Yampara indigenous people of Bolivia celebrate a ritual. Photo: Rocio Rua Alvis.
By Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez — Dec 7, 2023
Without the organization of culture and communication within our community, our best decolonizing efforts occur as islands of “good intentions,” even if they are educated, ingenious, and passionate. There is no correct practical application without correct organization. That is a major weakness and an urgent current task. What should such a community organized against symbolic manipulation look like? Perhaps we do not know it completely, but it is inexcusable to know how we do not want it to be, [without considering what it should be.] That is why we need a semiotics for de-colonization.
In order to subjugate us into to the hegemonic equation of “dominators vs. dominated,” we have been disorganized in thought, word and deed. The empire spends more effort in disorganizing us than in anything else; they unload bundles of confusing ideology, fear, political blackmail, class hatred, shameful aesthetics, and symbolic, police and military violence. Any organizing initiative to emancipate ourselves from this reigning economic barbarism and scourge must face an arsenal of disorganizing devices. Nevertheless, the forces of decolonization are resisting and multiplying little by little.
The colonizing, military, banking and religious apparatus (in its old and new versions) is so long-lived and extensive that the inventory becomes the biography of all generations, old and young. We have it even in the most “intimate” emotions. It invades our mind, body, and heart. The apparatus of colonial domination understands its mission in a totalitarian way and there is no corner of life in which we are not entangled with the huge tangle of mediocre idiosyncrasies, imposed traditions, ridiculousness, kitsch, superciliousness and ignorance, sometimes certified by official education. A tomographic [cross-section] of our current state of colonization would show metastasizing [tumours.] Even some “decolonizing” therapeutics seem to be contaminated by colonialism, as in those “education plans” that send the best students to complete their training in imperial academies.
It is impossible to defeat colonialism with unipersonal audacity. That is individualism that delays, distracts, or discredits the task of organizing the oppressed against the oppressors. In contrast, we have accumulated invaluable contributions in the formation of consciences and intelligent strategies. We have authors and schools of diverse inspirations. We have information and evidence, wisdom and science. What we do not have is a democratic, participatory, and internationalist organization for the decolonization of our lives and our peoples. Do not confuse organization with institutions or bureaucracies.
Five centuries have passed since Columbus’ voyage; 200 years of the Monroe Doctrine and, for example, agricultural, livestock, energy, mining, fishing production, etc. are mostly controlled by transnational corporations whose function, in addition to plundering, is the systematic obstruction of the sovereignty of the peoples for the solution of the problems of indebtedness, marginalization, hunger, housing, education, and health. To this must be added the modes, means and relations of cultural and communicational production concentrated in companies whose core interest is mercantilism and not the diversity of identity expressions or the development of vernacular decolonizing artistic or scientific talents. Administrative and educational models, for example, tend to be ideologically dependent on oligarchic models, not subject to collective scrutiny; they are decided by a bureaucratic elite infatuated with its “loyal knowledge and understanding” and, when not, with its business. Not all bureaucratic apparatuses are decolonizing tools, even if they have a façade as State instruments with democratic endorsements.
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The expressions of colonialism are so complex and have penetrated so deeply [into society] that, even among the pages of many books, colonialist whiffs slip unnoticed and even sanctified by some sects. Even if they disguise themselves as “academic.” It is not advisable to idealize decolonization, it is necessary to objectify and politicize it, to present the challenges crudely. Starting with self-criticism. Lest in the name of “decolonization” we deify scoundrels and fashionable scoundrels, or we promote esotericism to anesthetize the colonized, making them believe that “decolonization” in actuality comes between the pages of some books, the saliva of the news, or on the backs of a certain messianic “good will.”
Decolonizing ourselves will not be the work of some enlightened being and their friends, owners of the “keys” and the culteran storytelling, recommending us to be more patient. That is to say, to renounce organizing for self-management in order to embrace the “sheep-like” organization, and to forget about the class struggle. Much equality of opportunities and little equality of conditions.
Thus, it is necessary to decolonize the hegemonic economy in its totality, the structure and the superstructure, always inseparable; to examine the churches with their history and consequences; to review education at all levels, health, housing and the kind of life they impose on us.; to review media and culture to the point of detailing which colonial interests they obey and to fight them; to review the executive, legislative and judicial powers—their faults and their manias, their delays and their injustices until their role in the processes of economic, political, ideological and cultural colonization is clear. The a priori outcome is horrifying.
Decolonization does not mean hysterical persecution or ideological purge. It implies a thorough humanist contrast of what we have with what we had and what was taken from us by force of arms or brainwashing. Decolonizing means fundamentally to fight for what is needed to annihilate the oppressors-oppressed formula and to put an end to exploitation, plundering, inequality, injustice, and the unhappiness of the majority dispossessed by a minority that lives with all the privileges that, as it is said, Christopher Columbus wanted for his masters.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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Fernando Buen Abad
Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez is Mexican by birth, (Mexico City, 1956) specialist in Philosophy of Image, Philosophy of Communication, Criticism of Culture, Aesthetics and Semiotics. He is a Film Director graduated from New York University, a Bachelor of Communication Sciences, a Master in Political Philosophy and a Doctor of Philosophy. Member of the Consultative Council of TeleSUR. Member of the World Association for Semiotic Studies. Member of the International Movement of Documentalists. Member of the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity. Rector-founder of the University of Philosophy. He has taught postgraduate courses and conferences at various Latin American universities. He has obtained various distinctions for his intellectual work, including the Simón Bolívar National Journalism Prize awarded by the Venezuelan State. He is currently Director of the Sean MacBride University Center for Information and Communication and of the Institute of Culture and Communication of the National University of Lanús
