Revolution in the Americas Page 4 University Daily Kansan, July 22, 1982 A second Civil War; the birth of New Africa By SEKOU MUSTHAFA ALI Guest Columnist Ever since the arrival of Vasco da Gama on the shores of the east "Afrikan"—Afrikan spelling—cousin in the 15th century, the entire history of white domination of the resources of Afrika and the enslavement of native cultures hitherto known for the savage disregard for simple justice and equality for all people. THE 'EURO-AMERIKAN' male has never at any moment in America's - New Afrikan spelling - history regarded Afrikan people as worthy of self-determination. This is evident even in white American's history books. Afrikan people were violently and ruthlessly kled'ed from our homelands, brought to this hemisphere in shackles and treated as a commodity. We were exchanged by white men and women or sugar, rum and money so they could continue their business. Part One AMERIKAN HISTORY REVISTED From the earliest recorded moment of our arrival in Amerika in 1526 in South Carolina, to 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, African people were captives of a barbarian. Euro-American economic system based on the exploitation of Africans for African people entailed the extermination of our native languages and customs, the raping of African women, the murder of black men, women and children, the separation of African families and the violent theft of our labor. In essence, oceans of our blood and sweat were poured into our land for the African people or Afrikan dignity. It is also true that from the end of the Euro-Amerikan intra-capitalist conflict, the Civil War, to the opening of African guerrilla warfare in New York City in the summer of 1964—a period of 100 years—African people in the United States proceeded on our path to freedom without resorting to violence. We were attacked by weapons we had used during the previous 300 years. However, the struggle was violent. It was and is violently precisely because the white American state, unlike the African, never forsook violence as its primary instrument of control over the Afrikan. FEEW ATROCITIES in the history of any culture parallel those of whites in the 100 years of publicly lynching Afrikaners in America—the shameless and systematic murder of defenseless thousands in the period just after the Civil War and just after Reconstruction; the burning alive and disemboweiling of African children as well as hapless African adults; the sudden and unanswered disappearances in the back country; the use of white courts, the electric chair and the gas chamber, the white "thief troopers" police men's guns and weapons; African self-determination. Hardly anything parallels the committee committed by the white Euro-American economic systems and culture. However, this history of savagery has taught Afrikaners much about the white men. If we learned nothing else from our 100 years of being lynched in this nation, concurrent as it is with white treachery and systematic near-extermination of the Indians, we have learned that whites who are barbaric enough to allow an attacker to kill them and destroyed at their sources. This must be so, whether the racist criminal wears a badge, a swastika or a sheet. Part Two INTEGRATION Colonized black "misleaders" have told Afrikaners for years that the way to achieve black power is through integration and that the way to achieve integration is by nonviolent means. However, their goal and tactics negate reality and history. The goal of integration is flawed because it negates the reality of what integration really means—colonization. African liberation will not be won by using the same toilet or by eating at the same lunch counters as whites. Total Afrikan liberation can only be achieved through the liberation of the land upon which our Afrikan ancestors have shed oceans of sweat and blood. Total Afrikan liberation can be achieved by establishing a state upon that land. The alternative, which is integration, has failed and always will fail because integrationists have continuously underestimated white Euro-Americans conviction to maintain white supremacist domination of the world and the 'very lives of the integrationists themselves. THIS IS WHAT integration has really meant: Forty percent of the causalities in Vietnam were black, yet blacks make up less than 13 percent of the population in Amerika and occupy more of the country. In essence, black men died and were mutilated in vain, defending the interests of a nation that has no desire or will to accept them as political, economic or social equals. Forty-five percent of the ground troops of the present military forces of Amerika are blacks and Hispanics, which means they will be the first and most frequently killed when the "white war dogs" decide to send them to Central America. LAST AND MOST importantly, integration Self-abasement through acceptance of the attainable white, middle-class values and attributes—speech, dress, mannerisms and straight hair—the path of least resistance and least understanding of the oppressed nature of their colonized (integrated) status. In their effort to achieve functional sanity within a white-dominated society, colonized will be able to do nothing but accept the incorrect conclusions of their "new-found" white colonial masters' values—African inferiority. Inherent in the white colonial masters' values is one standard of beauty—white beauty; one standard of genius and courage—white genius and courage. The colonized black cannot achieve these attributes. White beauty is not black beauty and can only be achieved by skin and behavior. The end result for the colonized black is, and will continue to be, an existence of psychological misery and alienation from the African masses who refuse to accept white values. That will be compounded by their alienation from each other because of another culture. The result of Euro-Amerikan values—individualism. AS FOR THE TACTIC of nonviolence, the reason it has failed and forever will fail is because the white enemy is not nonviolent. From the moment the whites kidnapped from africa to now, whites have ruthlessly subjected Afrikans to a long and fatal systematic process of violence. Our ancestors were chained during their passage to America and they were packed into a prison camp that was almost violent? The psychological warfare perpetrated by the FBI against Martin Luther King Jr. was a form of violence and most assuredly his assassination was violent. The 100 years of the African people's being lynched was violent, and the assassination of brother Malcom X was violent. The isolation and torture of corrade Solomon Brown is