The following was written by Ricardo Ignacio. This is extreme, but it's all true!! Please read this and share it. It's a very emotional story.... it almost made me cry.
Please read it!!
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One day when I was a child, I was at my grandmother's house, in Mexicali, Mexico.
At her house at age 4, or 5 was where I first began to learn about color-ism, about internalized-racism…
The first sign of it was when I was in the backyard playing with my cousins, and then got in trouble for climbing a tree, so my grandmother yelled, "Oye, pinxe negrito desgraciado, bajate de alli antes de que the meta una xinga!" which means, "Hey, you little dark-skinned disgrace, get down from there before I beat the shit out of you!"
At that time I didn't see harm in it, perhaps because I was used to hearing it, but then when my cousin who was light-skinned got in trouble, he would be yelled at, "Bajate de ese arbol… ahi, mi guerito angelito precioso, no the subas a ese arbor porque the vas a caer." which means, "Get down from there… oh, my little white precious angel, don't climb trees, or you'll fall."
That's when it struck me, and I began to question, "Am I a mistake? Is it a crime, or evil to be dark-skinned?"
I could never figure it out! Nonetheless, I witnessed, and experienced the way we were spoken to, and treated depending on our complexion.
One time while we ate dinner, a 21 year old cousin of ours came by, and brought his fiancee to come join us to eat, and while we all had a great time, one of my relatives asked my cousin, "So I heard she's pregnant?"
My cousin's face brightened up, and excitedly explained, "Yes, yes, she is, and we are very happy."
So the relative asked my cousin's fiancee, "Are you happy?"
"Of course I am. I love him, and we are ready for a family." The fiancee replied.
"Well, I hope that the baby comes out looking like you; light-skin, and light brown eyes, because if that poor baby comes out looking like his dark-skinned father, then goddamned! We have enough dark-skinned demons in our family, we need more precious angels around here." My relative explained.
I was about age 6, and you could imagine what I felt, as they all laughed, and talked about how ugly it is to be dark-skinned, and looking like an 'indio'.
I couldn't understand that the reason why they felt this way about 'color' was because of internalized-racism, self-hate, and because I couldn't understand, then all I could do is feel ashamed to be dark skinned, and ashamed to look like a so-called 'indio'.
A few months after that experience my father decided to take us away from Mexicali, and to California.
A few weeks after we arrived California, he decided to leave my mother, my brother, and I in order to find a 'better-life' with a white-woman that he met here a year after our arrival.
Before leaving he told my mother this, "Te estoy dejando porque eres una india prieta y fea. Apoco tu crees que yo voy a estar cazado, viviendo mi vida con una pinxe india prieta?" which means, "I am leaving you because you are an ugly black indian. I hope you didn't think that I'd be married, living my life with a-fuckin' black indian?"
The irony was that he was just as dark-skinned as we were… but I doubt he knew that he hated his own reflection, which perhaps drove him to go find a white woman, and have children with her, probably with hopes that his children won't come out not looking "ugly, and dark" as he was…
Time went on… a few years, and I noticed that with time my mother began to use lightening-cream (a cream that whitened the skin) and meanwhile she desperately tried to be white, I too eventually began to only date girls that were Caucasian.
Never did I want anything to do with a "dark-skinned dirty india" because I didn't want my future children to be born "dark, and ugly" like me.
I grew up hateful, mostly hating my own skin. I hated everyone that resembled me, which made it easy for me to be in a gang that was created simply to hurt others that looked "dark, and ugly" just like me.
I didn't want dark-skinned friends, and did my best to have nothing to do with my own people… I just wanted to surround myself with "beautiful white angelic" friends, hoping that they'd accept a "dark, and ugly" person like me in their crowd.
I did everything I could to not resemble these "dark-skinned ugly" people, which drove me to try to detach myself from my own indigenous-culture, and wanted nothing to do with it.
When I saw my friends brag about their gorgeous Mexican girlfriends I couldn't understand it… I questioned it, and thought that they were blind.
"How could they brag about having a girlfriend that is dark, and ugly?" I asked myself.
Well, it didn't matter what they did, as long as at the end of the day I had myself an angelic white girlfriend.
As I was growing up, whenever I wanted to make my mother angry, I'd remove my shirt, and threaten her, "If you don't stop making me angry I will go stand in the middle of the lawn, and allow the sun to hit me for hours, so that I could get dark, and ugly!"
She'd get angry, and would say, "Go ahead, and do that! You'll be the dummy who will look ugly!"
Out of anger I would go to the bathroom, and would bathe, and grab a metallic sponge, and scrub my "ugly black knees" until they bled with attempts to remove the dark skin out of them… but no matter how much I scrubbed, and bled, the dark skin never went away… it was who I was, and there was no escape!
Everywhere I went and saw a white girl with blue eyes, I'd go bananas, and would fall in love, but whenever I saw a "dark-skinned ugly" indigenous girl, I would nod my head in disgust.
