One of the greatest threats to democracy is an uninformed electorate. Unfortunately, this disturbing state can clearly characterize the US public. In order to manipulate the public to go along with any policy that clearly goes against its own self-interest is through a combination of state-induced fear, distraction, and consumerism. George Orwell’s literally classic, 1984, reminds us that history is a vital part of our human existence; sadly, we often forget this very fact. Orwell wrote, “Those who control the past control the future; those who control the future, control the present; those who control the present control the past.” The genius part of all of this, you would barely know which part of American history has been manipulated and which part is historical fact. The consequence of this historical manipulation is a distorted view of who really had power and who were subjected to domination, and a concealment of issues and events that lead to the conflict.
Here in the US, we are living evidence on how the past, present, and future is as changeable as human opinions and beliefs. We, as Americans, have taken for granted the story of the United States, we have bought into this story that the US is an unstoppable advance of liberal democracy. What is often omitted from our school’s basic social studies/history curriculum are key facts on how this is achieved – the birth and growth of the United States was created by military conquest and that the conquered groups were viewed as being incapable of self-rule because of the uncivilized nature of their cultures.
We are taught that the United States began when Christopher Columbus “discovered” America, followed by how the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, and ending on how the 13 English Colonies won its independence from England through the American Revolution. We are also taught that the driving force for our westward expansion was based on manifest destiny which explains why this country became the enormous, rich country we see today. And depending in which state you live, you might learn the state’s history, such as in Texas.
The primary reason for concealing the history and experiences of a “colonized” people by the “colonizers” is to dominate the hearts and minds of conquered and wipe out the memories of our histories and histories of our forebears. As a result, there are only two options we are given – perish in isolation for strongly opposing the new system (disobedience has consequences) or accept the oppressors value system, being content to remain in “our place” by denouncing our past and heritage to survive. By embracing the rewritten history, we eventually buy into the manufactured story on how this nation was founded. By doing this, we are left with a “colonized mentality.”
From the cradle to grave we are constantly bombard with the notion that the American Revolution was about liberty when in fact, it was about securing new markets by conquering the land occupied by the Native American in order for the American Empire to grow even bigger, more powerful and, more profitable. And part of the mental process of colonization is that things are always about knowing or being put in your place.
In his book, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon recognized the way in which colonizers usurp the history of the colonized. He writes:
[C]olonialism is not simply content to impose its rule upon the present and the future of a dominated country. Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying their native’s brain of all forms of content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.
Prior of the American Revolution, many Native Americans feared that the colonists would drive them from their lands; in fact, some Native Americans had allied with the British as their only hope of protecting their homelands from future encroachments by American colonists and land speculators. Unfortunately, as history shows, they were correct.
Since there will never be a history book that will ever mention that the US was founded on the ideals of empire building, historians have reinforced the nations conscious image by producing its own history at the expense of manufacturing half-truths and lies. This country’s strategy of selective memory is what has shaped the United States’ identity. As this country started, it selectively “forgot” that without the help of the indigenous people during the first two centuries of America’s exploration, many Europeans would have died from malnutrition and diseases. And in showing America’s gratitude, the indigenous people were seen as impeding on the nation’s progress to raise an empire, therefore, elimination was needed.
Part of empire building is conquering other nations. According to A. Kent MacDougall, this was the ultimate goal of every Founding Father, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson.
George Washington called the nascent nation “a rising empire.” John Adams said it was “destined” to overspread all North America. And Thomas Jefferson viewed it as “the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled.”
In order to feel a sense of belonging, the newly minted federal government created a distinctive “American” identity, in an effort to unify the country’s population. In doing so, the Founding Fathers strategically misrepresented “the Indian” in a way that promoted the belief that the indigenous people were all racially, intellectually, and culturally inferior. And in drafting the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson made sure that future generations would feel no remorse about dispossessing and expelling these “merciless Indian Savages” by falsely accusing a whole population of assisting the Crown in the American Revolution.
[King George III] has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.
As a result, the indigenous people are viewed as “uncivilized” and “primitive,” everything the upper class Euro-Americans are not, therefore; justifying their eradication by any means necessary.
Rarely ever mentioned is the military invasion of Spanish Florida by the US on North American soil. According to William Loren Katz, the first US foreign invasion occurred in 1816 when General Andrew Jackson ordered the military to invade Florida (a tip of the hat to Marisacat for pointing this out).
In July 1816, General Andrew Jackson, Commander of the U.S. Southern District, ordered Army, Navy and Marine units to invade Florida, then under the flag of Spain. Jackson acted, probably on orders from President James Madison, without a Congressional declaration of war. Neither Spain nor its colonial outpost posed a threat to the U.S. or its citizens. Rather, the President and the General–both prominent slaveholders–had concluded that the slave economy and its human “property” were threatened by the several thousand Native Americans and African Americans, including escaped slaves, who had united in the Seminole Nation on Florida soil.
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, believing in “Indian removal, slavery, and the use of military force without congressional approval,” and that it was “better to err on the side of vigor than on the side of weakness,” defended the invasion, as well as Jackson’s brutal search and destroy operations. In presenting that defense, writes [Historian William Weeks], “he consciously distorted, dissembled, and lied about the goals and conduct of American foreign policy to both Congress and the public” — an effort, Weeks believes, that “stands as a monumental distortion of the causes and conduct of Jackson’s conquest of Florida, reminding historians not to search for truth in official explanations of events.”
