by Emilio Paqcha Benites
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| via Decolonization Wordpress |
It is hard to believe but my culture, along with many other indigenous cultures around the world, continues to suffer robbery at many levels by the new colonial powers just the same way our ancestors did. Incalculable amounts of gold, silver, copper, diamonds and other material goods were among the first few things that were (and continue to be) exploited with little or no opposition and with little or no benefit to indigenous peoples.
A greater crime, which persists today is one much more valuable than any material goods. Since the beginning of the exploration conducted by European colonialists, indigenous knowledge was seen as inferior, archaic, backwards and non-worthy of development. Ironically, indigenous knowledge has been the equal victim of robbery and exploitation without any compensation for those who own it, which, by the way, is communal ownership. Obviously, this indicates that our knowledge was not as inferior as they said it was but it is this ideology which has kept us indigenous people from opposing this greater crime. Although in my culture, the past, present, and future are one, it is important to analyze them as separate in order to have a clear understanding of what is happening today with our knowledge and pride as well as the present robbery which we continue to be victims of.
Documentation has finally confirmed that the information presented by indigenous people for centuries is not a folklore or tale. In it, it says that colonial powers stripped away our pride and implanted shame and dependency. This was accomplished by following three stages of terror, which are still used today. The first stage was to simply kill Indigenous people for practicing their indigenous traditions and costumes. Once their labor was found useful, torture and terrorizing was implemented. Finally, if this did not do the job, conversion to the inferiority and superiority ideology were presented by schools, missionaries, anthropologists and of course by community members with colonized mentalities. Although the three stages continue to be used by those in power, the last stage is the greatest threat to indigenous pride and knowledge.
My family and I became nomads after my father got captured and tortured by a U.S. and Peruvian sponsored terrorist organization called Sinchis. They killed many indigenous Andean people who saw an opportunity to end the colonization process by accepting an alliance with a Maoist communist movement called Sendero.
Such alliances forced those in power to reinforce and increment the three stages of terror. My father, I guess, was lucky to be in the second stage and not the first, as were many indigenous intellectuals who until today are seen by the mass media as the "terrorists." As we took refuge in many different houses, we were always presented with the idea that the Sinchis were liberating us from the terrorists Sendero. This never made sense to us because terror came from the other side, but we did not question this because those who were presenting the information were "knowledgeable people" such as the media, teachers, city people, police and leaders. There were probably more attacks in this way than there were with weapons and brute force. This psychological manipulation of course did not come alone. Part of making us believe in an alternate reality was to also present the idea that our thoughts and customs were inferior and in the process of extinction.
I remember back in school a teacher told me that we got lucky that Christopher Columbus discovered us so we could become civilized. Other members of the community, who had also already succumbed to that ideology, helped reinforce the argument by presenting visual and verbal examples of the uncivilized: indigenous people with their clothes and bodies dirty from working like animals in the fields; peasants chewing coca leaves and paying tribute to the earth before and after working; people dancing and singing in a language so foreign to the dominant Spanish. All these images and more were descriptions of what my family and I were. For us, and for many people who were in the same situation, it was enough to not only feel shameful of our own culture, but to welcome the western ideology. The third stage was put into effect at least at that time.
Unfortunately for those in power, many indigenous people, including members of my family were lucky enough to have gone through a process of conscious decolonization to a level in which we are able to analyze our experiences and history and now have decided to counterattack and stop the robbery by validating our own knowledge and bringing back honor and pride to indigenous people around the world. The process of globalizing this has always been present and this essay, followed by others in the future are only one more tool, which I hope will accelerate such process.
Bibliography:
Indigenous communal knowledge for the mere purpose of decolonizing our mentalities.
Emilio Paqcha BenitesTHE DECOLONIZER
September 2015
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