It is irritating not seeing a pattern for the first time, but I have often said that truly smart people hang with other smart people, which is why nobody needs to be that smart. Recently, I watched a video that was talking about how the empire was now doing to the Latinx community what it originally did to the Black community, and I felt silly. This might be because the empire has behaved this way so often that I am simply used to it, and I live as a despised creature, a Black woman, so I expect the monster to behave as a monster. People who have been telling themselves that the empire is “the greatest country in the world” are probably more shocked with the behavior. I now recognize that the empire is falling because it has nothing new to offer, and relies on too much oppressive energy to stay afloat.
With the bracero program and later iterations, Latinx people came to the United States and worked in fields or other seasonal jobs, and there are better sources that explain that process better than I could. People who, for all intents and purposes, commute to another country to earn a living probably want an easier commute, and instead develop ways not to travel so far. None of this is interesting even when only considering the whitewashed version of imperial history, in which three empires were staking their claim to what would become the United States. Coincidentally, Spain and France both owned huge portions of the United States, so there have always been Spanish-speaking individuals within the empire, whether people want to pay attention or not. After all, we should imperialistically be speaking English, French, and Spanish–but the dominant narrative is too stupid to respect that reality, so most of us just speak English.
Spanish-speaking people have maintained communities and businesses for centuries, just living their lives while managing a portion of the racism allotted to Black people. Fun fact: I took Spanish classes in college because I had a crush on one of my Guatemalan in-laws, but I really used it when I worked for the Texas Secretary of State in the corporations department. There are so many business owners who only speak Spanish, but still navigate the intricacies of the dominant narrative, and these businesses have supported families and neighborhoods for generations. However, the insecurity of the dominant narrative spouts the same stupid propaganda about how all Latinx people are “lazy” and “stupid” when they took over the slave responsibilities that Black people abdicated and built their own communities. Only truly insecure people continue to state that the ones allowing the empire to function are “lazy” and “stupid.”
Like I said earlier, there are better authors and storytellers than I am of the Latinx story in the United States, but now, people are making the same efforts to hide that history. Just like trying to spin chattel slavery, the idiotic regime is trying to act like Latinx people are invading the United States–as if anyone with half a brain wants to cross a border, get paid almost no money, and work two jobs on their feet to barely survive. By the way, that is not speculation; that is at least one of my coworkers who works both with me and down the street, because she is about twenty years younger than I am. The propaganda of the empire brought people to its borders, and the propaganda kept people here, but at a time when so many people are making the realities understood, there are fewer people falling for the lies anymore. Fortunately, people still parroting the lies sound dumber and dumber as they continue to say them.
Telling the story that Latinx migrants are lazy means that one is truly stupid in their understanding of how the empire works. First, people take over land they do not own and murder as many people as possible, which was done in the 1700s and 1800s of the Spanish empire. Second, they enslave as many remnants as possible to diminish their sense of self and try to command them to think less of themselves, which was done from the 1800s until the current day. Big Bill Broonzy coined this explanation of how the empire worked back in the early 1900s, and what he briefly touches on is how Latinx people were pitted against Black people so that both could be easily oppressed. Third, the oppressed communities find workarounds to exist in ways that feel less like being under the boots of others. Finally, the dominant narrative throws a tantrum and rips the workarounds and the people to shreds, harming itself in the process.
Essentially, believing in the dominant narrative is boring idiocy that ruins everything. Nobody expects the United States to do the same thing that it has always done, despite the fact that it has always done it. Such a fact never ceases to amaze me, and what is truly extraordinary is that the plantations are all over the world, not just in the imperial boundaries. “Which plantations?” Oh, some people are still pretending like the outsourcing to other nations was not a blatant effort to continue the plantations in other areas, while demonizing residents who came here. However, in the era of TikTok and other social media–and the collective awakening of multiple populations–nobody cares about people trying to cling to a stupid version of “history” that says nothing about the truth.
Chasing A Dying Empire 