The Blumenschein House, Taos

Star Road and White Sun by Ernest L. Blumenschein c.1920, Albuquerque Museum 

Since I've been on this dwelling theme for a while, why not continue for a bit longer, eh?

I was back in Taos over the weekend to pick up Ms. Ché who'd finished her writers' conference, and we decided to stop at the Blumenschein House on our way out of town to compare and contrast it with the Couse House which we'd visited the prior weekend.

Blumenschein, together with Bert Phillips, started the process of making Taos into the place it is today when their famous Wagon Wheel broke a couple of dozen miles from town and Blumenschein won the toss to take it into the hamlet somewhere down below them to get it fixed. They had to wait, as one can imagine there in the middle of nowhere, and so they did.

While waiting, they became enchanted, so the story goes, and they spent the rest of the summer awestruck and delighted, painting up a storm, and pondering their own futures.

Phillips stayed in Taos the rest of his life. Having settled in, there's no other place he'd rather be. Blumenschein went back to Paris where Joseph Henry Sharp had told him and Bert about the enchantment to be found in Northern New Mexico, and one thing led, eventually, to another, and all of them wound up living and working in Taos at least part time, and Blumenschein and his wife Mary settled in themselves, purchasing Buck Dunton's place (or part of it) on Ledoux St, where they set up quarters of a sort and a studio in four ancient rooms said to have been a part of the village defenses against the Indians when time was.

I won't go into that history, but quite a few of the Spanish settlements in Tierra Adentro were consciously built as fortresses, and the village of Taos was no exception. The Indians were wild back in the day, particularly Kiowa, Comanche, Apache and Navajos.

The appropriate tangent at this point is to mention that there are three distinct "Taos"-es. There is the ancient Indian Pueblo at the foot of the Mountain; there is the village some three or four miles south; then there is Ranchos de Taos, several miles south of the village, where stands San Francisco de Asis mission church that's been painted by Georgia O'Keeffe dozens of times and by other painters endless numbers of times.  Side note: Dennis Hopper is buried in Ranchos de Taos, and his grave is a pilgrimage site for a diminishing number of aging Easy Riders.

Surrounding all of this is an amorphous outlying settlement area dotted with ranches and ranchettes and earthships and what have you where by far the largest number of Taoseños currently live scattered to the winds perhaps, but partaking in their own way the essence of that Sacred Placewhere they don't have to mix too much with the tourists.

At least it's not as bad as Sedona.

Anyway, none of the Taoses would be what they are today without Bluemschein and Phillips and the other members of the Taos Society of Artists and their numerous offshoots and successors and the many other influencers who have passed through or settled there since that fateful Wagon Wheel broke in the summer of 1898.

Blumenschein returned to Taos in the summertime for years, but he lived in Paris or New York, making money as a successful illustrator for magazines and books, until 1919 when he purchased "four rooms" from Buck Dunton, another member of the Taos Society, and settled in, or at least tried to. This was like camping out for the Blumenscheins and most of the other artists attracted by the Blumenscheins and others to Taos. The four rooms were built of mud and timbers, some of the structure apparently among the oldest still standing in the village, they had little heat, no electricity or indoor plumbing, and like everything else in Taos they were at the edge of Nowhere. It's hard to explain how difficult it was to get to Taos from anywhere else, and to get from Taos to anywhere else. This isolation was both a handicap and a blessing.

The house as it stands today is a rambling L shaped structure around a lush courtyard, in one corner of which is Buck Dunton's studio -- which he apparently kept even after all the other rooms on the property  had been purchased by the Blumenscheins. This part of the story is a little confusing to me. Apparently Buck bought part of the rambling structure from earlier residents, but most of the structure was owned by and lived in by long-time Hispanic residents who one by one were persuaded to vacate by Blumenschein's offers of cash money. At least that's how I interpret the story of how Ernest Blumenschein eventually acquired the entire property.

This is a pattern that repeats over and over again -- even now --throughout the fancier and more tourist oriented areas of New Mexico. It's a form of gentrification, pushing out the original settlers and descendants to make way for the shiny, sophisticated newcomers. "Sophisticated" is the key.

The Blumenscheins were nothing if not sophisticated, and yet their mud house on Ledoux Street is a curious amalgam of its primitive Hispanic roots and the high style that the Blumenscheins had acquired in Paris and New York. Curiously, there's almost no Native influence in the house at all, though apparently they employed Native servants as well as Hispanic ones (this was typical of the art colony.)

