Decompiling Oppression #139
Sam McVeety
It is easy to read Paola Ramos's Defectors and feel a sense of frustration or resignation. In it, she explores the rising acceptance of far right ideologies in Latino communities, oftentimes in the very populations targeted by those ideologies. Immigrant communities agitate for the closing of borders and widespread crackdowns; victims of authoritarian regimes abroad voice support for erosion of freedom of speech and the press here in the United States. Beneath the surface, though, there are important lessons in these stories.
We can start with the fate of certain statues in New Mexico, and not the ones we're used to hearing about. At the same time that the country was facing a reckoning regarding the presence of Confederate statues, a parallel movement was asking similar questions of statues of conquistadors, many of whom perpetrated breathtaking acts of violence against Indigenous peoples. Here, too, there was resistance to removing these statues, not from the defenders of the Confederacy, but from descendants of these conquistadors (notably, many of mixed Spanish and Indigenous ancestry), who viewed this as an attack on their Spanish heritage.
Hearing these stories, it is certainly possible, perhaps even easy, to be dismissive. In her interviews, defenders of these statues praise "the Spanish Empire for protecting Native Americans’ identity when they settled in New Mexico" and argue that it is "inaccurate to refer to the Spaniards in New Mexico as 'conquistadors,' because [they should be considered] 'explorers' and 'settlers.'" (Beyond being a gross misrepresentation of history, this also erases the many acts of Indigenous cultural resistance, preserving spiritual and other practices, often at great cost.) In turn, they referred to their critics as "anti-Hispanic".
There's something important here, though. When someone's sense of self is deeply rooted in a particular story, it's not enough to simply expect people to read a history book and change their minds. Moreover, even if doubt manages to creep in, replacing it with the negative presence of shame only primes people for isolation and aggression. Whether it is the aftermath of imperial conquest or the American Civil War, we have to think about what culture we want to build instead; to simply leave a void is to create fertile ground for authoritarians.
The shadow of empire, past and present, also looms large. The United States spent a considerable amount of the 20th Century propping up authoritarian regimes in Latin America in the name of battling communism, and the consequences of this are still with us today. Beyond the overt violence wrought, these regimes inspired their own set of supporters, creating inspiration for modern authoritarian movements, whether this is admirers of Chile's Pinochet orchestrating the attempted coup on January 6th, or the avowed nostalgia expressed by Brazil's Bolsonaro toward the country's military dictatorship of the 1970s.
The racial and group dynamics of the situation also warrant a closer examination. The United States has a history of absorbing certain immigrant communities into whiteness, contingent on cultural assimilation and acceptance of the racial bribe of white supremacy. Given the colonial history of Latin America, many immigrants' home countries have already laid the cultural groundwork to strive for this racial bribe, including in some cases the literal ability to purchase whiteness. Even within specific groups, the pressure to assimilate is heightened by the current political climate, with rewards promised (and promises broken) to those who can successfully differentiate themselves from the "bad" immigrants as "good" immigrants.
And this all informs our present. When it comes to building cross-racial, cross-class movements for liberation, it is foundationally important to understand not only your own history, but seek to understand the cultural context of the people around you. It's powerful to see this fuller picture, in all its complexity, and not look away. It reminds us of the importance of lifting up and celebrating counterstories of resistance and liberation, like the southbound Underground Railroad. It reminds us how much the past influences the present, and that we cannot simply wish away the tremendous human costs that brought us to our current moment.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: If you've experienced a time when your beliefs or habits changed, what did people around you do to make that easier (or harder)?
Communal: How can we create a positive culture that creates space for people to change their beliefs?
Solidarity: Support WAISN and their work to defend immigrant and refugee communities from deportation while advocating for meaningful, systemic change.
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