Cesar Chavez Day and the Movimiento Mundial Macehualli

March 31, 2022

 

On the early morning of September 11, 2001, when the news of the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York was first hitting the public media, Gustavo Gutierrez and I were returning from the Macehualli Day Labor Center located in “La Esquadra -the Square” in northern Phoenix, Arizona.

 

This section of Phoenix, “the square”, got its name from being the area in Phoenix where the highest percentage of Mexicans reside per square census block, predominantly renters in lower end units such as trailers and such.  Also, this community had historically been the hub of day labor recruitment activities by the regional construction and service industries across the valley.

 

The day labor issue in Phoenix in 2001 was very contentious as it is now in 2022.  The nefarious anti-Mexican pogrom of state sanctioned racial profiling which was in ascendency under the regime of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio would consequently lead to the passage of AZ SB1070 in 2010.  The passage of AZ SB1070 and its copycat bills across the country broadened the pogrom of the normalizing “immigration” enforcement powers into the realm of community policing, and this phenomena of the normalization of and political socialization of racial animus across the country provided the political platform for the rise of Donald Trump to the US presidency.

 

But the stain of racial animus that motivated AZ 1070 and that continues today in Arizona did not begin with Arpaio.

 

 

On September 8, 2014, I was asked to provide testimony in a four-hour long deposition before the attorneys for the State of Arizona who were attempting to defend the AZ SB107 legislation in a community legal challenge that eventually went to the US Supreme Court.  When I was asked about my opinion of the discriminatory policing practices that AZ SB1070 officialized, I responded by saying that AZ SB1070 was the continuation of the experiment in American Apartheid that was previously called the theory of “Manifest Destiny”, aka American Exceptionalism which is motivated by the pathology of “White” supremacy.

 

One of the many community responses to the pogrom of AZ SB 1070 was the Macehualli Day Labor Center, which was established by a broad community coalition to provide a safe and orderly public infrastructure for the recruitment and dignified treatment of the Day Labor community in Phoenix. The project was realized and was an operational success in spite of constant harassment by KKK elements and Minuteman types who directly antagonized the day laborers and the employers on a regular basis.

 

The Macehualli Day Labor Center was a successful model of public partnership that was established under the principle of Special Measures as referenced in the International Labor Organization Convention 169, regarding the rights of Indigenous Peoples as Migrant Workers with Families.

Yet even today in 2022, to attempt to converse intelligently with the leadership or rank and file of the US labor movement regarding of the rights of Indigenous Peoples as Migrant Workers with Families in the context of International Human Rights law and standards as is articulated in Convention 169 is to address a void. The silence is not just deafening it is dehumanizing, deadly and inevitably – complicit in genocide.

 

Driving home on the freeway from the Macehualli Day Labor Center on 9/11, the first early morning reports on 9/11 of the number of fatalities was being estimated as being up to 5,000 lives.  Attempting to grasp the enormity of the tragedy, I turned to Gustavo and asked him if he recalled any such similar scale of human loss in such a brief time.  He paused and thought for a bit and then answered: “the Mayas of Guatemala”.

 

I also had come to the same recollection myself, not coincidently because Gustavo and I had both attended a continental indigenous encounter in 1991 in Guatemala where we were personal witnesses to the participation of the delegation from the Consejo Nacional de las Viudas de Guatemala (CONAVIGUA) in the October 12, 1991, protest march in Quetzaltenango.  The membership of the CONAVIGUA has a base membership of 50,000.  They are the enduring survivors of the genocidal war against the Maya that still rages in the continent, and which began with first fleet of invaders under Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492.

 

To make the connection between October the 12^th, 1492, and April 23, 2010, when AZ SB1070 became a law in Arizona, you have to pass by 1845 and jump on the train of Manifest Destiny.  For the adherents of “White Supremacy” this is not a problem, after all its their train. For Mexicans, both established and not established per the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), the problem is compounded by the quislings of the Latino white supremacy narrative vis-a-vis the identity of “Mexican” as a concept of International Personality in the treaty territories and not merely another generic ethnic minority  group.

 

For the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples who NEVER agreed to give the government of Mexico the right to negotiate with Uncle Sam over their territorial or human rights, the problem is the void in cognition, and thus recognition of the nature of Human Nationality as Original Nations of Mother Earth.  The problem is rooted in the patriarchal padre nostro of the pathology of the Doctrine of Discovery, aka American Manifest Destiny.

Here are the words of Gustavo Gutierrez during the Indigenous Peoples Forum on the Impact of the Doctrine of Discovery in Arizona held at the House of Representatives in the Arizona State Capitol on March 23, 2012.

