The West Coast was tempestuous in a way I’ve never seen before. The Caribbean Sea, ever the most crystalline and serene mirror of the sky, had churned up into a swell of relentless energy. Her tides near the shore pulled in in in, sucking up into a mounting form that grew as it lurched forward, then curled over with a sharp edge and bashed down with a force that roared as the rest of its barrelled body followed, throwing a white explosion up and out into the air and raining down droplets that joined its retreat. This was the rhythm of an agitation and deep motion beyond what we could see. She breathed in this way, invading her foamy reach all up under the beach chairs and causing a scramble.

I went walking to the far right side of the bay, thinking that the swell was eased there, and on the way the usually silky soft beach was bombarded by her huffing and heaving. I, along with other strollers, regarded her approaches tentatively assuming that our upright and erect bodies would surely pass through her outreaching extremities with ease. She made quick business of catching us off guard not one but two times — first with a push that trips you up and lurches you forward, and then with a pull that has you flailing and double stepping, if not already catching sand in your backside.

I got to the farthest end of the bay, where it’s typically so shallow that the water is almost warm like a drawn bath. But even in this corner it was tossing itself in all directions, like a wild laugh or tormented outlash. I tried to be tactful about entering, waiting on an interval of calm to at least be able to dip my head in. I couldn’t perceive that where I expected to be that coarse, pebbled sand at the base of the shore was actually swept completely away. Instead there was bare exposed rock, large boulders, sudden holes, and sharp edges. Feeling my way through this quickly felt precarious. I retreated. I saw that in this corner the tides had either deposited or excavated many large and medium-sized coral rocks. I was content to pick through them, resolving to take some home to study their intricate skeletal patterns.

On my way back I noticed that the waves had advanced all the way up to the gardens of the extravagant beach houses on this side. They had unburied and toppled over a string of poles that had been used to mark off a plot of beach. Now they looked like sad, rigid soldiers, stubbornly and pointlessly conjoined as the sand slipped from beneath them. The sandpipers scuttled around nearby, making me laugh. I had to admire the way this turquoise sea so ruthlessly cast off the role she is so widely lauded for.

At home that night I was grateful that the construction on the coast road was halted. It was quiet, apart from the usual chirping orchestra. I lay down but I kept my eyes wide open, straining to hear crash after crash from across the road, hoping to sense if she still breathed like that. The waning half-moon made the wrought iron window shine silvery. I did not sleep well this night, I felt a kind of uneasiness dressed in both anticipation and confusion. On Monday I worked as well as I could, and I also succumbed to a heavy three o’clock nap, lulled by a soft cross breeze.

Today I went again to the bay at Sandy Lane — this time at sunset since, starting tomorrow, only morning swims will be permitted. Earlier I had read in the news that two people went missing at sea that Sunday. They had found the body of one, a British visitor who got swept up just over in Holetown and was found all down by Payne’s Bay. The other was a local boy whom they had not found yet, he was swimming in Speightstown with his friends. It’s striking how dearly an underestimation can cost.

As the air cooled I could now enter the water with ease. The surfers were still flocked by the breaks, but the waves emerged gently and carried them lightly. I could almost swim out to their distance. The water, usually clear as the air itself, was now a murky soft blue straight through to the bottom. Being submerged and opening my eyes I could see that it was for the innumerable grains of sand and stirred up particles, suspended in the light of the heavenly ball of sun wavering on the other side of the surface. I swam slowly back to the shore, my eyes stinging from the salt.

During its early emergence, cinema was a craft accessible and developed by mainly North American and European industries. With the victory of the Cuban Revolution, this changed in a major way. One of the first institutions set up by Castro’s government was the Instituto Cubano de Artes Industriales y Cinematográficos (ICAIC). In their fervor to break free from the influence of Northern hegemonic culture, Cuban filmmakers found ways to challenge and redefine the norms of cinema — both in practice and in theory. Culture was seen as a crucial means of fulfilling the Revolutionary vision for a “new” Marxist-Socialist society. The ICAIC was thus tasked with rethinking the assumptions of the medium of film, its potential capacities and objectives, and its relationship to the audience and their reality. One truly revolutionary director whose work stands out amongst the corpus of Cuban film, is Sara Gómez. Her 1977 feature length film ​De Cierta Manera ​is outstanding because it illustrates her highly nuanced perspective of the Revolutionary project as an Afro-Cuban woman. At this time, the ideological restructuring of the nation had rapidly transformed Cuban social institutions, and official political discourse left no room for outright opposition to the cause. Castro once famously said in regard to cultural liberalism: “Within the Revolution, everything, against it, nothing”.

How then, could a minority voice critique these drastic national transformations? Specifically, ​how did Sara Gómez’s unconventional technique of fusing fiction with documentary form in her 1977 film ​De Cierta Manera ​serve to deliver her critique of Cuba’s national revolutionary project, from her perspective at the intersection of marginalized race and gender? T​o grasp this, first a contextualization of this period is necessary — with a focus on Cuba’s newly adopted cultural politics, as well as traditional social attitudes — in order to frame the message of her film. An illustration of the ICAIC’s theoretical reformulation of their cinematic approach will also need to be outlined, specifically Espinosa’s assertions in his essay “For an Imperfect Cinema”. A brief highlight of the basis of decolonial and feminist theory must also be presented to underscore the approach of Gomez’s subversive message. With this understanding established, my close reading of her film aims to argue that ​De Cierta Manera ​is a powerful example of culture jamming, in a profoundly ideological context that limited explicit opposition to the official socio-political discourse.

“Because of its special nature — an industrialised art and agent of cultural imperialism, on the one hand; on the other, the indigenous art form of the twentieth century and the vehicle of a powerful new mode of perception — because of this dual nature, film readily and acutely synthesised the whole range of cultural experience for a whole generation…The cinema club movement represented a breach in the defenses of cultural imperialism, and in this battlefield lie the origins of the ICAIC.” — Michael Chanan, The Cuban Image: Cinema and Cultural Politics in Cuba

The victory of the Cuban Revolution signified an unprecedented and explicit breaking away from a long history of Imperialist domination of the island. After centuries of European colonial, and later North American liberal-economic exploitation, the leftist cause signified independence on every level. That is, along with the reorganization of political and economic structures came the reorganization of social relations. To facilitate this, a strong contra-hegemonic discourse had to be elaborated, which was explicitly manifested in speeches, declarations and manifestos. Therefore, it is imperative to be sensitive to the fact that this period was characterized by both destabilized​and​destabilizing discourse, as “questions of power and of institutional hierarchies” were being challenged by the left; and that specifically Latin American actors were speaking back to traditional “formulate ideas about the world” (Schneider).

What did the Cuban brand of Marxism mean for filmmakers? An overarching theme in the political rhetoric was that of empowering the masses. In the 1962 Second Declaration of Havana, the national cause was declared a unifying cause, that “will be carried out by the people”. The leftist movement in Latin America more broadly was defined as the “struggles of masses and ideas. An epic which will be carried forward by our people.” By then, all major enterprises had officially been nationalised, including cinemas. What this shift represented in the cultural sphere was that intellectuals and artists could no longer correspond solely to the exclusive elite public sector. Rather, they had to correspond realistically to the conditions of the popular masses as their audience. This represented a major break from the European tradition of national culture being “disseminated” from the upper classes to the masses. In this way, the artists and intellectuals were considered creatively liberated, by not being constrained to cater to the rules, interests and perspectives of the few.

The ICAIC was set up so quickly because cinema as an art form was seen as an especially productive in stimulating cultural decolonization on a mass level. Yet, adjusting to this shift did present some obstacles. For filmmakers, at first, “there was very little (they) could safely assume about the audience beyond its powerful popular support for the revolution” (Chanan). Furthermore, Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton describes how this shift represented a “rupture in the social function of the artist.” For the individual artist in this new social function, the revolution posed a challenge in that it required “permanent incorporation of its totalising presence”. Hence, the total agency of individual expression inevitably encountered constraints. However, although a nationalised monopoly of the cinema industry, the ICAIC did endeavour to respect creative rights, once exercised within a disciplined application. It is within this unique condition of both new freedoms and constraints, that Cuban revolutionary filmmakers initiated the pursuit of aesthetic risks and formal experiments.

Another element that distinguished the Cuban filmmakers’ experience from that of the industrialized North, is the condition of “underdevelopment”. When considering that national politics sought to liberate the masses from impoverishment as a material condition, it follows that national culture faced the task of liberating the masses from this as a condition of consciousness of that period. To liberate mass consciousness in the Global South, an understanding of the “truth” of their social reality was necessary; that is, “self-knowledge”. As Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire phrased, only those “who can reflect upon the fact that they are determined are capable of freeing themselves”.

The Soviet culture of socialist realism was an institution of the Stalinist project, which sought to reproduce the material reality of socialism (Dobrenko). However, this Bolshevik approach was based on the assumption of “universal truths”, and the development of their revolutionary films tended towards “educational” propaganda (Kenez). Socialist realism was seen as an unsuitable approach in the cultural context of the Global South, and so Cuban filmmakers adopted a ​critical realist approach, which transformed the idea of social documentary.

For Latin American “Third Cinema” (Tercer Cine) filmmakers, it was erroneous to assume universal concepts of politics and arts, as conceived by the developed world as separate affairs (Solanas & Getino). They referred to the approach of liberating the popular masses from the existing culture which relegated them to a realm of silence — as a process of “conscientization” (conscienciación). They were hence much more concerned with ​communication with the masses as part of the political purpose of their films, in contrast to the Bolshevik approach. This was an approach unique to the leftist revolution in Latin America, and their filmic language was transformed to accommodate it. Filmmaking thus constituted a “dialectical affair which (promoted) a very different attitude towards both the idea and criteria of truth”. Particularly in its early stages, Third Cinema focused on documentary projects, as “the possibilities offered by the living document, naked reality and the power of enlightenment of audiovisual means make the film far more effective than any other tool of communication” (Solanas & Getino).

However, as the Revolution became an everyday part of reality, filmmakers had to respond to the “process of maturation, of reflection, and analysis of (their) accumulated experiences” (Alea). Tomás Gutierrez Alea argued that as the initial exaltation of the Revolution became more ordinary, it was no longer sufficient to simply capture “naked reality” on the street. He asserted that filmmakers had the responsibility to engage the masses’ active participation in constructing society, and “no longer let the public enthusiastically cling to the Revolution…the masses (had) to develop ways of understanding problems, strengthening their ideological coherence and of reaffirming daily the principles which give life to the Revolution”. He defined popular cinema as one that is not only accepted by the community, but also simultaneously expresses and responds to their most “profound and authentic interests”, with the ultimate objective of bettering their conditions.

What exactly did the reality, interests and experience of the Cuban population consist of then? For the particular focus of my investigation, the social dimensions of race and gender will be explored. Despite the fact that the official socio-political discourse and institutional structures were transformed radically according to the egalitarian ideals of the Revolution, traditional social attitudes are ingrained over centuries, and do not necessarily transform in tandem with the ideals of the movement. Cuba, like most Caribbean islands, has a large population of African descent, due to extensive use of enslaved labourers by colonial powers. In its cultural development, features of African practices and symbolism have remained more “immediate” in Cuba than in other islands. Despite playing a significant role in the fight for independence from Spain (1895–1898), Afro-Cubans faced both formal and informal discrimination and remained marginalized as a result of exclusion from social institutions. This was due to the fact that the independent Creole administration wished to maintain ties with the United States, and saw it against their interests to have their “character” associated with Black culture (Sawyer).

In the 20th century, much of the Afro-Cuban population joined the Communist Party, as their community faced negligent living conditions, unequal access to employment and high rates of imprisonment. The Revolution signified a “watershed moment” in the political landscape, as racial reforms were officially endorsed. However, Revolutionary rhetoric quickly considered the domestic “race problem” as “solved”, and attempted to make continuing inequalities invisible. Racial ideology in post-Revolutionary Cuba is hence complex, as it created an “inclusionary discrimination”, meaning that Afro-Cubans were officially acknowledged as essential parts of the nation and its culture, but still treated as unequal members.

When turning to discuss gender relationships in Latin American societies, one immediately encounters the term “machismo”. This concept refers generally to hyper-masculinity, and has been used in social studies to make over-generalizations, often condescending, about the male population of the whole region. It is hence necessary to clarify both the popular understanding, and the roots of this term. It typically classifies a whole range of traits, relating to male power, overt sexuality, bravado, drunkenness and arrogance (Hardin). It also tends to conflate courage and aggression. The term is often “presented as a Latin American phenomenon that was most notably manifested among lower-class men …[it was] exotic, an indicator of “underdevelopment,” a phenomenon foreign to the culture of the United States” (Ramirez, as cited in Hardin).

What is problematic about the overgeneralized use of this term is the fact that much of the traits consigned to it are arbitrary, as they can very well be found also in Northern societies. Nevertheless, it is evident that Latin American societies do consign certain expectations and behaviours to males. To understand machismo with more specificity in the Latino context, one must refer to the social norms founded by Spanish conquistadors — as they established themselves as the only valid model of masculinity.

It was part of their tradition to fiercely defend individual honour and public dignity; and traits of pride and vanity were esteemed. The violence of both colonial conquest and the battles for independence founded concepts of masculinity which must be demonstrated through heroism and aggression. Misogyny took root in colonial societies for reasons also attributed to the conquistadors. Physical and sexual abuse of indigenous and African women was enabled through relegation to inferior “Otherness”, whilst Creole women were consigned to what is known as ​Marianismo,​ referring to the Catholic ideals of female domesticity and submissiveness, and also abused on the basis of their husbands’ honour and pride (Stevens).

What did the Cuban Revolution then signify for machismo and for women’s equality? The Revolution was not won overnight, but through a long tumultuous armed conflict. Such a conflict required combatants, and as a result, models of “revolutionary masculinity” were formulated (Chase). The movement’s struggles innately required the willingness to enact political violence. Military leaders, such as Castro and Guevara, rallied forces by attributing integrity and courage to armed protest, and cowardice to civil activism or reluctance to join combat. In this process, the famous icon of the bearded guerilla warrior was forged as the epitome of Revolutionary spirit, indicating certain continuities of masculine identity. This created distinctions both amongst men, and between men and women about what defined a “real” Revolutionary.

Of course, in this sphere of combat women were excluded. However, in the years building up to the armed insurgency, many Marxist women were political participants in the FDMC (Democratic Federation of Cuban Women), a branch of an international Soviet-sponsored group. It facilitated the “growth of a cadre of politically experienced radical women who saw issues of gender inequality linked to broader structural problems of capitalism and underdevelopment”. However, the FDMC did not directly support the armed insurgency, which had implications later on. That is, the Revolutionary government adopted a top-down, centralized agenda in pursuing women’s inclusion, which imposed upon the “more organic and plural” grassroots women’s movements, resulting in a “more homogenous and less radical” vision of emancipation.

Through this summary of the post-Revolutionary context of Cuba, as characterized by its destabilized and destabilizing discourse that aimed to break away from dominant Northern hegemony, we can ascertain specific conditions relevant to Sara Gómez’s film:

1. For filmmakers, the Revolution represented both new liberties and limitations as actors in the cultural sphere. The ICAIC assigned cinema the role of empowering the masses through “conscientization”. From this process emerged new dialectic filmic approaches, which sought to productively engage the popular community with their social reality.
2. In understanding the objectives of this new cultural politics, it was briefly explored how the elements of race and gender were traditionally situated in Cuban society. Despite the Revolutionary government’s official egalitarian rhetoric, their approach still maintained continuations of discrimination and inequality.

Hence, as both a filmmaker and a woman of colour, it can be argued that Sara Gómez aimed to address these problematic continuations, which were ambiguous phenomenon. In order to communicate this to the national audience, she had to undertake a creative and subtle approach, one that would instigate — but not explicitly instigate — critical reflection on their drastic social transformations.

