America is being rediscovered.
No more ships. No oceans. No gold rush, no crowds disregarding indigenous rights. But there is the media. There is Twitter. And there are those who talk, argue and run with the same appetite.
There are those who make other countries states in the name of America, who enlarge and shrink the map and discuss other people's territories as a playground.
This language is familiar, because it was once like this.
That day they called it a “discovery”.
“They said ”civilization".
“A new world,” they said.
Brave sailors, new horizons, journey into the unknown...
It was told like a fairy tale.
In the past they called it “exploration”.
Today they say “democracy”, “freedom”, “stability”.
The word has changed, the story remains the same:
Soil.
Source.
Power.
***
The story of America has always been told to us as an adventure.
Brave white men, sailing into the unknown, a new world...
That was the story.
But the reality was different.
Some of the first to go were not explorers, but undesirables: debtors, convicts, evacuees from prisons. The New World was not just a place of hope; it was a place of release from the burdens of the old world. The dream of those who went North was not to live off the land; it was gold, furs, quick profit.
The natives were a hindrance.
And the barriers were removed.
In South America, another story was written. The land cultivators are gone. The church is gone. New peoples were born. There was liquidation in the north and exploitation in the south. The American north was referred to as “white” and the American south as “mulatto”. This was not an innocent demographic difference, but the historical result of two different models of domination, two different techniques of violence.
Someone will delete it.
The other suppresses.
Some shared the land.
Some washed the soil with blood.
Then history was made.
By the winners.
We were told stories of the white man's heroism.
However, Dee Brown's book “Bury My Heart in My Homeland”, while showing the colonial violence and cultural assimilation of both the past and the present with concrete examples, clearly states the following: There was no “war” in this land.
There were agreements.
Signed, broken, re-signed and broken again.
The Indians kept their word.
Withdrew from their lands.
He laid down his arms.
Then the army came.
The book does not shout. But it whispers this memorable phrase:
“The whites made many promises; they kept none of them except one. They said they would take our land and they did. They blamed savagery on the Indians; even the hunters who scalped and took trophies blamed their crimes on the Indians.”
The white man is still doing the same thing.
And the question arises:
If there is savagery, who have we been calling savages for years?
The answer is disturbing.
That is why truth is never told.
***
Jared Diamond, in his book “Rifles, Germs and Steel”, looks at it from another angle and breaks the fairy tale: The West did not win because it was more moral or innately genetically superior.
He won because he had a rifle.
He won because he had the germ.
He won because he had steel.
So the winners were not “better and superior people” but those with more lethal means.
But the white man's narrative of righteousness has never ended.
He just changed the language.
Today we are looking at Venezuela.
The same sentences again.
The indigenous people, the poor, the ordinary people of Venezuela are still alone today. Just as the Indians were once left alone. There are grand narratives again.
Again the experts speak.
Again, maps are opened on tables.
There is oil.
Source.
There is strategic interest.
And again, the people are an obstacle to these interests.
Then they called it “civilization”.
Today they say “freedom”.
At that time, the locals were backward.
Today the poor people are unconscious.
“There is a dictator.”
“There is no democracy.”
“The people must be saved.”
Familiar, isn't it?
The locals were an obstacle yesterday.
Today the poor people are the obstacle.
They live on resources.
They are mismanaged.
They make wrong choices.
This is how the white man's adventure continues.
And this adventure continues not only with the gun, but also with the pen, the screen, academia and columns.
***
The point is this:
Do we still have to believe this story?
Or are we going to accept this:
This is not an adventure.
This is a tyranny, a banditry that has been going on for centuries.
The white man's adventure continues.
The stories of the vanquished peoples remain in footnotes.
Maybe the real question is:
Do we still choose to believe in the fairy tale written by the white man?