One day at age 22, as I sat back in a hospital bed, paralyzed from waist down, I was watching the news, and at this particular time the year was 2007, and the television was flooded with "SB1070" news, which was undocumented indigenous people of Mexico, and Guatemala being the scapegoat for the lack of jobs, the terrorism, the failed economy in the U.S. country, and I also saw how indigenous women, along with elder people were being beat up with batons by police, by I.C.E., being tackled down, pepper-sprayed, and assaulted simply because these undocumented dark-skinned people protested peacefully, demanding 'equal rights'.
There was a scene of a mother with her elder mother that were both being hit on their knees until they both fell to the ground, clutching their knees, crying, as the police officer beat them with the baton, and after the scene the anchor-lady on Fox News justified it with, "These people have no right to be here in this country, so what gives them the right to ask for rights. You have the right to go to your country, and fix it, and stop coming to ours."
As much as there was internalized-racism inside of my brain, I still knew about compassion, and as I kept watching the News day after day, I kept seeing these news reporters speak about people like me in a very degrading manner, and I saw authority figures, and politicians justify the fact that many indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala were being snatched away from their children, their families, and deported out, and then others shot, or beat to death by the border simply because they were undocumented.
I asked myself, "Why are these beautiful angelic white people being so evil right now? Aren't they supposed to be the good guys?"
It was very difficult for me to comprehend why these light-skinned people that were all of my life depicted as good, righteous, humane, divine, just, and beautiful people were being so hateful towards others… watching them over, and over, day after day talk about how much they hate people that look just like me, and justifying the evil that they did against people that look just like me, was destroying the image of 'white-perfection' that was drilled inside of me as I was growing up.
It took one more episode for me to finally reach the point of breaking this 'white-perfection' image that was planted inside of me, and it was when on the news I saw that a young indigenous girl dehydrated to death due to the fact that her white boss prevented her from taking a water break, and forced her to continue working out in the field in that 110 degree Summer heat, despite the fact that she cried, and beg that she was thirsty.
That girl died, and nobody gave a damn… and I knew that if that girl would have been white, then the world would have went berserk!
It was when I began to realize that many indigenous women, and young girls were being molested, and raped by their white bosses, and the white bosses got away with rape, and molestation simply because these women, and girls were undocumented, and they feared involving the authority, so the white men got away with sexually-abusing, and raping dozens, countless girls, and women, taking advantage of the fact that these girls would never cry for help due to fear of being deported… it was then when subconsciously I began to grow love for my people.
This was all taking place at a hospital bed, as I was paralyzed from waist down, unable to get up, unable to wipe my own ass… I was burning inside, and in the 4 months that I spent paralyzed I didn't cry once out of pain despite the fact that it hurt, and burnt like hell due to the pain of being broken down physically after a car accident… I didn't cry due to physical pain, but when I began to realize that for 22 years of my life I had been hating myself, it was then when I finally cried…
It was about 3AM, and I remember grabbing the pillow, and covering my face, as I cried, and pushed the pillow down against my mouth to keep the nurses from hearing my wailing.
All I kept yelling was, "Noooo!" and I growled, and gripped the bars of each side of the bed, and I rocked it left to right, tightened my jaws, trying to keep myself from yelling, frustrated because I couldn't move.
Finally I had had enough of being there watching the news reporters speak against me so much, and watching my people get beat down, demonized, murdered, and all of it being justified by simply marginalizing my people, and lying to the world about the condition, and about not just U.S. but World History, so against doctors orders I crawled into that wheel-chair, and dragged myself out of there!
They told me that I'd never walk again, but the fire that I had inside of me did not allow their assumptions to become my reality.
No, sir!
It was the biggest physical struggle of my life, but I was very angry, and I used this anger to help me exercise daily, and when I wasn't exercising, I was reading, and researching, trying to find out why I, along with 99% of my people hated their own dark skin so harshly.
I realized that for the 22 years that I was alive I was lied to about who I was, and where I come from.
I began to go far back in history to where the root of where people with dark-skin began to hate themselves, and why?
Well, this is what I found, so pay close attention:
In the very late 1400s, right after the English, and Latin-speaking people of Europe began to rise out of the colonization that they had been under for over 700 years by the North Africans Moors, they also found themselves economically destroyed, and lacking resources that were required to rebuild their world that was ruined due to wars, so the Queen of Spain decided to send an explorer named Cristoval Colon (Christopher Columbus) along with an army to go and find a new land where they could find resources, and build a 'New World' on…
In any 'American History' book that you read in Elementary, Jr High, or High School, you'll more than likely find this, "In 1492 the brave Christopher Columbus arrived to America, and little did he know that he would soon be surrounded by violent, merciless, and hostile indians."
Which is a nice little fairytale, however the truth is this, "In 1492 Christopher Columbus arrived to Turtle Island, falsely known today as 'America', where he, and his violent, merciless hostile army of rapists would soon surround a civilization of an indigenous people that were highly advanced in architecture, science, mathematics, agriculture, astrology, and medicine, amongst the many other advancements."
Europeans that arrived to the 'Americas' had this belief called 'Manifest Destiny', which was the false idea that made them believe that they had the authority of their god to go, and conquer the world, and in the process they could pillage, and burn the cities, and torture, rape, enslave, and murder the people of the land, and steal their resources, as long as it was all in the name of the god that was depicted in their religious manual.
