As Augusto would say, "Just sharing this with you..."

Doug <DougWords@hawaii.rr.com>

Subject: FOG OF OBLIVION
Date: Thursday, October 11, 1990 10:24 AM


Here is the new stuff, you are the first ones to share with.....
Stay alive
The macaw forever dreamin'

Augusto
In solidarity

FOG OF OBLIVION

"Third World" they say...i don't understand, where is the second? and if there is no second, where is the first? in the rich and fenced neighborhoods of Argentina and other countries of Latin America? or in Beverly Hills? and where is the third? in the Bronx, in Harlem? or in the shanty towns of Brazil, Argentina or Colombia? in the mountains, rocks and deserts of Afghanistan?

A little girl raises her hand and showing some of her fingers asks: "How many are this?" i count, one, two, three, "three!" i say. She says, "no" and counts, "three, two, one!!" she says..."they are one!!".... A single world, indeed. Artificially sectioned and labeled, and in this very labeling and sectioning there is a meaning, the meaning of the Power affirming itself in the mirror that gives him back as a gift its own image and alikeness. It cannot find safeness nor certainty in any other way, and carves the reflection, names it and classifies it, and avoids thus seeing its own true face, the one that is seen on the other side, on the dark side of the glass.

One single world. But there are different visions of this oneness. In one side the Power, with an hegemonic unity, that excludes and fears the other, that affirms itself in violence, discrimination, negation, imposition and the arrogant haughtiness. And in no place (after all, "u-topos", "utopy" means this...) but in the heart of the earth and life and the ones that earth themselves and live, the varied colours, the other as brother that affirms and supports me in individuality and community, that grows in the dance and the creative un-certainty, the natural and vital play of light and shadow, of form and frame, of mirror and crystal, of the agreements of the word and the heart between the many that are the all that are the we that is the ourselves, as the feathers of the Quetzal or the macaw, affirming the rainbow as horizon and ocean, of the humbleness that knows of the silence that resists and the word that liberates and struggles.

And here, in this provisionally called Third World, i feel that even though it is thought that the first goes first, it is not like this. We are precursors. We go ahead. Thanks (it is just a figure...) to the rapacity, first, of the conquest of America and the fight for silencing her word, that built and made wealthy the decadent Europe of those days, we go ahead in showing crudely the today that is the tomorrow, if the greed and the looting in which this system called Neoliberal breathes and is based on, doesn't stop.

We are precursors, the America of the colours of the earth that for centuries and unsuccesfully the Power intended to domesticate and mold, first from the Europe, then from the North, changing masks of the same empire without face or culture, in our poverty, in our exploitation and exploitation, in our mortality and hunger, we show the future. The future of Greed. The future of a "First World" that stands over the podium smashing cultures, lands, peoples, children.

There are now there victims of terror, there are now fear and insecurity, there are now missing people, there are now mothers that will not be able to mourn the bodies of their sons and daughters, there is now the fear of death knocking the door at any moment, for no reason, in any place.

We were precursors. Welcome to the nightmare. We lived this already when the Empire needed and implemented the state terror in Latin America, and trained terrorists in its military, economic, patriotic and nationalistic bases, "Occidental and Christian" ones, terrorists that ascended to became chiefs of states or/and murderers and torturers in the varied stages of Latin America and other places of the planet, and in the name of liberty, democracy and justice, macerated bodies, horizons and illusions from the shadows, as the shadows themselves, with the blessings and support of the ecclesiastical crusaders of the moment. Another Holy War, only that without suiciders.

And what is going on? What is going on in this planet, that before september 11 was full of demonstrations against globalization and neoliberalism, (enemy of humanity if there is one..) from Seattle, the Zapatista March of the Dignity and the Colours of the Earth, the S11 of Australia, and many other, and more recently Prague and Geneva? The attacks have changed the map, but not the territory, and have given space and support to the Power and the Terrorist Global System. They have installed protagonism in the leaders of Greed, dimming the dances and the goals of the liberating resistances, that are now beginning to reorganize themselves without pause and fortunately uncertain, to oppose to the war of greed and oblivion as the ballroom from where death will be questioned and life affirmed, as Democracy, Liberty and Justice, the true ones, the ones of the dign women and men, not the mirages that use those names to perpetuate the misery and death that inevitably follow the vultures of greed, that are flying over, this time as in the oldtimes, as war and fundamentalism that does not listen, and thus, exludes itself from life, excluding dignity from itself.

But as having no face, it has not shame. This is, it has no memory. Then, what is going on? Two rams are bumping their heads. They look as if they were angry, they look as if in war at each other, but really they are just responding to their own natures, they are having fun. They are enjoying the situation. Maybe they are in heat, and is the dance of fertility, followed of new embryos. Two rams are bumping theis heads..... Two right wings. Two archaic right wings. One the echo of the other. Dressed to the occasion. In the name of their respective gods, disguised and masked for the occasion. Both of them profoundly inside in agreement and accord with the neoliberalism and the merciless capitalism (Osama is a very successful businessman enterpreneur after all....), in a colourless conception of the world, in a perpetual present that does not see the horizon, does not see the real past, does not see the roots and longings of the peoples. This is neither the Islam of the Quram that affirms "Whoever kills a single human being, it is as if he has killed the whole humanity...", and about the other side, ( it has become more and more difficult to be able to distinguish the manichean speeches and affirmations of Bush from the ones of Laden...) it is not necessary to make any comments, it is completely exposed in its fundamental hallucinated-blindness-kicker-of-ant-holes.

