Today's Topics:
1. Collectif Alternative Libertaire - By the UCL Brussels
Social Ecology Front - For a decolonial ecology (fr, it,
pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. [Mexico] Oaxaca joins acts of revolt against the police By
ANA (pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. [Greece] Anarchists protest against project to regulate
demonstrations (pt) By ANA [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #307 - Dossier
spécial: Editorial, Health, pharma: socializing, opening a
breach (fr, it, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. APO, restive horse - Counter intelligence to comrades
internationally for resistance in Slovenia (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. Canada, Collectif Emma Goldman - Epidemics, conquest and
genocide in the Americas (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
7. Britain, London Anarchist Communists: Mutual Aid in North
West Lon - Support Granville Community Kitchen!don
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
The environmental exploitation of the capitalist system has been linked automatically with the various mechanisms of colonialism throughout
history. Both feed themselves constantly. From the expansionist era to the present day, the axes of big capital imposed on our societies
what Malcolm Ferdinand conceives of as colonial inhabiting[1]*: a destructive way of inhabiting the earth. The various policies carried out
by the state institutions for the "protection" of ecosystems are only covers under which the trends of monoculture, extractivism, the
privatization of spaces and a recolonization of the territory hide.
Let us not have a partial vision of the ecological emergency, which does not recognize the numerous neocolonialist economic measures on the
peoples of the global South. Extractivism is exacerbated in post-colonial Asia, Latin America, and Africa, due to the import monopoly on the
North-South axes. This condemns the economies of our societies to depend on their raw materials, and at the same time allows major economies
to reproduce their plunder of labor and natural resources. It goes without saying the ecological damage that these very often mining
practices represent, especially due to the development of the transport networks that they require (motorways built in the Amazon, water
control for maritime trade in Africa[2]). Added to this is monoculture and intensive farming in the former colonies, largely reserved for
export for the benefit of European nutrition, including "healthy" and "balanced" consumption promoted among the wealthy classes. These two
phenomena increase prices in the domestic markets of producing countries, and instrumentalize the agricultural practices and knowledge of
peasants, thus fitting us into the capitalist logic of precarious employment. The difference between the quantity of food production and
consumption in the former colonies cannot be explained without accounting for these multiple commercial injustices. In addition, our regions
often suffer from the privatization of public services, as well as unfair competition from multinationals against local producers.
It is environmental colonialism. All the ecological issues that we face have been picked up by the dominant states and companies, and fully
inscribed in the colonization hierarchies present all over the globe. It is in this dynamic that the questions of fossil fuels, for example,
arise under the Western prism, which makes visible the concerns (certainly important) of air pollution of their own spaces, but neglects the
consequences[3]within the territories where oil exploitation itself takes place (Syria, Iraq, Venezuela, Brazil, Nigeria and Angola, to name
a few). Moreover, the energy transition envisaged by imperialist societies often means installing massive production infrastructures for
export in the countries of the South. Lithium factories in Chile and Bolivia, solar panel factories in Uganda, are all current examples. It
is on these so-called ecological productions that large companies in the North are concentrating monstrous investments, thus paving the way
for lobbyism, the monopoly on the management of spaces and structures, and international speculative politics, major tools of
neocolonialism. In parallel, a series of destructive practices exerted by the major poles are added: markets for pollution rights[4],
dumping of waste from industrialized countries into the oceans, deforestation, biopiracy[5], ... We also want to mention the monopoly of
telecommunication techniques, the mineral extraction it requires (think in particular of 5G and the extraction of Cobalt in Congo that it
"searches"), and cyber-vigilance surely disproportionate to racialized people it will accelerate. This diversity of consequences on the
habitat of our countries in the South immediately causes an ecological migration crisis, which will undoubtedly worsen in the years to come.
If the North remains in its current xenophobic policy, the arrival of ecological migrants in its capitalist society will revolve around the
reproduction of a colonial heritage. Excluding bureaucracy, cultural and linguistic negations, exploitation of domestic work, wage
differences and unemployment, racist police violence, unequal access to education,
Anibal Quijano, a Peruvian sociologist and philosopher, also puts the coloniality of power into perspective . We cannot articulate a
struggle within the ecological front without deconstructing the political, military and institutional occupations of neocolonialism. These
are baited on multiple instances which exist nowadays and which play a mechanical role in the intrinsic capital-colonial relation:
The white NGO which, masked by philanthropy, monopolizes the management of indigenous spaces for a "development" intended for political
tourism, and rejects any form of relation to the ecosystem of its inhabitants.
French, Chinese, English, American, and Russian military bases abroad, terribly polluting and devastating, analogous to the illegal
occupation of the territories.
The supra-state institutions (G20, WTO, IMF, World Bank) which grant world operations between the great powers, install nepotism and
clientelism among the political posts of our companies to limit our self-management, and apply an overhanging market pressure.
Institutional anti-racism, which appropriates the decolonial struggle and proposes a series of arbitrary laws which are supposed to
eliminate the expression of racism, but thus ensure the intangibility of its structural and systemic reproduction.