It was their belief that white was 'good', and 'black' meant evil, which was an idea developed after realizing that their manual depicted evildoers/devil-worshipers as 'black', so on their voyage, and mission to conquer the world, they ran into these 'black' people, and immediately identified them all as evil devilish demons, more so when these European Christians realized that these non-Euros were pagans, and/or non-Christians; non-believers of their savior Jesus Christ.
So the enslavement, torture, rape, and attempts of genocide against these non-Europeans was much easier, since they were all identified as 'black'; evil, demonic devil-worshipers.
European Christians slaughtered multimillion of indigenous people of the Americas (Native-Americans) in within the first year of their arrival.
They slaughtered so many people that in some of these Europeans' journals you can find them claiming that killing became so boring due to the fact that it seemed as if that was all that they did day after day, week after week, and month after month.
Eventually that lead them to come up with ways to make the killings fun. And some of those ways was to grab some of the indigenous children, and toss them up in the air, and see which Christian-soldier could slice more kids in half with their swords.
Thousands of indigenous women were raped by the European-Christians, impregnated, and then once the children were born, they were either sold to other European slavers, or they were killed in numerous ways, such as being fed to dogs, or having their heads smashed against rocks out of hatred against these so-called 'half-breeds'.
Numerous times the pregnant indigenous women were tied up with ropes to trees from their legs, and the Christian-soldiers would grand their swords, and slit their pregnant bellies open, and watch the unborn children fall out, and into the mouths of their hungry dogs.
Many of these pregnant indigenous women were at times tied up from their legs when they were ready to give birth, and the soldiers watched how the women suffered, as their legs were tied together, and they were unable to give birth, and eventually die of pain, along with the unborn children.
Meanwhile the indigenous women suffered all of that, the men were left with 2 choices:
you either convert to Christianity, and become our slaves.
or you die in the name of Christ!
This was the origin of how indigenous people survived; they were forced to convert to Christianity, which was the only way their lives were spared, and eventually our people lost our original beliefs, our ways, and we practiced the religion, and prayed to the god of the people that conquered, and colonized us.
My indigenous ancestors survived out of fear of being murdered, slaughtered, tortured, so instead they survived as slaves serving their slavers, shoved in Indian-Boarding Schools where our people were further assimilated; (white-washed) forced to forget their native culture, languages, identities, and beliefs.
In as little as 200 years, European-Christians had already wiped out over 300 million indigenous people of the Americas (from Argentina, to Peru, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, Haiti, Belize, United States, and Canada) and the survivors survived as slaves; servants of their conquerors/colonizers.
My ancestors were taught that we were ugly, inferior because of our complexion, our physical structure.
Europeans came up with the idea of color-ism, and that is where the idea of 'white' was superior, and 'black' was inferior comes from, which was the teaching that anybody with European features, and complexion was 'white' (decent, righteous, beautiful, superior), and anybody that didn't have European complexion was 'black' (criminal, evil, ugly, inferior) and this was the idea that was taught to our ancestors, and the phrase "Save the man, kill the Indian" was born; destroy indigenous people's identity, cultures, languages, history, education, colonize them, assimilate them, misplace them, wipe their brains clean, and teach them that they are the intruders here, and we are the owners of this land… make them believe that they are the foreigners, although they are really try original people of this land…
Eventually borders were built across this continent, and the ideas of colonies/countries were born; diving the indigenous people, and making them no longer view each other, and themselves as the indigenous/original people of this continent, but rather as 'wetbacks' who cross borders, as undocumented immigrant foreigners that although are actually original people of the land, they don't know this because they forgot who they are, what their root is, so they can only know, and go by what their conquerors/colonizers label them as, which is what? Wetbacks, illegals, foreigners, immigrants, and yet, the REAL foreigners, immigrants are their conquerors/colonizers, but they don't know because they forgot, because they were meant to forget!
A system exists specifically to continue misplacing the indigenous people, which is why you'll see indigenous people refer to themselves as 'Latino', or 'Hispanic', (Latino/Hispanics are just other terminologies to identify Europeans) because although they are indigenous to the Americas (Native-Americans) they are shamed, they feel ugly, inferior, and degraded ashamed to be 'indios', so they look for something more acceptable, more welcomed, and adored, hence, Latino/Hispanic; Europeans.
They want to be white! And why not? Their ancestors were taught that they were ugly, inferior, evil 'black' creatures, and this teaching went on, and on for centuries, and this teaching we carry it in our veins; seeing each other with the eyes of the people that hate us, that colonize us, and oppress us systematically, environmentally, economically, and even physically.
I began to think about everything, and even details such as light-skinned people-European-descendants teaching us that our skin is ugly, inferior, evil, and yet they hurt themselves desperately trying to get a tan, trying to gain our complexion but fail, paying large amounts of money in order to get fake plump lips trying to implant in themselves our features but they fail, and when I realized that the people that called me ugly for my dark complexion, and for my indigenous features were actually hurting themselves trying to desperately look like me, that's when I realized the truth…
I looked around, and saw my people hate their own skin, their own indigenous identity, calling themselves latino, meanwhile the people that drove them to hate themselves were hating their own skin, their own European complexion, and calling themselves 'Cherokee Indians, Native-Americans', and that was when I decided to teach my people the truth!
