Old post that I forgot to post...

My morning routine of the last two days has been to wake up at 8 am, shower, get dressed, walk to the local vegan bakery/cafe pick up a mock-egg salad sandwich (made with tofu) a large coffee and get a taxi to work. I would normally ride my bike but the weather here has hit a record low... well, not really, it's just that it's really f*cking cold outside and no matter how many layers of clothing, scarf and hat I wear the cold air hits my face like giant block of ice. I tried it the other day, when it was 12 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside, that's about 20 degrees below zero in Celsius and by the time I got to work I couldn't feel my legs so I was walking pretty funny.

Anyways... this morning a cab actually stopped for me, they usually don't stop when I try to flag them down on 14th ST, especially if they sense that I'm headed towards the northeastern parts of the city.

The driver was a 60-something year old “African American” man (I do have issues with that description since we don't call white people who have been living here for over 3 or 4-generations Irish American or German American, British American, so on), very friendly and wearing an outfit not unlike that worn by my grandfather when he was still alive: Button up v-neck sweater, flannel shirt, driving ivy hat (or paper-boy hat as some like to call them).

As I settled in the back-seat and took sips of my coffee, 89.3 fm. - D.C.'s Pacifica station, was playing over the radio. The host was talking about the history of racism in the U.S., all the way back to colonial times. He was recalling some really important historical information on the early American colonies and at the same time commenting on the contradictions that lie within the glorification of the so-called "founding fathers" and the U.S. Constitution which Americans are usually submitted to throughout their lives. What I liked best about the show was how the host described the early colonialists who were mostly outcasts (Protestants, criminals, debtors, etcetera), as people who went from being the oppressed to the oppressors.

Although that descriptions is pretty obvious to anyone with a little knowledge of history and common sense, that’s not what most people consider or see as the “official story”. The colonial past is usually romanticized and viewed simply as the beginnings of a “great nation” where all kinds of people from all over the world came to this land and found freedom and prosperity. The truth is, most of those crackers that landed on Plymouth Rock were of the same ilk as the criminals who colonized Australia and the immigrants who came later who were not English were treated a lot like the African slaves that followed shortly after. Therefore, this whole idea of a “white race” didn’t really come to be a unifying factor until much later.

The English considered themselves superior to all other Europeans, both as a culture and as a “race”, no matter if the other Europeans were of the same anglo-saxon descent. We can trace that same behavior back to Rome, where the gauls, celts and germans were seen as inferior civilizations. Racism as we know it today, based on skin tone, language and religion; may have its roots in the Age of Exploration (15th-18th centuries) when Europeans, following the model created by the now defunct roman empire, looked to expand their territories and find new sources of wealth in far off lands.

Race, as many other terms we commonly use in our language is a social construct. It is applied almost exclusively to the human species (well, my understanding is that we separate animals of the same species by breed, not by race). Darwin once called the concept of race "an arbitrary number of categories used to divide up the human species", as some "experts" (scientists) will claim that there are two races, some three, some four, and so on. The problem is that there are always degrees or gradations between the “arbitrary number of categories” used and there are always “exceptions to the rule”.

I have to agree with that definition, specially coming from a family of mixed race. I look white (or European) and have green eyes, light brown hair and light skin. My maternal grandmother is Spanish/Serb and my grandfather was Greek. As for my father’s side, things get a little bit trickier; although he resembles your typical light skinned Brazilian, his mother was an African woman with bright green eyes. I’ve got the thick lips and wide nose to prove it. In spite of all this mix and match, which I am very proud of, I have always benefited from my appearance. I have lived off the privilege of looking white and that is something that deep down can sometimes make you fell a bit of guilt and drives you to constantly re-assert yourself with people and remind them who you are and what you consider yourself to be.

Society is not color blind and racism in the U.S. is rampant, it’s institutional. It’s in the educational system, in government, in the work place, on TV, in the media, in the prison industrial complex, in popular culture, in your house, in my house. But oppression can take many shapes, and it has, maybe society has gradually become less explicit when it comes to discriminating against Blacks, Jews, Latino, Asians, Arabs, women, gay/lesbian/trans, the differently abled, overweight, you name it; but legislation and moral codes do not have a considerable effect on hundreds of years of cultural racism. We are still pretty fucked up, specially the privileged.

Shit... I lost my train of thought.

The government says:

- There is no such thing as global warming, winter feels like spring because of "el nino".

- Iraq needs more U.S. troops.

- Iran is harboring terrorists and plans on attacking the U.S..

- Venezuela is harboring terrorists and poses a serious threat to the U.S..

- North Korea has nukelear (it's actually spelled "nuclear" Mr. President) weapons.