The "war on drugs" waged by the United States and its allies, which in addition to being a monstrous expense of money extracted largely
through neo-colonial economic measures, has resulted in conflicts, paramilitary invasions, murderous operations, and more than 200,000 dead
since 2006 in Mexico alone[6]*. The environmental destruction that these operations have generated, from the manufacture of weapons and
ranges, among others, is evident.
The prison system and closed centers, disproportionately populated by racialized people. These work for nothing and generate an economic
profit for the State, fueled by systemic racism inherited from colonial slavery. The production of prisoners' labor, the construction of
prison regimes, their maintenance, the energy they require, multiply the environmental damage at the same time as they reproduce the
colonial and patriarchal patterns of class hierarchy.
The political interventions of the United States and Europe in the countries of the South (coups, civil wars, assassinations, state
terrorism campaigns[7]*), all in the name of a unilateral relationship between the governments which perpetuates the geo-economic links of
exploitation.
Finally, the mechanisms of environmental colonialism must not be seen as forces simply exerted by the dominant countries on the ex-colonies.
It is not only a question of dual dynamics which the colonialist powers continue to force on our regions; in parallel, we observe the
phenomenon theorized by the Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: the coloniality of being. It is about perpetual alienation and
the incorporation of Western social constructs into our very minds. This replicates the paternalistic attitude of the empire towards the
natives, who are not only thought of in relation to a logic of capital (utilitarian analysis of their societies and structures with a view
to economic gain), but also sacred .es in a theatricalization of Otherness. The latter is animated by a stereotyping which conceives them
rural and physically caricatured, and by a heritage which excludes them from the construction of the world. The museification of their
culture in the name of a "conservation" of it is only the make-up of a racist and Eurocentric disdain, which wants them out of the
globalized table. Multiple phenomena of cultural colonization, ranging from hierarchy, even the elimination of our languages, the
glorification of Eurocentric modes of knowledge, passing by the brain drain and European high schools abroad, add to this collective
de-identification. "Civilization", as we understand it, is only a baggage of liberal culture which denies our identity in favor of a white,
capitalist, patriarchal, lordly life, in search of capital and private property. Worse still, this life is sold to us as a natural "desire",
due to our precariousness forced by this very capitalist system. Patriarchal, cisheteronormative, Christian, bourgeois and familist
relationships of domination are legitimized in this way, and their reproduction becomes structurally automatic. passing through the brain
drain and European high schools abroad, add to this collective de-identification. "Civilization", as we understand it, is only a baggage of
liberal culture which denies our identity in favor of a white, capitalist, patriarchal, lordly life, in search of capital and private
property. Worse still, this life is sold to us as a natural "desire", due to our precariousness forced by this very capitalist system.
Patriarchal, cisheteronormative, Christian, bourgeois and familist relationships of domination are legitimized in this way, and their
reproduction becomes structurally automatic. passing through the brain drain and European high schools abroad, add to this collective
de-identification. "Civilization", as we understand it, is only a baggage of liberal culture which denies our identity in favor of a white,
capitalist, patriarchal, lordly life, in search of capital and private property. Worse still, this life is sold to us as a natural "desire",
due to our precariousness forced by this very capitalist system. Patriarchal, cisheteronormative, Christian, bourgeois and familist
relationships of domination are legitimized in this way, and their reproduction becomes structurally automatic. is just a piece of liberal
culture that denies our identity in favor of a white, capitalist, patriarchal, seigniorial life, in search of capital and private property.
Worse still, this life is sold to us as a natural "desire", due to our precariousness forced by this very capitalist system. Patriarchal,
cisheteronormative, Christian, bourgeois and familist relationships of domination are legitimized in this way, and their reproduction
becomes structurally automatic. is just a piece of liberal culture that denies our identity in favor of a white, capitalist, patriarchal,
seigniorial life, in search of capital and private property. Worse still, this life is sold to us as a natural "desire", due to our
precariousness forced by this very capitalist system. Patriarchal, cisheteronormative, Christian, bourgeois and familist relationships of
domination are legitimized in this way, and their reproduction becomes structurally automatic.
However, these sociological mechanisms that neocolonialism inserts in people's minds, have among their engines the false perception of Human
/ Nature duality, which led colonization in the first place, then imported into the colonies. It thus perpetuates on a global scale the
different environmental exploitations against which we position ourselves. This false duality reduces the natives to "good little guardians
of nature", without allowing them to directly manage the spaces they have historically inhabited. It is an archaic approach full of colonial
guilt about their ecological rights, guilt that wants to be reconciled by romanticizing a population that it continues to discriminate
against. Psychological and social alienation is also part of the environmental movement, and we oppose a vision that incriminates and
generates deep anxiety in the inhabitants of societies in the South. Very colonialist is an ecology that requires us to feel blamed for our
lifestyles and consumption, after having been forced into a framework of capitalist development over 500 years.