It doesn't require hatred against any people at all to spread the truth. It doesn't require that we hate, or attack anybody because of their complexion, or nationality, or cultural/ethnic background, but it simply requires that we begin to teach every people of the whole world the beauty in themselves, and destroy the false ideas of superiority, and inferiority, color-ism, which are the ideologies that drive us all to hate ourselves.
It took years, and still it's taking me time to decolonize, to escape self-hatred/internalized-racism, but one thing for sure is that I can now look at the mirror, and smile, and see tons of beauty, not just physical, but find beauty in who I am, my root, the amazing people I come from indigenous to this continent.
I can now look up, and feel pride, and I can now look at my women, and find so much beauty in my indigenous women who practice our indigenous culture, and speak our indigenous languages, and are proud of their heritage/ethnicity.
My message is NOT hatred for others, but instead love for yourself!
Yes, I do highlight history a lot because it is important that people know where the root of the problem is!
If you don't know the root of the problem, then you can't ever find the solution, and the root to this problem of self-hate that started with false ideas spread/forced unto us by religious lunatics that were infected with a false sense of superiority.
We have 2 eyes, so keep one in the past so that you can continue learning lessons from there, and so that you can never forget who you are, and the other eye you can keep on the future, so that you can continue spreading your culture to your children, and make sure that we continue helping our indigenous cultures remain alive, and grow stronger.
I've known people that spend most of their time hating people that existed 500 years ago, 200 years ago… I've met people that torture themselves, and spend so much energy worried, and stressing off of people that existed 500 years ago, 200 years ago… and most of these people spend their times worrying, and hating people that don't exist anymore, that have been dead for hundreds of years ago, in eras were you, nor I did not exist…
It is very important to know our history. Very important! But not to use it to hate people today because of what happened 300 years ago, but to learn from it all, and make sure that you do not repeat the same ridiculous actions/cycles of sick-demented people that lived 500 years ago, 200 years ago… and these type of sick-demented people still exist today, but only because they used to be children that were taught to hate, taught ideas of white-supremacy.
There is absolutely nothing you can do about what already happened 500 years ago. It's done, and it cannot be undone, it is written, and cannot be unwritten, but the future however is full of blank pages, and it is up to all of us to write the pages, and if we don't learn from the past, then we will sure repeat the same ugly mistakes as our ancestors made.
The cycle repeats itself over, and over again, generation after generation, and you know where it starts?
It starts at home, right there in the backyard where my grandmother yelled, "Get down from that tree you little dark-skinned disgrace before I whoop your ass!"
It starts right there, at the dinner table where my relative said, "I hope that your kid comes out looking like your light-skinned fiancee, and not dark-skinned like you!"
Internalized racism was planted in our people, and our people were forced to practice these ideologies of self-hate, and it is up to us to destroy these ideas.
But it doesn't happen with hating others because of their complexions, or nationalities, etc., but it starts by teaching your children to love themselves!
It starts by not teaching them the ideas of superiority, and inferiority, ideas of condemning one complexion, and blessing another complexion. The ugly ideas of color-ism!
I learned my history to learn from it, and not to hate others because of it. I don't hate people because of their complexion, because of their sexuality, their nationality, culture, ethnicity, and I will not allow anyone to push their hateful agendas of supremacy unto me!
My children will not learn to hate people because of people's skin-tone due to what happened centuries ago.
You know why I can't hate people of today because of what other people did 300 years ago? Because it will only rot me inside. It will only torture me, and it will ruin me. I don't deserve to suffer, and torment myself because of what happened centuries ago! I did nothing wrong so that I could be suffering, so I won't! But what I do deserve is to prosper, and my ancestors don't deserve for me to suffer because of what happened to them, they deserve for me to make sure I build something with what remains of what they build… I deserve this! My people deserve this!
My people don't deserve to be taught to be bitter… they deserve to be taught to love themselves, and to work harder so that we can build our world, and work towards de-colonizing both mentally, and environmentally.
Is colonialism over? No… colonialism is very much alive, and in full effect, but hating people because of their complexion, nationality doesn't yield it, it probably only fuels it.
I can't hate people for those reasons, but I can hate ideas, such as color-ism, racism, sexism/misogyny, colonialism, and every other ism that results to the ruining of a people, or my people… I hate these ideas, and my reaction to hating these evil ideas is to teach the contrary, and hope that whomever likes my ideologies could takes notes, SHARE, and contribute to the growth of our indigenous cultures, languages, etc., so that our world can once again come to life, or otherwise we can sit, and waste time hating events that happened 500 years ago, focusing on history that can't be changed, meanwhile our present, and future are ignored because our focus is in the past…
Thank you for reading, yes, you can share, and tag your friends, and peace be unto you all… be blessed, and teach your children to love themselves!
