El derecho de rebelión es sagrado porque su ejercicio es indispensable para romper los obstáculos que se oponen al derecho de vivir. Rebeldía, grita la mariposa al romper el capullo que la aprisiona; rebeldía, grita la yema al desgarrar la recia corteza que le cierra el paso; rebeldía, grita el grano en el surco al agrietar la tierra para recibir los rayos del sol; rebeldía, grita el tierno ser humano al desgarrar las entrañas maternas; rebeldía, grita el pueblo cuando se pone de pie para aplastar a tiranos y explotadores. La rebeldía es la vida; la sumisión es la muerte. ---Ricardo Flores Magón
November begun with a white settler dressed as Pocahontas, white guilt and apologists’ justifying the commodification of brown bodies. Symbolic metaphor of white supremacist ideologies categorizing what is rapeable for consumption. This is nothing new; I've seen friends pull headdresses out of hipsters’ heads in alleys. In this world of illusions, Indigenous peoples become souvenirs, objects and it all leads back to sexual violence as a tool of conquering the “other.” Turn on a box, just another show of “Indians” and “Cowboys”, feathers, arrows, and cultures to exploit, appropriate, and sell in stores…indoctrination now comes in all forms. Like a virus, blinded by greed and consumerism, Amerikkka is a colonial white supremacist empire, a war fueled robotized society. To question everything is to liberate yourself. La rebeldia, como la arte en las calles, unfoldinging in front of our eyes.
Mad worlds I awaken in where genocide is part of life and at the end of the feast, games on TV entertain us. No mention of the legacies of colonial exploitation and the historical trauma in reservations…still we live in the ongoing occupation. To survive we learned to fight and free our minds. “America” Nativa to Palestine: stolen land, broken promises given in blankets and for that we give “thanks” then eat pie and ignore the ongoing systematic attacks on black and brown bodies. Capitalism is the virus that eats your consciousness. On this day given to celebrate genocide and historical trauma; I am reminded of white settler colonialism that raped the land of my foremothers. We survived beyond the legends, rebellions, and displacement…
Like a twisted fairy tale story, Americans celebrate the pilgrims’ arrival, where ancestors fed them only to be betrayed and captured. Greed, consumerism, and exploitation become celebration. Now pilgrims create laws, where they call us “illegal” and/or “terrorists” for defending the land of our ancestors. Concentration camps fill to profit from our bodies…our wealth has no price, the earth our bodies that feeds, provides, and gives life...people died for the survival of each generation.
In institutions of brainwashing, blinded by lies fed to us in classrooms, told to feel nothing, silence our thoughts with medications, policed to submission, we eat without knowing where our food comes from and/or the migrant that picked, packed, sustains our overconsumption. On Black Friday, with a piece of plastic, a credit card, we justify purchasing, like robots, the wars against Indigenous peoples and workers resisting colonialism, imperialism and genocide. On a table, colonizers pray to a white man; silently ignore the wars in our neighborhoods and the concentration camps. While the cops patrol their neighborhoods to protect them from us. We are still seen as the savages. Where is our celebration in this occupation?
Reflecting on feelings of displacement, I find myself in a place known for political repression against Anarchists and radicals where Ricardo Flores Magón, Mexican Anarchist of Zapotec descent, was incarcerated in early November 1919 at the McNeil Island Penitentiary near Seattle, Washington before transferred to Leavenworth, Kansas. Regeneración was published during the winter of 1918 and on March 21 cops came and arrested & charged Flores Magón with sending “politically dangerous” and “indecent” materials through the mail. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison. Resembling today’s Patriot Act, the Espionage and Trading-with-the-Enemy Acts of 1917 measures allowed federal authorities to hunt “suspicious” “citizens” and “residents.” on November 21, 1922, Magón was killed for speaking out against the United States and Mexican governments, leaving behind a legacy of indigenous autonomy in the popular narrative of Mexico. Autonomia is not just a theory, but an act of resistance and defiance to political structures and systems. Autonomia es la tierra…They fear what they can’t control: Free minds. Now they hunt us...truth seekers. Divide and conquer, the old tactic to turn friends into foes, create confusion and mistrust amongst comrades. Everyone is talking about witch-hunts, grand juries and investigations…but all I can think about is the millions of people resisting occupation and the mourning of a mother losing her baby, bombs falling on Palestine, and rebellions manifesting…
“South of the border” where occupation moves in the form of foreign aid, military troops, manipulations, and lies affect those of us living en el norte. No different than 102 years ago when our great grandparents rose up in arms. November 20th marked the 102rd Anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, when the Porfirist regime supported by the US government falls and uprisings surge across Mexico. Zapata and Villa betrayed and killed: the revolution was co-opted and the same political structure remained where today the PRI/PAN dictatorship and narcogobierno repress, kill the people and systematically control the media. $1.6 billion in US tax dollars fund genocides, the Mérida Initiative and war crimes.