As French Marxist film critics Camolli and Narboni (1971) asserted: “being a material product of the system, (film) is also an ideological product of the system” . In their context, they discussed film as a commodity within the capitalist system. In this investigation, film as an ideological product is constituted by nationalist interest, as defined by “the empowerment of the people”. This empowerment, however, had to be attributed to the state’s official agenda. It is hence evident that​ De Cierta Manera can be classified by Camolli and Narboni’s typology as a film which “seem at first sight to belong firmly within the ideology…but which turn out to be so only in an ambiguous manner”. This is done by a cinematic framework which “throws up obstacles in the way of ideology” which “lets us see it… and denounce it”. To present this how Gómez creates her subversive cinematic framework the intersecting theoretical elements pertaining to film genre and decolonial feminism must be explored.

“Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in quality or technique…
The only thing it is interested in is how an artist responds to the following question: What are you doing in order to overcome the barrier of the “cultured” elite audience which up to now has conditioned the form of your work?”

- Julio​ ​García Espinosa

In his controversial 1969 essay “For an Imperfect Cinema”, Espinosa opens the topic by asking why it was that the “boom” in Latin American cinema had been met by applause and approval in Europe. He instigates, “why should we be worried about their accolades?”. He first explores the new role of the artist, which was certainly an unstable one in this context. He asserts that the desire of every artist is to express “the vision of a theme in terms that are inexpressible through other than artistic means.” He acknowledges that the creative function of art serves to stimulate change in attitudes towards life, but that — unlike sciences — the outcomes are unspecified, and is hence an “uncommitted” activity. For this reason artists feel an exaggerated need to justify themselves as productive individuals. Espinosa argues however, that in a truly revolutionary society, “the people on a whole” should exercise the artistic functions of critics and conscience of society.

In this moment, the advance of technology was evidently transforming and challenging the world of art. Reality was unfolding in such a way that, for the arts, the elite was being “done away with”. What Espinosa wanted to emphasize was that this should not induce anxiety, but rather optimism. “The development of science, of technology, of social theory and practice… has made possible as never before the active presence of masses in social life.” He asserts that “the task at hand is to find out if the conditions which enable spectators to transform themselves into agents — not merely more active spectators but genuine co-authors — are beginning to exist”. The term “imperfect cinema” provoked disputes, as it was assumed that it implied that political cinema in the Global South could not also be aesthetically beautiful. But he asks, “what is considered beauty today? And where is it found?” The term “imperfect” rather refers to the belief that the purpose of the film need not succumb to formal aesthetic or generic rules. The purpose of promoting imperfect cinema was to “show the process which generates the problems”, which hence runs against the grain of “cinema dedicated to celebrating results” or “cinema which ‘’beautifully illustrates” ideas or concepts which we already possess”.

Espinosa conceived of imperfect cinema, not only as an answer to the doubts and questions arising about the role and capacity of art (and artists); he also conceived it as a question, one that would “discover its own answers in the course of its development.” For this pursuit, all rules were to be disregarded: “it can make use of the documentary or the fictional mode or both… it can use all genres”. He believed these issues did not represent the real problems or goals for a revolutionary filmmaker, and that the disappearance of the “director as star” should be seen as positive prospect. This implied knocking the official poetics of film off of its pedestal, in order to truly let “a thousand different flowers bloom”.

One of the focuses of ​De Cierta Manera — particularly in the documentary segments of the film — is an exploration of the Afro-Cuban belief system, which is investigated in an attempt to attribute the causes of their social marginalisation. The authoritative voice-over explicitly addresses the relevant “afflictions” of “lacking work ethic” and “male chauvinism” as responsible factors (Ocasio). It is hence evident that the documentary segment refers to the intersection of both racialized and gendered identity. From its seemingly “empirical” analytical stance, it frames a correlation between Afro-Cuban religion and misogynistic attitudes. As Padrón points out, this represents a continuation of comprehending and theorizing nation building and social relations according to notions of subaltern “Otherness”, as established by colonial ideas of race and gender.

Mendez elaborates decolonial feminism as a concise approach to scrutinizing this phenomenon, as it combines both critical perspectives to interrogate its origins in post-colonial societies. She points out the need for historicized awareness, as colonial societies were constructed according to the intentional stratification of identities. The Catholic Spaniards enabled the material conditions and practice of enslavement and slave trade according to “categories of inferiorisation”, which also implicated a particular “Othering” of gender. That is, within the American and Caribbean context,“‘women were (re)defined in relation to enslaved physiognomically distinct laboring bodies, and were in fact partially empowered in relation to these bodies”.

This notion of empowerment in relation to “these bodies”, is the result of hierarchical stratification positioning of white women being relatively “​less inferior” to women of colour. This colonial notion also implied that the white man be the sole possessor of “valid” subjectivity, and thus naturalized his authority to impose his will over any “Other” positioned as subjects “inferior to him” . That being understood, it can be seen that men and women of colour are subjected to a “double articulation” of inferiorization (Padrón) which complicates the understanding of oppressive relationships, but is ultimately more productive in recognizing the structural continuities of discrimination. It can be seen that these continuities influence assumptions, even within projects that explicitly seek to eliminate inequalities, such as in Cuba.

In studying Sara Gómez’s film I aim to show how she constructs a layered cinematic structure, by using both fictional narrative and documentary form. This structure communicates an insinuated critique that reveals the contradictions encountered in the Revolutionary nation-building project, as it attempted to redefine both racial and gender relations. In order to wield productive insight within the limited scope of this article, the study will first provide a brief summary of the overall plot; it will then focus on the moments in which the fictional narrative switches over to the informative documentary mode. These are potent moments in the film, as the dynamics within the fictional narrative express a typical denoted story of love and life in post-Revolution Cuba. As conflicts arise within the story, it cuts off and the conflictive elements are explored by using the “empirical analytical” voice. This is assumed to represent an authoritative perspective as endorsed by the state, which serves to impose certain ideological connotations to the story. However, it will be demonstrated that the exchanging of these modes reveals to the audience that Cuban reality as it is experienced in “everyday stories”, does not necessarily adhere to the asserted official discourse.

“Cinema, for us, will inevitably be partial, it will be determined
by a taking of our consciousness, it will be the result of a defined attitude… in facing the need to break with traditional values, whether they be economic, ethnic or esthetic.”

- Sara Gómez

In the initial years of the ICAIC, as mentioned previously, documentary was the favoured mode of “authentic” revolutionary film production. However, this created the challenge of a scarcity of entertaining films; fiction was assumed to be associated with falsehood, but still the audience desired to see experience dramatized on-screen. What Gómez captured in her production of ​De Cierta Manera is an obscuring of falsehood and authenticity, by using a mixture of real people from the streets, and actors who play both themselves in the documentary segments, and scripted characters in the fictional story. The film opens with a scene from a bus factory ​asemblea — meaning “assembly”, which refers to the meetings amongst factory workers and the heads of labour unions to discuss their interests. In this case one worker, Humberto, is facing a kind of “trial” as he is suspected of slacking off from his shift. This was seen as a negligence of responsibility as a revolutionary worker, punishable by being sent to the country to work on a farm.

Humberto is giving a speech to defend his absence from work, until suddenly Mario bursts into a rage from Humberto’s insinuation that Mario is a “out to get him”, and he reveals that Humberto is indeed lying. The film then cuts to its title sequence montage, featuring the destruction and re-construction of the urban marginalised neighbourhood. The rest of the film builds back up to this opening scene by following the romance developing between Mario and Yolanda, a young middle-class teacher who is new to the schools of this outskirts community.

The title sequence gives way smoothly to the documentary voice-over, which explains the transformation of the slums as part of the Revolution’s plan to “tackle the problem of marginal cultures.” We are introduced to Yolanda as she gives an interview to the camera. She expresses that she doesn’t feel very good about teaching in these re-established neighbourhoods. She explains how she comes from a well-educated background, and thought that this “strange world” that she finds there “no longer existed.” The voice-over then pedagogically explains the origins of these outskirt communities, described as an “economic stratum” of poverty, with “well defined characteristics — principally unemployment.” It is asserted that these people were relegated to this condition “as a result of capitalist competition.” We see that the Marxist “official discourse” perceives this “problem of marginal culture” primarily as a ​class problem, which the state officially solved through their reconstruction and educational programmes.

However, this official discourse addresses the fact that, although their material conditions of marginalism have been transformed, the culture which was produced from being “cut off from production” still persists. It is claimed that this sector “has no idea that their vital interests lay in taking advantage of the work opportunities offered to them by the Revolution.” Their low education levels and oral traditions are point out as what makes them “cling” to their old habits, customs, beliefs and values. Whilst the voice-over explains this, it is layered with a soundtrack of rhythmic Afro-beats, and a montage featuring solely black Cubans being interrogated by police, idly relaxing and dancing in the streets, and zoom-in shots of their symbolic tattoos. The voice-over explicitly consigns the initial problem as one of class, with immediate solutions offered by the State. Yet, it is insinuated that the continuing problem of the “anti-social attitudes” is associated with the Afro-Cuban culture. This opening segment hence effectively illustrates the ambiguous attitudes of “inclusionary discrimination.”

This documentary mode subtly jumps back into the fictional story when a montage of factory workers then pauses to show a friendly exchange between Mario and Humberto, whom are recognizable from the opening scene. The audience is then brought into Mario’s family kitchen, with Yolanda and his mother waiting for him to arrive. This represents the fusion of the documentary “empirical view” with the story’s narrative world via the fictional love interest between Yolanda and Mario. In an intimate scene where they try to get to know each other, Yolanda explains that she comes from a “comfortable background”, which contrasts strongly with Mario’s more delinquent childhood growing up in the streets.

As fictional characters, they represent the differing realities from pre-Revolutionary Cuba, that have to come to terms with each other in this new socio-political setting. Evidently, Yolanda represents the progressive and egalitarian ideals of the Revolution embraced fully by the middle class; whereas Mario represents how more traditional social attitudes struggle to adjust accordingly within the new agenda. It is relevant to note that within Latin American literary traditions during the struggles for independence, narrative romances in novels were often used as a rhetoric tool to mitigate public and private tensions, and help consolidate national identity in times of conflict (Sommer). The narrative romance is hence an effective way to dramatize (and hence communicate) the conflicts encountered within national social relationships.

Yolanda and Mario’s roles as a fictional couple is crucial in exposing the obstacles relating both to racial relations, and its connection to machismo. In this intimate exchange, Mario confesses that, if it weren’t for the Revolution, he probably would have taken the oath to join the “secret” Afro-Cuban ​Abakuá religious sect. Yolanda has a shocked reflex reaction, to which Mario jokingly defends: “you probably think they eat babies, right?” This exchange is clearly the result of known social presumptions about this group, and the documentary function imposes itself on the narrative to conduct an official explanation.

This interjection of the voice-over as the “official discourse” manages to expose the way in which racial prejudice is also associated with notions of machismo. The “documentary analysis” of the ​Abakuá society uses abstract West African illustrations of figures, whilst (“pedagogically”) explaining how their society is exclusionary of women due to their religious myth that a woman betrayed the secret of their god. This myth is seen as the origins of their patriarchal and exclusionary practice. It should be noted that the use of these “exotic” illustrations, followed by vivid clips of men dancing at ​Abakuá sacrificial rituals, serves to dissociate the similarities between this culture’s patriarchal myth, and that of the Christian story of Eve and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. The voice-over acknowledges that the “bad behaviour” of southern Spanish sailors had some influence in the formation of machismo, but that misogynist and degenerate culture in marginalised society was mainly rooted in Abakuá practice.

The film explores both characters within their own “separate worlds” as well. The story of Yolanda unfolds to demonstrate the dilemmas of the top-down approach of the State’s educational programmes. She lashes out at both the children and parents for what she perceives to be delinquent, irresponsible and negligent behaviour. Her colleagues try to tell her that she must be more understanding of the practical struggles of their background, but she takes this as an attack. Through Mario’s interaction with his buddies from the factory, the culture of probing masculinity is revealed. He is taunted for being turned more “soft” for his relation with Yolanda. The ultimate tension between traditional and Revolutionary masculinity is revealed when Mario is asked by Humberto to cover for him while he takes off from work for a week to hook up with a woman. In this scenario Mario is faced with the dilemma of either honouring the old macho “code”, or that of the new working Revolutionary man; but one must negate the other.

There is much to be discussed about the development of Yolanda and Mario’s relationship, but the most potent point is the build up to Mario’s point of crisis — making a full narrative circle — when he exposes Humberto’s lies in the ​asemblea.​ It is in the aftermath of this incident that their incompatibility is most evident, as Mario is sorely regretful for exposing Humberto and lashes out at Yolanda for approving of him as an “informer”

Mario even later lashes out at male friend, who affirms Yolanda’s opinion by saying that he “did right” to the Revolution through his actions. But Mario insists angrily that he “acted like a woman” for betraying the “man’s code”. His friend instigates “what is a man for you then?”, to which Mario explodes: “me! I am a man! Not a fairy who betrays his friends!” The friend follows: “What is a Revolutionary?”, Mario insists: “someone like me! A macho!” It is clear that in this conundrum Mario finds himself in a double-bind, unable to reconcile the Old and the New expectations of an “honourable” man.

This all boils down to an incredible scenario made possible by Gómez’s subversive cinematic formulation. The final scene features a group of bus factory workers, none of whom are actors, but who carried out and improvised a heated debate on the fictional scenario of whether or not Mario’s actions were respectable or Revolutionary. Here is where true imperfect cinema can be seen in practice. For the audience, the real and the fictional have fused, after being contrastingly interwoven throughout the film to reveal conflicts within both realms. The audience witnesses the final scenario as so true to their reality, that they can identify as both the spectator and actor. Thus they are enabled to reflect on the same questions dealing with their own reality, as the people and characters featured on screen.

The very final shot features Mario returning to Yolanda, while at first they are seen fighting, as they walk away from the camera it seems that they make amends. Such a committal ending can be attributed to the fact that Gómez passed away before the final cut was produced, and the ICAIC did not want to assume a decision to conclude their narrative romance.

To conclude, the focus applied in this brief study reveals how the application of both modes of fictional narrative and “official” documentary analysis were exchanged in a way that ​powerfully insinuated criticism towards the attitudes and policies of the official socio-political rhetoric. Gómez’s achievement is captured best by what Homi Babha refers to as a “discourse at the crossroads of what is known and permissible…. And what should remain hidden. A discourse uttered within lines, and as such is both against and within the rules at the same time”. It is at this crossroads that Gómez executed an ambitious filmic experiment that can be seen feat of productive culture jamming.

Bibliography

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Practices, and Transcontinental Articulations​. Edited by Michael T. Martin Contemporary Film and Television Series. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997

Comolli, Jean-Luc, and Paul Narboni. “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism.” ​Screen 1​ 2, no. 1, 1971, pp. 27–36.

Chanan, Michael. ​The Cuban Image: Cinema and Cultural Politics in Cuba.​ BFI Books. London [etc.]: British Film Institute (BFI) [etc.], 1985.

Chase, Michelle. ​Revolution within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952–1962​. Envisioning Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

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Hardin, Michael. “Altering Masculinities: The Spanish Conquest and the Evolution of the Latin American Machismo.”​ International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies​ 7, no. 1, 2002, pp.1–22.

Kenez, Peter. ​Cinema and Soviet Society: From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin.​ London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2001.

Mendez, Xhercis. “Notes Toward a Decolonial Feminist Methodology: Revisiting the Race/Gender Matrix.” ​Trans-Scripts​ 5, 2015, pp. 41–59.

Ocasio, Rafael. “Ethnicity and Cuban Revolutionary Ideology in Sara Gómez’s De Cierta Manera.​”​Polifonía Scholarly Journal, 2016, pp. 127–140.

