8. Unity With the Indigenous Pan Americans

Toward the Unity of North American Africans

8. Unity With the Indigenous Peoples in the Americas

There is clear evidence North American Africans were here before Columbus. We know Africans traveled here during the time (circa 900 AD) of the Ghana, Mali and Shonghay empires. Thus we have an integral relationship with the indigenous people throughout the Americas. Certainly we have a blood relationship with the kidnapped Africans who are scattered throughout the Americas, the millions in Brazil who speak Portuguese, the Spanish speaking millions in Columbia, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, Mexico and throughout the Caribbean.

Our oppressed condition is more in harmony with the indigenous and Africans throughout the Americas than with the oppressor Euro-Americans. Yet we are mostly ignorant of our historic relationship with our brothers and sisters. It brought tears to my eyes to discover Afro-Mexicans, Afro-Cuban, Afro Columbians, Afro-Hondurans, Afro-Brazilians, et al. Part of the tears was because I could not communicate with them in Spanish and Portuguese. In spite of language, there was an undeniable spiritual unity and brotherhood. There was instant love between us. The tragedy was than we didn't know each other existed.

Today, the moment has arrived for Pan American unity of us with our indigenous and African American brothers and sisters. At this hour we have much to learn from them. Yes, we have a black president for the first time in 400 years. But in Bolivia we have an indigenous man as president for the first time in 500 years and he, unlike Obama, is a revolutionary! The winds of revolutionary change are blowing throughout the Americas and we need to be in harmony with the winds blowing in Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador , Brazil, Venezuela and elsewhere.

They are striving to destroy the raw capitalist economic model imposed on them by Yankee imperialism, that has kept them in poverty, ignorance and disease for centuries. We have been in the identical situation but out leaders would have us continue in this state of economic wretchedness. We must unite and work with our brothers and sisters throughout the Americas to create a common future for ourselves that transcends the European white supremacy culture.
Our ignorance of the need for Pan American unity is quite similar to our attitude toward Pan African unity (but we will deal with Pan African unity is another essay).

We harbor racist attitudes toward our Pan American brothers and sisters just as the white man hates them, though he loves to exploit their labor and natural resources. Yes, he loves everything about them but them, to quote a poem by Paradise. But they have declared death on capitalism. They have declared that economics is not totally about profit but there is a social element, economics is for cultural development, not simply growth.

We must detox from our addiction to raw capitalism. And we need our Pan American brothers and sisters to help us detox and recover. You may need to unite and learn from the people who survive on rice and beans, who live on dirt floors without electricity and running water. You must rid yourselves of your white supremacy mentality of arrogance and superiority. Do not hate the indigenous people for wanting to come across the border to reclaim their land, yes, their land! How can you talk about Mexicans, at least they make their own soap, their own toilet paper, their own beer and tequila , their own clothes. You don't, so yes, we must unite to defeat this horrible monster called capitalism that has enslaved us and seeks to devour us, that has kept us divided and full of hatred, jealousy and envy of each other.