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Selections from the Tribuno del Pueblo (October, 1997)

 

Día de la Raza

Celebrate and renew our commitment to community

By Carlos G. Rodriguez

Certain voices from the American past, long past, sound very futuristic. For example, the ancient voice that still tells us we are children of the earth and that our mother is not for sale or for hire.

In New Mexico, the Isleta and Cochiti Pueblo Indians salute this ancient voice. These tribes tell their children that if they bring harm to each other or to anything belonging to the earth, the Water People will take them. Each year, during their respective feast days, many Pueblo men paint themselves in bold black and gray stripes (from head to toe) and pay their "Water People-visits" to the children. The parents of the misbehaving children give gifts to the Water People in the hopes that they will not take their children. Although the children have different offenses, they are clearly united in their renewed respect for each other and Mother Earth!

The Latino community as a whole is extremely diverse - from Salvadorans to Mexicans to Puerto Ricans to Dominicans. Like the Pueblo children, in spite of their diversity, Latinos are united by many common experiences. Forged through discrimination, language, culture and resistance, our experiences transcend national origins. All our struggles have attempted to bring life into balance and into line with our natural tendency toward community. What has marked these struggles?

The capitalist system this continent has been burdened with for centuries marked these struggles through the pitting of people against each other. Through legislation and warfare it has brought disharmony to human relations. In response, people have attempted to reform, resist and curtail its excesses. A Civil Rights Movement was born. Bilingual education was promoted. All the time, however, the capitalists maintained their rule through bribery. They point to the Latina professional here or the Latino legislator over there as examples of advancement. But the capitalist system is one of detachment: to keep silenced people isolated from participating in controlling which way society should go.

What stamps the struggle for Latinos entering the 21st Century? Today, resistance goes beyond being Latino. A new way of life is trying to emerge which calls into question the very principals of capitalism's "culture of money." People are being compelled to cooperate, regardless of race or gender, in order to survive. A new idea is being seized: the material basis for a paradise on earth exists and we are on the brink of realizing it! People instinctively know that there is no justification for anyone to starve, for any child to be homeless and for anyone to go without medical care. What blocks us from moving forward are the old, outdated ideas of "dog-eat-dog" or "looking out for number one."

A new voice is arising which is calling forth another world different from this one that poisons the water, soil, air and soul. This voice, one that the Zapatistas of Mexico have embraced so courageously, calls for a communal vision of the future. The call is not only for resistance to the culture of money, but demands we create a vision of the future that brings us back into balance with our natural tendencies.

"The ancient voice that speaks to us of community heralds another world as well," writes Eduardo Galeano in his Book of Embraces. "Community - the communal mode of production and life - is the oldest of American traditions, the most American of all. It belongs to the earliest days and the first people, but it also belongs to the times ahead and anticipates a new New World. For there is nothing less alien to these lands of ours than socialism. Capitalism, on the other hand, is foreign: like smallpox, like the flu, it came from abroad."

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