Padrón, Yissel. “Relatos De Exclusión: Indagaciones Poscoloniales Sobre Raza y Marginalidad en el Cine de Sara Gómez.” ​Arte y Políticas De Identidad​ 13, 2015, pp. 59–78.

Sawyer, Mark Q. ​Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba​. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Schneider, Florian. “Getting the Hang of Discourse Theory”, ​Politics East Asia​. May 2013. Solanas, Fernando & Octavio Getino. “Towards a Third Cinema” in ​New Latin American

Cinema.Vol. 1: Theory, Practices, and Transcontinental Articulations​. Edited by Michael T. Martin. Contemporary Film and Television Series. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997.

Sommer, Dorris. “Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America”, in ​Nation And Narration,​ edited by Homi Bhabha. London: Routledge, 1990.

Stevens, Evelyn P., and Ann Pescatello.​ Marianismo: The Other Face of Machismo in Latin America​. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973.

The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba. ​Second Declaration of Havana​. Cuba: February, 1962.

I’m writing to address your recent article in The Spectator on The Myth of the Stolen Country. You made more than a few indications that you’re aware of the controversy of your current take, so without a doubt you’ve been anticipating a series of responses. Coincidentally, the same day I read your article I had finished an essay by Chicana activist Elizabeth Martínez in which she addresses the contested ground of national identity in the US, published in 1998. She explores what she termed “The Great White Origin Myth”, a parallel to your title that triggered me to contemplate your contrasting focuses. You both acknowledge the purpose of an origin narrative as a set of stories and symbols, and how the myth “provides the basis for a nation’s self-defined identity.” “Most origin narratives” Martínez points out, “are called myths because they usually present the most flattering view of a nation’s history; they are not distinguished by honesty.”

She goes on to talk about how “Manifest Destiny Dies Hard”. She states:

“Today’s origin myth and the resulting concept of national identity make for an intellectual prison where it is dangerous to ask big questions about this society’s superiority. When otherwise decent people are trapped in such a powerful desire not to feel guilty, self-deception becomes unavoidable. To cease our present falsification of collective memory should, and could, open the doors of that prison. When together we cease equating whiteness with Americanness, a new day can dawn… Refining the U.S origin narrative, and with it this country’s national identity, could prove liberating for our collective psyche. It does not mean Euro-Americans should wallow individually in guilt. It does mean accepting collective responsibility to deal with the implications of our real origin.”

I hence feel compelled in such responsibility to interrogate your take on “The Stolen Land Myth”. I am deeply invested in the formulation of collective memory and its relationship to the present, and indeed, to the future. In “The Uses and Misuses of History” Margaret MacMillan says that history helps us to asks the right questions. I can’t help but point out that the current hysteria from the left that disturbs you should not necessarily illicit the question “What should the Europeans have done with the New World?”, but rather begs the question “What should we (the nation) have done with what the Europeans did do with the New World”.

I’m aware that in today’s public climate, disagreement on any political topic can incite the kind of backlash that aims for the jugular and desecrates your whole character (hence the drama of revealing yourself to be a centrist). I am not looking to take such aim. Perhaps I’m appealing to you who would have been at the barricades fifteen years ago to hear out my intervention. I do understand where your genuine concern stems from so I will start with mentioning that on which I do agree with. I do agree that discourse on the left has acquired a somewhat frenetic character; and that the “rush to signal support for the historically downtrodden” has definitely been amplified by platforms such as twitter and instagram, where extremely superficial camps of thought have manifested themselves with the trappings of ideological language. There has definitely been a rush, which has resulted in what is framed as “radical thought” spreading throughout mainstream discourse without thorough consideration of nuances; and it’s definitely been focused on signalling support, instead of taking on the more challenging task of actually providing support.

However, even within that take I disagree with the distinction made between the left supporting the historically downtrodden — I would argue that by and large the historically downtrodden make up a significant part of the left. In which case am I to assume that it’s on the reader to infer that the downtrodden refers to racial minorities and the left refers progressive white people? On that note, it stood out to me that you open with saying that “the ‘stolen country’ paradigm has spread like wildfire throughout the British Diaspora in recent years”. What exactly does the British Diaspora refer to? To the Common Wealth? To the white people in the ex-colonies? To the particularly white ex-colonies of the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand? As I mentioned, Elizabeth Martínez was discussing the debate on national origin narratives in the US at least twenty two years ago. So are you looking to address this myth as it has existed as a contra-narrative within the New World for ages, or are you looking to ease the discomfort of white people only recently coming into awareness of the “burdensome” side(s) of the colonial story?

Another aspect of your introduction that stood out to me was your perspective on the apologetic measures taken by the Canadian government. You propose that “The problem is this: if you begin the day by acknowledging that your country, your society, and people of your ancestry are particularly egregious, this is a sure route to self-doubt, impotence and societal failure.” What is exposed by the conflation of “your” country, society and ancestry is that the “your” refers specifically to the white segment of the country, and the deeds of their ancestors. However, the country and the society also belongs to people of other ancestries, and in light of this cohabitation (co-constitution) of a post-colonial society, doesn’t the formation of genuinely collective memory necessarily need to start with acknowledging the true nature of the relationship between races as it existed in the past (and hence understand where it stands in the present)? Do you not consider the self-doubt and impotence cast on those of non-European ancestry when the experience of their entire lineage is invalidated as an unfortunate footnote in the pages of national history? Is the acknowledgement and apology process, which at the government level only started in 2008, such a grave concession to make in light of the nature of phenomenon like the Indian Residential School system? Is white self-confidence so thin that accountability for past wrongs is interpreted as a threat to societal stability itself?

The truth is I’m well aware of the stubbornness of white insecurity. For some personal background, I am a white woman from Barbados. This was a British colony until 1966, and currently the race demographic is 91% black, 4% mixed, 3.5 % white and 1- 2% of Asian decent. Entering as a minority into the school system implied an inevitable encounter with the “particularly egregious” nature of my ancestors. And frankly speaking, there is no other way to spin that narrative. Without a doubt, somewhere in a British secondary school there is some practical interpretation of the institution of slavery — if it’s studied very thoroughly at all. But in Barbados the demographic pyramid itself is a testament to the plantation legacy — it is something we refuse to remember but cannot forget because the segregation is all around us. I went through a period of complicated feelings of guilt at a young age as a result of the refusal of white Barbadians to form a genuine dialogue with our direct past that is intrinsically, undeniably rooted in racial domination. I eventually came to realise that whiteness (or “Europeanness”) itself is not a personal condemnation because of the actions of my ancestors. That is, the coincidence of my being born white does not directly connect me to the atrocities of plantation owners; it does however, directly connect me to the privileges granted to white people because of these atrocities committed. It is therefore a moral obligation, not a verdict of judgement, to recognise and reject the false premise of the racial hierarchy. What does illicit a verdict of judgement is an outright refusal to acknowledge or act on this hierarchy.

I’m going to go off on a brief tangent so that you may be better informed of my perspective regarding the present and the future, and why I feel compelled to intervene on these issues of historical interpretation. Broadly speaking, I believe there is a strong impetus, through gradual advancements of gender equality, of bringing forth a more feminine outlook and approach to conflicts — an outlook which may be so unfamiliar on the grand conventional stage of centuries-old politics that many may not even recognise its current emergence at all. The logic of a punitive reaction to notions of ‘guilt’ aren’t necessarily the exclusive outcome of a more balanced interpretation of history. Accusation and guilt are not necessarily the point; it’s about holding space to recognise and validate the grief and anger of the communities which have sustained (and sustain) considerable suffering in our societies — and to work towards amending that.

The point also is not to dwell in shame, but rather to open ourselves up to those communities whom we have shut out from our privileges. Shame results in clutching one’s pearls and persistently reading demands for amendments as attacks. Forfeiting the hierarchy means an encounter with the multifaceted reality of others as equals — because the New World has always been one of many realities suddenly and intensely encountering each other — not a singular, ultimate experience. (I wonder if you would be more conscious of this if you were to go back to the Native American barricades a few more times over the years, and not only seek knowledge in the comfortable libraries of Europe?). Forfeiting a hierarchy, both materially and symbolically, requires great humility — a humility that can constitute self-love and self-respect as it brings us closer to genuine cohesion with the rest of society.

It could be that you might roll your eyes at my insertion of something as subjective as a “feminine outlook” into this issue which no doubt would be dealt with more neatly if we stuck to objectivity. But my investment is in how memories make up historical narratives, and collective memories are infused with the pathos of all subjects involved. I know you’re a proponent of the humanities, and as a lecturer for one of my International Studies courses I know you’re aware of the fertility of cross-disciplinary approaches, so I trust in your openness to what I put forward. I’ll conclude my point on the imperative for a more feminine outlook to the current conflicts stemming from history’s (histories’) wounds by this piece called Of the Empire by Mary Oliver:

We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

So with that being said, I want to illustrate the problematic insular nature of your historical interpretations — or rather, your “clear-sighted” rebuttal to what you believe is the current “fad” of a “myopic and one-sided interpretation”.

You open with addressing the fact that the particularly lethal encounter between the Old and New Worlds, which resulted in mass pandemics, was a biological inevitability. You dismiss the “claims of genocide by disease” as therefore lacking mens rea — the mental element of intent and malicious aforethought — and thus Europeans are free to dust their hands because “verdict: not guilty”. This take, however, reflects a pattern found in many court cases today dealing with racially charged crimes, often involving police officers either killing or seriously traumatising people of colour: the emphasis is practically always on intent over outcome. Lives are taken, and everyone goes home. Would your verdict stand if the audience (jury?) you’re addressing was made up of a representative demographic of the various lived experiences in the US and Canada, or would that undermine “impartiality”?

Evidently the judicial system in the US is facing a crisis, provoking waves of civil outrage — with the most recent being this summer — as a result of this flaw of so often failing to account for the loss of life on the basis of lack of “intent”. What ensued the arrival of Europeans is often referred to as “genocide by disease”, but maybe the vocabulary used is what triggers you to deny the gravity of what happened, because “genocide” happens on purpose. Regardless of the whether or not it was on purpose or unavoidable, what resulted was a civilisational apocalypse — something which signifies a deeply painful, irrecoverable loss for many people. Just as todays’ court rulings of “not guilty” inflame indignant crowds of people most harmed by the outcome of state-endorsed police brutality, your approach to an intent-centred narrative only indicates an indifference to the generations of people who survived in the trenches of the catastrophic outcome of European diseases. However, this court-room framework is unproductive, because it flattens out the contention over the historical narrative as if it were a trial. Europeans of yesteryear are not on trial — but if you do feel uncomfortable with present-day descendants being unfairly judged its useful to keep in mind that they do still hold the monopoly on force. The contention around the arrival of Europeans could maybe be addressed more realistically as a truth and reconciliation commission.

Regarding the state of Indigenous civilisations that the Europeans found upon arrival, you’re right in pointing out that — contrary to the essentialist and romantic ideas of outdated anthropology — they were societies as complex and conflict-afflicted as any other in this period. You’re also correct in pointing out that power-struggles were fluid, dynamic cross-community alliances were established to favour ever-shifting interests, and notions of property were malleable at best — and so indeed it is impossible for a the “crime” of stealing land to have been manifested by the presence of Europeans in and of itself. Nevertheless, you’re missing the point when you bring up pre- (and post) conquest in-fighting and land grabbing between Native American communities as if it constitutes the same “wrong-doing” as the expansion of European land acquisition. It reminds of the common response by white Barbadians in conversations on slavery: “don’t you know how badly the indentured Irish were treated by the British on the plantations?”. The fallacy of this point when discussing history as it informs the present (and future) being that, yes, it was wrong that the Irish were also cruelly exploited, but do you see any Irish descendants currently disenfranchised or discriminated against on the basis of their ancestors’ indentureship contracts?

Hence to ask whether “is it somewhat okay” that Native Americans stole land from other Native Americans is a non sequitur in this discussion on historical narratives — because inter-Native land “theft” was an issue of a politics of resources, whereas the land “theft” between Natives and Europeans evolved into a politics of race — which as we’re both a aware maintains a much more topical and consequential legacy. I’d also like to point out that ideas of the scarcely populated, “abandoned” land stem from a still disputed area of anthropology — necessary disputes considering that findings in this field were very much brought to light in the context of dubious objectivity, due to the Eurocentric proclivity to establish convenient interpretations. I strongly recommend 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann for a wholistic survey of the preconceptions being revised in this area.

You go on to ask “what would our pious anthropology professors have had Europeans do with the New World?” (again, on the topic of national myths, you think this question only pertains to anthropologists or liberal academics?). You bring up political reality and the pipe-dream: firstly, I don’t think it’s anyone’s pipe dream to think that colonisation should or even could have been avoided all together — that would be a delusion. However, in your survey of political reality you get up to the point of saying “for a long time, few Europeans harboured any master plan of pushing the Native Americans out of their own lands” — and then you start talking about population demographics. This is quite a noticeable point in which the focus of the survey changes, since eventually the Europeans did actually start to formulate the strategies and apparatus to dominate other populations. I like your phrase “reality tends to occur ad hoc”, but in this specific argument I find it misleading. Indeed the Western Frontier did advance slowly at first, but clearly to President James K. Polk the idea of militarily seizing the whole of Alta California and Santa Fe de New Mexico in 1848 — the third largest land acquisition in US history — did not seem too absurd. Despite the terms defined by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to grant civil and property rights to Southwestern Mexicans, they were summarily tricked out of land holdings and violently oppressed through terrorism such as lynchings. And you wonder why people would still hold a grudge against the “particularly egregious” character of European ancestry when to this day Latino children are being put in cages at this border and separated from parents deemed “illegal aliens”?

You tell me to sit quiet when robbed of my manhood, With nowhere to live and nought to call my own, Now coming, now going, wandering and wanting, No life in my home save the drone of the beetle!

Go tell the worker bees,
True guards of the hive,
Not to sting the rash hunter
Who grabs at their combs.

A.C Jordon

Secondly, I want to point out that your survey of population density in way goes to show how reality doesn’t always happen ad hoc. Considering, as you do, that the Europeans did not entirely wipe out the population of Africa, Asia and India, it was only through rigorous systematic disruption of the existing social fabric that the European minority could install itself at the apex of power and extraction. If you were to travel to any of those places today, or to Mexico, Peru or Barbados, you’d find quite clearly that being a minority in no way inverts the power structure. You might protest “but Africans participated in perpetuating the slave trade!” or something to this affect of Native complicity in the colonial projects. But what that discounts is how the projects succeeded not just through technological monopolies or economic prowess, but through the logic of racial “civilisational” supremacy — a form of epistemic colonisation that we are still struggling to untangle ourselves from today. This is the key aspect of great relevance that seems to be somewhat of a blindspot for you.

For instance, in your description of “political reality”, you assert: “the European track record shows them to be almost shockingly un-genocidal, given their clear technological advantages over the rest of the world for a period of several centuries…Europeans are regularly painted as the very worst society on Earth, when in fact they had the power to do far, far more evil than they actually did.” Frankly speaking, this comes off as supremely obnoxious and tone-deaf. Are we discussing historical narratives as they happened? or as they could have happened? To use such hypotheticals in this matter only serves to diffuse the political interpretation of history as it exists in the belly of the present. Ultimately, it’s incredibly irresponsible to defang the reality of what actually did happen by suggesting that it could have been worse, or someone else could have come along and been a much greater menace. What good does it do for black people living in the US, susceptible every single day to be exposed to the physical and mental assault of anti-black discrimination, to “acknowledge” that the Mongolian brand of oppression would be far more brutal? Is it supposed to assuage the horror of the Middle Passage to think that it could have been more evil? I’m genuinely struggling to imagine what worse could have transpired… does that make me naive? Further, I wouldn’t be so precious about Europe being painted as the “worst society on earth”, as that’s quite a broad brush. One can appreciate the intrinsic value within Europe, and recognise European contributions like the Uffizi Gallery, Spanish Flamenco or Kate Bush to the portfolio of mankind, and simultaneously recognise that the colonial instruments of power installed across the globe in order serve the interests of Europe perpetuated and still perpetuate immense harm to non-Europeans and should be dismantled. These are not mutually exclusive perspectives.

