-Many times we speak of the original peoples as those who speak of the past. In many museums around the world, in fact, indigenous peoples are still part of “natural history.” Do you think this perspective has changed?
In more enlightened circles in fact the perspective has not changed from the “derogatory sense”. Although the relationship with nature has been resurrected as an ideal that the backward cultures of the “developed world” would do well to strive to achieve, actually learning from the original peoples, who show us again and again that we either live in harmony with nature or we will persist in our march towards the suicide of the species, taking much of our life with us.
-It was common in schools and universities to call the arrival of Christopher Columbus to this continent as the “discovery of America”, then in 1992 it was changed to “encounter between two worlds”. What’s the right way to mention it in your opinion?
There is a national holiday in the United States called “Columbus Day.” Years ago I informed the students of my courses that we would not meet because of Genocide Day. Over the years, bewilderment was transformed into understanding, as awareness of historical truth began to penetrate the culture. Today I think a good term is “the invasion of America,” borrowing the title from the groundbreaking book by Francis Jennings who expounded the mythology and vulgar apology that prevailed in general culture unfortunately and even in the most learned circles. It is quite shocking to look back, which was disseminated only 50 years ago by leading historians and anthropologists. And it’s no coincidence that Jennings was an independent scholar, outside of academia. The basic facts, suppressed for a long time, were not, of course, obscure to the perpetrators. Some celebrated, others lamented them, such as former (U.S.) President John Quincy Adams, the intellectual architect of Manifest Destiny. In his later years, long after his own contributions to crime, he reflected bitterly on the fate of “that hapless race of Native Americans, which we are exterminating with such ruthless and perfidious cruelty… among the heinous sins of this nation, for which I believe God will one day bring us to judgment.” Jennings opened the door to the revelation of the horrible historical record, now understood at least in some circles. It is so well understood that the proto-fascist Republican Party – without exaggeration – is now trying to ban the teaching of real history in schools, on the grounds that it is “divisive”, because it “makes” some students feel “uncomfortable”..
-And what has changed to this day?
It should be added that the United States is not breaking new ground in these aspects. After centuries of horrific atrocities, Britain’s real history is just beginning to reveal itself in depth, shattering the shameful myths of British exceptionalism. France cannot yet lift the veil, for example, regarding its horrendous record in Haiti, the source of much of the European country’s wealth.
In Argentina, President Fernández recently said that Argentines arrived on boats, while Bolsonaro in Brazil said that “they (the indigenous people) are already practically like us, they want to exploit their land; that’s very good for us and it’s very good for the world.” In Chile there is a proposal for constitutional recognition that has aroused many reluctances. Do you think there is also a responsibility of academics and intellectuals?
-We could think of the Historikerstreit (intellectual struggle between Ernst Nolte and Jurgen Habermas, in which the former defended an alleged external and accidental origin of Nazism) on revisionism in Germany in the 80s, debates that opened when Habermas wrote a critical essay on the tendencies in the discipline of history to minimize Nazism and the Holocaust. No two crimes are the same, but sometimes there are common characteristics. Habermas’ intervention illustrates the responsibility of academics and intellectuals that can also be extended to this debate as well.
-Indigenous peoples usually have a different relationship with nature, they also live in community, which seems to clash with the neoliberal paradigm in which, in the words of Margareth Thatcher, “There is no society, only individuals. “Will this be a factor exacerbating the conflict?
Thatcher’s words require crucial clarification, more precise interpretation. What he meant is that there should be no society for the great mass of the population, the “rabble,” as his predecessors called it. They should throw themselves into the market, so that they would somehow survive, by themselves, remaining atomized and helpless, like “a sack of potatoes,” occupying Marx’s term to condemn the practices of the autocrats of his day. But for the rich and privileged, there must be a rich society, with a dense network of interaction and support: chambers of commerce, trade associations and, above all, a powerful and interventionist state that they largely control. It should be unnecessary to explain the details once again. That is the current neoliberal paradigm, best characterized as a form of bitter class warfare.
Violence against indigenous peoples is because they are in the middle of “the road”. They are like third world countries that mistakenly believe that “the first beneficiaries of the development of a country’s resources must be the people of that country,” a crime against the “good economy” and a heresy that must be extirpated, as the United States informed Latin American countries at the 1945 hemispheric conference. when the rules of World Order were established, to avoid obstacles to the “Masters of Humanity” in the search for their “vile maxim: everything for us and nothing for others”, a maxim that is valid for all ages, I am repeating the words of Adam Smith. For the servants of the Masters of the Bolsonaro type, indigenous communities block the search for the vile maxim by the timber and agricultural industries that try to exploit the riches of the Amazon for their own benefit, contributing in the process to the destruction of human life on earth. But it is fair to add that they are not the only ones who defend these “principles”.
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