So yeah I haven't updated in a while. I've been busy. Its exam season, and i Just started a new job. Im taking the lazy way out...One of my exams was an essay. We were asked to use Walter Mosley's
What Next A Memoir Toward Peace to discuss the factors of conflict in society and propse solutions or measure that would prevent futher conflict or violence.
Since the events of September 11, 2001, and perhaps as early as the Iran Hostage Crisis in the 1970's and the first World Trade Center bombing and the bombing of the USS Cole in the 1990's, we as Americans have struggled not only with the grief of losing our loved ones and fellow country men but also with understanding the motivation behind such brutal acts of terror. Many try to attach their understanding as a cultural void; a clash between East and West- Christianity and Islam. While these cultural aspects merely complicate the situation they are not the root of conflict. As Walter Mosley wrote:
“I don't believe that the current conflict is a war between religions, that whole cultures who believe in a magnificent afterlife are plotting to take the US down with them in the glorious flames of holy war. I don't believe that our enemies are ignorant dupes fooled into slaughtering the innocent lambs of America....” (Mosley 26)
Religion and Culture are merely the tools through which foreign nations and interests defend their sovereignty, demand their equal place in the global economy, and ensure their rights as human beings. The American domination and oppression of foreign economics, government, and religious freedoms has lead to mass starvation and wide spread infection and poverty in most of the developing world. The contempt which leads to violent acts is born when a man's vote is canceled by a foreign government, when a woman watches her children die hungry and disease ridden and when children are forced to work 12 hour days for little more than a bowl of rice and some contaminated water. “Not only do we stand silently by while Kurds, Mayans, Sudanese, and South Africans die from warfare, slavery, disease, and neglect, but we also sit almost passively...” (Mosley 37). By ignoring the economic factors which contribute to these violent acts we allow more violence to take place.
If we wish to stop violence against our people we must not resent until we have taken all necessary steps to prevent violence against those who might attack us. First, we cannot be free while our neighbor wear chains. We cannot know happiness while others are forced to live in despair. We cannot know health if plague and famine thrive outside our door. And we cannot expect to know peace if war rides forward under our flag and with our consent.(Mosley 41) We have falsely made our War on Terror a war against regimes, dictators, and fundamentalist, when our war should be against the conditions they derive their power from. “A modern terrorist is a single minded being- a man or woman, sometimes even a child, who had made the decision to give up his life, or at least to give up the lives of others, to make a statement and to instill fear. We perceive these terrorists as being full of hatred, desperate and possibly crazed. They attack innocent citizens who, to them, represent the evils that beset another group of people somewhere. The decide to destroy one group of innocents to bring attention to those who have suffered but about whom no one seems to care...” (Mosley 59). In the Middle East we have toppled the Hussein regime, bringing freedom to the oppressed people of Iraq, however we have also injured or killed thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens, sacrificing their liberty for our gain and sowing the seeds of terrorism. In Hobbes's Leviathan it is argued that if a man is commanded to kill or wound himself; or not to resist those who assault him; or to abstain from food, or medication or any other thing that without he cannot live; he has the Liberty to disobey (Hobbes 164). We must not condemn those who rebel against or oppression yet we must seek to raise them to our level. As Americans we do not accept a foreign nations authority over us, we should not seek to control and compromise the sovereignty of any other nation. Because they were the first to attack we often spend too much time examining situation in the Middle East, and we often forget the violent atrocities which have been committed in our own hemisphere.