When you bring up the issue of cultural adaptation you also miss the mark by miles. It’s ironic that you pose what you consider this aspect of the “myopic” interpretation of history as if it were some recent wave of social media controversy that’s spreading round as click bait sensationalists articles, when the fact of the matter is that Native Americans have been fighting against the erasure of their cultural identity and practices for centuries.

It appears that what you put forth as instances of “cultural adaptation” might be restricted by your stance as an economic historian. Obviously the phenomenon of cross-cultural adoption of practical technologies or enjoyable ornaments of life is as old as time itself and it is what it is. But do you really think when people talk of cultural imperialism they’re talking about something as inconsequential as spaghetti? You’re really fooling yourself if you think that the historical rage and struggle of Native American activism has anything to do with the incorporation of the millstone to grind their corn, and not the eradication or near- eradication of a whole spectrum of languages, customs and spiritualities. In addressing it as cultural adaptation you’re misinterpreting the actual problematic phenomenon of cultural assimilation. The heart of the matter is that only up until the very recently a force of cultural homogenisation reigned in North America. I can testify to this personally as my Chicano grandmother with a migrant farmer background did not speak Spanish to my mother — why would she when an accent can expose you to obvious discrimination? Her sister changed her son’s name from Javier to Charles in order to get ahead. I don’t think it makes me some sensitive snowflake to be upset over the loss of this link to my background. It is obtuse to moan about the current fight to resurrect what remains of the many colours of America — any ecologist can assure you that there is weakness in a monoculture and strength in diversity, as well as beauty.

You round off your statement of “They were certainly not exterminated at the behest of any concerted ideology of hatred or European superiority…The stories of Powhatan and Pocahontas attest to the presence of this pattern at the dawn of English-Native American relations, and it continues to the present day” by acknowledging that such a statement would cause an uproar in almost any academic conference room. Admittedly this part stumped me, because it’s riddled with paradoxes. You state that any “good Liberal critic” is “taught” to read into instances of cultural assimilation, such as with Pocahontas, “with suspicion” — it boggled me to note this patronising suggestion that the academic current of reading against the grain of Eurocentric narratives is somehow an indoctrination. Really? When the purpose of critical reading is in and of itself to breakdown the rigid Eurocentric dogmatism maintained in Western academic institutions for centuries? The reason this claim might stir up academics today is because your feel-good take on the Pocahontas story is a means that defeats your ends. You try to argue that her successful story is “the exact opposite of racism” — but you fail to recognise the fact that despite this token of “proof” that Native Americans had the same “innate human abilities” as Europeans (i,e. disproving the theories of biological determinations of superiority) American society nevertheless evolved to use racialised justifications to waiver the flagrant abuses by its Anglo society. You state that there is no case for any concerted ideology of European superiority, but how can you deny the fact that non- European groups were (maybe) treated as equals only when they conformed to being European in every sense but race? When the Pocahontases became Beckys, and the Javiers became Charles? I’m starting to wonder whether you’ve been anywhere close to a barricade against encroaching oil companies in your life, because you wouldn’t feel so light-hearted about present day Anglo-Native relations and the scale of environmental abuse that endangers the health of these communities — and specifically these non-Anglo communities, because the “merchants” of today feel much more comfortable in knowing that the state will look away from grievances of second-class citizens, as they consistently have.

I also want to address your persistence in bringing up the Mongols. I have no clue what the historical and current relationships are between the Mongols, the Russians, the Chinese and Muslims… but my best guess is that it might be abstract and distant. My point is, I don’t see the productivity in discussing the American origin myth by saying “whew, aren’t we lucky we weren’t those guys?” That is, even though it’s true that the Mongol “blood orgies” may have been worse than those of the Conquistadors, did those blood orgies play out into the equivalent of a centuries-long theatre of Spanish reign in which a whole racial caste system was constructed in such a way that cemented the continuation of violent domination and plundering of raw resources for the Global North? For indeed, it was a business model that played out far beyond any “curious” or “expert businessmen’s’” wildest dream. I’m purposefully reiterating this point — even if it was well beyond anyone’s intentions, what did emerge still constitutes a gravely unjust outcome.

Additionally, I don’t see why you feel the need to make a defence of Columbus’s, Queen Isabella’s, or Bartholomé de las Casas’ personal character, because what plays into the historical narrative is not whether or not they were nice people — it’s perfectly imaginable that they would have had the very human proclivity to consider not outright slaughtering or torturing other human beings — but frankly that’s the bare minimum and not the real issue at stake. For us, more than being just humans, they are symbols in the narrative. Now, as Martinéz points out, national myths are typically dishonest in order to function. As symbols, these characters have been cast for the majority of history as heroes, in order for the nation to function as it did. For the majority of Latin Americans who, as you have acknowledged, are not of European lineage, these characters are far from the archetype of heroes. Hence why, as the caste system is being thoroughly shaken down, and the function of the nation evolving, these characters must be recast — you cannot expect the whole population pyramid to remain deferential to those who symbolised the formation of the pyramid in the first place. Disclaiming them as heroes doesn’t imply that they were blood thirsty, soulless devils — time will start to mediate their true place in the story, but clinging to yesteryear’s symbols won’t stop the social structure from transforming.

I found your story about the Moravians very interesting, and it sincerely provoked great sympathy from me. I recognise where you’re coming from in lamenting that the habit of mind of binary thinking washes out the shades of nuances that can make working through these issues more constructive. Maybe we need to address why it is that people would think that the Native Americans were the only ones who faced cultural erasure — and this is something I’ve been grasping at in the dark for a while myself, so I’m saying this quite candidly. It brings to light a phenomenon that may be recognised by white people in the ex-colonies, but not so much in Europe itself. That is, the fact that in the ex-colonies one is first and foremost perceived as white, whereas in Europe, you may be white, but very often you are also perceived according to nationality, class, religion, language and so on. You describe yourself how race becomes completely distorted, maybe even an impotent concept when looking at pre-colonial European history. However, race is the foundation of the whole design of society in the colonies, it’s foundational to the narrative, and whiteness is not an origin, but a mechanism required by the colonies. So wondering why the Moravians are not lamented as a victim of the cultural assimilation and erasure that they did indeed experience, I find the answer is that they were simply absorbed into “whiteness”, to be blanketed with the social safety and benefits that this construction comes with. It’s quite evidently by design that it would be in the interest of the colonist for this communist-oriented, refugee, associates-of-the-Natives group should distance themselves from these conditions that would possibly interrupt the top-down white hegemonic project that was taking body over the years. You say that it is racist in itself to forget about this instance, but Moravian is not a race. I think it’s high time to interrogate the way this is tripping up the way we have these discussions.

Finally I want to wrap this up by looking at your motive behind writing this piece in the first place. You mention naivety, so I want to illustrate the ways in which your assumptions lean towards naive. In your introduction you say that “many in the US have no clue just how much of a ‘city on a hill’ the US is still perceived to be” and that Obama is seen as “a real life-super hero. Such universal support for a politician is virtually unheard of”. Within this I would point out that the ‘city on a hill’ effect stems from the international cultural monopoly perpetuated by Hollywood, and which indeed plays into US politics. It’s not a bad thing for Obama to be seen as a real-life super hero, but I do believe this is in part due to the Hollywood-ification in the US media’s relationship to its politics — which has it’s obvious detriments. Back in June 2019 when I tuned into the first Democratic debate (part one, for ten of the twenty qualified candidates) I was struck by how CNN framed it as if the candidates had to fight it out to see who was “worthy” of “stepping into the ring” to “take down” Trump. In every sense: commentary, visual and sound affects, I felt like I was on the WWE channel. The problems with the super hero trope is that it is centred on ultimate victory or defeat, and in the end both sides have their own heroes; so the mood of the exercise shifts from one of debate to outright tussling. This super hero trope both plays into and is symptomatic of the US’s warped political arena, and I think that what we recently witnessed in the first presidential debate attests to this.

North America has always been presented globally as the “super hero” of nations, or as you say, ‘the good place’. But behind that veil of an image are many peoples’ actual encounters with North American actions. Maybe you haven’t studied it too hard whilst residing in Europe for however many years, which has its own special relationship with North America since the post-WWII years (solidified in affectionate gestures such as Kennedy’s “ich bin ein Berliner”). Elsewhere, however, North America has a history that speaks for itself. The idea that the US “equates with democracy”, as you put it, was delegitimised in Chile the day that bombs were dropped on Salvador Allende’s administration in order to usher in the Chicago Boys’ neoliberal economic experiment along with one of the most ideological intolerant dictatorships in Latin American history. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the notion that Canadian democracy acts as a sort of spearhead of human idealism might contradict the fact that Canada has failed to reel in the Canadian mining MNC’s which are complicit in the decades-long land conflict that has claimed literally tens of millions of lives. North America’s image is protected from its role in flagrant foreign affairs abuses because of the relative safety to be found within the US and Canada; maybe put more accurately it is a place of refuge. But if as you say the US’s “good place” image is its “entire raison d’être”, it will cling to this image despite the ever-growing contrast with its actions in both foreign and internal relations, which leave much to be desired in terms of “goodness”. A stubbornly immutable image will ultimately rift with actions, and soon it will start to look a lot like schizophrenia.

So putting the simplistic ideas of super heroes and good places aside, I think your frustration might be rooted in the academic currents found mainly in universities and not so much beyond that. You talk about the one-sided assault on history by “Cultural Marxists” as a “group of self-appointed intellectuals” best “suited” to bringing about a revolution for a “good society”. You express distress because this has become “far too culturally dominant, far too damaging to global society”. This needs some serious re-framing, or zooming out I should say. I’ll go on to answer the question you candidly pose: “What myth about the Pilgrims needs tearing down with such one-sided ferocity?”. What you seem to be oblivious to is that people aren’t stoked to revise the image of the Pilgrim simply because the Pilgrims arrived; the problem at hand is that the Pilgrims arrived and then constructed the myth of Pilgrim superiority, and defended it with ferocity for centuries. The same goes for colonists everywhere. It’s glaringly ignorant to state “The only reason to be this consistently, this unreasonably angry about things which happened centuries ago, is if one sees the entirety of experience through the lens of perpetual racism and victimisation”, when the reality is that it’s not just about “that one incident” that happened centuries ago that infuriates so many — it’s everything that ensued. To think that this anger stems from a “lens of perpetual racism and victimisation” is to wholeheartedly ignore the centuries of blood, sweat and tears of the resistance and activism on the part of “the historically downtrodden” in order to seize their rights as equals — very much in spite of their race and wrongs committed against them. Further, it is well out of order to suggest that Anglo-democracy alone was what paved the way for the gains made for the more fair society we see today — European enlightenment did not benevolently right it’s past wrongs, it was gradually, painstakingly claimed by those actively oppressed by European interests to maintain its power.

Your ultimate concern is for the state of democracy, for global society. What you perceive as a breakdown caused by “self-inflicted wounds” I would argue is actually the inevitable reckoning with the inherent contradiction (or wound) conceived within the constitution that declared all men equal and free in the pursuit of happiness, whilst forging the nation on the backs of slaves and eradicating (or assimilating) Natives. I wonder if you roll your eyes at this point, because we’ve gone full circle: you opened your article with “we all know this story: genocide, slaves, etc, etc.”. But if you really are addressing historical narratives because you are invested in the values of fairness and humanity as you conclude you are, then to be a truly clear-sighted historian you should not only look at the accounts told as is — you must also inform yourself through fictions and biographies, you must learn the art of listening to subjectivities that differ to your own. Through other people stories you will understand the collective memories forged through their lived experienced of historical reality, and you will understand their relationship to history and what being a part of the nation signifies for them.

To continue, you should be informed that, in this time of clear crisis of power in the US, North America is not the very beating heart of democracy and goodness itself. Neither is Europe. This might be viewed dubiously to those attached to US exceptionalism. Alternative formulations of democracy can and are taking place, although the question remains whether or not the US would ever consider any modus operandi other than its own as valid. Further, regardless of the built-in constitutional hypocrisy, there are clear technical flaws that mar the US democratic process: the electoral college, the dominant two party system, gerrymandering and voter suppression just to state the most known. To address your other candid question: “Would it not be more productive to be more nuanced, to acknowledge that there have been points of goodwill, friendship, positive communication and — shudder the thought — even mutual benefit, since the very beginning?” — on everything minus that of “mutual benefit” I do agree. I think if there was anything close to actual mutual benefit since the beginning we wouldn’t see the lopsided domestic and international power relations we do today. However, even as part of the left, I am in no way inclined to make a sweeping defence of the left in its current state. I agree that there are some serious afflictions in leftist discourse, relationships and agendas which have succumbed to dualistic thinking, narcissism and freewheeling assumptions that one can jump straight to the result and skip the process.

My adamant disagreement, confusion even, is that you perceive the left to be “dangerously misusing history” and the foremost threat to democracy. You pick bones primarily with a particular article on the BBC bashing the Mayflower, and the Canadian app to name what used to be Native territory. Does this really hold a candle up, in your view, to the president which has repeatedly defended white supremacists groups, most recently in the internationally-aired debate? One might say that this is just Trump’s peculiar style of antics that play into his populism, but it has serious consequences for civic culture on a whole when his supporters are emboldened to fatally shoot into protest crowds advocating for black rights. His concluding statement in the recent debate explicitly undermined the election results preemptively, with his attacks on the mail-in ballots. “This is going to be messy” he said — does that not raise more alarm bells for you than some academic Marxists bent on “embarrassing” Capitalism etc.? I’m aware that this debate happened after the publication of your article, but nevertheless I was shocked that you would size up North American leftism to be the real danger to “science” and “level-headedness”, when it has perpetually been the case that the right is openly propped up by the corporations responsible for so much real-world destabilisation of the environment (the Democrats are also implicated in this, but can they even really be considered “the left”?). In acknowledging the corporate-political relationship and their selective respect for Western principles, such as sovereignty, you should google “Ecuador and Chevron in The Hague” -and look beyond the top search result endorsed by Chevron.

My saying all this is not in any way to suggest that you are in line with the right, but frankly, I don’t think centrism necessarily equates to neutrality nor the higher ground. I’m not suggesting that you’re in line with white supremacy, but stubborn maintenance of the “Pilgrim innocence” myth lends way too much ground to be borrowed by the “Pilgrim supremacy” myth. In other words, to borrow from Yeats’ poem (though I’m no doomsday proponent): the centre will not hold.

Margaret MacMillan says that history is worth doing, that we have to do it in order to think about the present and about ourselves, but it has to be handled with great care. She says it doesn’t offer very clear lessons, but if we do learn something, it should be to think things through and gather as much information as one can. With that being said, when we look at the left in its state of short comings, one should keep in mind that it is in need of recuperating from a catastrophic century in which leftist projects went horribly sideways everywhere. This was followed by a prolonged period of suppression of leftist or alternative discourse which would have allowed us to think through, re- think and develop beyond those failed projects. It is in dire need of historians who can take real responsibility in refining an ever-changing national identity and understanding how we got here. I don’t think you are a mean-hearted person, but rather insulted from what history means for your fellow Americans. If your whole worldview is framed by the idea that the Mongolian raiders set the bar of the worst that a society can do, then the bar is obviously set quite low. If you read the poem Of Empire by Mary Oliver and you think that’s just The Way it is, because that’s the way it always has been — then you are accepting that humans will always use brutish means to achieve brutish ends. To accept that is to be trapped in history. What we need is the conviction that humans are indeed capable of evolving beyond the need for Empire, any Empire — then we may start to be propelled by history.

