Open Veins of Africa

A hugely important letter published in the UK Guardian (11/8/15), touching on the flood of African and Middle Eastern asylum seekers now heading for Europe:

"As organisations working to address global poverty, we condemn Phillip Hammond's [British Defence Secretary] warped claims about African migrants (Report, 10 August). It is not 'marauding' African migrants, but the UK and other wealthy nations that are threatening living standards and causing poverty for people in Africa and across the world. Sub-Saharan Africa loses $192 bn to the rest of the world each year. In return it receives just $30bn back in aid. Whether it is our network of tax havens that allows the theft of billions from countries in Africa each year, the costs we save by recruiting health workers from the world's poorest countries, the aid we give as loans which contribute to the looming debt crisis, or our carbon emissions which force African countries to pay out billions to adapt to the climate change we cause, it is the UK and our wealthy allies, not African migrants, doing the marauding.

"The UN is clear that most migrants attempting to reach the EU are fleeing persecution or conflict. These people have the right to protection under international law. The British government claims it wants to stop the minority who are fleeing poverty making dangerous journeys to the UK. The solution does not lie in increased security in Calais. It is in ending our own contributions to global poverty." (signed by 9 UK aid organisations)

The letter reminded me irresistably of the late Eduardo Galeano's wonderful 1971 book Open Veins of Latin America, from which, obviously, comes the title of this post:

"The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing. Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations. Centuries passed, and Latin America perfected its role. We are no longer in the era of marvels when face surpassed fable and imagination was shamed by the trophies of conquest - the lodes of gold, the mountains of silver. But our region still works as a menial. It continues to exist at the service of others' needs, as a source and reserve of oil and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit and coffee, the raw materials and foods destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming them than Latin America does from producing them...

"Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into European - or later United states - capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power. Everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral-rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources. Production methods and class structure have been successively determined from outside for each area by meshing it into the universal gearbox of capitalism. To each area has been assigned a function, always for the benefit of the foreign metropolis of the moment, and the endless chain of dependency has been endlessly extended."

RIP Eduardo Galeano 1940-2015

The great Uruguayan journalist, historian and writer Eduardo Galeano, author of The Open Veins of Latin America and the Memory of Fire trilogy, passed away last week. Needless to say, Galeano had no trouble passing the Palestine test:

Si yo fuera palestino
If I were Palestinian (2009)

Desde 1948, los palestinos viven contenados a humillacion perpetua.
Since 1948, the Palestinians have been condemned to live in never-ending humiliation.

No pueden ni respirar sin permiso.
They can't even breathe without permission.

Han perdido su patria, sus tierras, su agua, su libertad, su todo.
They have lost their homeland, their lands, their water, their freedom, everything.

Ni siquiera tienen derecho a elegir a sus gobernantes.
Even the right to elect their own government.

Cuando votan a quien no deben votar, son castigados.
When they vote for whom they shouldn't, they are punished.

Gaza esta siendo castigada.
Gaza is being punished.

Se convertio en una ratonera sin salida, desde que Hamas gano limpiamente las elecciones en el ano 2006.
It has become a dead-end mousetrap since Hamas won the 2006 elections fairly.

Algo parecido habia occurido en 1932, cuando el Partido Comunista triunfo en las elecciones de El Salvador.
Something similar happened in 1932 when the Communist Party won the elections in El Salvador.

Banados en sangre, los salvadorenos expiaron su mala conducta y desde entonces vivieron sometidos militares.
The people atoned for their misbehavior with a bloodbath and lived under military dictatorships from then on.

La democracia es un lujo que no todos merecen.
Democracy is a luxury deserved by just a few.

Son hijos de la impotencia los cohetes caseros que los militantes de Hamas, acorralados en Gaza, disparan con chambona punteria sobre las tierras que habian sido palestinas y que la occupacion israelita usurpo.
The homemade rockets that Hamas combatants, cornered in Gaza, shoot with sloppy aim at formerly-Palestinian lands currently under Israeli rule are born out of helplessness.

Y la desesperacion, a la orilla de la locura suicida, es la madre de las bravatas que niegan el derecho a la existencia de Israel, gritos sin ninguna eficacia, mientras la muy eficaz guerra de exterminio esta negando, desde hace anos, el derecho a la existencia de Palestina.
And desperation, the kind that borders on suicidal madness, is the mother of the threats that deny Israel's right to exist with ineffective cries while a very effective genocidal war has long denied Palestine's right to exist.

Ya poca Palestina queda.
Very little is left of Palestine.

Paso a paso, Israel la esta borrando del mapa.
Step by step, Israel is wiping it off the map.

Los colonos invaden, y tras ellos los soldados van corrigiendo la frontera.
The settlers invade, followed by soldiers who retrace the borders.

Las balas sacralizan el despojo, en legitima defensa.
Bullets shot in self-defence consecrate the plundering.

No hay guerra agresiva que no diga ser guerra defensiva.
No aggression fails to claim its purposes are defensive.

Hitler invadio Polonia para evitar que Polonia invadiera Alemamania.
Hitler invaded Poland to prevent Poland from invading Germany.

Bush invadio Irak para evitar que Irak invadiera el mundo.
Bush invaded Iraq to prevent Iraq from invading the world.

En cada una de sus guerras defensivas, Israel se ha tragado otro pedazo de Palestina, y los almuerzos siguen.
With each of its defensive wars, Israel swallows another piece of Palestine, and the feast goes on.