- Gay people should not and cannot get married/adopt children.

- Torturing people is ok.

- Arresting people and locking them up without trial is ok.

- Abortion is wrong.

- That god told the president that he should be president.

- Universal health care and social security are bad for the economy.

- Immigrants are a threat to national security and the economy.

Seven years in office, and they haven't been right on a single issue.

As I sit here near my living room window facing Park Rd, browsing through ebay for things I want but don't need, three high school-age salvadoran kids chase a white sports car on foot. Swear words in spanglish come and go and then one of them stops, takes out a gun, pulls the trigger and: 1 click, 2 click, 3 click, 4 click and then Bang!. A small spark lights the end of the barrel. Then they start running again.

Oh kids these days...  It's all about acting tough and proving yourself. So someone mocks you from their car, big fucking deal. Keep walking, life goes on.

Seconds after they fire a gun of course they start running, I can't see if they hit anything or anyone. I'm not worried. if they had, there would be police cars and ambulances outside my building by now. This is not uncommon.

Since I moved to this street I've seen two shootings and a beating (3 against 1). No casualties. I'm indifferent to it all. These kids watch way too many gangsta rap videos and play way too many videogames. It's all one big fucking joke. They're just playing out the roles that are expected of them and by doing so they are assisting gentrification, they are helping promote racism and furthering discrimination. That's what white america expects us inmigrants to be: criminals, gangbangers, cholos, vatos locos, ms-13 and all that bullshit fabricated for prime-time TV.I'm oblivious to all this shit cause I can't find any justification for it.

This violence is not making their lives any better, and it sure ain't making things easier. That's what it all comes down to isn't it? Whatever decisions you make in your life should alwyas be preceded by these questions: "is this going to make me happy"? is it going to make my life easier?".

And that's what I have to say about that.

Fuck tough-guy shit and fuck the president, again.

This morning's New York Times tells me that Saddam Hussein was hanged in Baghdad. I have no love or sympathy for the man whatsoever, but the news made me a bit queazy. Death on the front page.

I think he deserved a far more severe punishment, like keeping him locked up and isolated for the rest of his life. Deprive him of the same basic human rights from which he deprived his population. I am not an advocate for the death penalty,. I'm sure my opinion would shift if somebody murdered a loved on, but I think most of my loved ones do not believe in the death penalty either so in their honor I could never ask for that kind of punishment.

I think that what bothers me the most is that while Saddam Hussein got death, every other dictator responsible for human rights abuses and thousands of deaths did not and has not received the same punishment. In fact, those that have been favored by the U.S. government have eluded all punishment whatsoever. I think they all deserve the same punishment, if you commit crimes against humanity, no matter what your political affiliation, you should be held accountable.

Makes me think, if the U.S. were invaded and occupied by a foreign nation who would have to face trial? Rumsfeld? Kissinger? Would all the buildings named after Ronald Reagan have their names changed? Would we tear down all the monuments of slave-owners?

Just like beauty, morality seems to also be "in the eye of the beholder".

I got the call while preparing my Sunday breakfast: scrambled eggs, soy-sausage, toast and black coffee. The news did not come as a shock, his health had been deteriorating for years and Chileans throughout the world knew it could happen at any time. In fact, some of us wanted it to happen.

When my co-worker Hendrik called from the office, my first thought was “What the hell is he doing at the office on a Sunday?”, and then his first words were, “Guess who just died?”

I knew who died before he even finished the sentence. It was Sunday December 10, 2006, International day for human rights.

(In an effort to not give him any more attention than I think he deserves, I refuse to say or write his name publicly from now on, so throughout this posting I will refer to him as “HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED” – not to be confused with the guy from the Dwarves)

I have never found joy in someone else’s pain; in fact hatred and resentment are things I try no to dabble in, but I caught myself inadvertently smiling at the idea of his supporters freaking out and behaving like the hysterical troglodytes that they are once they heard of his death.

HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED supporters are some of the most violent and irrational people I have ever encountered. Not unlike religious fanatics or fascist authoritarians, they do not accept nor tolerate dissent or the questioning of their leaders and their legacies. Any kind of criticism or doubt of their validity is immediately retaliated with accusations of “unpatriotic”, “communist”, “fag”, and/or any other kind of adjective which they associate with “bad”. Sometimes they will even resort to physical violence, no questions asked.

This all takes me back to when HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED was arrested in London. The morning after hearing the news (and some of us were a bit hung-over from celebrating the night before) a bunch of friends (8-12 young co-ed punks) and I decided to meet and organize a counter protest to the rally that his supporters would be holding outside the Spanish Embassy in Las Condes (the extradition order for which he was being held in London had come from the Spanish courts). We assumed, and made asses of ourselves actually, that there would be other counter protestors. I mean, why wouldn’t there be? We were thankful for the fact that Spain had the guts to demand his extradition and hold him accountable for crimes against humanity, something that courts in Chile had never done (and never did), and we thought others would be to.