We suggest first advocating an exercise in memory. We must condemn negationism in its entirety, the one who wants to invisibilize genocides
and assassinations, the one who builds statues of murderous men in cities populated by migrants, the one who detaches the ecological problem
from the anti-colonial question. We also support a direct democracy localized and self-managed in our societies, the collectivization of our
means of production and our resources, our proletarian, popular, and anarchist struggles. We are fighting for a libertarian society in which
migrants participate as legitimate actors, not as "guests".
The dead of colonized societies are victims of environmental imperialism. Between the importation of devastating European diseases in
colonial times, and the capitalist appropriation of territory, resources and minds today, the ecological abuse of the colonizing State is
guilty of millions of murders. And while Europe (and Belgium) pretend to be welcoming and cosmopolitan, women on "illegal residence" are
locked up in inhuman conditions in Holsbeek[8]*, in times of health crisis. The undocumented remain without regularization, thus denying
them daily access to health, national mobilizations, safe mobility, healthy housing, declared work, social assistance, financial security,
affordable telecommunications. economically. Furthermore, Those who manage to be regularized must still pay gigantic differences during
bureaucratic transactions, for studies, mutual insurance, insurance, banking, etc. The precariousness that these discriminations increase
often results in one or more irregular jobs, and in the impossibility of following the rules of social distance. Legal problems, police
proceedings, imprisonment and maintenance of prison institutions, not to mention the likelihood of infection, are still similar
consequences. The anti-ecological European state is today colonialist. The precariousness that these discriminations increase often results
in one or more irregular jobs, and in the impossibility of following the rules of social distance. Legal problems, police proceedings,
imprisonment and maintenance of prison institutions, not to mention the likelihood of infection, are still similar consequences. The
anti-ecological European state is today colonialist. The precariousness that these discriminations increase often results in one or more
irregular jobs, and in the impossibility of following the rules of social distance. Legal problems, police proceedings, imprisonment and
maintenance of prison institutions, not to mention the likelihood of infection, are still similar consequences. The anti-ecological European
state is today colonialist.
Regularization of sans-papier.es! Prison centers are closed!
Collectives and libertarian anarchist organizations of postcolonial societies:
Federación de Organizaciones de Base Autonóma (FOB) - Argentina
Taller Libertario Alfredo López - Cuba
Pan y Rosas Bolivia - Bolivia
Grupo Libertario Via Libre - Colombia
Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) - Uruguay
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front - South Africa
Coordenãçao Anarquista Brasileira - Brazil
Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement - New Zealand
Federación Anarquista Santiago - Chile
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FERDINAND, Malcolm, Thinking ecology from the Caribbean world. Political and philosophical issues of ecological conflicts (Martinique,
Guadeloupe, Haiti, Puerto Rico)
SHIVA, Vandana, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
QUIJANO, Aníbal, Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina
MIGNOLO, Walter D., Coloniality of Power and Subalternity
SEGATO, Rita, La crítica de la colonialidad en ocho ensayos. There was an anthropology for asking
RIVERA CUSICANQUI, Silvia, Ch'ixinakax utxiwa. Una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores RIVERA CUSICANQUI, Silvia,
Violencias (re) encubiertas en Bolivia
[1]In his doctoral thesis, Ferdinand defined the principles of the phenomenon: geographic subordination, altericide of the other
non-Christian, exploitation of the non-human, massacre of the natives, rape of the indigenous women and logging.
[2]For example, the BR-163 highway of 4,476 km in the Brazilian Amazon, completed in 2019 by the government of Jair Bolsonaro. As for
maritime trade in Africa, it is made up of 40% of oil exports ( https://unctad.org/fr/Pages/PressRelease.aspx?OriginalVersionID=476) through
literal ports.
[3]Generation of rock fragments that pollute the water tables during extraction, ejection of salt water harmful to the ecosystems of
neighboring areas, emission of gases into the atmosphere due to production infrastructure. This study (
https://www.business-humanrights.org/sites/default/files/documents/Contaminaci%C3%B3n-Petrolera.pdf) specifies the environmental
consequences of petroleum activity in Venezuela, 9th country in net exports worldwide.
[4]Opened in 2005, this is the transaction market by which industrialized countries buy rights to pollute, that is to say, the purchase from
a centralized authority of permits for polluting waste for a period of time. The market aims to reduce environmental damage by implementing
a logic of competition in which transnational corporations and large companies speculate with the State. It is a commodification of air.
[5]Biopiracy is the exploitation of genetic resources of the biodiversity of a region, or indigenous community knowledge on these resources,
without prior authorization (or in sharing of benefits with the State), intended for the manufacture of new food, agricultural and
pharmaceutical products. Vandana Shiva, Indian ecologist, proposes that biopiracy, today implemented by research centers and private
companies, is in fact a modernized strategy of colonization of the bodily space which has been carried out since colonial times on the
fertility of women, transported to plants and animals.
[6]According to figures from the Drug Policy Alliance (https://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics) , which are ambiguous due to
the very probable number of unregistered deaths.
