Why am I so political?

Why am I so political?
Why am I so political you ask?
Why do I even bother?
Where did my love for the other
arise?
In 1492 two cosmos collided and out
of the ashes, a people were born. But not without hurt and not without pain,
and still to this day we all feel the pain.
If only I could believe the stories
in books, “a happy encounter, a forecievalbe truth, the meeting of people, we
are the living proof.” They tried to convince me it was for the best, the
collateral damage they said was needed at best.
My indigenous ancestors were colonized in
mind, body and soul. They were robbed of their identity as kings, queens, astronomers,
healers, and now had no control.
They were told that their knowledge
was no longer needed nor wanted and that the pope had to confirm that they had
a soul.
They were taught that the thousands
of years of knowledge that they held in their minds and in their hearts were
invalid in this new world order. That knowledge had already been discovered by
someone in Europe, and to prove it their temples were burned or replaced with a
church.
They were told that if they prayed to
a cross they would live forever, and if they chose not to, they would burn at
the stake.
Some chose to resist and some chose
to submit and in the end we are still fighting this battle within.
The ones who submitted took the cross
in the daytime, yet prayed to their Gods that the sunlight would not come.
They dreaded the days, working and
toiling in the sun. Looking for riches for the Spaniards and seeing their
children run. Running away, being massacred by the millions. Homicide and
genocide is what it was, yet no one mentions those words and calls it the black
legend. I can assure you it was no legend, it was not a tale. The hurt is still
seen in the eyes of the people. Exploited to no end and still barely surviving
for the colonizers to say, “It was for your own good, we saved you you know, before
us you were savages and you knew no true God.”
Yet the colonizers were ignorant to
the many facts prior to their arrival. They didn’t care nor want to know, they
were in denial.
The people had schools, universities,
were proficient astronomers, thus the pyramids were constructed to exact
measurements of the cosmos. They had already been using the zero, they had
majestic cities, they knew of plants that healed and birds that sang. They knew
of the power of stories, and the balance between humans and nature.
They were told that their color was
proof of their sin, but if they repented, in heaven they would live. There were
some like Hautey who while being burned at the stake, he took a deep breath and
confidently he said, If heaven is the place where the Spaniards will live, I
will not go to heaven, his will did not give. So his memory lives on. He might
be a martyr, as were thousands of others, who continue to be victims of this
new world order.
Women were taught how to have sex and
where to have it. They were taught to be ashamed of their bodies and that if
they were raped by the white man it must have been their fault. So they stayed
silent, passive, they held in the hurt and the pain. But it had to be
transferred someplace, and the place was the body and mind of their daughters. The
daughters that are my grandmothers, aunts and mothers.
They were robbed on their land, of
their gods, of their mind. They were kept in captivity and they now belonged to
the parcel of land. The land that their ancestors had kept for so long. The
Pacha Mama that was now being raped and wronged.
And so to this day you may ask, why
the bother? It was so long ago, why continue the pain?
My answer is simple it is not over.
The hurt continues and the colonization is still felt.
My generation has the memory and the
hurt of the ages. We know of the past and we toil in the present.
My other ancestors were taken as
slaves, dragged along the ocean and made to submit to work, sex, orders and the
white man. They were brought to this new land, made to work for nothing. Told
again that their color was why God had intended them to suffer.
And my other ancestors came from all
over. And I am not ashamed of all that I am. Like Octavio Paz put it, we are
the cosmic race, and we will move forward.
It would be so easy to detach myself from who
I am and where I came from and be, well, not so political, but that would be
cultural and ethical suicide. That would mean forgetting all the pain that runs
through my veins. That would mean accepting the claims the white man has made.
Injusticias
Atrocidades
And it is still not the end.