During Queen Victoria’s reign — in the second half of the 19th century — the British kingdom had established itself as the empire on which the sun never set. It evolved to become a formidable colonial power, and for Englishmen, “the world was open to them” [1]. However, this period was marked by a growing sense of anxiety towards the stability of colonial institutions. After the success of the Haitian Revolution in 1804, the British imperial administration sought to fortify power dynamics in order to calm preoccupations about uprisings — in both both the metropole and in the colonies. One way this was done was through the construction of cultural and social identities that symbolically positioned Britain and its monarchy — in relation to the colonies around the world — as the apex of power.

This can be identified particularly in travel writing, which forged representations of countries so that the imagined ties that constituted imperial relationships could be established.

This article aims to present how Barbados is an example of one of the most “successful” cases of British identity being infused into national representation. It will investigate how this was possible, and for what purpose it served to actively conceive of this small Caribbean island as “Little England”, or “Bimshire”.

To do this, the following aspects will be explored:

• How travel writing served as a particularly useful tool for this process.
• An illustration of the political context of Britain’s empire at the end of the 19th century, in order to understand the motives to create this specific symbolic relationship.
• A close reading of primary sources from this period will outline the specific way this was applied in Barbados.

“…To govern a social body, you must know it; in order to know it it is necessary to study it as a whole, and as constituent parts, to know the role each part plays in the overall picture; know its origins, its history, its population, its territory, its customs, its spirit, its strength and its riches.”

- Marbeu (1834) [2]

For readers in the metropole, travel writing was essential in creating a collective idea of the various worlds within the web of colonies that composed the global British empire.

This empire was interconnected through various flows of commodities, people, cultural products and knowledge [3]. Travel writing rose to widespread popularity particularly in the 19th century, as it facilitated a combination of positivistic “information gathering” — a major colonial classification project — with exoticized aesthetics and Romantic perspectives of exploration. During this period, this kind of writing was accepted as empirical representation. However, critical revisiting of these texts exposes the issue of ‘translatability’ between the “rational ‘seeing’ European and the ‘seen’ native” [4].

That is, the texts and images produced actually represent the expectations and desires of the author, more than the reality itself. This is particularly true for texts focused on the Caribbean islands. Considered as ‘contact zones’ [5], this region served as the crossroads between the New and Old Worlds and was a point of encounter for people from highly differing backgrounds. This region thus served as the space for negotiating national and racial identity construction on the basis of “Otherness” and “Sameness”.

The language utilised in travel writing reveals the construction of a symbolic order penned by Europeans; in their encounter with the unknown they used signifiers from their own culture in order to understand and “translate” the new landscape they found themselves in [4]. Sheller illustrates how cultural translation served 19th century social theory, as ​non-Western places were used as “counterfoils for Western modernity, ‘backwards’ places against which processes of modern urbanisation, industrialisation, democratisation, rationalisation, individualisation, and so on could be gauged​”. The tropical geography and remoteness of Caribbean islands allowed for anachronistic ideas to be embedded in its representation. It was was often depicted as a “Garden of Eden”, a land of untouched natural beauty and thus isolated from history and seen as “outside” of civilised modernity. The Caribbean was thus constructed in the European and Northern American gaze as an object of exoticisation tailored for the consumption of curious readers [3].

For centuries the islands were sites of disputes for contesting colonial powers. They were fought over by British, Spanish, French and Dutch forces for years, and so served as a means for establishing imagined hierarchy; representing cultural and even moral superiority over each other. It was in the interest of imperial powers to thus also maintain links of “Sameness”, so that the perceived virtues of colonial islands could be attributed directly to the presiding dominance of the metropole.

The British took particular focus in emphasising the difference with the Spanish Catholic empire, who was seen as the “chief rival in the colonial enterprise”. Considering the horrors of the Spanish conquest in Latin America centuries before the arrival of English colonisers, the British believed themselves to be on higher ground, “evident” in the productivity and relative stability of their colonies. In this way, the land and people were seen in terms of utility and profit, in a way that legitimised and maintained the seemingly naturalised logic of not only European, but​ British superiority [2].

The West Indian colonies were seen in the minds of the British public as prized possessions: “precious jewels, which hundreds of thousands of English lives had been sacrificed to tear from France and Spain” [1]. Barbados especially held a special place amongst these treasures, as it was never fought over. Rather, it was handed over by the Spanish to the British in 1627 whilst totally unoccupied and so was seen as the most “pure” of all the colonies. As put in the words of famed Victorian era writer James Anthony Froude: “Two hundred and fifty years of occupation have imprinted strongly an English character….However it may be in the other islands, England in Barbadoes is still a solid fact”.

This study will focus mainly on Froude’s text ​The English in the West Indies, published in 1888​. It not only provides extensive insight into the political concerns of the Empire as the turn of the century approached; his accounts of many different Caribbean islands also portray the way in which they were differentiated between each other. This text is well-suited as an example of Imperial attitudes considering that, according to Brady, Froude’s “opinions on politics and society, and on the world in general, now appear so drearily representative of the comfortable middle-class values of his day” [6]. More minor but complimentary primary sources will also be considered.

“If the West Indies are going to ruin, Barbadoes, at any rate, is being ruined with a smiling face.”

- James Anthony Froude (1888)

In order to understand the projected view, expectations and motives of such a visitor, the conditions of his origins must first be taken into consideration. In this period the British metropole was in the midst of rigorous debates surrounding the question of political autonomy of their colonies. In the 19th century, the Empire encountered various conflicts that challenged the authority and legitimacy of colonial rule. One of the first topics touched upon in Froude’s book is that of “union or separation” and “self-government”, which reveals the main political concerns of this period. He introduces his book by acknowledging that the recent celebration of the Jubilee of the Queen was celebrated with “a special and peculiar meaning”. That is, to discuss the terms on which the colonies are united under the Imperial sovereign.

He acknowledges that the problem of the complexity of such a vast Imperial network, is that each colony must be dealt with in accordance to its particular “character” [1]. Hence the question of permitting self-governance could not be discussed broadly, but rather with focus on the particular contexts. For instance, for Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Cape it was considered a “settled question”, as they could be “trusted” with constitutional liberties and “did not require to be constrained”, but that this was not the case for Ireland and India. Froude adopts an explicit support for the maintenance of Imperial unity, stating that “local spheres of self-management can revolve round a common centre while there is centripetal power sufficient to hold them”.

To Froude, this debate was the “only public cause on which just now it was possible to feel concern”. Regarding his particular focus on the West Indies, he says that although he supports the principle of self-governance, these colonies were suffering — he goes on to justify why he needs to “attend more particularly to the West Indies”. He presents the practical debates regarding the declining economic profitability of these colonies. By extension, it was debated whether or not England should take responsibility for continuing such a “burden”, especially whilst “the whole world had become (their) market”. However, we see that one of the main distinguishing concerns regarding colonial rule in the Caribbean was connected to notions of race.

The disproportion between the white minority and black majority populations in these colonial societies was evidently a preoccupation in these political debates. It was observed that the white population “was diminishing and dissatisfied” and that since the black and white races were not inclined to “blend into one, there might be, and even inevitably would be, collisions between them which we could not tolerate”. It is clear that the dramatic and violent racial clashes that resulted from the uprising of the Haitian Revolution was a worrying possibility that loomed over the debates of balancing colonial authority.

Indeed, Froude acknowledges that the liberty granted to Haiti was followed by the massacre of the French settlers “who had done no worse than we had done to deserve the ill will of their slaves”. He draws a comparison to Jamaica, where recent constitutional adjustments regarding the parliamentary participation of “the blacks” was seen to have revived for them the hope that “the day was not far off when Jamaica would be as Hayti and they would have the island to themselves”.

With all this being considered, what then is revealed of Froude’s visit to Barbados in particular?

He poses the idea that there is a broad distinction between ‘colonies’ and ‘conquered countries’: Where on one hand, “colonists are part of ourselves”, and on the other “foreigners attached by force to our dominion” and “will not always consent to rule themselves in accordance to our views or interests”. He explains that the West Indian colonies are a mix of these categories, as it remains an “unsettled question” as to whether or not the recently freed “coloured population (could) be admitted to share in the administration”. What Barbados hence represented, was the idea of being the ‘good’ colony, with which the continued administration according to the British “views and interests” could be trusted.

In order to create this representation, Froude makes use of what Ferguson calls “anti-conquest”. That is, the “European tactic of claiming innocence while consolidating hegemonic control”. This is a kind of “false naivete” adopted by a protagonist who is typically a “European male subject whose imperial eyes ‘passively look out and possess’” [4]. Indeed, in chapter four Froude arrives to the island saying: “On no one of our foreign possessions is the print of England’s foot more strongly impressed than on Barbadoes” . With that in mind, Froude’s description of Barbadian society evidently implies an ​innocent de facto unity with England — not on the basis of force or political constitutions — but rather, unity according to “the same language, the same habits, the same traditions”.

“ As islanders set apart from the continent, between or among continents and surrounded by ocean or sea, we seem to be always on the threshold of identities. The virtual spaces of islands are susceptible to translatability and articulate perspectives on the shifting relationship between self and other, centre and periphery. Islands… serve as sites of mediation between cultures. Within a global culture marked by inequalities and differences, islands induce a contrapuntal approach for literary and cultural criticism.”

- Stephanos & Bassnett (2008)

In seeking to understand the grounds on which the British anchored their hierarchical relationship to Barbados, the analysis will focus on the elements of language, society and race represented in the rhetoric of imperial visitors.

Upon arriving in Barbados, one of the first observations Froude makes in the port is that of the “chattering crews of negroes.” He states that, their language was without “the smallest transatlantic intonation”, and thus classified as “pure” English. What is the relevance of pointing out such a detail? ​

When examining other, more minor excerpts of travel writing, it is indeed a recurring observation that seems to make the Barbadian population exceptional. Lafcadio Hearn was a travel writer who made a similar comment (1890): ​

“One is almost startled on hearing Barbadian negroes speaking English with a strong Old Country accent. Without seeing the speaker, you scarcely believe such English uttered by black lips; and the commonest negro labourer about the port pronounces as well as a Londoner. The purity of the Barbadian English is partly, no doubt, to the fact that, unlike most of the other islands, Barbadoes has always remained in possession of Great Britain.” [7]

Language has been recognised as an essential tool since the earliest projects of Imperial rule, as pointed out by Antonio de Nebrija to Queen Isabella de Castile in 1492 stating, “Language has always been the consort of empire, and forever shall remain its mate.” That is, the ‘language of empire’ served as a powerful way with which to constitute a categorical “Other”, by invalidating the capacity and the agency of inferior subjects’ tongues. Hence, Imperial expansion could be determined by marking the spread of the official national language of “Self” [2]. It can be seen here that Barbadians are seen in the ambiguous in-between space of being an exceptionally “English” kind of “Other”, by virtue of their “Imperial” dialect.

Such an ambiguous positioning can be identified in further observations made about society in the island. This is important to note because it reveals the constructed categories which were used to gauge “exoticness”. In the case of Barbados, Froude notes that society — referring its national constitution, parish system, churches, schools and respective authorities — were all organised “from the first on English traditional lines…on the old model; which the unprogressive inhabitants have been wise enough to leave alone”.

As Hearn wrote on his arrival into the port of Bridgetown, it would disappoint a “stranger who expects to find any exotic features of architecture or custom — disappoints more, perhaps, than any other tropical port in this respect”. He continues to explain why it fails to constitute a more exciting tropical spectacle:

​“Its principal street gives you the impression of walking through an English town, - not an old-time town, but a new one, plain almost to commonplaceness...Even the palms are powerless to lend the place a really tropical look... the manners, costumes, the style of living, the system of business are thoroughly English; the population lacks visible originality; and its extraordinary activity, so oddly at variance with the quiet indolence of other West Indian peoples, seems almost unnatural.”​ [7]

This “sameness” is also noted upon by an anonymous writer (1899) for the Pall Mall Gazette magazine based in London. He writes about his visit to the island while recovering from an illness:

“‘White Creoles’ still speak of Englishmen as distinct from the white people who have hereditary connection with the West Indies, but white society in Barbados is really much the same as that of Scarborough or Brighton…The chat with the jolly, friendly planter… almost made one believe that a Devonshire farm lay outside the sitting-room windows; then stewed guavas and fresh-cut green cocoanuts were brought in… and the mirage of England faded.” [8]

It is strange to note that, even though the white creole class see themselves as distinct from Englishmen, it is still insisted upon that they are one and the same. Furthermore, the elements referred to in gauging the “exoticness” or “plainness” of the society seem arbitrary. The “extraordinary activity” is seen as “thoroughly” English, whilst objects such as palm trees, guavas and coconuts are signifiers of​ un-​Englishness. Additionally, on one hand, it was considered virtuous for Barbadian society to maintain the old English institutions, whereas on the other,“the manners” and “style of living” of the population being was deemed unoriginal and disappointing.

It can be discerned from the contrasting tones of the authors that Barbados was both praised and criticised for its ambiguous position of being such an “English” Other.

Upon focusing on the Imperial visitors’ observations on race in the island, it is clear that here lies some of the most dissonant colonial perspectives.

Froude remarks on the history of English slavery in Caribbean colonies, explaining that “on the least symptom of insubordination they were killed without mercy; sometimes they were burnt alive, or hung up in iron cages to die”. Yet, despite the utter horrors of such a reality, Froude goes on to observe about the crowds in town, “Nine-tenths of them were pure black; you rarely saw a white face, but still less would you see a discontented one, imperturbable good humour and self-satisfaction being written on the features of every one”. In numerous instances in his accounts Froude insists on the contentedness and good humour of the black population: “My poor downtrodden black brothers and sisters…looked to me a very fortunate class of fellow-creatures.”

This strikingly reveals the way in which the observations of the “seeing” European can certainly misinterpret his surroundings in order to fulfill the desires and calm the worries of not only himself, but his fellow readers. The use of “false naïveté” is clearly being exercised here in order to “claim innocence while maintaining hegemonic power”. Such attitudes are adopted in order to pose Froude’s political arguments for continued Imperial unity. He claims that “the English has proved in India that they can play a great and useful part as rulers over recognised inferiors”.

Interestingly, despite the multiple ways in which “Sameness” is constructed, it is still illustrated that “At home (England) there is general knowledge that things are not going well ​out there​. But, true to our own ways of thinking, we regard it as ​their affairs and not ours”. It his hence evidence that Otherness is maintained when it comes to questions of “responsibility” (power). Froude consistently frames the notion of self-governance of “coloured people” as something destined to fail. Therefore, he asserts that English rule is not merely a claim to power, but rather, a moral imperative of responsibility: “The West Indian negro is conscious of his own defects, and responds more willingly than most to a guiding hand”. The moral dissonance is especially striking when he goes so far as to claim that “slavery itself was the first step to emancipation”, freeing them from their previous “dark connection with Satan’s invisible world”.

We see that, considering the structural instability of “the silent revolution” in the Empire, Froude turns to emotive arguments to justify ongoing rule of “freed blacks” in colonies like Barbados. He praises the English in saying, “our own Anglo-Norman race has become capable of self-government only after a thousand years of civil and spiritual authority”. Herein lies the mechanisms of “innocent hegemonic control”, as he contrastingly portrays “the future of the blacks, and our own influence over them for good, depend on their being protected from themselves”.

Therefore, it can be argued that for the middle class readers (and voters) in the metropole, this emotive appeal washes clean their consciousness of the not-so distant institution of slavery. Additionally, it implicates an innate superiority to their race, in which it seems obligatory for them (as good Christians and citizens) to maintain a ‘guiding and benevolent’ authority over the population. Barbados played a particular role in being a successful example of infusing British identity.

