Comrade Carlo (FTP-Baltimore)

The Imperialist settler state known as the USA is separating families at the border. This is an undeniable fact, and the body of evidence is damning. Across the world, and within the US itself, the people recognize and denounce this as heinous, repulsive, and downright criminal. The history of the current political border is the history of colonization, veiled as manifest destiny to give it a divine aspect and obscure its objectively violent and unjust nature. The current boundary has been placed by the arbitrary whim of the colonizer caste on the indigenous peoples of North Amerika. While we are all affected by the brutal carving of a settler-colonial political boundary, the violence is targeting the indigenous peoples of Mexico, the Southwest United States, and Central America primarily. Due to the colonization of Central America by the Spanish colonizers, the establishment of the caste system, and the resulting persecution/exploitation, the indigenous groups of Central America have had their homes, their collective wealth, and now their families taken from them. The death tolls and violence against these peoples rise astronomically every year as they take the brunt of the crude and savage violence of the united Euro-Amerikan Settler Alliance. The Ki’che, Kaqchikel, Mam, Q’eqchi, Yucatec, Mopan, Kekchi, Miskito, Ramas, Mayangna, Quitirrisí, Matambú, Chorotega, Maleku, Bribri, Cabécar, Guaymí, Boruca, Térraba, Pipil, Lenca, Kakawira and others who make up the asylum seekers are fleeing mass murder and displacement in their homeland (directly attributable to the United States), and are welcomed with tear gas and concentration camps in the USA. These peoples are the most exploited, and their voices the least heard.

American settler-colonialism and imperialism is undeniably the greatest evil that threatens the potential prosperity and peace of the indigenous peoples of the Amerikas. Historically, the US has used every pretext to appropriate indigenous land, dominate Latin America’s markets and destroy nearly all attempts at establishing people’s democracy. From the imperialist corporations’ targeted assassinations of indigenous leaders such as the crimes of the United Fruit Company (Chiquita) in Guatemala, to direct coups in Honduras as recently as 2008 and Bolivia in 2019, the destabilization of the Global South is well documented. This disorder and chaos makes it nearly impossible for the indigenous peoples to live in their own lands and provide for their families.

Declaring that these indigenous parents are criminals for stepping over a political boundary set up to bulwark the settler states control of a territory and then stealing their children is scientifically proven to be fucked up. Decades of research, by hundreds of pediatricians and child psychologists shows that strong relationships to caregivers are crucial to the development of children. Even colonizer medical authorities corroborate this — Drs. Mackenzie, Bosk and Zeanah state clearly that “cumulative adversity can last a lifetime, even increasing the risk of early death” in their article “Separating Families at the Border — Consequences for Children’s Health and Well-Being”. It is undeniably traumatic, and the results will stunt the growth of the children that the USA is claiming to protect against these refugees fleeing violence that the USA is responsible for. This act of legerdemain is so thinly disguised that the monstrous surface reveals itself at the most casual of glances.

Understanding this is crucial to understanding why the vulgar treatment of the asylum seekers at the US border is so miserably repugnant. This atrocity is completed by the hypocrisy that is endemic to settler society. As often as they make their declaration of human rights, they find new insidious ways to transgress indigenous people’s humanity. One such example is the violation of laws of bourgeois liberal “International Peace Organizations” such as the United Nations. Studies conducted by Elon University, Idaho State University, CSU Monterey Bay, Salem University, and others reveal the irreparable damage done by the “Zero Tolerance Policy” enacted against the children of the asylum seekers. The same study outlines the international legal prohibitions against these actions, starting with the League of Nations Declaration on the Rights of Children in 1926 and continuing all the way up to United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 (Monico, Rotabi, Vissing, et al). This shows the blatant disregard of the liberal civility this state claims as integral. The contradiction between word and deed equates to Liberal Democracy for white settlers, Settler Colonialism for Black and Brown Colonized People.

As revolutionaries, we know that theses crimes must be paid for with settler blood. Only the complete annihilation of the settler state machinery will guarantee that the victims of the genocidal colonizer states around the world will have a chance at peace. The colonized peoples will continue to survive and wage struggle against their inveterate enemies, as will all revolutionary allies of the oppressed peoples.

DEATH TO US IMPERIALISM AND SETTLER COLONIALISM!
VICTORY TO THE NEW AFRIKAN AND INDIGENOUS NATIONS!
EXIGIMOS IGUALDAD

Sources
Mackenzie MJ, Bosk E, Zeanah CH. Separating families at the border—consequences for children’s health and well-being. N Engl J Med. 2017. https://doi-org.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/10.1056/NEJMp1703375

Monico, C., Rotabi, K., Vissing, Y. et al. Forced Child-Family Separations in the Southwestern US Border Under the “Zero-Tolerance” Policy: the Adverse Impact on Well-Being of Migrant Children (Part 2). J. Hum. Rights Soc. Work 4, 180–191 (2019). https://doi-org.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/10.1007/s41134-019-00095-z

Minority Rights Group International, World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples – Guatemala : Maya, January 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/49749d163c.html [accessed 3 November 2020]