Tupac Enrique Acosta

 

YouTube:

Gustavo Gutierrez at the Arizona State Capitol

Indigenous Peoples Forum

on the 

Impact of the Doctrine of Discovery in Arizona

March 23, 2012

¡No somos ilegales, No somos criminales!
¡Somos trabajadores de Pueblos Originales!

Canto Macehualli

Movimiento Mundial Macehualli

WWW.MMM.WWW

Comités de Defensa del Barrio

TONATIERRA

www.tonatierra.org

Tlahtol Macehualli: Las Guerras de Petropolis en Ucrania y el mundo entero

Comités de Defensa del Barrio
Press Release

Para entender la guerra se tiene que estudiar el patriotismo, el nacionalismo, sin dejar a un lado el egoísmo. Algunos de mis “amigos” se ofenden porque no me uno al coro patriótico pidiendo solamente la condenación de Rusia por su invasión a Ucrania. La guerra es llegar a la enajenación total como ser humano. Matar a tu próximo legalmente independientemente del lado que defiendas y con la bendición de la santa madre iglesia es el peor crimen contra la humanidad entera.

Y no, no me uno a condenar solamente a Rusia y Putin, se tiene que condenar a todos los presidentes, primeros ministros, y todas las Naciones supuestamente Unidas.

Todas las naciones adoctrinan a los niños desde su mas tierna edad con himnos nacionales, “mexicanos al grito de guerra,” estados unidos “las bombas explotando en el aire dio prueba a través de la noche que nuestra bandera todavía estaba allí,” Rusia “Lealtad a nuestra patria amada nos da fuerza,” Ucrania “Nuestras almas y cuerpo daremos por nuestro país,” y así sucesivamente por el mundo entero se programa a los niños, cuando todavía no tienen habilidad de analizar, en un patriotismo ciego que se puede evocar en aquel momento que las clases en el poder necesiten soldados para defender intereses ajenos a los del pueblo.

Es una especie de programación hipnótica que se puede utilizar para levantar ejércitos, enviarlos a tierras lejanas donde no hablan ni el idioma, ni conocen las costumbres, pero van a pelear en contra del comunismo, el dictador, el déspota, el pagano. Una vez hice un experimento donde agarré dos banderitas, una norteamericana y otra mexicana. Hice como que iba pisar la bandera norteamericana y una clase de mexicanos aprendiendo ingles aplaudieron y les dio gusto.
 

Luego cambié los papeles e hice lo mismo con la mexicana. Los estudiantes se pusieron serios y algunos hasta se enojaron conmigo, casi me querían golpear. Les explique que así trabaja el patriotismo y como se utiliza para tener una cantidad de cuerpos dispuestos a defender los intereses corporativos. Les conté como los Magonistas, (seguidores de Flores Magón) pisoteaban la bandera en mítines durante la revolución mexicana y tenían que salir huyendo porque los mismos revolucionarios que peleaban con Villa o Zapata, que gritaban “Tierra y Libertad,” estaban dispuestos a matarlos por un trapo pintado al que les enseñaron a respetar, amar, y dar la vida desde su mas tierna edad.

El patriotismo a través de los símbolos patrios es integrado al ego individual donde “un soldado en cada hijo te dio.”  Un insulto a la bandera, al país, ya no es algo abstracto, es algo personal por el cual Vladimir, Juan, Hanz, Robert, Danny, esta dispuesto a dar la vida. Al soldado raso ruso lo mueve su bandera, su amor a la patria, al ucranio lo motiva la defensa de su bandera, su nación.

Las razones verdaderas de la guerra no importan.

Que es una guerra por el control del petróleo no importa, es mas ni siquiera lo saben la mayoría de los reclutas. Durante la guerra de Afganistán los soldados norteamericanos no sabían ni siquiera que estaban disputándose el control de los minerales de las montañas, el mercado del opio, ellos solo sabían que fueron a buscar a Osama Bin Laden, y después que peleaban por traer “democracia.” Pero en el fondo ellos peleaban por la bandera y el orgullo nacional de estados unidos.

Algunos preguntaran que ¿porque digo esto? Porque yo también fui parte de la fuerza aérea norteamericana. Porque yo también en un tiempo creí que estaba allí defendiendo la libertad, la democracia y la justicia.

Hasta que me di cuenta solo éramos ejércitos de ocupación para mantener el flujo del petróleo del medio oriente para las grandes trasnacionales. Espero que esta guerra no se transforme en una guerra mundial nuclear inculcada por patriotismos infundados, patriotismos convertidos en cuerpos calcinados por las bombas nucleares.

Salvador Reza

 

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 Aucan Huilcaman

Consejo de Todas las Tierras Mapuche

SIMILITUD DE LA INVASION EN UCRANIA Y EN WALLMAPUCHE / MACROZONA SUR Y LAS CONDICIONES PARA LA PAZ