The “Sameness” of the island constituted a relationship of affection and kinship, whereas its simultaneous, inferior “Otherness” constituted the ground for continued domination.

In summary, it has been explored how travel writing was essential for the identity construction of colonies, and their imaginary connections to the metropole. This was particularly crucial at the end of the 19th century, considering the debates regarding the independence of the colonies. Travel writing is a particularly useful tool for understanding the perspectives that reflected more about the author and audience, than about the subject of writing itself.

In the case of Barbados, we see strong notions of “Sameness” with Britain when focusing on the observations on language and society. However, the constructed inferior “Otherness” is strongly maintained regarding the black majority population. The tensions between these contradictory identity constructions can be identified as the premise to argue for continued Imperial rule and political authority in the colonies. It substantialised imaginary connections of both kinship and moral authority that served as an “innocent” way to continue the hegemonic projects of Empire. Continuing to scrutinise such colonial primary sources is essential in truly understanding the origins of present national identities and hierarchical relationships.

Further Observations…

This article was adapted from an academic essay that was assigned with a word limit, which restricted the range of primary sources consulted. It is worth including a brief look at other primary source material which indicates a pattern of similar “good colony” rhetoric being deployed in major moments of 20th century political turmoil.

“Gawd’s Cuntree” : Poem by Kathleen Catford commemorating the 1935 Jubilee of King George V

Unlike the previous travel writing texts, this text was written for residents of Barbados, as what could arguably be considered colonial propaganda. Specifically, the use of Bajan dialect throughout the entirety of the poem indicates its target audience as the common local men and women.

Aside from marking the king’s silver Jubilee, 1935 is a remarkable year because at this point the entire British Caribbean was being swept by disruptive political upheavals by the poor working class. Colonies such as British Honduras, Trinidad, St. Kitts, Jamaica, British Guyana, St. Vincent and St. Lucia had all experienced organised strikes, marches and protests throughout 1934. This was largely triggered by acute economic grievances resulting from the Great Depression but which, of course, was directly related to the steep structural disadvantages suffered by Black citizens — the predominant demographic descended from the previously enslaved class.

It can hence be reasoned that this is a politically motivated poem which served as to quell possible unrest, and reinforce the depiction of the “wholesome and innocent” connection between Barbados (Little England) and Great Britain. It opens with an emphasis on the distance between days of slavery and the present:

In standard English translation: “I’m sitting down to recollect the days that have passed and gone, and all that my great grandmother says she saw before I was born, I’m studying about the times gone by when all of us were slaves, then good Victoria made us free like the blackbirds and the waves.”

The first half narrates the relatively unremarkable acquirement of the island by the British. When it arrives to the point in history in which the enslaved were introduced, it follows the logic of: “Those Englishmen found that the sun was really hot, they cooled out in the shade of a palm tree and asked, ‘what do we do?’ In England all our skin is white, our cheeks nice and pink, but look at how we’re blistering and getting black as ink’, some person says ‘the very thing, we’ll send across the sea and get some Africans to come and work the land for us’ , and Massah, we were packed so tight you could barely pout your lip! And enough time has gone since then, till now the Jubilee…”

The total omission of the traumatic experience of enslavement endured by many generations of African descendants is so blaring that it could only be intentional. There is very little to be found (online) about the author Kathleen Catford, besides for this brief description from abebooks.com which indicates, unsurprisingly, that she came from the white upper class of Barbados. So even if this omission was not explicit political intent, it nevertheless reflects the willful ignorance of the white classes and failure to recognise and validate the reality of slavery.

This text not only exemplifies how the anti-conquest approach of the British Empire was not only applied to citizens of the metropole to justify their dominating rule, it was also forced onto the colonised population as rationalisation of their being systematically dominated. This poem attempts to portray not only an innocent rationalisation of enslavement, it goes as far as to praise the ‘benevolent’ British for freedom, and invoke subsequent gratitude and servitude in its conclusion: “I don’t mind what outlorded men tells you about the whites… I tell you, though my skin is black, my heart is red, white and blue. And if those troublesome men start to make war in the sky, we Bajans will all back the King, for our fish can even fly!”

…To what extent such propaganda was immediately effective can be debated, since two years later Barbados saw its own waves of riots and political upheaval by organised labourers. But of course, still an extension of Great Britain, many Bajans were indeed sent to fight under the Union Jack in WWII. If anything, the poem lends itself to the understanding that the indoctrination of British innocence and moral superiority was also applied to the exploited masses of Black Bajans — which one could suggest still forms part of the framework of white supremacy as it stands today.

NY Times 1971 Column by Lee Edson: “Barbados Keeps Its Distance to Resist Change”

An in-depth analysis of this text from The New York Times archives can be saved for a later time— but it must be included here in order to highlight the continuation of the use of the “good colony” rhetoric even in response to modern, post-independence political agitation. Although written for the United States media, and almost a century after Froude published his travel writings, an undeniable echoing of colonial discourse can be identified in passages such as the following:

“The island’s heliocentric isolation resulting in smug insularity, according to some critics — and its 300‐year colonial dependence on Great Britain have contributed strongly to the island’s peculiarly individual character. Barbados is more implacably English than Jamaica; indeed it has been described as the Black Britain of the Caribbean — not contemporary Britain, declining in imperialism and regard for royalty, but turn‐of‐the‐century England, where elitism, colonialism, and snobbishness were rampant. The Anglophile atmosphere is still there underneath the sun, from the statue of Lord Nelson in the main square (named Trafalgar Square of course) of Bridgetown, to the market place character of the city with its bustle and ubiquitous Barclays Bank. No wonder the oldest joke on the island, probably apocryphal, refers to the cable gram sent by the Barbados Government to the “mother country” shortly after Britain declared war on Germany. “Go to it, England,” the cable read, “Barbados is behind you.”

The article presents many problematics that reflect the mainstream media’s attitudes and perception of the Civil Rights/Black Power movement, which was making history at the time. For instance, while our first Prime Minister is described as “ a former bled, R.A.F. hero, Errol Barrow, a man who is as outspoken against black power as he is in favor of modernizing the island and bringing its sugar economy into the 20th century” — it also implies here that “black power”, as the author understood it, is incompatible with what he considers “modernisation”. The article goes on to describe what pro-Black activism was occurring in Barbados at the time as “Some Rumbles”. It assures readers that “The average tourist and the sophisticated traveler find no undercurrent of hostility to whites” — equating the Civil Rights sentiments with anti-whiteness (and further, terming tourist/sophisticated traveler as interchangeable with white).

The column dedicates a section headed “Courteous and Helpful” to describe the some “reassuring” amicable experience white visitors had with black locals. Lee Edson goes as far as to offer his own, very Yankee take on what Black empowerment looks like: “They have set aside enough wealth of their own to build some of the plush hotels that are dear to American, Canadian and British hearts and pockets, and they are smart enough to watch, calculate and husband the growth of this new tourist industry. One day they may tax it heavily, not enough to drive the white foreigners away, but enough to increase the prosperity of the island. That of course is the real crux of black power.”

I think it’s safe to say that the fact that this column is found under the broader headline “Caribbean ‘Black Power’ — Will Their Plans Affect Yours?” — which itself is found under the ‘Travel and Resorts’ section of the newspaper — speaks for itself in reaffirming the tradition of Northern foreign media constructing and framing Bajan identity in accordance with its own political and economic interests and desires.

Concluding Questions…

I would like to close off this article with acknowledging that national identity formation is absolutely more complex, nuanced and profound than any piece of media could capture with words and images. However, I think there is something to be said for recognising the evolution of national tropes, stereotypes and “characteristics” which can be repeated and reinforced so many times that they become taken for granted. I hope this article may serve to expose that, in the case of formerly colonised countries, national identity was first imposed by colonising forces for debilitating, motivated reasons. And although it may be that centuries of development according to the narrative of “Little England” does indeed reflect truths about our current identity, these are not immutable truths. I believe that — considering the overlapping phenomenon of a global pandemic disrupting tourism as we know it, along with the revitalisation of the Black Lives Matter movement instigating a critical assessment of race relations and Imperial legacies — it is a potent moment for Barbados to be asking, who does this identity really serve? Could we strive for something better? What would that look like? The political unrest of today is of global proportions, history is being thoroughly challenged, new narratives are taking root and a new sense of self, on many levels, is waiting to be born.

Sources

[1] Froude, James Anthony. ​The English in the West Indies: Or, the Bow of Ulysses​. Cambridge Library Collection . Latin American Studies, 2010.

[2] Clarke, Stephen. ​Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit​. London: Zed Books, 1999.

[3] Sheller, Mimi. ​Consuming the Caribbean : From Arawaks to Zombies​. International Library of Sociology 810662647. London [etc.]: Routledge, 2003.

[4] Stephanides, Stephanos, and Susan Bassnett. “Islands, Literature, and Cultural Translatability.” Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化​, no. Hors Série, 2008. pp. 5–21.

[5] Ferguson, Moira, and Mary Louise Pratt. “Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation.” Eighteenth-Century Studies​ 26, no. 3, 1993.

[6] Brady, Ciaran. ​James Anthony Froude: An Intellectual Biography of a Victorian Prophet.​ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

[7] Hearn, Lafcadio. “XXII: ​Two Years in the French West Indies.​ New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890.

[8] Anonymous. “Barbados: By One Who Has Wintered There”. ​The Pall Mall Gazette​ (London, England), Wednesday, August 30, 1899; Issue 10740. ​British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800–1900.

Throughout the whole country the streets have been seized by waves of protests for almost two months now. How is it possible that such quantities of people could maintain such a level of commitment for so long? As declared in the early weeks of the outbreak, there is no going back to the previous “normalcy”. This continued commitment is especially notable in light of the appalling brutality inflicted on the protestors by the State security forces since the outbreak of social unrest.

It is pertinent to frame this as a human rights crisis rooted at the intersection of Chile’s neoliberal government and dictatorial institutional mechanisms. An extensive investigation by Amnesty International identifies the consistent and organised use of extreme force and torture by the State’s security forces as a deliberate “politics of dissuasion”. That is, that the official mandate in response to the manifestations is to inflict as much harm as possible, in order to repress and discourage those engaged. This mandate has categorically violated numerous human rights and international laws, including (but not limited to) the illegal use of lethal force, such as semi-automatic weapons and intentionally running over protestors; firing rubber bullets at the face, inflicting an unprecedented rate of irreversible eye trauma; using chemically infused water canons; unleashing excessive amounts of tear gas not only against protestors, but also around schools, hospitals and residential areas; attacking human rights observers and first aid medics while attempting to carry out their work and numerous reports of physical and sexual torture, including rape, have been filed by detainees.

All of this points to a grossly corrupt relationship between the security forces responsible and the system overseeing this ongoing menacing of civilians. Amnesty expresses that “The individual criminal responsibility of these incidents does not end with the trial of those who pull the trigger. To guarantee justice and that these incidents are not repeated implies sanctioning those superior authorities who, even with clear awareness of the crimes committed by the functionaries under their command, ordered and tolerated their commission day after day.”

One may cast a skeptical eye on media reports of plundering, the burning of supermarkets and metro facilities, the tangible rage of the crowds and insist that it is the protestors that are menacing what some call social “order”. But to do so would neglect to look further, at both the lengthly history of isolation and severe neglect from the political elites, as well as the multiplicity of creative forms in which the unrest is being manifested.

Neoliberalism: Being uprooted where it was implanted.

In an interview with The Clinic, Chilean historian Gabriel Salazar explains the origins of the situation in neoliberal political-economics “imposed by foreign intervention and through a Constitution in which citizens did not participate in. Therefore, the model was illegitimately born. It was perfected by the civil political class, the Concertación, which administered it better than Pinochet (the dictator) did. So a pressure pot was being created where there was a was a crisis of representation and of surplus value. Any spark was going to make a popular social protest explode. An increase in metro fare, for instance.” This model implemented an extreme level of privatisation, meaning that national resources and basic social services have been administered for the interests of profiting the few for more than 30 years. As a result, whilst the country has been praised for its robust rates of economic growth, the material reality is that social rights such as higher education, efficient health services, retirement pensions and an adequate minimum wage are privileges accessible to the few.

This is not the first instance of people have taken to the streets; in the past 20 years there have been a series of peaceful mass protests, mostly spearheaded by students. Yet the rigid political class paid them no mind and no significant reforms were brought about. Salazar comments that “Nobody took them seriously. Then, what has occurred these days is the cumulation of this transformative process of citizenship through an internal revolution and that now appears in the streets in a massive way.”

The response of the government to the October 18th uprising has been disastrous, insensitive, and short-sighted; overall indicative of their estrangement from the precarious reality that the majority of Chilean citizens live in. The State of Emergency triggered the vivid trauma of the dictatorial years, an era which still has neither answered nor apologised for its victims and survivors of torture. President Piñera’s discourse has been floundering, both seeking to demonise and criminalise the civil unrest whilst also attempting to insert himself in solidarity with the people. Upon realising that this is not a situation that would gradually die out, politicians wrote up with an Agreement for Peace and a New Constitution on November 15th. But this has not resolved anything, as it maintains crucial continuities with the current norm and excludes crucial reforms that the people are insisting on.

There is a term in Spanish that is not commonly applied in English: gatopardismo. It originates from the Italian novel Il Gatopardo (1958) which chronicles social shifts in Siciliy. In this narrative, the aristocrats accept the revolution of the unification of Italy in order to continue maintaining power. It is hence used in politics to refer to symbolic or superficial changes, whilst maintaining the same essential power structure.

This is critical to keep in mind when reading the fine print of the Agreement. It stipulates mechanisms for the formulation of the new constitution, such as a requisit 2/3 consensus, which gives a 34% minority the ability to veto initiatives of substantial reform. It completely leaves out the moral imperative of administering justice to the state agents responsible for the violations of human rights. It also dictates that only the political parties that sign the Agreement are able to form the Technical Commission, which would take charge of the whole process. This is implies a means that defeats the end, as it excludes non-signatory parties, forces the current government and the opposition to equivalent roles in the reforms and leaves out critical actors from the table. In short, it disregards the true imperative of the social movement.

So, with the redundancy of politics-as-usual in the midst of this uprising, what is this movement aiming for?

A manifestation with 21st century dimensions.

In understanding the aims of the movement lies the need to understand the particular nature of the movement. “Revolution” is probably one of the most historically saturated words after the turbulence of the 20th century, and so using it in a contemporary context can result in a loss of specificity.

Rodrigo Karmy Bolton describes the particularity of the Chilean uprising as “a revolution exempt from the philosophy of history”. What does that mean? It refers to the fact that the phenomenon of Revolution is informed and understood by certain models established throughout history. He elaborates how “The Russian Revolution of 1917 followed the paradigm of the French Revolution, which constituted the modern pretext under which all possible revolutions were understood. In other words, the French Revolution acquired a “normative” sense, by which its paradigm was able to bring emancipation to all people.”

But what makes this situation exempt from this paradigm? Most notably, it is not spearheaded by a single leader or representative party. This is an anomaly especially in the Latin American context, where social change is typically led by caudillos — charismatic leaders that rally the masses under a personality cult tied into revolutionary ideals. Leaders turned into cultural-political mythology such as Castro, Chavez, Evo, Lula and Perón. Instead, this revolution came forth like a tide, a citizens’ collective which does not need a caudillo mouthpiece to articulate their visions for a better society. Indeed, Salazar confirms that “this time the enemy is the political class. The people do not want any of it: not a line for the right, nor for the left nor the centre…All of this is new…It must be thought of in terms of itself. It is no longer fitting to recollect old models. The ideology of the Cold War does not work here.”

Indeed, a distinct egalitarian and anonymous character is evident in the symbols which have emerged as definitive of the manifestations. One of the most prevalent is Negro Matapacos (Black Cop Killer), a dog who became famous for participating in the 2011 protests and for attacking the Carabineros who violently confronted the students.