Florida, like Texas, the Southwest and Puerto Rico is often marginalized in American history. Because the foundations of our political institutions come from the tradition that was established through the English colonies, American historians tend to leave out how the US has been influence from other colonial powers. By doing this, it creates a false idea that the US frontier was a vastly uninhabited and when other states entered the Union, it was done effortlessly.
Respectively, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans were brought into the US in 1836-48 and 1898. The homelands of Mexicans (fractions of) and Puerto Ricans were conquered, and this conquest was followed by their emigration into a new country. This meant that while the connection of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans with the United States was comparable, it was not exactly the same as that of European immigrants. And in a lot of ways, colonialism is similar to the term stated by the African Americans, “slave mentality,” whereas cultures and memories of histories have also been wiped out.
The experiences for Mexicans can be broken down into two phases; the first occurred two-thirds of the 19th century the other phase developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After the invasion of Texas and the Southwest, Mexicans were considered very much like the indigenous population because “White immigrants actually assigned Mexicans an intermediate location in the new society they imposed in the region” according to Tomas Almaguer. It was after the 1880’s the US began the realization process, categorizing people by race and ethnicity. One of the problems with Chicano history is that it begins with the Mexican American War, leaving out the invasion that transpired in Texas and Florida.
The struggle throughout the southwest started out as resistance through insurrections against the Euro-American encroachment and domination. These were insurrections were led by men such as Juan Nepomuceno Cortina and Gregorio Cortez in Texas, the Gorras Blancas in New Mexico, and the acts of social bandits such as Juan Flores and Joaquin Murietta in California It was not until the 1890, the Mexican American population was pigeonholed into its new racial identity. Victor Rodriguez writes:
The “Mexican Problem” ideology was constructed on the basis of writings of travelers, Protestant missionaries, journalists, academics, businessmen, and engineers who went to Mexico during the late 19th and early 20th century. The writings shaped a popular understanding of Mexicans, who were seen as a group that had to be colonized and racialized both in Mexico and within the United States. The U.S. had a putative civilizing mission; Mexicans, domestically and abroad, were to be the subjects of these efforts. (The racialization of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans: 1890s-1930s by Victor Rodriguez)
But as long as society is socially controlled through the dominant corporate media and their public relations partners, every sight and sound we encounter through advertising, literature, history, and the entertainment media will continue to create powerful images of other people and we can expect further resistance from those who refuse to accept the facts of America’s history of imperial ambitions. Because of this denial, this clearly explains why we see gringos (like the Pat Buchanans and Lou Dobbs of the world) so ambivalent towards the civil disobedience being practiced by the “colonized” and their sympathetic allies.
We must fight the “colonized mentality” that is woven into our very hearts and minds because knowing our own history is a necessity to our sense of identity. The ability of recalling and identifying with our own past gives our existence meaning, purpose, and value. We have bought in to the “colonized mentality” and as a result we lost the value of community, we have replaced it with the American value of individualism, it is this kind of “me first” narcissism that fragments community.
Like any good Americans, we are constantly on the move to satisfy our materialist need – wanting the car, the house, the clothes, the jewels, the gear, not realizing we are chasing an illusion under the guise of the American Dream. This value has perpetuated a sense of need for immediate gratification and a sense of entitlement – “I’ve got mine.” One promise I have always made to myself is that I never wanted to one of these persons who either sit in judgment of the poor, or worse, forget them cause “I’ve got mine.” But recently my heart aches in ways that are beyond words when I see the plight of our own who are easily forgotten, and the loss of hope I see in the eyes of our young. As we look ahead, we need to examine ourselves and remember the past. We have a responsibility to our community, to not forget where we’ve been, to not write off our brothers and sisters once we “made it.” It is vital that we give back by helping others along.
If we are to believe in the American myth, then it bespeaks a certain arrogance when we unfairly judge and demand other countries to be accountable for their historical atrocities when we refuse to be accountable for our own atrocities. Those who are not colonized must come to grips that it is the capitalist elites who created a façade around American independence. Although the colonists had genuine grievances against a tyrannical imperious monarchy; the truth is, the primary motivate was to establish our own imperial empire and compete for global domination.
I am not condemning all of the aspirations of the colonists, but I will not discount its consequences either. The revolution with its grand democratic justification did inspire liberation struggles throughout the world. In fact, the American revolution did inspire Mexico to do the same. The fact is, we must acknowledge the consequences that has played out – it created a dynamic of violence and oppression and a relentless play-or-die, rule-or-be-ruled society that rewards the most ruthless to the highest positions of power. One might question the point of a moral argument about events in the distant past; and true these facts are not recent historical revelations. However, many have not found it necessary to rationalize these terrible costs of the war and it is this moral calculus that many Americans are able to justify the atrocities in Iraq. It is evident how profoundly racism and sexism deforms our moral framework.
Even though it may appear futile to go against the all-powerful western imperialist hegemony, in reality it is not. We have many allies who share a mutual history of colonization brought on by America’s imperial arrogance and it will be this history that will unite us all, but it is vital that we discover the hidden truths that are willfully kept from us. Once decolonization occurs, it will be our collective will that lay siege to this mighty Empire. ¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!