Sincerely, Ricardo Ignacio
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Hopefully this never happens again.
Please read it!!
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One day when I was a child, I was at my grandmother's house, in Mexicali, Mexico.
At her house at age 4, or 5 was where I first began to learn about color-ism, about internalized-racism…
The first sign of it was when I was in the backyard playing with my cousins, and then got in trouble for climbing a tree, so my grandmother yelled, "Oye, pinxe negrito desgraciado, bajate de alli antes de que the meta una xinga!" which means, "Hey, you little dark-skinned disgrace, get down from there before I beat the shit out of you!"
At that time I didn't see harm in it, perhaps because I was used to hearing it, but then when my cousin who was light-skinned got in trouble, he would be yelled at, "Bajate de ese arbol… ahi, mi guerito angelito precioso, no the subas a ese arbor porque the vas a caer." which means, "Get down from there… oh, my little white precious angel, don't climb trees, or you'll fall."
That's when it struck me, and I began to question, "Am I a mistake? Is it a crime, or evil to be dark-skinned?"
I could never figure it out! Nonetheless, I witnessed, and experienced the way we were spoken to, and treated depending on our complexion.
One time while we ate dinner, a 21 year old cousin of ours came by, and brought his fiancee to come join us to eat, and while we all had a great time, one of my relatives asked my cousin, "So I heard she's pregnant?"
My cousin's face brightened up, and excitedly explained, "Yes, yes, she is, and we are very happy."
So the relative asked my cousin's fiancee, "Are you happy?"
"Of course I am. I love him, and we are ready for a family." The fiancee replied.
"Well, I hope that the baby comes out looking like you; light-skin, and light brown eyes, because if that poor baby comes out looking like his dark-skinned father, then goddamned! We have enough dark-skinned demons in our family, we need more precious angels around here." My relative explained.
I was about age 6, and you could imagine what I felt, as they all laughed, and talked about how ugly it is to be dark-skinned, and looking like an 'indio'.
I couldn't understand that the reason why they felt this way about 'color' was because of internalized-racism, self-hate, and because I couldn't understand, then all I could do is feel ashamed to be dark skinned, and ashamed to look like a so-called 'indio'.
A few months after that experience my father decided to take us away from Mexicali, and to California.
A few weeks after we arrived California, he decided to leave my mother, my brother, and I in order to find a 'better-life' with a white-woman that he met here a year after our arrival.
Before leaving he told my mother this, "Te estoy dejando porque eres una india prieta y fea. Apoco tu crees que yo voy a estar cazado, viviendo mi vida con una pinxe india prieta?" which means, "I am leaving you because you are an ugly black indian. I hope you didn't think that I'd be married, living my life with a-fuckin' black indian?"
The irony was that he was just as dark-skinned as we were… but I doubt he knew that he hated his own reflection, which perhaps drove him to go find a white woman, and have children with her, probably with hopes that his children won't come out not looking "ugly, and dark" as he was…
Time went on… a few years, and I noticed that with time my mother began to use lightening-cream (a cream that whitened the skin) and meanwhile she desperately tried to be white, I too eventually began to only date girls that were Caucasian.
Never did I want anything to do with a "dark-skinned dirty india" because I didn't want my future children to be born "dark, and ugly" like me.
I grew up hateful, mostly hating my own skin. I hated everyone that resembled me, which made it easy for me to be in a gang that was created simply to hurt others that looked "dark, and ugly" just like me.
I didn't want dark-skinned friends, and did my best to have nothing to do with my own people… I just wanted to surround myself with "beautiful white angelic" friends, hoping that they'd accept a "dark, and ugly" person like me in their crowd.
I did everything I could to not resemble these "dark-skinned ugly" people, which drove me to try to detach myself from my own indigenous-culture, and wanted nothing to do with it.
When I saw my friends brag about their gorgeous Mexican girlfriends I couldn't understand it… I questioned it, and thought that they were blind.
"How could they brag about having a girlfriend that is dark, and ugly?" I asked myself.
Well, it didn't matter what they did, as long as at the end of the day I had myself an angelic white girlfriend.
As I was growing up, whenever I wanted to make my mother angry, I'd remove my shirt, and threaten her, "If you don't stop making me angry I will go stand in the middle of the lawn, and allow the sun to hit me for hours, so that I could get dark, and ugly!"
She'd get angry, and would say, "Go ahead, and do that! You'll be the dummy who will look ugly!"
Out of anger I would go to the bathroom, and would bathe, and grab a metallic sponge, and scrub my "ugly black knees" until they bled with attempts to remove the dark skin out of them… but no matter how much I scrubbed, and bled, the dark skin never went away… it was who I was, and there was no escape!
Everywhere I went and saw a white girl with blue eyes, I'd go bananas, and would fall in love, but whenever I saw a "dark-skinned ugly" indigenous girl, I would nod my head in disgust.