We met at my friend Miguel’s house where we painted a giant banner made out of brown wrapping paper with the words “Thank You Judge Garzon”. Our plan was to walk to the protest site, observe his supporters and then wait for the right time to reveal the banner.

At around 3 pm we began walking up Av. Apoquindo, supporters carrying Chilean flags and portraits of their hero were also making their pilgrimage up the hill. The avenue and surrounding streets had been sealed off for the protest, businesses -fearing damage to their establishments, had also closed down and sealed their doors and windows. I had never seen so many right wing nuts together in one place, except in movies, and it was quite a sight. The most surprising, well not really, were the Nazi and Iron Cross flags that some supporters carried. At one point, a white pickup truck filled with pre-pubescent kids wearing arm bands with the “Patria y Libertad” (a fascist paramilitary group from the 1970’s) logo rode past us. I wondered if those poor kids even knew what they were getting into, if maybe they would have preferred to spend that day at home playing video games or watching cartoons or just plain hanging out instead of getting paraded around by their parents as the new right wing vanguard. I wondered what they would do when they hit puberty and considered everything about their parents to be lame, how would they rebel? I hoped they would grow up to be god-bashing anarchists or flaming queens with artistic inclinations, or whatever would annoy their parents the most.

As we walked towards the embassy, we began to see the crowd that had gathered outside. It was a really large crowd, probably over 3,000 people, mostly middle-aged women and families. The fact that his most fervent supporters have always been middle aged women just boggles me. He was not a good public speaker; in fact, his use of the Spanish language was quite brutish. He was not an attractive man, and I know an attractive older man when I see one. And this guy was no Julio Iglesias. Anyways... the middle-aged hags and families were pelting eggs and throwing paint at the gates of the embassy while chanting “Viva Chile, Viva (insert HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED here)” and other moronic diatribes in defense of someone who oversaw the deaths and torture of thousands of Chileans while robbing the country blind to fill up his secret accounts with Riggs Bank.

As we watched the supporters do their thing we began to realize that we were the only counter-protestors there and it was unlikely that anyone else would show up. So we made the decision right then and there to get it over with before the mob got any bigger.

We moved back a bit, until we were about 20 feet away from the line of HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED supporters, a few policemen that were doing their usual crowd control so us backing up and gave is a suspicious look. They knew we were up to something. My friend Miguel who was carrying the banner began to unroll it; six of us took hold of a part of the banner, one on each end and four holding the middle. I was the second to last from the right. It took the HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED supporters a while to become aware of our presence since we were basically behind them and facing the same direction as them, towards the Spanish Embassy.

The second one of them saw us and began shrieking in our direction (kind of like being identified as a human in Invasion of the Body Snatchers) the domino principal came into effect and in a few seconds a large portion of the mob was facing us and screaming all kinds of insults, soon enough, rocks began flying. The cops, surprisingly, began forming a column in front of us and separating us from the angry mob, one of them came up to us and asked that we leave because they could only offer a limited amount of security since they would be clearly outnumbered. “That was nice of him” I thought to myself. In Chile, to have a cop treat you with civility if you are a HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED opponent at a pro-HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED rally was pretty unusual. I mean, you used to “magically disappear” for pulling these kinds of stunts.

The situation began to escalate when rocks turned into people rushing towards us with fists in the air and sticks in their hands, it was time to go.

In spite of the threat we did not roll the banner back up, we continued to walk backwards, just at a faster pace. Once the mob saw that we were retreating they went back to their business and we made our way down the hill. We kept the banner spread out and facing forward as we walked down the street so that anyone coming up the hill towards the rally would see it. We got a few insults, middle fingers, just the usual crap. Once we were back on the intersection of Av. Tobalaba and Av. Apoquindo, where there was normal traffic, we got honks of approval from passing cars. That was a good reflection of Santiago, things and people are considerably different depending on what neighborhood you happen to be in.

It was a good time. Anything that had to do with making some form of statement against HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED to me was not only productive from a merely moral and political standpoint; it was also lots of fun, especially if the actions were creative and spontaneous.

HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED, I’m glad you’re gone, we don’t need you around, and we never did.

This blog was inactive for quite some time. I went through the trouble of retrieving my password and re-designing it. I don't know how often I will be updating it but I do realize that having a journal of sorts helps me keep myself and my ideas organized.

So... I'll be back shortly.