[7]The Coup d'état supported by the United States in Chile in 1973, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba by Belgian intelligence, or
Operation Condor led by the American government in Latin America responsible for at least 60 000 dead (estimated) are some examples.
[8]Testimonies with women locked up in the center, regarding the sanitary conditions and the lack of measures taken by the authorities, are
available here: https://soundcloud.com/839815654/sets/enregistrements-centres-fermes? fbclid =
IwAR3SPbQR98ROobqC7YSCGDkwZvXGyMX4z_3fP9sNCJ_7ZKaCGpt8vA8XHqk .
https://bxl.communisteslibertaires.org/2020/07/08/pour-une-ecologie-decoloniale/
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2020 07:58:33 +0300
From: a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
To: en <a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Subject: (en) [Mexico] Oaxaca joins acts of revolt against the police
By ANA (pt) [machine translation]
Message-ID: <mailman.397.1594529916.8316.a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
On June 14, in front of the Autonomous University of Benito Juarez, in Oaxaca, several anarchist groups protested against the violence of
the State, recalling the protests of 2006 where there were several murders committed by police corporations. Protesters protested the
murders of young people in the state of Oaxaca, such as Alexander, 16, and Diego ELP ,. 20 years old, as well as other murdered activists in
the region. ---- Alexander was murdered on June 9, when he went out with three young men to buy a soft drink in the city of Vicente
Camalote, located north of Acatlán de Pérez Figueroa. The group was shot at from a local police car.
The anarchist contingent blocked Avenida Universitária on both sides with incendiary barricades, painted slogans on the walls like "the
police are rape and murderers" and "we are your worst nightmare" and also anarchist symbols. Convenience stores were attacked and looted,
releasing products on the street, some bank branches, several traffic lights and public property. The press was also violently repelled.
These facts add to the sequence of violent protests against the police in different parts of the country in places like Guadalajara, Mexico
City, Xalapa and San Luis Potosí, where anarchist groups and other protesters gathered to give an anarchic and violent response in the
streets. .
Long live the disturbance and expropriation!
Long live the vandalism!
For the extent of the attack, the revolt and the anarchist affinity groups!
For informal coordination!
Let us remain attentive and disobedient!
>> Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1IyzuxkIP4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoHXYAgHGJk&fbclid=IwAR30SpL1xBYTMqCDYq
Translation> Sol de Abril
Related contents:
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2020/06/23/mexico-informacoes-sobre-disturbios-em-diferentes-cidades-e-uma-breve-reflexao/
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2020/06/19/mexico-video-anarquistas-se-manifestam-apos-assassinato-de-jovens-em-oaxaca-pelas-maos-da-policia/
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2020/06/11/mexico-anarquistas-atacam-a-c
Catedral-o-beaterio-e-comercios-de-xalapa-em-marcha-contrace-a-repressao- policeman/
anarchist news agency-ana
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2020 08:01:41 +0300
From: a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
To: en <a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Subject: (en) [Greece] Anarchists protest against project to regulate
demonstrations (pt) By ANA [machine translation]
Message-ID: <mailman.415.1594530105.8316.a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
Bill orders appointment of an event organizer, stipulates penalties and holds organizers legally liable ---- Hundreds of anarchists gathered
in the center of Patras on Tuesday (07/07) to protest the government's plans to regulate the frequent street demonstrations in Greece. There
were also protests in Thessalonica and Athens (photo). ---- Street protests in Greece are the main form of opposition to government
policies. The legislation under study in the Greek Parliament will be put to a vote on Thursday (07/07). ---- The bill in particular orders
that a demonstration must be announced in time and licensed, in addition to the appointment in advance of a "responsible organizer of the
protest" who will coordinate with the police to "inform the content, the time and the route so that the "socio-economic life" of the area is
not affected "and imposes restrictions on a demonstration if the number of participants is low. The proposal also stipulates penalties for
"violent behavior, holding organizers legally responsible for any damage or injury caused by the protesters".
With this law, the Greek police will decide for themselves when and how a demonstration will take place, having the right to dissolve it if
there is no "responsible" or is considered dangerous for "public security". The approval of this bill aims to eliminate anyone who defines
the State as an "internal enemy".
Strikes, okupações, demonstrations, confrontations ... They will not stop!
anarchist news agency-ana
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2020 08:57:53 +0300
From: a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
To: en <a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Subject: (en) France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #307 - Dossier
spécial: Editorial, Health, pharma: socializing, opening a breach
(fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
Message-ID: <mailman.430.1594533478.8316.a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
Undeniably, the coronavirus crisis has broadened the awareness that capitalism is a deadly system. But it is not enough to repeat like a
mantra that we must " change everything, reinvent everything ". It is necessary to advance an alternative society project, to put it under
discussion, and including to do foresight: would it have better faced the virus ? ---- Health care workers have been warning for years, but
it took the coronavirus to crudely expose the damage to the health care system of capitalist profitability goals coupled with bureaucratic
management. ---- In the press, the forums have multiplied to expose the vision of a " world after " which would have learned all the
lessons of the crisis. For libertarian communists, this demonstrated the need to revolutionize the health system, which must be fully
unified and socialized under popular control. Unified, this means the requisition of private clinics and their integration into the public
service ; massive hires ; the creation of thousands of additional beds ; a revitalized territorial network. This would be a huge step
forward for the population in general, but also - provided there is specific voluntarism - for the least well cared for categories, such as
women.
