An Idealist's Rant

Okay, so I know that my other post this week was about impunity and justice and remembering/memoralizing trauma and that I probably shouldn't write this one about the same thing - but it's on my mind, so I'm going to.

Simon Bolivar says: "The relics of Spanish domination will be with us for many years before we manage to obliterate them: The contagion of despotism pervades our atmosphere, and neither the flames of war nor the details of our wholesome laws have succeeded in purifying the air we breathe. Our hands are now free, but our hearts still suffer the pangs of servitude. Man, said Homer, when he loses his freedom, loses half his spirit." (40)

And then we have Nicholas A. Robins' article, Native Insurgencies and the Genocidal Impulse in the Americas. Robins begins his look at genocide and native uprisings in Latin America by presenting different examples of Spanish policy that all had a similar theme: the destruction of native culture. He explains that the Franciscans "fervently and consistently sought the extermination of traditional native beliefs and religious practices" (23). The natives in the pueblos that eventually revolted were forced both to convert to Catholicism and were "required to support all of the religious and temporal needs of the resident priests" (24). As Robins presents it, the revolts were a reaction to the threat posed against the indigenous peoples' right to culture and religion.

In our discussion of rights so far, the right to culture and religious practice hasn't come up very often. We've discussed the right to religious belief, but this differs from the right to religious practice in that it implies that religioun is part of the individual's private world, and denies the importance of the religious/cultural community. Not that culture hasn't come up, we've seen it in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, specifically focusing on Quebecois culture and language, but it hasn't played as significant a role as has freedom, property, or equality.

But, for the indigenous peoples involved in the Pueblos revolts, the right to culture and religious practice was arguably more important that the right to freedom. The people were enslaved or subject to debt peonage by the Spaniards, but, as Robins quotes a contemporary from the 1680s, "the 'Indians wished to rebel becasue they resented it greatly that the religious and the Spaniards should deprive them of their idols, their dances, and their supersititons'" (24).

So, what does this have to do with Simon Bolivar and my other posting about impunity and justice? Just that the "relics of Spanish domination" that Bolivar mentions is the history of abuses against indigenous rights to culture. We've seen in Latin American history that traumatic events aren't simply forgotten. They continue to effect the survivors, the population, and the whole culture. The genocidal impulse began with the attempt to exterminate indigenous culture, and continues with current attacks against indigenous culture - and the refusal to recognize and punish these attacks for what they are. Bolivar said that the relics of domination would be with them for many years until they manage to obliterate them. I wonder how these relics can be obliterated if they are not recognized and punished when they occur? The history of genocide goes back over five hundred years in Latin America. By ignoring it, minimizing it, allowing it to go unpunished in the name of "stability", how will Bolivar's dream every become a reality?

Works Cited

Bolivar, Simon. "the Angostura Address." El Liberador: Writings of Simon Bolivar. Trans. Frederick H. Fomersh. Ed. David Bushnell. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003.

Robins, Nicholas A. Native Insurgencies and the Genocidal Impusle in the Americas. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2005.

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