One day at age 22, as I sat back in a hospital bed, paralyzed from waist down, I was watching the news, and at this particular time the year was 2007, and the television was flooded with "SB1070" news, which was undocumented indigenous people of Mexico, and Guatemala being the scapegoat for the lack of jobs, the terrorism, the failed economy in the U.S. country, and I also saw how indigenous women, along with elder people were being beat up with batons by police, by I.C.E., being tackled down, pepper-sprayed, and assaulted simply because these undocumented dark-skinned people protested peacefully, demanding 'equal rights'.
There was a scene of a mother with her elder mother that were both being hit on their knees until they both fell to the ground, clutching their knees, crying, as the police officer beat them with the baton, and after the scene the anchor-lady on Fox News justified it with, "These people have no right to be here in this country, so what gives them the right to ask for rights. You have the right to go to your country, and fix it, and stop coming to ours."
As much as there was internalized-racism inside of my brain, I still knew about compassion, and as I kept watching the News day after day, I kept seeing these news reporters speak about people like me in a very degrading manner, and I saw authority figures, and politicians justify the fact that many indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala were being snatched away from their children, their families, and deported out, and then others shot, or beat to death by the border simply because they were undocumented.
I asked myself, "Why are these beautiful angelic white people being so evil right now? Aren't they supposed to be the good guys?"
It was very difficult for me to comprehend why these light-skinned people that were all of my life depicted as good, righteous, humane, divine, just, and beautiful people were being so hateful towards others… watching them over, and over, day after day talk about how much they hate people that look just like me, and justifying the evil that they did against people that look just like me, was destroying the image of 'white-perfection' that was drilled inside of me as I was growing up.
It took one more episode for me to finally reach the point of breaking this 'white-perfection' image that was planted inside of me, and it was when on the news I saw that a young indigenous girl dehydrated to death due to the fact that her white boss prevented her from taking a water break, and forced her to continue working out in the field in that 110 degree Summer heat, despite the fact that she cried, and beg that she was thirsty.
That girl died, and nobody gave a damn… and I knew that if that girl would have been white, then the world would have went berserk!
It was when I began to realize that many indigenous women, and young girls were being molested, and raped by their white bosses, and the white bosses got away with rape, and molestation simply because these women, and girls were undocumented, and they feared involving the authority, so the white men got away with sexually-abusing, and raping dozens, countless girls, and women, taking advantage of the fact that these girls would never cry for help due to fear of being deported… it was then when subconsciously I began to grow love for my people.
This was all taking place at a hospital bed, as I was paralyzed from waist down, unable to get up, unable to wipe my own ass… I was burning inside, and in the 4 months that I spent paralyzed I didn't cry once out of pain despite the fact that it hurt, and burnt like hell due to the pain of being broken down physically after a car accident… I didn't cry due to physical pain, but when I began to realize that for 22 years of my life I had been hating myself, it was then when I finally cried…
It was about 3AM, and I remember grabbing the pillow, and covering my face, as I cried, and pushed the pillow down against my mouth to keep the nurses from hearing my wailing.
All I kept yelling was, "Noooo!" and I growled, and gripped the bars of each side of the bed, and I rocked it left to right, tightened my jaws, trying to keep myself from yelling, frustrated because I couldn't move.
Finally I had had enough of being there watching the news reporters speak against me so much, and watching my people get beat down, demonized, murdered, and all of it being justified by simply marginalizing my people, and lying to the world about the condition, and about not just U.S. but World History, so against doctors orders I crawled into that wheel-chair, and dragged myself out of there!
They told me that I'd never walk again, but the fire that I had inside of me did not allow their assumptions to become my reality.
No, sir!
It was the biggest physical struggle of my life, but I was very angry, and I used this anger to help me exercise daily, and when I wasn't exercising, I was reading, and researching, trying to find out why I, along with 99% of my people hated their own dark skin so harshly.
I realized that for the 22 years that I was alive I was lied to about who I was, and where I come from.
I began to go far back in history to where the root of where people with dark-skin began to hate themselves, and why?
Well, this is what I found, so pay close attention:
In the very late 1400s, right after the English, and Latin-speaking people of Europe began to rise out of the colonization that they had been under for over 700 years by the North Africans Moors, they also found themselves economically destroyed, and lacking resources that were required to rebuild their world that was ruined due to wars, so the Queen of Spain decided to send an explorer named Cristoval Colon (Christopher Columbus) along with an army to go and find a new land where they could find resources, and build a 'New World' on…
In any 'American History' book that you read in Elementary, Jr High, or High School, you'll more than likely find this, "In 1492 the brave Christopher Columbus arrived to America, and little did he know that he would soon be surrounded by violent, merciless, and hostile indians."
Which is a nice little fairytale, however the truth is this, "In 1492 Christopher Columbus arrived to Turtle Island, falsely known today as 'America', where he, and his violent, merciless hostile army of rapists would soon surround a civilization of an indigenous people that were highly advanced in architecture, science, mathematics, agriculture, astrology, and medicine, amongst the many other advancements."
Europeans that arrived to the 'Americas' had this belief called 'Manifest Destiny', which was the false idea that made them believe that they had the authority of their god to go, and conquer the world, and in the process they could pillage, and burn the cities, and torture, rape, enslave, and murder the people of the land, and steal their resources, as long as it was all in the name of the god that was depicted in their religious manual.