But there is no viable health system without its productive autonomy. The shortage of masks, gowns, tests, respirators, then the inability
to produce them in an emergency are a scandal of the market law, coupled with a scandal of State. The Plaintel or Luxfer cases illustrate
this. There, as in Greece, these are workers who, fighting for their future, defend the general interest. Socialization of the health system
therefore also presupposes the socialization of the pharmaceutical industry and the manufacture of medical equipment. It would, for example,
allow the production of medicines to be relocated, when the country is regularly out of stock, and to redirect research and development
towards meeting real needs.
By defending, here and now, the socialization and self-management of the health system, because there is an availability to discuss this
vital sector, the UCL intends to advance, on the same model, the idea of a complete revolution in society.
A dossier coordinated by
Simon (Rennes), Lulu (Nantes),
Tudy (Grenoble), Grégoire and Matthias (Orléans)
Contents of the file:
The Alternative to Capitalism
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Sante-pharma-socialiser-ouvrir-une-breche
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2020 08:58:14 +0300
From: a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
To: en <a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Subject: (en) APO, restive horse - Counter intelligence to comrades
internationally for resistance in Slovenia
Message-ID: <mailman.432.1594533497.8316.a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
Counterintelligence against comrades internationally for the resistance in Slovenia that, in mid-March and due to a corona, started on the
balconies, continued on bicycles and ended up on normal marches, against the far-right government with hardliners and hardliners,
nationalist tendencies. ---- About 10,000 people continue to gather every Friday in the capital and more than 25,000 in other cities - and
in other cases, mainly related to environmental issues or culture issues or, for example, in support and solidarity with the people fighting
against racism. USA. ---- There are three major groups - anti-capitalist, cultural and environmental blocs, which work together in
solidarity. All local / autonomous teams of the Federation for the Anarchist Organization - Federacija za anarhisticno organizitanje (FAO)
are also involved. Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck. Police in riot gear stormed a
rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck. But we, as anarchists, remain strong on the side of the people! We do not allow
the regime to divide the insurgents into good and bad - in one case there were several protesters who appeared dressed in black in
solidarity with the anti-capitalist blog that had been targeted earlier. We are able to resist repression - there is strong support for the
repressed.
Large demonstrations in front of the police station on the night the police arrested some people. And the last attempt to hold
pro-government demonstrations with Nazi groups (wearing yellow vests symbolically) was successfully suppressed. Through our efforts and also
through the efforts of the most liberal parts of society, the world has devalued nationalist rallies. Only forty Nazis appeared at their own
rally, with thousands standing in front of them.
And one of the most important points of cooperation between the insurgents is the open assemblies initiated by the anarchists.
Solidarity!
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2020 08:59:04 +0300
From: a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
To: en <a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Subject: (en) Canada, Collectif Emma Goldman - Epidemics, conquest and
genocide in the Americas (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
Message-ID: <mailman.438.1594533549.8316.a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
"The Tainos, in the past, were not afraid of death - but that death escapes them. It is too much like a collective punishment to be lived
serenely. At first, the sick were watched over by their parents and friends. But as the dead number in the tens of thousands, bodies in a
more or less advanced state of decomposition are everywhere - in the fields, in the caves, in the woods - and are not even buried any more.
The Taino body is nothing but waste. An unnamed body, piled up in a mass grave. An unnamed death. All these deaths break family ties, mow
down the religious political elite, plunge Taino society into collective oblivion [...]. The New World has turned into a slaughterhouse.»[1]
---- Lissell Quiroz, "Epidemics, Conquest and Genocide in the Americas" in Decolonial Perspectives by Abya Yala, 23/0320. Link to the
original, here: http://decolonial.hypotheses.org/1677 .
March 11, 2020. WHO declares that the Covid-19 outbreak constitutes a pandemic. In all corners of the world, exceptional measures are taken
to try to contain the spread of the disease. Since then, many countries have established states of health emergency including the closing of
borders, the confinement of populations and the suspension of air and sea links.
Pandemics are not a phenomenon of the 21st century, they have existed since ancient centuries. Europe has thus known several plague
pandemics since Antiquity, the best known being the black plague which raged on the continent between 1346 and 1353. It would have killed 25
million people (between 25% and 50% of the European population) . Europeans did not remain passive in the face of this long and devastating
epidemic. The first measure taken was to follow the hippocratic or "electuary of the three adverbs" adage, namely Cito, longe, tarde, that
is to say "(Go) fast, (go) far, (come back) late"[2]. In other words, containment was already the preferred means of escaping - especially
for the wealthy categories - from contagion. The trauma of the plague remained in people's minds for centuries, especially since it became
endemic on the continent. City closures and containment were common during these health crises.
