As most of the country has heard, once again, the capitalist arm of oppression has struck one of our communities. The unethical construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline has made for droves of activists and allies to make their way to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation to stand against this assault on religious and environmental liberties. And I am one of them. I had the privilege of meeting with just a few of these beautiful tribe members (before I was immediately ignited to join them in Standing Rock) and learned of their struggles. I was inspired, touched, amazed and enraged with and for them. These people are so powerful, so strong and instantly life altering, no matter your background but as a Latinx woman I felt personally effected by their words.
I looked at the faces of the Natives and I saw my ancestors. I saw people no different than my own family. I saw the same tired eyes weighed down by oppression, the same generational pain of my Latinx people.
Their tears for freedom and justice were the same that ours cried when conquistadores destroyed our language, our culture, our resources, and stole our islands. They were the same tears because we are the same people. It’s a quite linear and logical history of which we are deprived. The loss of the Latinx identity is an American tragedy, a clandestine assault on our unity and our existence. They tell us Christopher Columbus discovered a land and a people who are often described monolithically, inattentively and without care. There is nowhere near the investigation into the diversity of tribes that existed here pre-colonization. This is the first step in the culture of disregard that surrounds Native history and therefore Latinx history.
The genocidal attacks on these people are either untold in history books or the severity of their brutality is deeply diminished. Personally, I hail from Afro-Latinx Arawak/Taino ancestry and not even once did I hear any of those terms in school. I certainly wasn’t taught that conquistadors rained a decade long genocide on our islands. Those were parts of my identity that were kept from me. And I know that throughout the Latinx community the same can be said for their respective tribes and those individual historical struggles. We don’t know who we are. We were never told. We walk around this country with our identity in Jennifer Lopez, in the stereotypical dangerous cholo depiction, in the over-sexualized unintelligent Latinx woman, in the strictly heterosexual (and often Catholic) depiction of our families. We are never given the privilege of intersectionality and it breeds a strange and unique kind of self-hatred.
Our African American brothers and sisters have been bludgeoned, beaten, incarcerated, defamed, enslaved and destroyed with drug wars, police brutality and the general message that they are lesser throughout this country’s history. And so I do not at all mean to take away from their oppression and their resistance. I passionately stand with their movement for freedom. However, those things have all also happened to the Latinx community throughout history – only our struggle has been ignored.
I see strong black people in my life rise above their history. They choose to conquer it bravely and beautifully. Because they were told what they were up against. Latinx people – we do not know who our enemy is. And so we either sink into indifference that has only changed because of the direct assault on our character by Donald Trump or we turn against the people who would stand with us. There is an epidemic of anti-blackness in the Latinx community that makes no sense (as most of us are historically black and even currently descendants of black people; e.g.: all Afro-Latinx people, my fellow Dominicans I am looking at you), and only serves to deepen the pain and division that destroys us. We are mestizos, a word that means a mix of races and cultures. We are black, we are indigenous and of course we have colonialist European blood in our veins as well. Just acknowledging this is such a fundamental part of our liberation and the liberation of all people.
So as I fly out to Standing Rock to fight for the rights of those who are my blood brothers and sisters, as I continue to fight for black lives, as I continue to fight the capitalist heteropatriarchy that oppresses people of color especially – I want to send the message out to my fellow Latinx people. Wake up and see who you are. These fights are indeed your fights. Black lives are your lives. Native rights are your rights. Seize the power of your numbers and of your passion and change this country. Despite the message that we don’t matter – despite the trivialization of our existence and our voice, despite exotification of our culture and our women, despite the hateful words of a certain presidential candidate that once more label us and demean us – we are important enough. Significant enough. Strong enough. Brave enough. Don’t ever let them tell you otherwise ever again.