“La Primera Linea”(The Front Line) has also gained recognition as the ‘David against Goliath’ of the manifestations, referring to the masked protestors in direct contact with the water canons, teargas and firing range of the Carabineros. They often form street barricades and launch stones and Molotovs in order to keep the security forces from disrupting the crowds of thousands of passive protestors. For this they have been recognised as essential to sustaining the movement. Despite Piñera’s attempt to ban the use of masks, the “right to anonymity” has been emphasised in retaliation to the State’s attempt to encroach on individual privacy. In line with this, street performance collective Complejo Conejo has been actively giving out balaclavas to protect the identity of protestors.

Without a doubt one of the most impactful expressions of this movement has been the anthem and dance by feminist performance collective LasTesis. ‘El Violador en Tu Camino’, which translates to ‘A Rapist in Your Path’, has not only given momentum to the feminist prerogative of the Chilean movement, but has also been recognised internationally as a universal “call-out” of the systemic abuse of women — with which the State is not only complicit, but has always empowered up to today.

Angela Erpel writes that “In this context, where the television is bogged down by private finance, where it insists daily on showing vandalisms, looting and destruction, feminists have proposed collective spectacle as resistance.” LasTesis was inspired by the works of Argentinian feminist anthropologist and activist Rita Segato. In an interview with BBC Mundo she expresses that “I love that this has gone beyond the control of typical media. I see it circulated the planet with its own feet, evading all filters, all the selectivity of conventional channels.”

She also unpacks the potency of this spectacle according to her perspective on abuse against women: “The violator is the moral subject par excellence and the violation is moralising , that is, it puts the woman in her place… it tells her: more than a person, you are a body…Those who rape are the authority…. Rape is not founded in sexual desire, it is not the uncontrolled and necessitated male libido. It is not this because it isn’t even a sexual act: it is an act of power, of domination, it is a political act.” This moralising authority also ties into the ‘masculine mandate’ which also harms men everywhere; it “implicates violence, cruelty, lack of sensitivity, empathy, solidarity and companionship towards women… this continues to cause internal tension in many men, not to be able to feel or express tenderness.”

Segato states that “masculine and patriarchal coded politics is arriving to a point of inflection for its great failure, because it has not managed in any moment or in any way to transform history by taking the route of the State, we have not arrived at a world with more wellbeing for more people through the typical means that has always been the means of the State, politics in the hands of men.”

So although the destructive manifestations of this social instability may unsettle or provoke anxiety for some, it is accompanied by distinctly creative manifestations that are putting forth new values and new norms: consensus over authority, respecting those who truly protect the people, anonymity as subordination and aim over ego and freedom from patriarchal hierarchy. In sum, as can be seen on many graffitied walls and signs: Hasta que la dignidad se haga costumbre — until dignity is made the norm.

What’s To Come…

What are the necessary steps to take towards making this broad goal attainable through concrete, material changes? Representative elective politics has been proven an incompatible means towards policy reform in this context. As Carlos Durán Migliardi observes, “the outburst of social rebellion in all of Chile from the 18th of October constitutes an event in the rigorous sense of the word: an event which fractured the knowledge available up to now in the political arena, in the intellectual world and in media devices.”

In response to this crisis of incompatibility, we see what Bolton refers to as constitutional commitment being cast as “revolution” in an entirely novel way… “Its means are not concerned with “seizing State power” but rather, maybe, of re-imagining its own formation.” This re-casting of constitutional commitment is evident in the people’s demands not only for a new constitution, but also that this is created through a Constituent Assembly. In this way, the new constitution would be forged by a more direct democratic mechanism and hence better reflect the diversity of interests within the nation.

The Constituent Assembly differs from the Constituent Convention in that it is informed by a wider variety of voices, and participation is not exclusive to politicians — it is born from horizontal dialogue amongst citizens (1). This is necessary in order to achieve a dignified society, because the differing realities along intersections of class, gender, ethnicity, age and geography must be represented. Policies must account for the plurality of challenges that affect different citizens, a process which can be facilitated by plebiscites, town hall meetings and unions. The pursuit of this process is the less explosive and more long-term expression of the Chilean manifestations, and will be contested tooth-and-nail by the political elite who cling to institutional defences. Nothing is certain. But it is a process that has already been initiated — certainly in spirit — at the level of the street and on digital platforms. Politics is happing from the ground up, and determined to bring forth significant transformation. After thirty years of being shut out of significant participation, Chileans won’t be losing stamina any time soon in the pursuit of undoing the dictatorial legacy and re-imagining 21st century social formations.

Beyond Chile.

As an end note to this summary — although I thoroughly believe that social movements cannot be generalised beyond their specific historical and cultural context — I would like to suggest that some major elements that spurred this uprising can be recognised in socio-political dilemmas in most parts of the world.

Alia Trabucco Zerán comments that “this attempt of criminalisation however, does not exclusively point to the articulation, that is to say, the current political moment as a stage of “disorder”, but rather it intends to also dissuade and punish future social movements, classifying as “public disorder” acts of civil disobedience, which will have to multiply themselves in the face of the climate emergency which is already present in Chilean territory.”

I do not think it’s necessary to point out the common factor in this equation. The climate emergency has been one of the most globally discussed topics this past year. The tone of the discourse is only increasingly urgent. Yet symbolic solutions offered up in the face of a very tangible crisis have turned out hollow. How could one take seriously the grandeur awarded to the “achievement” of the Paris Accords when the situation has only worsened since then? I’ll admit to feeling bitter about that moment of false promise.

Neoliberalism has a particularly strong bearing in Chile, but this model dictates international governance with the unregulated extraction of natural resources in order to sustain a limitless cycle of excessive productivity. It has installed itself as the seemingly natural structure of our reality — the next major recession is regarded with the same sense of inevitability as the hurricane season. Yet it is an artificial set of norms, consciously designed by man not so long ago as the means to untether profiteering from checks and balances.

It is increasingly evident that electoral representative democracy is incapable of reigning in the unprecedented levels of exploitation that is offsetting our ecosystems. The tension built up with growing mass awareness of approaching a ‘tipping point’ and the lack of correspondence to significant changes by the international business and political class suggests a similar scenario of a pressure pot on the point of boiling over. What else could be expected when it seems we’ll soon be up to our knees with rising sea levels while watching industry leaders jet off on a yacht fleet?

It may not present itself as a sudden or spectacular eruption, but as Zerán points out, civil disobedience will necessarily manifest with more frequency as our environments continue to destabilise. What’s currently going on in Chile may be seen as informative for movements elsewhere: the potential in alternative civil formations, and the reactions against this. It demonstrates the need to look critically on what is being classified as criminal — is it criminal or is it inconveniently confrontational? The coming years will likely attest the degree of commitment of many States to the values of human rights. Meanwhile, we may be sold a rhetoric of hysteria as old pillars start to quiver, but as power dies out it counts on fear to sustain and justify itself. But fear and hysteria lack direction, and with the impetus to do something breathing down our necks, it’s time to shift the focus from the podiums to the much wider and rounded kitchen table.

This summary was informed by the following reports:

(1) Asamblea por el Pacto Social

Chile: Política deliberada para dañar a manifestantes apunta a responsabilidad de mando (Amnistía Internacional)

El pueblo quiere un nuevo régimen (Rodrigo Karmy Bolton)

Gabriel Salazar: “Esta vez el enemigo es la clase política; la gente no quiere nada ni con la derecha, ni con la izquierda ni con el centro” (The Clinic)

Acuerdo por la paz y nueva constitución en Chile: ¿Convención o asamblea? (Carolina Bruna)

La Dislocación: el Frente Amplio y el 18-O (Carlos Durán Migliardi)

Destitución, primera línea y potencia plebeya (Mauro Salazar Jaque)

Rita Segato, la feminista cuyas tesis inspiraron ‘Un violador en tu camino’: “La violación no es un acto sexual, es un acto de poder, de dominación, es un acto político” (Mar Pichel)

El Otro Orden (Alia Trabucco Zerán)

Reflexiones sobre la provocación feminista de las performances callejeras en el estallido social (Ángela Erpel)

Crónica sobre la “Primera Línea” de las manifestaciones: Una batalla de David contra Goliat (Camilo Cáceres)

El camino para una Nueva Constitución: comentarios críticos al proyecto de Reforma Constitucional (Òscar Cornejo y Sofía Brito)

Translated interview by The Clinic with Chilean historian Gabriel Salazar (11.11.2019). Find the original interview here.

Historian Gabriel Salazar studied the social movement that has already surpassed three weeks in Chile and in an interview with La Segunda assured that it will last a while longer, and that the political class is not just alluded to as one of the main focuses of the citizens’ unrest.

In respect to the spontaneous nature of the manifestation and the origin of the rage, the academic reflects that “the people have united in small groups in order to deliberate on their own. It is seen on social media, the collectives. The political parties and the governments did not pay them any mind, not during the Mochilazo movement (2001), not during the Pingüinazo movement (2006), nor during the student mobilisation of 2011.”

In this sense he specifies that “Nobody took them seriously. Then, what has occurred these days is the cumulation of this transformative process of citizenship through an internal revolution and that now appears in the streets in a massive way.”

About the type of organisation that has been present in these moments, Salazar responds that “long ago people associated in legalised organisations. However, the movements of the marginalised (mid 20th century) were not guided by statutes. They were armed in order to do something and then they disarmed. This is a social network. For example, the delinquents are associated like this. Micro-organisations are armed, disarmed and multiply. Pinochet was able to destroy these organisations with torture, but when confronted with the stage of protests of 1983 and 1987, when he faced the popular social networks, he lost. This form of getting together is typical of social banditry.”

Salazar describes this last concept at the historical level: “social banditry of the 19th century — from 1780 until 1940 — that nobody could destroy, it has the same structural form. Nowadays, the protestors act in networks; they arm and disarm, the cellphones appear, and that gives the movement potency. For this reason it is ridiculous that the government says that there is a group behind the scenes organising everything.

Also consulted as a sociologist on the destruction of monuments, Salazar first says that “if you examine Chilean statues, they are purely statues of the dominant oligarchy: Diego Portales, Manuel Montt, Bernardo O’Higgins, los Carrera; the elite. Therefore, enemies of the mestizo population.

Salazar continued by adding that “In Chile, unlike in Mexico, they are no statues of the warriors for the people. Where is the statue of Lautaro? He defeated the Spanish. Where is the statue of Violeta Parra or Luis Emilio Recabarren? Well, for this reason the mestizo population does not identify with the monuments and the hispanic-European cultural history.

When asked is the violence of the protestors is justified, Salazar categorically responds that no, but that his role as a historian is “to explain phenomena”. The he adds that “If this system exacerbates consumerism, we cannot be surprised that it has resulted in looting. Hence why you see shameful scenes like people stealing plasma screens. On one hand it is the grand finale of consumerism, but, at the same time, it is the rage against the system that brought them to burn supermarkets.”

In interview with La Segunda, the sociologist points out that neoliberalism was a model “imposed by foreign intervention and through a Constitution in which citizens did not participate in. Therefore, the model was illegitimately born. It was perfected by the civil political class, the Concertación, which administered it better than Pinochet did. So a pressure pot was being created where there was a was a crisis of representation and of surplus value. Any spark was going to make a popular social protest explode. An increase in metro fare, for instance.”

“This is not cyclical. Today’s movement is a unique outbreak in the history of Chile. Because it is not a sectoral reaction of one small group that is affected. Neither is it a reaction from only a single city. It is all of Chile. It is not a classist reaction, here there is everyone: it is pluri-classist.” he declares.

Regarding whether the mobilisation could have electoral consequences for the Partido Comunista and the Frente Amplio, there is a rounded “no”, explaining that unlike the previous large strikes, “this time the enemy is the political class. The people do not want any of it: not a line for the right, nor for the left nor the centre. What’s surprising is that they are not taken for granted, and so they want to control the Constitutional Assembly process. Hence, the government and the opposition are going to unite to defend themselves.

Salazar recognises that there is no management within the movement and what actually has appeared is an assembly which operates without a head of the movement, that it is a table of social unity. “All of this is new. We are in a situation of unedited history. It must be thought of in terms of itself. It is no longer fitting to recollect old models. The ideology of the Cold War does not work here.”

Asked whether the manifestations will continue, the professor assures that “without a doubt” and that “the mobilisations will not come to an end because the model is already made. The masked protesters have learned to plunder. Neither the army nor the police were able to avoid it. In a way, Piñera was right, we are at war. Not a military war, but a political battle. And it will go on.

Almost ten years ago the Arab countries were filled with only one mandate: “the people want the fall of the regime”. A potent dismissal engulfed them and with that various governments fell, but not the “regime”. The Arab term “nizam” is fundamental here: it doesn’t refer to “government” but rather “regime” or “system”. It’s about making the “regime” fall in all of its totality.

Unlike Tunisia which actualised the process of Constitutional Assembly, all the rest of the countries encountered strong resistance by de facto powers, which derived from the application of neoliberal-focused politics in order to neutralise the protests (Saudi Arabia and the monarchic regimes), to accept certain reforms (Morocco) or simply to militarise the revolts to eventually succumb to a civil war (Syria and Libya) or to well justify the business-military symbolic shift of power with the arrival of General Sisi in Egypt. This ousted Mohamed Morsi, historical leader if the Muslim Brotherhood who won elections in the year 2012 and, once arrested by Sisi’s armed forces was imprisoned without any communication during all these years until, finally, ended up “dying” this year exactly on the day on which he was to give his tribunal testimonies.

The Arab revolts were marked by the formula: “the people want the fall of the regime”. Those who participated in said events referred to them in terms of “intifada” (revolt) or “thawra” (revolution) in an interchangeable way. Is this about a lack of theoretical precision? or, rather, of a decisive moment in which the “revolt” and the “revolution” begin to be presented as possibilities within each other. Frio Jesi states that a revolt implies a “suspension of historical time” which defines the new regime; a revolution is the establishment of a new historical time which defines the new regime. The revolt does not know of “today” or “tomorrow” because it is not calculating the action of the former in relation to an already suspended chronological time. The revolution does, because it should act exactly in order to confront the “today” and “tomorrow” of the newly established chronology. Hamid Dabashi termed the event of the Arab Spring as an “open-ended revolution”: it’s not about a simple revolt, but also not about a consummated revolution, but rather a hybrid that exceeded the notion of both revolt and revolution.

But since a long time ago, the notion of “revolution” originally comes from the astronomical sciences with which Nicholas Copernicus termed the perfection of the celestial orbits, and which turned into a term articulated from a certain historical philosophy that could guarantee success and was able to justify terror. The Russian Revolution of 1917 followed the paradigm of the French Revolution which constituted the modern pretext under which all possible revolutions were understood. In other words, the French Revolution acquired a “normative” sense, by which its paradigm was able to bring emancipation to all people. If revolt suspends historic time, revolution can establish a new one. According to Jesi, a revolt opens a “beginning” and a revolution gives it consistency and direction because it installs and conserves a new order, a new regime.

What is the uprising of the Chilean people? What do they desire through their signs, graffiti and chants? A new political regime. It not only aims for the “fall of the regime” but also another possible regime. In this sense, its position is revolutionary: leave behind the judicial framework of the 1980 Constitution together with its Oligarchic Pact in order to initiate a new regime exempt from said Pact, based on the communal commitment of a Constitutional Assembly. In other words, it is not just about “the people want the fall of the regime” but also, and above all, that “the people want to initiate a new regime”.

So this is about a revolution? It certainly is, but a revolution exempt from the philosophy of history, that knows that there are no guarantees of anything because everything burns in the passageway of a constantly uncertain historicity. Let’s say it is about a revolution. But a revolution in the 21st century has entirely different dimensions than the classic revolutions of modernity: it does not have a vanguard as a driving force, it does not maintain representative leaders and, as Dabashi would say, it is concerned with open-ended revolutions that certainly lack the classic revolutionary terror once they have won power — that is, if they do win.