It was their belief that white was 'good', and 'black' meant evil, which was an idea developed after realizing that their manual depicted evildoers/devil-worshipers as 'black', so on their voyage, and mission to conquer the world, they ran into these 'black' people, and immediately identified them all as evil devilish demons, more so when these European Christians realized that these non-Euros were pagans, and/or non-Christians; non-believers of their savior Jesus Christ.
So the enslavement, torture, rape, and attempts of genocide against these non-Europeans was much easier, since they were all identified as 'black'; evil, demonic devil-worshipers.
European Christians slaughtered multimillion of indigenous people of the Americas (Native-Americans) in within the first year of their arrival.
They slaughtered so many people that in some of these Europeans' journals you can find them claiming that killing became so boring due to the fact that it seemed as if that was all that they did day after day, week after week, and month after month.
Eventually that lead them to come up with ways to make the killings fun. And some of those ways was to grab some of the indigenous children, and toss them up in the air, and see which Christian-soldier could slice more kids in half with their swords.
Thousands of indigenous women were raped by the European-Christians, impregnated, and then once the children were born, they were either sold to other European slavers, or they were killed in numerous ways, such as being fed to dogs, or having their heads smashed against rocks out of hatred against these so-called 'half-breeds'.
Numerous times the pregnant indigenous women were tied up with ropes to trees from their legs, and the Christian-soldiers would grand their swords, and slit their pregnant bellies open, and watch the unborn children fall out, and into the mouths of their hungry dogs.
Many of these pregnant indigenous women were at times tied up from their legs when they were ready to give birth, and the soldiers watched how the women suffered, as their legs were tied together, and they were unable to give birth, and eventually die of pain, along with the unborn children.
Meanwhile the indigenous women suffered all of that, the men were left with 2 choices:
you either convert to Christianity, and become our slaves.
or you die in the name of Christ!
This was the origin of how indigenous people survived; they were forced to convert to Christianity, which was the only way their lives were spared, and eventually our people lost our original beliefs, our ways, and we practiced the religion, and prayed to the god of the people that conquered, and colonized us.
My indigenous ancestors survived out of fear of being murdered, slaughtered, tortured, so instead they survived as slaves serving their slavers, shoved in Indian-Boarding Schools where our people were further assimilated; (white-washed) forced to forget their native culture, languages, identities, and beliefs.
In as little as 200 years, European-Christians had already wiped out over 300 million indigenous people of the Americas (from Argentina, to Peru, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, Haiti, Belize, United States, and Canada) and the survivors survived as slaves; servants of their conquerors/colonizers.
My ancestors were taught that we were ugly, inferior because of our complexion, our physical structure.
Europeans came up with the idea of color-ism, and that is where the idea of 'white' was superior, and 'black' was inferior comes from, which was the teaching that anybody with European features, and complexion was 'white' (decent, righteous, beautiful, superior), and anybody that didn't have European complexion was 'black' (criminal, evil, ugly, inferior) and this was the idea that was taught to our ancestors, and the phrase "Save the man, kill the Indian" was born; destroy indigenous people's identity, cultures, languages, history, education, colonize them, assimilate them, misplace them, wipe their brains clean, and teach them that they are the intruders here, and we are the owners of this land… make them believe that they are the foreigners, although they are really try original people of this land…
Eventually borders were built across this continent, and the ideas of colonies/countries were born; diving the indigenous people, and making them no longer view each other, and themselves as the indigenous/original people of this continent, but rather as 'wetbacks' who cross borders, as undocumented immigrant foreigners that although are actually original people of the land, they don't know this because they forgot who they are, what their root is, so they can only know, and go by what their conquerors/colonizers label them as, which is what? Wetbacks, illegals, foreigners, immigrants, and yet, the REAL foreigners, immigrants are their conquerors/colonizers, but they don't know because they forgot, because they were meant to forget!
A system exists specifically to continue misplacing the indigenous people, which is why you'll see indigenous people refer to themselves as 'Latino', or 'Hispanic', (Latino/Hispanics are just other terminologies to identify Europeans) because although they are indigenous to the Americas (Native-Americans) they are shamed, they feel ugly, inferior, and degraded ashamed to be 'indios', so they look for something more acceptable, more welcomed, and adored, hence, Latino/Hispanic; Europeans.
They want to be white! And why not? Their ancestors were taught that they were ugly, inferior, evil 'black' creatures, and this teaching went on, and on for centuries, and this teaching we carry it in our veins; seeing each other with the eyes of the people that hate us, that colonize us, and oppress us systematically, environmentally, economically, and even physically.
I began to think about everything, and even details such as light-skinned people-European-descendants teaching us that our skin is ugly, inferior, evil, and yet they hurt themselves desperately trying to get a tan, trying to gain our complexion but fail, paying large amounts of money in order to get fake plump lips trying to implant in themselves our features but they fail, and when I realized that the people that called me ugly for my dark complexion, and for my indigenous features were actually hurting themselves trying to desperately look like me, that's when I realized the truth…
I looked around, and saw my people hate their own skin, their own indigenous identity, calling themselves latino, meanwhile the people that drove them to hate themselves were hating their own skin, their own European complexion, and calling themselves 'Cherokee Indians, Native-Americans', and that was when I decided to teach my people the truth!