Solidarity crosses borders. Capitalism on the brink of collapsing… Conflict, necessary for change, whether manifested physically, emotionally, spiritually, or a clash of all is growth. People are rising…energía desde las montanas de Chiapas, El Estado de México, Guerrero, Atenco, Cheran, Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, Vancouver… este continente resiste contra el capitalismo y gobiernos imperialistas corruptos. Nos dicen ilegales, mientras nos asesinan por cruzar fronteras construidas por neocolonialistas. Contaminan el agua, tierra, matan el maíz. Sentimos el sufrimiento. Lamentos de ninxs con hambre, muxeres desparecidas en Juarez, cuerpos encontrados debajo de trenes, tierrra ocupado por capitalistas: ellos son los ilegales. Nosotros somos pueblos originales.Consciencia: Sin la tierra no hay libertad. Quieren oprimirnos con guerras para matar la tierra.
la rebeldía es la vida y la autonomía es más que una palabra. Es vivir entre mundos sin fronteras, violencia, y autoridad. La guerra contra las drogas es una guerra contra los pueblos indígenas en un continente ardiente. Desde el norte hacia el sur, estamos en una batalla para la autodeterminación, autonomía, tierra, y libertad. Han derramada mucha sangre. Nostrxs somos los subrevivimentes, los hijxs de revolucionarios que lucharon por defender lo que le pertenece a todxs. Somos los resos de nuestros ancestros que viene con las olas del viento. Escuchamos la llamada de rebeldía contra el imperio…more than 520 years of occupation and here I am...watching the sky cry.
There is warmness, a feeling of creative rebellion in the air. The mixes of colors, renegades, poets, artists, writers and intellectuals know: a renaissance is arriving…Slowly, we find each other and share, palabras de nuestros ancestros. With my privilege stamped all over my passport, I've been meditating, gathering thoughts, and creatively manifesting internal rebellion… See in the belly of the beast, nothing is guaranteed. This world of poverty pimps and sellouts, mentally enslaved into a system to gain political power. The irony is lxs vendidxs will glorify revolutions outside of the war-machine but will silence youth from challenging authority. Colonized brown folks who justify the genocide and violence in our neighborhoods but will never understand liberation in walls...urban canvasses, the word of the people visually unpredictable.
In the last 90 years since his death, Magón’s ideas flourished where now intellectuals and radicals gather, drink coffee, talk about the revolutions unfolding and the impact of Zapatismo locally and globally. Across a Mexian Coffee Shop, near a Guerilla garden is a taco truck with a graffiti piece created by youth with Zapata and a Zapatista…each community’s political legacy and potential slowly unfolds con arte. Autonomous with so many questions on my mind:What is real and what is thought? What is imagination and unconditional love? So, here I am questioning. Why?
The leaves have fallen, and in a few days I’ll be flying…enter into a warzone. More than 200,000 deaths, disappearances since Felipe Calderon and still the machines, guns, and violence will not silence the resistance... generations of rebellions, bodies and temples are buried, underneath the soil once walked by warriors and descendant of healers, learning from plants and medicines, I will return to my ancestral birthplace…where nothing is predictable and the past, present, and whats to come constantly clash. where capitalism lacks creativity and profound love we might not see in this lifetime... Energy cannot be destroyed or contained, it manifests within each instance. Chaos is life. To fear life is to fear who you are: your mind and autonomy in a place colonized.
Farewell Occupied Coast Salish territory,
A Renegade Poet