The demographic bleeding of the Americas
However, arrived in 1492 in the Americas, Europeans will ignore this traumatic experience. It is now agreed to attribute to the epidemics of
the turn of the 15th to the 16th century, the almost exclusive responsibility for the demographic disaster suffered by the Americas at that
time. Although there is no certainty as to the number of deaths caused by the pandemic during the Conquista that followed the Reconquista ,
this argument is accepted on both sides of the Atlantic. On the one hand, it makes it possible to exempt the Spaniards on the one hand from
responsibility for the crimes committed at that time, while on the other hand, it gives meaning to the brutal fall of the rich and powerful
Pre-Columbian Empires.
If precise quantitative data on the period are lacking, we can be sure that this episode represented a massacre for the people of Abya Yala.
According to the figures provided by the chroniclers as well as the estimates elaborated by researchers, the population of the Americas
experienced a vertiginous fall at the time of the invasion and the conquest. Different hypotheses place the initial population between 20
and 150 million inhabitants. A certain consensus has been established around 100 million inhabitants[3]. Fifty years later, the continent
had lost between 80% and 90% of its total population.
Regional and local approaches help refine these general considerations. Massimo Livi Bacci estimates that around 300,000 people lived in
Ayiti (renamed Hispaniola during the conquest) in 1492. In 1514, there were only 26,000, a fall of more than 90% of the pre-Columbian
population[4].
For its part, the Peruvian historian Julio Villanueva Sotomayor places the population of Tawantinsuyu at 15 million inhabitants in the
period before its collapse[5]. Noble David Cook estimates it 9 million[6]. In any case, it was no more than 600,000 people in 1620. This
means that in the space of 88 years, Peruvian territory would have lost between 93% and 96% of its population from the pre-conquest .
As for Mexico, the study by S. Cook and W. Borah, considers that the Meso-American population would have passed from 25 million in 1518 to
one million in 1605, that is to say a decrease of 96% of the population[7]. Never before has any other continent experienced such a
demographic slaughter. Add to this the fact that this decline was not, due to the violence of colonization, contained until four centuries
later, in the 20th century. Mexico, for example, did not find the number of inhabitants of the 15th century until the 1960s (see graph below).
Graphic produced by the author using data from: Mercedes Alcañiz, "Cambios demográficos en la sociedad global", Papeles de población , vol.
14 No. 57, Toluca Jul / Sep 2008, p. 227-255.
An overestimated epidemiological shock
This disaster is due to a combination of factors. It is very likely that the viruses transported by the conquistadors decimated many regions
at the time of the invasion. The infectious agents imported into the Americas were very virulent, as in the case of measles, typhus or
smallpox (see graph below).
Graphic developed by the author from various data.
However, the Aboriginals quickly understood what was happening to them as evidenced by certain illustrations, notably that of the Florence
Codex compiled between 1558 and 1577 (see illustration below). They knew in particular that the contagion was by oral route. The original
peoples and in particular the Aztecs, had sanitary habits which testify to a high degree of cleanliness. Thus each district of Tenochtitlan
had public baths with spring water led by aqueducts. The Mexicas groomed almost daily and cleaned themselves with soap. The Florentine codex
also alludes to the use of deodorants and products to freshen the breath and clean the teeth.
Florence Codex.
This high degree of healthiness - as well as the balance in which the region lived at that time - must have prevented, at first, the spread
of epidemics. Livi Bacci notes that in Ayiti there was no epidemic listed in the sources before 1518, when the population of the island had
already been decimated[8]. In addition, the organisms which survived the epidemics create an immunization which normally decreases the human
losses in the face of later virulent attacks. Those cells which did not die, therefore became, under normal conditions of life, more
resistant to viruses. However, in Abya Yala, we observe a contrary phenomenon: depopulation and demographic stagnation continue over several
centuries. Bacteriological shock cannot therefore alone explain this long-term phenomenon.
The ferocity of conquest
And these causes were multiple and are all intertwined. As the Argentinian historian Carlos Sempat Assadourian points out, epidemics are not
the main cause of the hecatomb, they are part of a dynamic set of exactions, violence and destructuring of pre-Columbian societies:
"[...]The demographic destruction results from the greed and the wars started by the Spaniards between 1530 and 1550. All the sources of the
observers can be gathered in only one label: a state of permanent war, which includes not only the losses caused by the great battles but
also those produced by an infinity of punitive attacks, the struggles between the own ethnic groups, the destruction of hydraulic systems,
the scourge of hunger, the increase in mortality from endemic diseases, etc.[9]"
The epidemics are part of this global context of the establishment of a colonial system in the Americas. It was the colonial system that was
the real producer of the demographic bleeding, of which illnesses were only one element among others. Viruses have even served as a weapon
of conquest because there has never been any containment during this period. The conquistadors moved freely from one territory to another,
knowing full well that they were carrying viruses against which the Aboriginals were not immune.