It doesn't require hatred against any people at all to spread the truth. It doesn't require that we hate, or attack anybody because of their complexion, or nationality, or cultural/ethnic background, but it simply requires that we begin to teach every people of the whole world the beauty in themselves, and destroy the false ideas of superiority, and inferiority, color-ism, which are the ideologies that drive us all to hate ourselves.
It took years, and still it's taking me time to decolonize, to escape self-hatred/internalized-racism, but one thing for sure is that I can now look at the mirror, and smile, and see tons of beauty, not just physical, but find beauty in who I am, my root, the amazing people I come from indigenous to this continent.
I can now look up, and feel pride, and I can now look at my women, and find so much beauty in my indigenous women who practice our indigenous culture, and speak our indigenous languages, and are proud of their heritage/ethnicity.
My message is NOT hatred for others, but instead love for yourself!
Yes, I do highlight history a lot because it is important that people know where the root of the problem is!
If you don't know the root of the problem, then you can't ever find the solution, and the root to this problem of self-hate that started with false ideas spread/forced unto us by religious lunatics that were infected with a false sense of superiority.
We have 2 eyes, so keep one in the past so that you can continue learning lessons from there, and so that you can never forget who you are, and the other eye you can keep on the future, so that you can continue spreading your culture to your children, and make sure that we continue helping our indigenous cultures remain alive, and grow stronger.
I've known people that spend most of their time hating people that existed 500 years ago, 200 years ago… I've met people that torture themselves, and spend so much energy worried, and stressing off of people that existed 500 years ago, 200 years ago… and most of these people spend their times worrying, and hating people that don't exist anymore, that have been dead for hundreds of years ago, in eras were you, nor I did not exist…
It is very important to know our history. Very important! But not to use it to hate people today because of what happened 300 years ago, but to learn from it all, and make sure that you do not repeat the same ridiculous actions/cycles of sick-demented people that lived 500 years ago, 200 years ago… and these type of sick-demented people still exist today, but only because they used to be children that were taught to hate, taught ideas of white-supremacy.
There is absolutely nothing you can do about what already happened 500 years ago. It's done, and it cannot be undone, it is written, and cannot be unwritten, but the future however is full of blank pages, and it is up to all of us to write the pages, and if we don't learn from the past, then we will sure repeat the same ugly mistakes as our ancestors made.
The cycle repeats itself over, and over again, generation after generation, and you know where it starts?
It starts at home, right there in the backyard where my grandmother yelled, "Get down from that tree you little dark-skinned disgrace before I whoop your ass!"
It starts right there, at the dinner table where my relative said, "I hope that your kid comes out looking like your light-skinned fiancee, and not dark-skinned like you!"
Internalized racism was planted in our people, and our people were forced to practice these ideologies of self-hate, and it is up to us to destroy these ideas.
But it doesn't happen with hating others because of their complexions, or nationalities, etc., but it starts by teaching your children to love themselves!
It starts by not teaching them the ideas of superiority, and inferiority, ideas of condemning one complexion, and blessing another complexion. The ugly ideas of color-ism!
I learned my history to learn from it, and not to hate others because of it. I don't hate people because of their complexion, because of their sexuality, their nationality, culture, ethnicity, and I will not allow anyone to push their hateful agendas of supremacy unto me!
My children will not learn to hate people because of people's skin-tone due to what happened centuries ago.
You know why I can't hate people of today because of what other people did 300 years ago? Because it will only rot me inside. It will only torture me, and it will ruin me. I don't deserve to suffer, and torment myself because of what happened centuries ago! I did nothing wrong so that I could be suffering, so I won't! But what I do deserve is to prosper, and my ancestors don't deserve for me to suffer because of what happened to them, they deserve for me to make sure I build something with what remains of what they build… I deserve this! My people deserve this!
My people don't deserve to be taught to be bitter… they deserve to be taught to love themselves, and to work harder so that we can build our world, and work towards de-colonizing both mentally, and environmentally.
Is colonialism over? No… colonialism is very much alive, and in full effect, but hating people because of their complexion, nationality doesn't yield it, it probably only fuels it.
I can't hate people for those reasons, but I can hate ideas, such as color-ism, racism, sexism/misogyny, colonialism, and every other ism that results to the ruining of a people, or my people… I hate these ideas, and my reaction to hating these evil ideas is to teach the contrary, and hope that whomever likes my ideologies could takes notes, SHARE, and contribute to the growth of our indigenous cultures, languages, etc., so that our world can once again come to life, or otherwise we can sit, and waste time hating events that happened 500 years ago, focusing on history that can't be changed, meanwhile our present, and future are ignored because our focus is in the past…
Thank you for reading, yes, you can share, and tag your friends, and peace be unto you all… be blessed, and teach your children to love themselves!
Sincerely, Ricardo Ignacio
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Hopefully this never happens again.
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