepted their responsibility to be stewards of this land long ago. The traditional people in the Dineh and Hopi nations are trying to tell all North American people, through their words and actions–the way to a future of harmony and peace among the world’s peoples and the Natural World.

The traditional Dineh and Hopi are struggling to keep their way of life. A Way of Life is more than just a livelihood: it is a holistic, sustainable way of living that is economically, politically and culturally self-reliant. It depends on staying in harmony and balance with their environment and their natural resources. The traditional Dineh way of life is based on herding sheep for wool and meat; trading with the Hopi for corn and squash; listening to their elders; and daily earth-centered prayers to the Great Spirit. Most non-Indians have a livelihood, which usually consists of working at an alienating job, collecting a paycheck that is used to buy processed food, casting a vote every four years for smooth-talking politicians that they only see on TV, and sometimes sitting in a church on Sunday.

The way of life of the Dineh/Hopi people does not depend on ripping up the earth (they want to leave the coal and uranium in the ground), dosing their land and animals with harmful chemicals, or colonizing and oppressing other people for their resources or cheap labor. Their low-energy, ecologically sound and sustainable way of life does not produce a National Security State, with an imperialist foreign policy, avaricious global corporations, and a far-flung military machine armed with weapons of mass destruction.

The Hopi prophecy speaks of a Gourd of Ashes, which if we allow it to fall, will “scorch the earth and cause the seas to boil”. This is a warning of the nuclear holocaust that may befall us if we do not turn away from what the great English social historian, E.P. Thompson, called: the “path of Exterminism”. Externimism is rooted in the dynamics of greed, cancerous industrialism and the domination and exploitation of peoples and nature.

The Dineh/Hopi people are showing us a path based on simple living, sustainable bioregional economics, decentralized politics and a spiritual culture that sees Land and Life as sacred. The values that underlie this way of life are generosity, cooperation, a balance between male and female roles, and respect and harmony with nature. The values that grow out of this way of relating to the earth and all living things, may be what we need to halt what Einstein called our “drift towards unparalleled catastrophe”.

The love of the sacred Mother Earth is not like the abstract Patriotism of military parades and flag waving politicians talking about the good old USA (which is no more real than lines on a map). Theirs is an earth-centered, deep-rooted ‘Matriotism’, which comes from a daily connection to the cycles of planting, harvesting and birthing, blessed by sun and rain.

Native people are asking for a more holistic awareness of what it means to struggle for peace and non-violence. We must understand that without justice among peoples and respect for the Earth, peace cannot sustain itself.