violent. The list could go on forever; the point is that nonviolence only works when both sides behave correctly. The White Saints clearly shown its unwillingness to behave nonviolently. Therefore we have no choice but to pursue a military option (revolutionary violence). Part Three BLACK NATION TIME Are African people in America a colonized nation? Yes. We are a captive colonized nation. In terms of the African people's relationship to America, we are a "captive" colonized merika, yes, we are a "captive" colonized nation. BEFORE WE GO any further we must ask ourselves what constitutes a nation. A nation is a historically, culturally, economically and politically stable community of people with a common identity that lives within the country itself through a community of culture. African people in America are an oppressed nation having special features different from their colonial oppressors. Afrikans in America were kidnapped from their homeland and forcibly transplanted into the United States before we constitute a captive oppressed nation. Using a dialectical and historical materialist framework to ascertain the location of our nation, one quickly recognizes where our nation is—the South. Oceans of our sweat and blood have fertilized our nation in the South. The idea of an independent African republic in the South has been consistent since the chattel slave revolt. IN 1890, the Colored Farmers Alliance in Texas during the Populist movement called for a black republic in the South and in the 1890's the Nationalist Education Association did the same. In the early 1900's one million former African slaves demanded that the U.S. pay them reparations in the form of 40 acres and a mule. In the 1920's, Marcus Garvey called for a black nation that would allow African Islam called for a black nation in the south and in the 1960's RAM, RAN, and APP called for an independent African republic in the South. And in the 1890's the struggle for self-determination continues. So you can see the idea of an Afrikan Republic in the South has been a consistent one. In hundreds of counties throughout the south, Afrikans are the majority, yet you would never be able to recognize this fact by looking at the white plains illiterate houses of progress. more just act by looking at the white people's illegal houses of representatives. HISTORICALLY, Afrikanes had never been granted the right to self determination; Afrikanes were treated as illegitimate and nounced "freedmen" by the Emancipation Proclamation and were never given a chance to decide whether or not they wanted to be U.S. citizens. Therefore, the 14th, 15th and the 18th amendments of the U.S. Constitution are illegal. They were never ratified or rejected by a mass vote. In fact, Afrikans are forced to accept all the responsibilities of citizens yet receive none of the benefits of that citizenship. So-called citizenship for Afrikans translates into citizenship slavery. Fifteen years after the civil rights movement, Afrikans are still politically, economically and socially dominated by the white racist society. We are the ones denied adequate medical care, We are the ones denied adequate high- quality education and decent housing. We are the ones that die disproportionately in the imperial wars of this society, we are the ones who are constantly underemployed, we are the ones starving—and yet we are constantly told by white politicians and their black tools to be thankful that we are "American citizens." TO THAT I RESPOND: "Lend a Hand and Free the Land" so we can become our sweet Afrikan selves. It is only by struggling against the exploitive big white flaw that we will become our sweet and beautiful Afrikan selves. DARE TO STruggle, DARE TO WIN! EDITOR'S NOTE: Sekou Must_af Ali is a junior in Radio Television and Film at KU. Latin America struggles against U.S. oppression By RONDA NEUGEBAUER Guest Columnist Freedom and democracy's biggest enemy is Soviet and Cuban-inspired community. Is this the truth? Or is this a justification for U.S. support of Latin American military regimes bent on destroying any and all opposition—whether reformist, democratic or revolutionary? SEEKING TO CONFIRM this premise in order to set the stage for dramatically increased U.S. intervention in the Central American-Caribbean region, Reagan has stated at this long-awaited speech to the Organization of American States that he will work with allies rallies, armed and supported by and through Cuba, are attempting to impose a Marxist-Lennarian dictatorship on the people of El Salvador as part of a larger imperialist plan," and, if "we do not act promptly and decisively in defense of freedom . . . we will face . . . more regimes exporting subversion." Yet, leaders of revolutionary movements in America from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s have moved in Chile and Argentina, strongly object to this simplistic characterization of their anti-militarist and anti-imperialist mobilizing campaigns of the last few decades. They stress the "home-grown causes of their people's desire to change their relations with the wealth; whose interests are backed militarily by the U.S. equipped national police, army, right-wing paramilitary units and private armies of large plantation owners. THE REVOLUTIONARY LEADER8 agree on the causes of the Latin American revolutionary wars. unwilling to endure poverty and to watch their children die of malnutrition. They want to stop the unjust and oppressive living conditions and the injustice of being denied every available legal means of agitation for change. They have organized years of peaceful protest and have been met with increasingly violent repression from their governments. They are now faced with battling for their very survival. This struggle is especially pronounced now in Central America and the Caribbean. Here guerilla warfare is attracting increasing numbers of once passive rural villagers, peasants and farm laborers, union leaders, the rank and file and intellectuals. CENTRAL AMERICA also is where Reagan hopes to justify his interpretation in order to substantially increase U.S. military and economic aid to faltering dictatorships while reiterating the perceived "causes" of unrest here as a communist menace in our own backyard. The Reagan administration, though, has been hard-pushed to settle this dispute of interpretation and statistics that show that they have not even come close to convincing the American people that there is anything to fear from the struggles of the Central American people for the right to determine their own futures and govern their own "backward." Asked whether the U.S. should send U.S. troops