argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Gunpowder, burgers and Coca Cola lords
Laura Penagos Rodríguez 2023ko urriaren 25a

In the bar Gato de Pamplona was singing screaming, the famous song of curse of Malinche: "Eta oker horretan, pasako grandeza eman egingo dugu, eta oker ants three hundred years Geratu gara slaves."

Having a birth in South America, especially in Colombia, is nothing comfortable, unfortunately. I would say it's like walking with cooked feet and tight shoes. Especially if it is not about surnames here, p. ex. : Gabiria, Ospina, Mendieta, Etxandia, Garai, Aristizabal…

– Day of the discovery of America! “It wasn’t a discovery! - We were before! – Encounter between two cultures! “No, it was genocide! “Race Day! “No, we have nothing to celebrate! “Yes, yes, of course. Resistance Day! “The truth is, we have to dignify our peoples! “Yes, the day of indigenous resistance.

The process of colonialism began in South America on 12 October 1492, where Spaniards and Basques carried with them the gunpowder and ambition. The Indians placed feathers, arrows and gold. Conclusion, well known. The centuries have passed, and although we reinvent words to dignify and reclaim genocide, trauma is trauma and we are still kidnapped by the traces of trauma. But everything remains the same. New ways to achieve the old objectives. Domination continues, we depend on the Yankees, we depend on the Europeans, and the systematic process of maintaining military, political, economic and religious control continues. Once our languages were forgotten, they took away the lights and, blindly in solitude, we lost all the references, along with the possibilities of saving our cultural and emotional universe.

Colonialism is not a matter of time, but is based on slavery and domination, values that feed our current system.

In the 21st century, we still don't know what it is to be Latin American. The logic of the thought of our ancestors has not come to us to give a broad sense to current values. What political economic, sexual, erotic affective system do we want to develop? How do we want to organize ourselves? What relations should we have with animals and with the earth? Without the heritage of our ancestors, we cannot enter into an honest reflection to rethink and reconstruct our reality. Colonialism continues to be a cancer that has caused us metastasis.

Colonialism is not a matter of time, but is based on slavery and domination, values that feed our current system. This is how modern states developed the colonizing lords. This is how Europe developed the Renaissance in Italy and Encyclopedism in France, exploiting the dignity, gold and blood of South America.