The Hispanic colonial regime did the rest. To be able to exploit mineral resources, Christopher Columbus instituted a per capita colonial
tax (called encomienda ) according to which every three months, each Indigenous person had to give him a certain amount of gold or
cotton[10]. The encomienda was a mandatory Aboriginal tax system that involved forced displacement of people to the mines. Formally
established by the Crown in 1503, it is legally akin to medieval serfdom. The conquistadors received the right to divide the "Indians" into
encomiendas where encomenderoswere responsible for collecting tribute. The native tax - made up of precious metals, textiles, food, animals
- was collected by the cacique (chief) of the community who was to give it to the encomendero . In effect, the system instituted aboriginal
serfdom. The Church was a major support and evangelism served to better control the uprooted and acculturated indigenous workforce. The
ncomienda and evangelization deeply destructured the societies of Abya Yala. Aboriginal people were forcibly displaced and forced to settle
where the Spaniards wanted, especially near the mines which arose from nothing new cities like Potosi, founded in 1545.
"Que el encomendero le hace ahorcar al cacique principal don Juan Cayanchire", Guamán Poma de Ayala (ca. 1535-ca. 1616), Nueva crónica y
buen gobierno (1600)
Community, family and collective life was completely turned upside down and ultimately wiped out in all the conquered and colonized American
regions. A third of indigenous men spent months, sometimes a dozen, in the mines, exploited and weakened by overwork and lack of
food.[11]Added to this is the ill-treatment, separation from family and community, fear, loss of bearings. Women suffer in addition, sexual
assault and the provision of their bodies for the conquistadors as recorded in a report sent by Dominicans to the Minister of Charles I
(future Charles V), in 1519:
"Each of them[the foremen of the mines]made it a habit to sleep with the Indian women who depended on him, if they liked him, whether they
were married or young girls. While the foreman remained in the hut or the hut with the Indian, he sent the husband to extract gold in the
mines; and in the evening, when the unfortunate returned, not only would he beat or whip him because he had not brought in enough gold, but
also, more often than not, he tied his feet and hands and threw him under bed like a dog, before lying down, just above, with his wife[12]. "
Indigenous women were therefore, as Lorena Cabnal, a Mayan xinca feminist, conceptualizes, the first territory of conquest[13]. Under these
conditions, the Aboriginal mortality rate could only increase during the decades following the invasion and the conquest, while the birth
rate also fell. The establishment of colonization in Hispanic America was therefore not the result of an "encounter" but of a brutal and
generalized destruction of entire societies on a scale never before known. This is the reason why we can speak of genocide.
Genocide never recognized as such
"Settlement colonialism contains violence or the threat of violence. People do not give up their land, their resources, their children and
their future without fighting, and their resistance provokes the violence of the settlers. Using the force required by its expansionist
designs, a colonial regime institutionalizes violence. The conflict between settlers and natives was therefore not the product of cultural
differences or misunderstandings, and the colonized were not as violent as the colonizers. Euro-American colonialism and capitalist
globalization had genocidal tendencies from the start[14]. "
A colonial enterprise which thus destroys entire societies and millions of people in the space of a few decades cannot be described as
"discovery" or "encounter". The conquistadors and Christopher Columbus in the first place, knowingly set up a system of exploitation of
which they saw immediately the consequences on the populations. The 50 years following the conquest were a period of death and suffering of
all kinds for the peoples from Abya Yala. Julio Villanueva Sotomayor estimates that, in the Andes, between 1532 and 1620, more than 450
people perished daily and more than 165,000 annually[15]. To see in the disaster that contact with violent excesses and a fortiori the
result of the virulence of epidemics is at best ignorance,
"This massacre[the destruction of the indigenous population of the Americas]has often been erased in several countries on the American
continent. Very different currents, animated by opposite ideological motivations, contributed to erase not the destruction of the American
Indians but the atrocities which accompanied it. There is a writing of this history which makes pass the extermination of approximately 70
million human beings like the profits and losses of a process where there was not only bad[16]. "
The invasion and conquest of Abya Yala constituted genocide, an epistemicide and an ecocide. The unsanitary conditions of the cities spread
over the entire territory of the Americas. The introduction of animals such as horses, cows, sheep, goats, dogs and even rabbits, often
presented as a European contribution, dismantled the Amerindian ecosystem. As Alfred W. Crosby points out, the importation of large European
animals destroyed more than it enriched the native territories.[17]The cattle fed on fruits used for local consumption, while the excrement
polluted the seeds which were then found scattered everywhere. The same goes for the cultivation of sugar cane, the introduction of which in
the West Indies and Brazil destroyed the tropical forest as well as the forest fauna.
