Colonialism, Neoliberalism, and Sweatshop Politics: On the March (Still)
WHAT USGOV is now doing to México by way of NAFTA and the overwhelming of México’s market by US-subsidized Agribusiness it does directly in other nations through coups and forced legislation. The Empire, in yet another shape, sprawls and burps and bleeds and chews up humans as it moves into its final phases.
What the US is now doing to México by way of NAFTA and the overwhelming of México’s market by US-subsidized Agribusiness (gutting their farming-based/corn-based market and glutting it with our own products, while employing many of their citizens at substandard rates and in substandard health conditions in order to help our own economy and prepare/manufacture/sell our food) it does directly in other nations through coups and forced legislation, Nations that are further from our border, and thus beyond the radar of the average US citizen. For example, Haiti, where the US’s Wilsonian fantasies and greed and neoliberalism led long ago to the destruction of the rice farmer’s ability to sustain him/herself and are a direct prerequisite to the food crisis they are experiencing now. USGOV has long been sucking the lifeblood of much of Latin America, and in the case of Haiti, refuse to let go the neck.
We can go further and talk about the undeniable thirst for the Strategic Crescent, the oil-rich Middle East, the wars to gain footholds (bases and massive “city within a city” embassies being built in Iraq as well as Af-Pak + lest we forget the “reservoirs of oil” that Iraq is “floating” atop). The US economy is collapsing, the nation is heavily armed, but hollowed out at the heart, waving numb fingers, and with a belly soon to feel real hunger pangs. It is supporting itself by draining the lifeblood of other nations and peoples. This is happening on many levels.
The Empire, in yet another shape, sprawls and burps and bleeds and chews up humans as it moves into its final phases—the phases where it self-destructs as all Empires do, as all man-made power-suction gold-glory death machine-staircases to the halls of the Gods must always do when they forget their place in the overall family of creatures and balances. It isn’t pretty, it will get uglier, but we must be ready. Because the danger we are used to reading in books and seeing in movies, or hearing about happening in a faraway lands is crawling closer and closer to our front doors, and in more cases than many of us care to think about, has already woven its caustic threads into the tapestry of our small, ambitious lives.
Borders are illusions, and they are perhaps necessary to some degree in a world where spirit is somewhat bound by containers. But in many cases they are a deadly illusion behind which humanity chokes. The illusion is disconnection. The illusion is that our worth is greater on one side than en el otro lado. The illusion is Us and Them. The illusion is that we are in control of nature’s deepest rhythms.
How to wake ourselves up from these dreams that suffocate so many?
I live in Haiti and the rice we produce is to expensive for the population to consume. I fear that what Jared diamond has said will come to pass that we are a society on the verge of collapse. It has before and will happen again. Unfortunately for us this decline is happening everywhere in the world.