Open Letter to Telesur

by Ricardo Levins Morales

During the same years that Simón Bolivar was warning the newly independent nations of Latin America that the greatest threat to their sovereignty was U.S. imperialism, and urged a strategy of unity and cultural independence in order to prevent a reconquest, the great Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa were warning the indigenous people of North America of the same dangers, and built a Pan-Indian alliance to unify the Native nations, restore indigenous cultural and spiritual values, and oppose U.S. expansion.

Two hundred years later, U.S. capitalism and imperial domination continue to be the greatest threats to sovereignty, democracy, economic, social and environmental justice inside and outside its borders, in Latin America and the world.  The revolutionary processes now taking place in Latin America represent the most successful opposition to that threat, and have made it the most hopeful place on earth in a time of tremendous danger.  The support and defense of an integrated, independent, egalitarian Latin America capable of withstanding U.S. domination is in the highest interests of all people, but especially of the people of the United States, whose liberation has always been deeply entwined, whether we knew it or not, with that of all of America.   At the same time, everything we are able to do to weaken U.S. imperialism has impact around the world, but especially in Latin America. 

---

by Ricardo Levins Morales

During the years of decolonizations and revolutionary uprisings, we took our part in a worldwide surge of resistance.  In the backlash of empire that brought you death squads and dictatorships, we were also under attack.  The wave of new and peaceful revolutions has turned your dry fields green, while not only does our drought drag on, our landscape is on fire.  

After decades of lost battles and fractured causes, our leaders brought down by repression and bribery, and our birthright of humanism and solidarity undermined by a toxic culture of consumerism and glorified violence, and a national cult of individualism, our own social movements are weakened and in disarray, in desperate need of any good news that can cross our borders. Your triumph is our medicine. 

If Tecumseh were with us now, if he turned his long gaze south upon the promise of ALBA, he would know what he saw.  He would have a seat at that table.  But though we are heirs to his vision, we have not yet built our 21st century Tecumsian Alliance.  While Bolivar rode victorious across the map of South America, Tecumseh was killed in battle, his people exiled, his body buried in secret to prevent its desecration, and his alliance did not survive him.   Our first independence as a nation was built on the defeat of most of our peoples.  Our bicentennial was a national festival of imperial patriotism.  In our long, proud history of resistance, true victories have been few.

Our struggle to challenge U.S. capitalism from within, and yours to resist it from without, are inextricably bound.  The people of the United States could be a powerhouse of solidarity for the new, socialist democracies of the continent.  The informed hearts and minds of our people can be mobilized against military intervention in your countries, just as the Viet Nam peace movement of forty years ago, spearheaded by U.S. soldiers, grew to include large sectors of the population, and helped end that war.

---

by Ricardo Levins Morales

U.S. youth of color, economically deprived, politically disenfranchised and targeted by racist violence, are extremely vulnerable to recruitment into the military.  The more they know about the Bolivarian movements to the south, the more receptive they will be to an inoculation of hope, which is the best defense against their militarization.   The Latino/a population of the U.S. is increasingly under attack, as immigrants from Latin America are blamed for the collapsing economy.  We are the scattered children of the continent,  and our inclusion in the project of regional integration offers us the protection of a continental family, which we strengthen in turn.  

If all the social movements and leftist governments of Latin America are under assault by media terrorism, we live in the central command post of that assault.  The U.S. corporate media industry has an almost total monopoly on the information available to our people, so that very few of us know about Latin America’s history, struggles or present reality.  On the day of the coup in Honduras, while the Honduran people were shown cartoons, we watched endless footage of Michael Jackson. 

The United States is one of the few countries that prides itself on ignorance of other languages, and the pressures of racism and assimilation guarantee that the children of Latin American immigrants quickly lose their fluency in the language of their parents.  Although Telesur can be watched on any computer with an internet connection, an English language version of its broadcast would open a floodgate of new information and inspiration.  Access to the news from the south could be our own Operation Milagro, one that restores not our eyesight, but our imaginations, our sense of the possible.  

---

by Ricardo Levins Morales

We need the uninsured sick of this wealthiest nation to witness ALBA’s free clinics and constitutional guarantees of health care.  We need the discouraged teachers of our bankrupt public schools to see literacy in bloom and libraries climbing mountain ranges on the backs of donkeys.  In the nation that imprisons the largest percentage of its population, most of them for non-violent crimes, in cities where the police are one of the principle threats to the public safety of the poor and brown, we need the imprisoned, and those who will be, to hear the Venezuelan Foreign Minister’s speech to the graduates of the new police academy, that their job is to end the injustice at the root of crime.  We need them to know that Bolivian judges must speak indigenous languages.  In a country where the homeless sleep on cardboard boxes beneath window displays of glittering merchandise, we need to watch guns melted into steel to build houses, and the multiplication of roofs over the unsheltered.  We need the original peoples whose land is stripped for coal and uranium to hear the drums at celebrations of indigenous autonomy, to know the numbers of repossessed acres in the hands of Bolivian Indians, that Mother Earth has legal rights in Ecuador, that there is oil being left in the ground for her sake.

Just as Radio Habana boosted its signal to reach the blockaded people of Honduras, broadcasting news of treachery and bloodshed, acts of defiance and plans for resistance, an English language Telesur news broadcast, web site and subtitles for documentaries and political commentary can breach the wall of deception between us and open the way to an alliance that would make both Tecumseh and Bolívar proud.
                                                                        ◊◊◊

More artwork by Ricardo Levins Morales can be seen here.
    

---