Thus, in the space of five decades, European colonization wiped out an entire continent. The consequences of this colonial wound are still
not closed, even if the peoples of the Americas have resisted, and continue to do so, to the different forms of coloniality. Faced with this
massacre, the resistance was very strong and the descendants of these peoples today retain endurance but also the flame of hope. As Lorena
Cabnal says: "I recover joy without losing indignation in a vital act of emancipation. "
1. Paula Anacaona, 1492, Anacaona the Caribbean insurgent , Anacaona Editions, p. 112
2.Jean Vitaux, History of the plague , PUF, 2010, p. 138
3. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Counter-history of the United States , Wildproject, 2018, p. 77
4. Massimo Livi Bacci, "Las múltiples causas de la catástrofe: consideraciones teóricas y empíricas", Revista de Indias , 2003, vol. LXIII,
n ° 227, p. 31-48, p. 43
5. Julio Villanueva Sotomayor, El Perú en los tiempos antiguos , 2001, Lima: Empresa Periodística Nacional SAC
6. Noble David Cook, La catástrofe demográfica andina , Perú 1520-1620, Lima: Fondo Editorial de la PUCP, 2010, p. 20
7. Sherburne F. Cook, Woodrow Borah, Essays in Population History: Mexico and the Caribbean , Berkeley, LA, London: Univ. of California
Press, 1971
8. Livi Bacci, op. cit. , p. 44
9. Carlos Sempat Assadourian, "La crisis demográfica del siglo XVI y la transición del Tawantinsuyu al sistema mercantil colonial", in
Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz (ed.), Población y mano de obra en América Latina , Madrid: Alianza Americana, 1995, p. 69-93, p. 74
10. Livi Bacci, op. cit ., p. 45.
11. Livi Bacci, op. cit. , p. 44
12. Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America. The question of the other , Seuil, 1982, p. 145-146 13.Lorena Cabnal: "Recupero la alegría sin
perder la indignación, como un acto emancipatorio y vital", Píkara Magazine , 11/13/19 , URL: https://www.pikaramagazine.com/2019/11/
lorena-cabnal-recupero-la-alegria-sin-perder-la-indignacion-como-un-acto-emancipatorio-y-vital /
14. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Counter-History of the United States , Wildproject, 2018, p. 40
15. Villanueva Sotomayor, op. cit .
16. Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe, La ferocity blanche , Albin Michel, 2001, p. 36-37.
17. Alfred W. Crosby, Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 , Westport, Greenwood Press, 1972, p. 98-99.
by Collectif Emma Goldman
http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/2020/07/epidemies-conquete-et-genocide-dans-les.html
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Message: 7
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2020 08:59:16 +0300
From: a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
To: en <a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Subject: (en) Britain, London Anarchist Communists: Mutual Aid in
North West Lon - Support Granville Community Kitchen!don
Message-ID: <mailman.442.1594533565.8316.a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
We received the following article from a supporter of Granville Community Kitchen. https://granvillecommunitykitchen.wordpress.com/ ----
Granville Community Kitchen (GCK) is a small organisation with one part time grower and ten long term volunteers. Before the crisis, one of
our projects for the past five years, was running a free and halal community meal on Friday nights where people who come would have a hot
meal, share the week's news and receive surplus food. We had been serving up to 100 people a night with about 150 meals. People took food
away to neighbours and friends and for themselves for the week. We distributed about 30 pallets of surplus food. We are now (June 7) giving
food aid, cooked food, toiletries, cleaning products and emergency white goods and bikes to over 500 people a week in Brent, Harrow,
Westminster and Camden, with 10 delivery routes and over 20 regular volunteers. We get 60-80 pallets twice a week although the surplus food
is dropping due to high demand from many organisations. We have had to ask for donations of food from mutual aid groups to make up the
difference. It is important to us that we give food to whoever asks. It is not easy to ask for help and we feel it is no one's place to
judge who is in need and who is not.
Even now as restrictions are loosened we expect our numbers to continue to rise. Many people are in service industry jobs or self-employed,
for example, drivers or care workers, and these jobs are hard hit. This creates a new layer of people in financial difficulties who before
the virus were self-reliant. Now on top of those who were in difficulties due to ill health, age or low income we now have to add the newly
unemployed.
GCK is playing a key role in responding to the coronavirus shut-in and the impacts it is having on people and communities in regards to
access to food for vulnerable groups. We face extreme difficulties due to a lack of funding and volunteers, increased demand and a reduction
in surplus food supply due to a disruption in the food supply chain and more demand.
At the same time we are looking to the future to reimagining a new food system. One of the main lessons of this period has to be our food
system is rotten. We were dependent on heavily processed, high sugar and trans fat edible concoctions that travel many miles to get to us
and whose price does not reflect the damage done to human health and the environment. This has to change. Through Granville Community
Kitchen Good Food Project we hope to show an example of change. We will be starting to offer low cost veg boxes to low income families of
culturally appropriate food bought direct from farmers or from ethical wholesalers. The project also has an education element with young
people and long term unemployed able to train in food production from seed to plate. We will offer more and more seasonal and culturally
appropriate food direct from farmers outside London, grow more food in a highly urbanised setting and train growers and food producers for
the future. This is not about big business but about supporting human health, creativity and the earth - good food grown by us for us.
(For an in-depth look at food and capitalism see the new ACG pamphlet).
https://londonacg.blogspot.com/2020/07/mutual-aid-in-north-west-london.html
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