INDEPENDENCE FOR WHOM?
Hold fast to dreams / For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird / That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams / For when dreams go
Life is a barren field / Frozen with snow.
—Langston Hughes, African-American poet
Many winters ago our wise ancestors predicted:
the white-eyed monster will come from the east.
And as he advanced would consume the land.
This monster is the white race and the prediction is near its fulfilment.
—Prophecy of the Iroquois, confederation of tribes in present-day NY state
While listening to the outbursts and watching the splendid fireworks of 4th of July, we must not forget that Independence Day does not celebrate freedom or the end of oppression for all who lived in the United States in 1776. Slaves continued to be slaves and indigenous people continued to be exterminated and those who survived were subjected to living decades later on reservations assigned by European invaders. The independence of the United States was designed and won by and so that the English colonists could have autonomy to perpetuate themselves as the new masters of these stolen lands.
Independence was, above all, for English men. Because women continued to be subjected, without voice or right to vote until 1920 (and still, one hundred years later, with a long way to go to obtain full rights). As Howard Zinn says of the times of independence, “If we read the most orthodox history books, we may forget half of the country's population. Explorers were men, landowners and merchants were men, political leaders were men, and so were military figures. The very invisibility of women and the oblivion to which they were subjected, indicate their submerged condition” (The Other History of the United States, 2001, 81). Freedom was not for them.
Nor was it for blacks who remained slaves until Lincoln's 1862 Proclamation of Emancipation of Slaves during the Civil War. This proclamation never really represented complete freedom, neither in practice nor legally, as shown by the Jim Crow laws (in force in various states between 1876 and 1965) that legalized segregation and whose effects are clearly felt in absolute social inequality and lack of opportunities for today's African-American population. Or the ominous Amendment 13th of 1865 that constitutionally authorizes to this day the continuation of slavery within the prison system: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The application of this amendment is manifested in the criminal mass incarceration in the United States, the country with the most prisoners in the world, the vast majority of them African-Americans (and indigenous and Latino in second and third place), subjected to forced labor with little or no pay for corporations that profit from their incarceration and work (here is a report on these corporations: “Post Meek Mill: Report Discloses Companies Profiting from Prison,” May 7, 2018). The African-American population has never been passive; they has always fought in an enormously unequal way against the iniquities to which they has been subjected up to the present, as we continue to see with the Black Lives Matter Movement, which perhaps, if continues in the fight permanently, will become the moment of change most decisive in history against racism in the United States.
Nor can the indigenous people celebrate Independence Day as a victory for their people. Independence for them would have been to get rid of the invaders of their territories. So the indigenous people of this country, like those of the entire continent, continue to live in a state of non-freedom within their own lands. The indigenous people have always offered fierce resistance to the invasion of their territories. When they realized that the arrival of the Europeans on their land was actually an invasion that ended up stripping them of their lands, they fought first as independent tribes and then as confederations of indigenous groups. They played a subordinate active role during the 13-states war of independence, either alongside the English empire or the English colonists (allied with the French), as these powers alternately offered to be their protectors. On either side, nothing worked for them. In 1851 Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act through which the reservation system for indigenous people was created as a way to keep them under control: natives could not get out of there without government permission. This and other subsequent laws on federal government control of native communities were superseded by The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 which gave greater autonomy to the 567 federally recognized indigenous tribes of the country, including having their own constitution and not pay federal taxes. But the problems of marginalization, poverty, lack of health services and the drama of alcoholism and drugs, caused by centuries of colonialism, are rampant within an economy that depends on tourism and casinos, a system in which they are subject to the constant looting and exploitation of their identity and culture.
Evidently what is celebrated every 4th of July is the victory of the English colonists to obtain the freedom to continue to command a government meticulously created to the measure of white supremacism. The same would have to happen, with its own nuances and variations, with the Spanish Criollos who advanced the independence of the Spanish-speaking countries. What is celebrated is, as usual, the history of the victors. In this case, the defeated continue to fight, because they are not defeated. As the African-American poet Hugues sang, they “hold fast to dreams” from a world that is their own and is the standard and not the exception in history.
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Today I recommend the book The Origin of Others, by Toni Morrison. The text is a collection of the lectures she gave at Harvard University in 2016 where she discusses the concept of race and the construction of white racism in American society. The talks and the book coincide with the presidency of Donald Trump, one of the stages of this country when racism, police brutality against African-American and Latino communities, persecution of immigrants by ICE, rhetoric against Latinos and the urgency for build the wall on the border with Mexico, are in the forefront of daily news. Morrison illustrates her speech through various literary works, including her own.
Another book that I recommend is War Against all Puerto Ricans. Revolution and Terror in America's Colony, by the journalist and lawyer Nelson A. Denis, born in NY to a Puerto Rican mother and a Cuban father. He has developed a journalistic career and legal committed to the defense of Latinos in the United States. Graduated from Harvard and Yale universities, was director of El Diario / La Prensa and represented New York's 68th Assembly district, which includes the East Harlem and Spanish Harlem neighborhoods from 1997 to 2000. The book recounts the insurrection by the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico in 1950 against the United States government in search of the island's independence and the bloody US military retaliation that included the bombing of Jayuya and Utuado, marking the first time that the US bombarded cities under its jurisdiction.