-Which are the 9 colonial disgraces - colonising or recolonising- that are being continually defeated by Chavez, minute after minute, and constitute part of the magic or the secret of his empathy with the people, in its true sense?
-The first three are crucial. The rest are but ramifications of these:
1.- FIRST COLONIAL DISGRACE: The disgrace of being poor, or the disgrace of class.
Chavez has always prided himself in having once been "the hawker of Sabaneta". A boy who sold home made sweets around the streets of his native town, to help support his family's meagre income.
2.- SECOND COLONIAL DISGRACE: Our racial disgrace, the need to overcome our self-racism.
Chavez has always taken pride in "The Amerindian that I am, the black man, or the 'zambo', so what?"...
3.- THIRD COLONIAL DISGRACE: The ethnic disgrace, the contempt for our own culture, even of our own landscape and people.
Chávez has always been proud of his Llanos [Venezuelan inland plains], of his people and of our music; even of his most marginalised and persecuted people, such as the Cuiva of the Capanaparo river: “I would like to spend my last days by those small streams and landscapes with their most excluded of peoples: the Cuiva and the Yaruro.”
Already in his own time, José Martí denounced those who felt shame of having an Amerindian mother; the first of our mothers in the Americas, also known as Abya Yala.
The native peoples call upon the vindication of Mother Earth from our primordial cultures. Feeling shame for the land where you are born is perhaps the worst disloyalty you can have towards yourself and with our peoples.
4.- FOURTH COLONIAL DISGRACE: The disgrace of religion, creed or philosophy.
Chavez always goes around wearing his cross. He had his crucifix in his hand when he returned from his momentary uprooting, following his rescue from the ghost of death by his people and the armed forces. From the standpoint of his Catholicism, taken up by the sphere of Liberation Theology, he finds agreement with Critical Marxism, Protestants, popular religions, the beliefs of our native peoples and afro-americans, agnostics and atheists, in the various walks of social and political life.
Curiously, an intercultural society seeks above all -among other things- a relationship of peaceful coexistence and equity between persons and peoples of different religions, philosophies or beliefs, where believers, agnostics and atheists can all live happily together.
5.- FIFTH COLONIAL DISGRACE: The disgrace of defeat.
In the wake of every defeat, every adversity, Chavez assumes a “¡Por ahora!” [For the time being] (Feb. 4th 1992).
He thus converts a visible but transitory military defeat, for instance, into a political triumph, a historically far-reaching diplomatic victory. It’s like the condor thriving in the storm and rising over the shoulders of the very social and political hurricane of our times. Of the revolutionary hurricane.
In terms of his continuous triumphs, on the other side of the coin, he does not take advantage of these to persecute, kill or repress his enemies in their defeat. Even though his style and speech, his wounding word, can at times confuse some and conceal his great soul, as a Gandhi to ‘Abya Yala’ [original pre-colonial Amerindian name of our American continent].
He returns to power on April 13th (2002) in the arms of the people and loyal armed forces, crucifix in hand. He returned with the upfront offer of pardon and dialogue, only to be promptly misrepresented by his opponents, coup after coup, and impunity after impunity. But the dialogue, rather than pointlessly engaging the unpatriotic elite, takes place below, with peoples and armed forces as units that guarantee peace with justice, and the political stability required to spearhead structural transformations and progressive changes in mentality. However, the unity of the people and the armed forces has operated like a kind of ‘collective Gandhi’, as a factor of national cohesion, and as a dissuasive element in a “revolution that is peaceful, but not unarmed”, in Chavez’ own words.
6.- SIXTH COLONIAL DISGRACE: The shame or fear of taking on illness and death.
He does not cover up his illness, presenting it to his people with purpose and taking it on with a sense of dignity. “I have a cancer. They’ve extracted a tumour from me, but there’s no metastasis, as our enemies have suggested”. He confronts a second operation with prayer, resolve and firmness; and with the adequate treatment from our sister, Cuba, accompanied by the song of life; as well as understanding that a revolutionary has the right of preserving life, in order to fully carry out his or her historical mission. “¡Viviremos y venceremos!” [We will live and we will win!].