to El Salvador to aid the right-wing government against liberation forces, 8 percent have approved sending troops and 89 percent disapproved. A majority of 54 percent say they thought the United States should stay completely out of El Salvador, not extending any form of aid to the regiment. A total of 74 percent (as opposed to 61 percent a year ago) have are of the opinion that it was "very or fairly" likely that those troops would join a coalition like Vietnam. Finally, 49 percent of those polled has disapproved of Reagan's handling of the situation in El Salvador, and only 33 percent approved. Early this year a Gallipop opinion poll has published results of a survey about Latin America Reagan, along with his Central American military government counterparts, seems bent on a belligerent policy, taking no note of the sizeable portion of the public who have stated their opposition to those policies, or to the peoples' struggles in Central America "truly needy" of a federal government. This is an absurd structure. Because administration policy is predicated on destruction of revolutionary movements for change and social progress, military repression has become severe in the region. ONE EXAMPLE is the famous search and discovery of all people within a designated area. Anti-gambling up" operations have forced large numbers of the Central American populations to seek refuge in other areas of their countries. This increases the economic problems already facing the local populations. Displaced persons make easy targets for military operations carried out routinely in the countryside where international press and many relief agencies are prohibited. Massacres of alarming proportions are reported by the opposition forces who claim eyewitness accounts of military executions, assassinations and terror campaigns. In the last three years more than 38,000 people have been killed in El Salvador alone for refusing to believe in a type of U.S. imported faece of democracy and freedom. But the struggle for democracy has been a Central American nation. Indeed the efforts to stifle revolutionary sentiment are orchestrated from Washington and carried out by the national military structures of each Central American government (with the exception of Nicaragua, as this dependent relationship with Washington). Continuous attacks have been launched against the newly formed government in Nicaragua in an attempt to destabilize it using funds from the CIA, which admitted that $9 million has already been used for this purpose. The Gulf of Mexico naval base of duras, El Salvador and Nicaragua is militarized by U.S. Navy ships. Washington has secretly financed training of pro-Somozha counterrevolutionary terrorists in the United States and Honduras and has recently stepped up its propaganda war against the Sandinista government. It has even had a CIA press conference on Friday that Nicaraguan military buildup that Washington alleges is a threat to U.S. allies in Central America. THE U.S. GOVERNMENT has resumed aid to Guatemala, where 13,000 civilians were killed in 1981 alone in the war of extinction that the military government is waging against the people's just aspirations. The United States has sent tens of millions of dollars in military aid and the sending of counterinsurgency experts to Honduras and is considering rebuilding and establishing U.S. military bases there, turning them into targets for further attack the peoples of neighboring countries, which has been going on consistently for the last three years. THIS REPRESENTS a dangerous, imminent threat to stability in Central America, one that is increasing with the collapse of other U.S. options for curbing the spread of national liberation movements in Central America. Also growing is interest in interventions within the re-ect—throughout the world and Reagan wants us to think that his actions and policy are the road to democracy and freedom in the Americas. Social, regional and international inequalities are growing. In the last decade there has been a deepening poverty (lower wages, higher prices for food and rent, fewer job opportunities), a restricting of political freedoms and an increasing militarization of the ruling class in the U.S. supported militarized Central American countries. For decades a small wealthy elite has maintained itself in power through the aid of military and police repression. Attempts by the poor and the dispossessed to speak out for a more just society were with violence and terror against the population of civilians, exterminating labor, civic, religious and academic leaders. These brutal tactics are meant to burrow the masses of their desire for land, jobs, decent housing and stability. Why does he insist that it is the Soviets, Cubans and Nicaraguan who are stirring up the trouble of this war? ON THE CONTRARY, the governments of Central America are in a social crises of generalized and revolutionary proportions. Change already has come whether the military steps down or is forced down. The change has come in the people's consciousness. They are ready to resist the military terror campaigns they have unleashed themselves. They have a political and a military strategy embodied in organizations that represent many sectors of the population. The masses and dispassessed are represented in the military and diplomatic arms of the revolution. They are workers, peasants, students, doctors, teachers, men and women. They have a program of action which aims to empower them and oppress them for so long. They want to change their society and eliminate the suffering of their people. They want to redistribute the national wealth and to change the conditions of poverty which have dominated the life of the Central American people for the last decade. If the communist menace can be found in these programs and strategies for revolution, it is a home-grown variety that declares a people's right to make revolution whenever oppressive conditions warrant such a change. One must remember, if we accept Reagan's argument that the United States has become a neutral America are reflective of a struggle for freedom and democracy, we accept the brutal tactics of routing out sympathy for change in societies where there are virtually no political, economic, cultural or civic freedoms. These tactics include state-sponsored violence and terrorists with military links, death squads, assassinations—in other words, repression of freedom and democracy. EDITOR'S NOTE: Rhonda Neugubber is a coordinator of Latin American Solidarity. Letters Policy The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. 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