And thus, the neoliberalism (as the name of the death cry of the crisis), in its two faces confronted in the mirror that gives back to each one the image of the other, without seeing that is the image of itself, has placed the whole humanity in a situation of global death, with the logic and the action of the club and annihilation, this is, of the total and absolute hegemony, with the desire to be permanent and stable. This denies the principles and laws of life, but who cares, if it is not life what matters to them? Two rams are bumping their heads. One the echo of the other. They are generous, they leave options to us. Either to be the air in the middle, compressed and then expelled in the very colliding, or being the ground, delved into and depredated in the passive act of being support. Space or support, asks the haughtiness that names itself with the name of "Western Civilization" (but we are at the South, and few are at the 'occident', and after all, 'at the west or occident of what?' 'or of who?' or maybe it is like someone said, 'Occident Oxidizes?'). "Western Civilization", imperial expression per-se, that ignores the colours of the earth and its legitimate (if not legal) claims, longings and rights, and fogs but does not hides the hallucinations of superiority, paternalism and colonialism that the leaders, clones and puppets of the War of Oblivion do think, feel and act from the bottom of their Imperial heart, but do not say. Because the heart of this War of Oblivion is Deceit. And the rams have taken humanity to nuclear and bacteriologic risk, and the pretended splitting of the world, fortunately and infinitely multiple, in two colours, two kind of greys, greys as lead, as war planes, as the poisonous clouds of the storm of deceit. A horizon of suffering of the non-human species, animals, plants, oceans, rivers and forests. One of them, echo of the "Western" violence, with archaic means destroys suddenly the false and impossible security of comfort in spite of the most, the others, of the antimissile shield, of the war of the galaxies, the bellicose hypertechnology, fading away forever the "American Dream". Archaic echo that appeals to the most basic and elemental method: the body as weapon, the strike, the fire, while the Global Sheriff appeals from his side to the old and deteriorated concept of "Crusade", a manichean, hypertechnologic and squandering one, and can claim the authorship and copyright of the creation of a myth, that one occult inside a cave, renouncing the material commodities that could have, moving on a horse, the mountain.....Osama.

But this myth is not his worst nightmare, as it could be supposed. This myth is his best ally. Nothing to thank to the Global Sheriff for this myth. In this deadly chess game that now has taken away two towers, this myth is his perfect ally. It gives the Empire the perfect excuse for the polishing and expansion of the Global Ranger, free now to spy and punish the "others" in the name of the "Good", this is, to the forgotten ones, the transgressors of the predictable, and the liberating social resistances that in the whole globe do struggle for Justice, Freedom and Democracy. Maybe this has not yet fully happened, but the empire smells in its blindness toward life, that is, are, we are, the real enemy. Either you are with us, under us, or you are the "Evil", says the empty voice of the Power, as a Narcissus that only finds delight in its own face. In an analogous way, the Empire has created already in this lands, when it was convenient to it, another myths. Small ones, but not less deadly ones. We were precursors. Already in 1976, in this lands, the allies agents of the Empire were projecting their shadows and their fly. Also trained in its academies, financed by its banks, armed by its greed and ignorance, its proverbial fear of the different and its blindness toward the rainbow.

They were also times of the "Good".... In that Holy War, also of the "Cristian Western Civilization" against the "Evil" of those years, where the victims would dissappear, engulfed by the earth, assimilated by the fish, resting in the bottom of the rivers and dikes and seas, the general "president" by fact was affirming, and he believed it: "terrorists are not only those who put bombs, but the ones that act with ideals contrary to our christian and western civilization....", a Monseñor, (but not the only one), a bishop, was saying: "there are no inocents...", and that "it is just to annihilate one hundred suspects even though only five of the one hundred result guilty....." was saying the general that was in charge of the 'intelligence".

"Deja Vu...." now the Global Sheriff, kicking antholes, affirms once more that this is a crusade of the Good against the Evil....... "We are winning the Third World War..." was saying already in 1976 the general in charge of the crusade in this lands.....we were precursors. But there were no winners. Death, yes, it was. Atrocities, yes there were. Business, yes there were too, and even now there is pain. Active pain that struggles, dances and creates. Thirty thousand reasons for saying yes to life, thirty thousand faces for forgetting the oblivion, thirty thousand lives for fighting against deceit and greed.

We are precursors. May this time all the colours, the peoples of the Blue Planet, resist this sheet of oblivion that disguises itself as perdurable, lasting freedom. The macaw dreams a new world. A true one, an including one, with Justice and Freedom in he uncertain dance, but dance of all for all that is called Democracy, no, not that, the true one. She dreams this memory of the tomorrow, inspiration and heart of the step not yet taken. The macaw dreams and flies. And follows the rainbow that inhabits her. The insomnious vulture flies over, feeds on death, follows the armies. The rainbow abides in the Quetzal and the macaw. Abides as a horizon in the body of the Great Bird that is the struggle that is us. Horizon that flies un-fogging the face of the Power that falls in this very act. Humbleness that walks in silence that frees and word that resists affirming that rainbow as struggle as root and ocean. Neither air nor ground, for the colliding rams. They are bombing an arid and faraway land, they are bombing a suffering people, and the vulture in its flying seems to affirm forcibly the need of death.

They are bombing an arid and faraway land, they are bombing a suffering people, and a child is crying. My body is that faraway land, that people, that child, the we that enbrothers in intimacy that bleeds.

This is the earth, this is the air, this is the tree, this is the fly. Dignity as memory that walks and struggles. Un-fogging the Oblivion in fist and shout and step.

Augusto Al'calde
11-October-2001

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