In response to the other face of illness, which is death, comandante Chavez has given sufficient proof of having challenged it with courage on many occasions. Even on the 11th of April, 2002, when he was kidnapped and held hostage by the fascist powers that placed him on the very edge of death, having been unable to obtain –either through force or seduction– the signature of his resignation as president.
7.- SEVENTH COLONIAL DISGRACE: The shame or fear of “assuming a sense of ridicule”.
Chavez has gone beyond the frontiers of the fear of ridicule. He breaks with protocols here and there. He talks, he sings, he dances, he shouts and plays around his own discourse. He makes fun of his own English pronunciation, in order to make clear that Americans and Brits don’t pronounce Spanish too well either when they come here. Nor do the French or the Germans make such a good show of Spanish pronunciation.
When the bourgeois guys make up some anti-Chavez joke, he picks it up like a baseball in the glove, he tells it himself, he disarms it and throws it back at them, deflated, like an unexpected home run. Not without first unmasking its racist and classist, as well as Eurocentric, and –last but not least- patriarchal content.
8.- EIGHTH COLONIAL DISCRACE: The shame of being Venezuelan, not just in the political sphere, but even in things such as sport. Everything that came from outside was always better. This is a problem that has not been altogether resolved, because it has roots that date back almost half a millennium. But there is no doubt that there is a new pride in being Venezuelan.
Recovering our pride in being Venezuelans implies resolving these nine variations of our colonial disgrace, beginning with the pride of being Amerindian; of the legacy of our original peoples, and our indigenous descent.
9.- NINTH COLONIAL DISGRACE: The shame of being “Sudaca” [pejorative term for South Americans used by Europeans].
It’s a feeling of induced shame, which dates back to the earliest days of the colonial conquest. Already in his time, Francisco Miranda spoke of the mortal sin of being born in the Americas. Bolivar spoke of that “denatured stepmother” in reference to Spain, and of our people as its ill-treated and oppressed “stepson”. However, our academic institutions used to impose on us the narrative of Spain as our supposed “mother country”.
In response to our overcoming of this shame of being “Sudaca”, the current King of Spain shouts to Chavez in a Summit in Chile: “Why don’t you shut up?” Chavez’ Bolivarian reply to that order of “Shut up, you Amerindian!” is simply: Our North is the South. The South looks to the South: Latin America and Africa, as well as the Middle East.
OVERCOMING THE SHAME OF BEING COLONISED CALLS FOR A POLICY THAT STEMS FROM UNITY IN DIVERSITY
The surpassing of the shame of being colonised must open our eyes to feeling and thinking more about our diversities, in order to achieve inclusiveness; starting from the unity and diversity of our peoples, working teams, political factors and social movements; where the PSUV [United Socialist Party of Venezuela] and other parties of the Bolivarian alliance are present, but not just the party, as Chavez himself has emphasised on various occasions. There isn’t just one historical subject or actor on the scene. There is a host of men and women who have been rendered invisible over generations. It’s not just the ‘proletariat’. There is a written history, which has been imposed on us, and an oral one, yet unwritten, still in the murmur of our peoples –although it has already begun to be heard and written with the direct participation of its own actors, who had previously been erased and excluded. There are indigenous communities, sections of African descent, women’s movements, coupled with an as yet subtle sense of being heirs to a rich Amerindian legacy; embodying a dialectical tension between our ancestry and our contemporary life, as different faces of the same process, and of its historical present; the need for liberation theologies as a challenge to a pseudo-evangelizing crusade at a global scale, fostered and financed by the great centres of World power; environmental movements that are emerging in response to the planet’s imbalances and developmentalism; peasants of Amerindian and African descent, and in some places, of European ancestry in more visible rural and urban pockets, in the context of our present sense of being Venezuelans and of our multiple and mixed heritage. And, finally, the need to open our eyes, in order to understand that, if the processes of integration in our America or ‘Abya Yala’ are to have the Good Life as their ultimate purpose, we have to find the keys to progressively uproot unsound Developmentalist policies, from the heart of revolution and of social change, as part of the ultimate surpassing of all forms of internal Colonialism.
Saúl Rivas Rivas
Great.I wish Chavez Victory!
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