For hundreds of years the indigenous people of the world have been violently exploited and oppressed. No where else has this been quite as prevalent as in Latin America, where the original colonizing nations raped the land and its people of their precious metals and latter enslaved them in latifundos, as result of comparative advantage theories. After the Spanish, French, and Portuguese Crowns successfully sucked the silver and gold from the veins of South America they discovered the rich soil and favorable climate for growing crops such as sugar, coffee, and other raw materials. With this discovery large plantations were created and the slave trade began, enslaving not only Africans but the remaining indigenous population. The creation of the plantations, or latifundios as they are called in Latin America began a rigid class system and the systematic oppression of peasants and indigenous workers. Over the years as democracy grew in the western hemisphere many educated Latin American thinkers began to realize the injustices their neighbors were dealt, all tied to the lack of industrial growth in Latin America and the fluctuations in world coffee and sugar markets. These men and women began revolutionary movements in Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Cuba, planting the seeds of democracy and reform in the region. Massive land reforms were enacted stripping land from the Church, private land owners and also American and other international corporations. These reforms sought to end the starvation and stagnation of the indigenous and peasant populations of Latin America and put control of the land, government, and economics of the continent into the hands of the people who lived there. In most nations these reforms were welcomed with open arms by their people, however American and other international interests had little to gain and everything to lose from these reforms. In 1954, the United States, influenced by United Fruit, successfully overthrew the reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz, and allowed the dictator Castillo Armas to take power. The new government fiercely sought to oppress all dissent, over 200,00 Guatemalans were murder and tortured by this regime, with the consent of the United Stated government. Guatemala was not the only country to suffer from U.S. political interventions. After gaining its independence from Spain, in 1901, Cuba was subjected to the Platt Amendment which gave the U.S. Authority over the new Cuban government. The U.S. would intervene again in Cuban politics and sovereignty when trying to over throw the government of Fidel Castro, forcing him to align with the Soviet Union. On September 11, 1973 Chile saw the violent overthrow of the Allende government and the installment of the Pinochet dictatorship; another coup paid for by the American dollar. The congress was closed, and labor unions and political parties were banned. Anyone suspected of being an Allende loyalist or a “socialist” was arrested, tortured, and killed. An estimated 20,000-30,000 Chileans lost their lives as a result. In the 1980's and 1990's almost all Latin American nations fell victim to the neo-liberal economic policies of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. These policies forced the nations economies into further depression, and many have yet to recover. Most recently the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has lifted nearly all trade, labor, and environmental barriers between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. While NAFTA created thousands of new jobs in Mexico, the jobs are often criticized for paying near starvation wages and requiring workers to work in unsafe conditions fro excessive periods of time. Maquiladores, as the US owned factories are called, have also contributed to the further environmental detestation of Northern Mexico.
With such interference and intervention from our government it is impossible for us to ignore the fact that we bare some responsibility for the crisis in Latin America. Recent trends in the Politics of Latin America have indicated a desire of the people to be free of U.S. and international control and influence. Presidents such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela have been outspoken against U.S. policy goals which he believes would be harmful to the region and his nation. Chavez has formed alliance with other newly elected reformist presidents like Evo Merelos of Bolivia, and Michelle Barchette of Chile. Recently Merelos began a program in which the natural gas production of Bolivia will be nationalized, lowering prices and creating new jobs for Bolivian workers. In Venezuela Chavez has set tighter controls on international oil companies producing oil in his nation. Chavez also made an important agreement with Fidel Castro of Cuba, in which Cuba receives oil at a fair price in exchange for supplying Venezuela with highly trained medical professionals. As part of this agreement Cuba will also be training Venezuelans to become Doctors and Nurses. These are steps being taken by Latin American countries to repair the damages done to them by foreign interests. While some of these policies may negatively affect some U.S. owned corporations we cannot threaten these nations with military or economic sanctions. Further intervention of the United States would only lead to further agitation and conflict between our nations. The actions taken by these soreign governments are in reaction to policies which they have fallen victim to throughout the past five centuries As a nation we must protest every unwarranted act of war- every embargo, every refusal to help enhance the quality of life in disease-ridden, famine-plagued nations. We should not punish the nation which excises its sovereignty but punish the governments and corporations which threaten sovereignty of others (Mosley 118). “If we do not respect our sister nations, we will get they're ire in return,” (Mosley 123). We have not yet seen any violent attacks or demonstrations against us from our southern neighbors but without drastic changes in U.S. and international policy such violence may be imminent. We cannot expect governments and men to sit in idle as their families neighbors are starving, dying of curable illnesses, and being murdered.
To prevent violent acts against us and protect our people we must work as a government and as a nation to repair the situations we have created and prevent any further destabilization. We must work as a global community to follow those principles which I laid forth earlier; to ensure no man lives in bondage, no child lives in despair, no one suffers from illness or disease, and that all humans live free from violence and warfare. To achieve these goals we should require all international corporations to provide their workers with a wage that will afford them adequate nutrition, health care, and housing; we should encourage governments to provide for there people security not only from the physical violence of neighboring nations but also from economic violence; we must allow every human the same freedoms, liberty and justices in every nation.