The Chilean process has entered into a “second era” — without a doubt. The institutionalism of the Ancien Règime has offered an “Agreement” filled with tricks which are not present in the devices of a Constitutional Assembly. If the Chilean people have declared “constitutional assembly” in the streets and not “constitutional convention” it is because they seek “to initiate a new regime” without the current “parliamentary” shelters. But this process cannot comply with a representational application, so the people want a new regime with the people, not without them, decided by them and not simply on their behalf: Will any new parliament be able to assure the representation of the people today? Not in any way, this is precisely what opens a hiatus between both places. So its constitutional commitment is cast as “revolution” in an entirely novel way: it is capable of initiating another era, but under very different premises than those of the modern revolution in that its means are not concerned with “seizing State power” but rather, maybe, of re-imagining its own formation.

The recent experience in Latin America shows some experiments in this regard: the use of the term revolution in Bolivian, Venezuelan and Ecuadorian versions — distinct experiences of which the classic formulation of the 60s in which the Cuban experience was inserted. The revolutionary orbits are not far from the boulevards. Rather, these experiences — failed or not — implicated an emergency of an old conclusion for a new experiences: the constituency.

Is the current “Chilean experience” not permitted to be qualified as a “revolution” if its objective is the establishment of a new regime? Well, the difference with the Bolivian, Venezuelan or Ecuadorian cases is that these experiences had the face of a leader: Evo, Chávez and Correa tie in these processes to still prevalent “modern” remnants. That is not to say that one may not suggest some leadership in the process. But for now, the subject has been collectively desired without the need of any leader. The desperate attempts of the political parties to manage or capitalise on these events show their abysmal impotence and their supposed exit from the process that we attend to.

Can there be a constituent process without leadership, without a vanguard? Maybe that defines the current Chilean experience: beyond a revolt and a revolution, it all turns into a revolt of constitutional framework and a revolution without vanguards. As Dabashi defines the Arab Spring, maybe it’s about an open-ended revolution in the 21st century — in virtue of its political experiences, it begins to imagine a non-modern conception of revolution. Such a conception implies powerful moments of deprival that are unable to neither reason nor inscribe itself to the core of the whole constitutional process that depends on the State, but which interrupts it each time that this latest threat tries to do away with popular imagination. This possibility was present in the Arab Spring, and for some time now has been prowling around the Latin American stage.

Chile, 1971. After a long process of negotiating with large North American mining companies, copper was nationalised by the first elected socialist president in the world. But this was a fleeting joy, since that — for the US in the midst of the Cold War — this was an unpardonable offence, just as bad, or worse than having a socialist country in their backyard. Nationalisation hence became another nail in the coffin of this Chilean experiment; one which took too many decades — of blood, suffering and struggle — for the betterment of the quality of life for its workers and population. Like so many other instances before, and in so many other places, the empowerment of the working class provoked the wrath of those accustomed to centralising power. So on the 11th of September, 1973, with much help from the US, the Unidad Popular was replaced by one of the bloodiest dictatorships on the continent.

During the seventeen years of the civil-military dictatorship, Pinochet established the most hard-line neoliberal reforms seen in the world. The setting was perfect, people terrorised by the prospect of death, being ‘disappeared’, and tortured, the people were made neutral by the vengeance of the military, backed up by the Chilean oligarchy. They were in no condition to impede the total privatisation proposed by Milton Friedman and his Chilean students from the Chicago School of Economics (the Chicago Boys). These transformation took place in a country split in two: where workers were obliged to compete according to the logic of social darwinism in order to survive on their own; while the elite enjoyed the profits and benefits of their new business in the recently privatised sector of basic services.

State terrorism was justified by the slogan of the macroeconomic resurrection during this period, so beginning the early construction of the “Chilean Miracle”. However, in 1975 there was a major macroeconomic crisis, conveniently forgotten about by the Chicago Boys, which obliged Pinochet to allow the them to participate in government. Additionally there was the major international macroeconomic crisis of the 1980s, which hit the country hard. Although Chile was not the most unfortunate country during this period, the rate of unemployment, economic growth and inflation was scandalous enough [1] to bring the terrorised population to the streets with mobilisations that ended with the departure of the dictator. Mining multinationals and direct foreign investment returned with the arrival of democracy in 1990. During this decade Chile was consolidated as the “poster child” for new liberal economy, thanks to a rapid and sustained macroeconomic growth rate and stability. This thrilled Friedman and dazzled other Latin American nations, also “neoliberalised” and indebted by the IMF through the imposition of structural readjustment policies.

Due to the simultaneous rise of the “Asian Tigers”, Chile also adopted a its own metaphor, self-proclaimed as “The Jaguar of Latin America”, a branding used to sell themselves abroad as a serious, politically and macro-economically stable and developed country — unlike its more tormented neighbours. Chile embraced globalisation, becoming the country with the most signed free-trade agreements in the world. This consolidated its undisputed leadership in the production of copper — essential for expanding economies. This international image contrasted with what was going on internally: a growing concentration of revenue, labour precarity, increase in families vacated from proper accommodation, centralism and wounds still open from the terror of the dictatorship — due to the impunity of many guilty politicians, citizens and military. With these contrasts, Chilean society slowly grew more and more tense.

The governments which followed the dictatorship governed “within the possible means”, which failed to diminish any of these problematic issues. On the contrary, the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia [2] failed to fulfil their promise to bring back happiness to the Chilean people, evident in the delays to put war criminals on trial; the extreme open trade; and the deepening of the privatising process in key sectors such as education, health and pensions. As this was carried out, the governments only widened the already abysmal cracks of various sorts. In today’s Chile, 1% of the population holds a third of the income — in light of this, it is considered one of the most unequal countries in the world.

Despite this, the current right-wing government has continued to sell Chile internationally as an “oasis” in the midst of a Latin America becoming more and more rebellious in the face of social injustices, as president Piñera said some weeks ago. But the magnitude of the latest protests have made it clear that this social “oasis” was in reality a “mirage”, proven by the strength of the massive mobilisations never before seen in the country. Unlike the Concertación governments — apt in the quelling of social movements — the arrogance and ineptitude of a government consisting of a conglomerate of right-wing parties has served as the perfect social catalysts to unleash the rage accumulating since 1973. More than anything due to the characteristics of their leader, president Piñera.

Piñera has a dark history: being a fugitive of the law for the Banco de Talca scam; facing various accusations for workplace harassment, nepotism and use of privileged information; creation of zombie business and other forms of tax evasion. In addition to being a Harvard doctorate, his praise of neo-nacionalist governments such as Bolsonaro and Trump, and his overriding style of doing business and politics, we have a character that encompasses all that dispossessed Chilean society detests. That is, an amoral businessman that made a fortune during the dictatorship by taking advantage of legal gaps or his position of power. Part of that group of people who exists above the law, that are sent to ethics classes when they are caught guilty of grave economic crimes, and that are determined to neglect any kind of improvement in social justice.

So, after two years of a government that boasted of reducing social advancements, it met its limit with a new rise in public transport fares. This led to an upheaval of the Chileans people, to mass evasion of metro fares which resulted in the a post office in Santiago going up in flames. And even more gas was thrown on these flames when it was revealed that the president was idly enjoying pizza in a rich neighbourhood while all this was happening, to then shortly after declare an immediate state of emergency. This then results in a political incapacity to respond to the demands for structural change, on top of a militarisation of the conflict. Piñera announced a war against the mobilised people of Chile on national television, leaving the military in charge of some of the most important cities of the country. This management of the crisis was a reminder of the painful events of the dictatorship, especially considering the alarming amount of violations of human rights by the armed forces. Today social media platforms show thousands of unarmed citizens — children and adults — injured by the police and the army, some of which have passed away. Today, they have caught arrests occurring in the middle of the night by civilian cars, of people still yet to be found. Today, the National Institute for Human Rights has received reports of sexual harassment of tortured and battered women. Today, right in the 21st century, the practices of a supposedly surpassed dictatorship still continue.

However, today the Chilean people also decided not to turn back, and continue to upheave the streets en mass in order to demand structural reforms — as shown by the sea of more than a million protesters on the 25th of October and at the marches following that. Beating on kitchen pans and spoons, the manifestations don’t cease, and don’t intend to cease, while there still exists Chileans and their flags. “They have taken so much that they left us without fear” can be read on much of the protestors’ signs, the same people who challenge the night curfews or the weapons that they point back at with their pans. The people have unmasked the idea of a stable Chile, unveiling at an international level this mirage, and it reveals a territory of economic, social and urban violence that unceasingly deepens. In the words of Victor Jara, murdered by the dictatorship, today the Chilean people are organised and they demand a new social pact formulated in a new constitution, which puts an end to the inequality imposed and exacerbated since the dictatorship, a substantial and historical change that guarantees their binding participation in the construction and defence of their legitimate “right to live in peace”.

[1] In 1982, the unemployment rate reached 22% (Castañera, 1983), the growth rate was -14.4% and the inflation rate was 9.9% (World Bank data).

[2] The coalition party consisting of left, centre and right wing political parties which formed the opposition to Pinochet’s regime (Translator’s note).

[3] https://www.ft.com/content/980ec442-ee91-11e9-ad1e-4367d8281195

“The architecture of this work is rooted in the temporal. Every human problem must be considered from the standpoint of time. Ideally, the present will always contribute to the building of the future. And this future is not the future of the cosmos but rather the future of my century, my country, my existence. In no fashion should I undertake to prepare the world that will come later. I belong irreducibly to my time. And it is for my own time that I should live.”

For a long time I’ve regarded the Internet with much suspicion — as an elusive and immaterial space that I never felt fully confident being present “on”. It’s a force that has encompassed and transformed our social relations and cultural landscape at a dizzying rate. It’s referred to as many things: at first as a “web”, commonly as a “platform”, often as a “tool”. However, as much as it’s conceptualised as being useful, it’s just as fervently regarded as detrimental, with insidious effects at the individual and social level. Both positive and negative — the way we interact and integrate it into our lives seems to evolve every year. And frankly, I was never bothered to be that actively involved. That is, besides my own personal communications and utilitarian needs, I’ve used the Internet comfortably with the voice in “off”. The way I saw it, trying to actually say something or show something online was the equivalent of trying to speak up in a vast crowd of people talking all at once — a mass with little to no attention span. Why bother shouting into that space? What response would I have? What effect would it make? The fact that viral trends and viral news both seem to be very short lived further convinced me of its futility. Every crisis, celebrity and joke seem to last as long as a fruit fly. So I’ve been quite content to be a little tech-hermit, selectively tuning in when I felt like it.

But my bubble popped upon graduation, which comes as no surprise. Throughout the course of my International Studies BA, my days were paced by lectures, classes, researching and writing. By specialising in Latin America and the Caribbean, I was introduced to a critical cross-disciplinary illustration of its history, culture, politics and economics. The more I learnt the more questions I had; my essays and projects seemed to facilitate what felt like an active conversation in which I would interrogate the social reality that characterises this region. This conversation kept me busy, and my pursuit of “explanations” was a satisfactory endeavour in response to the many complex issues rooted in the systemic exploitation of the region’s population and environment. But I’ve now exited this academic institution — my energy is no longer centred on a curriculum, I have no assignments and I’m no longer required to actively respond or even pay attention to these issues. But I have been paying attention, and my hands idle.

This has been a recipe for unease, restless unease. Time and time again I have been advised to “establish an online presence” in the context of career networking. I never quite knew where to begin in that pursuit… it seemed to suggest curating a persona with certain objectives in mind. It seemed like acting, and I’ve always been a terrible actress. But yet, many important conversations are taking place on the Internet, which by its nature is more democratic, that is, more accessible than university classrooms. One of the reasons I didn’t sign up for a Masters degree was due to my discomfort with the seemingly isolated nature of these academic conversations. That is, it was striking to me that, particularly in polemical subjects of political and economic development, many actors are left out of the table in these larger institutions.

I perceived an imbalanced transmission between “active” institutions deploying solutions to benefit “receptive” subjects — those directly affected by polemical issues. But how can solutions be applied without their active (and autonomous) participation? How can they fully participate if not fully informed? What if it is the institutions that have failed to be fully informed by those affected? There is also the significant dimension of translating the jargon and terminology of the issues at hand, making the conversation dominated by those with the privilege of having accessed higher education. For these reasons I felt need to look beyond the university to engage with what I guess is called social activism — but which I think should just be considered the normalised venture of conscious participation in what’s going on around us. Of the many perspectives I gained from my study, one is that neither politics nor economics are simply ideas, professions or interests, but rather realities we all participate in everyday. To what extent we are active agents in challenging and changing this reality varies — but this is where I realised the Internet is truly potent.

This became searingly clear during these past monumental weeks in which Chile despertó — Chile has woken. For both personal and political reasons the complete upheaval and mobilisations of the people there has stirred a true awe in me, and my eyes have been glued to the screen for the past three weeks. One of the most impressive and distinct features of this movement is the way in which it is facilitated and sustained through social media — it’s no small feat to initiate a mobilisation of up to two and a half million citizens across a country. Furthermore, it has been able to contest and speak back to national commercial media. Previously, the press has always had the monopoly on reporting events, but today we are smartphone-citizens, who can continually project — live and direct — a broader light on things. The framed set-ups have been exposed; the nauseating gangster behaviour of state forces have been exposed; and the accusations of delinquency by those in authority who wish to delegitimise its citizens’ demands just serves to expose how deaf they have become, because the rage on the street is not delinquency, but the result of too many years of neglecting to engage in the basic responsibilities of a government to provide a dignified quality of life.

In light of how easily Sebastián Piñera’s government could slide back into repressive dictatorial reflexes, it is indeed those in office who are plain criminals. The many grave violations of human rights, murders, rapes, and battery of citizens by a state which was a so-called stable oasis of neoliberal success in the region, should be a serious concern to everyone, everywhere. Now, the history of Chile’s not-so-distant brutal dictatorship and the extreme concentration of its plentiful resources to benefit a small elite class is long and complex. But when taken into account, the state of affairs today comes as no surprise — as a Nigerian proverb says “A man who lives on the bank of a river does not use spit to wash his hands.” That is, Chileans have been so blatantly denied the basic securities that their country can so clearly afford — so why shouldn’t they break out of the routine of precarious survival in order to reform the illegitimate system that benefits illegitimate, and quite sordid authorities?

The use of social media also goes beyond the initiation and coverage of this movement, it is also facilitating new forms of “autogestión” (self-management), the spread and sharing of critical information and ideas, and the organisation of assembly meetings. It is an instrument that is making new ways of proposing and and debating visions of the future possible. I don’t intend to sound positivistic in assuming that this means that this instrument thus makes these visions possible — what will unfold will undoubtedly be messy and chaotic. But it does change the character of social and political conversation to be more inclusive, more accountable and both better informed and informative. Witnessing these developments has jolted me into seeing how incredibly constructive these various outlets are, and that I can no longer play the tech-hermit if I am to be held accountable to my own ideals and beliefs.

So I renovated the idea of “online presence”, to see it in my mind as a very much alive and evolving network with interrelated functions — such is an ecology — within which I am obliged to participate in… because, as Franz Fanon so concisely says, “I belong irreducibly to my time. And it is for my own time that I should live.”

I don’t seek to be a pseudo-journalist on international affairs, but rather give voice to my agitations, to highlight what strikes me, and to share what should be shared. Towards that goal I will also publish translations of articles written in Spanish, as I think linguistic divides should be no barrier to making a greater diversity of sources more widely accessible. At the moment I don’t know how or if I could make the distinction between personal and political writing, because to detangle them from each other would take away from the true dimension of things. It’s an imperfect process, but I have to put my hands to the task and see how it evolves.