The Couse house shows lots of Native influence or at least artifacts, and Mabel's Place up the road from the Couse House was built by Native artisans from the Pueblo, and of course, Mabel was married to Tony Luhan (who had his own house on the property) who was born and raised (and had another wife and children) on the Pueblo.

There are a number of other Taos Society historic sites to explore, and eventually we may get to them, or not. I started my explorations of this sort many years ago at La Fonda de Taos where I stopped one evening to take in the D.H.Lawrence scandalous paintings. The ones there now are reproductions, but I saw the originals... and to be kind, I wasn't moved. But it started my journey to learn more about the artistic history of Taos.

It's a story of colonizers and colonization, one that has transformed some of New Mexico yet has left much of the rest of the state practically untouched.

On our way back from Taos this past Sunday we stopped off at the Santuario de Chimayó where a large group of East Indian pilgrims was taking all the Holy Dirt out of the Holy Dirt Pit and transporting it away in gallon containers. There seemed to be none left for the other pilgrims. We sat beside the abandoned crutches and Santo Niño and shook our heads in wonder and wiped the sweat from our brows as the heat and humidity of the day was surprisingly intense. We nodded to the statue of Father Roca in the courtyard. His generosity of spirit will live on....

"Cowards and Bullies the Lot of Them"

I haven't written much about the Standing Rock actions against the Dakota Access Pipe Line lately. It's a very emotional story in the Ché household, for it shows something about the strength of Indian peoples that we haven't really seen since the AIM uprisings all those many years ago.

Some of those AIM activists are now teaching classes on Native American topics in colleges and universities all over the country, and that's one way activism is co-opted. It usually works. This time, however, the authorities appear to be intent on crushing the Indian rebellion with massive force.

In some ways it's a replay of the First Nations uprising in Canada over pipelines and oil extraction and terrible environmental consequences that affected Native Peoples primarily. We didn't hear a lot about it south of the border, but the protests and other actions (some still ongoing) were constant, widespread, and widely supported in Canada and around the world. They were partially effective, but not without cost to individuals and the tribes. Many were arrested and brutalized by the RCMP, and many still face abuse by authorities for daring to stand up to the power of oil interests.

The First Nations of Canada have been partially successful in forcing governments and private interests to pay attention to the interests and needs of the Native Peoples, and to curb their appetites for unfettered resource extraction above all other considerations. I understand some projects have been canceled, pipelines shut down or rerouted, environmental cleanup begun, water contamination halted here and there, and even some compensation provided to tribes.

It's not enough, but it is something. And it took months and months of constant protest and nonviolent resistance to get even that.

Actions against the Keystone XL pipeline were highlighted in this country, and they also involved a lot of Indian/First Nations activists. Ultimately, those actions were successful in stopping that project -- at least for the time being. The Dakota Access Pipeline seemed to come out of nowhere, and apparently it was fast-tracked by the Corps of Engineers and regulators in order to get done before anybody noticed.

Or something.

The pipeline was originally routed just to the north of Bismark (90% Anglo). The people of Bismark rose up in righteous indignation and insisted the pipeline be re-routed south of their source of drinking water, the Missouri River. So it was done. The pipeline is now routed to cross the Missouri just north of the current boundary of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation near Cannonball, ND. The Standing Rock tribe claims the land on which the pipeline is being built as Treaty Land, part of the original much larger Reservation that was negotiated in the Treaty of Laramie in 1851, lands that were never ceded by the tribe but were essentially confiscated by the US government in periodic seizures in order to give the land to Anglo squatters -- and the Corps of Engineers among other agencies.

The tribe and their allies claim the pipeline is inherently unsafe, and if it breaks under or near the River, it will contaminate drinking water not only for the tribe but for millions of Americans living downstream. They would prefer that the pipeline not be built at all because it is just too dangerous, but they recognize the counter argument that the way the oil from the Bakken Field is being transported now -- by truck and rail -- is even more dangerous; oil transport trains are called "Bomb Trains" for a reason, after all. Pipelines, while marginally safer than rail or road transport of petroleum, are also vulnerable -- as the recent explosion of a gasoline pipeline in Alabama demonstrates.

The obvious answer is to leave the oil in the ground. Given the way oil prices have collapsed, that may be the ultimate resolution to the issue, but we're not there yet.

The tribe and its allies have formed a number of camps on the Reservation and near it, full of Native and allied activists from the Standing Rock Reservation and from Native communities throughout North and South America. It's a wonder to behold. Thousands have gathered periodically and many hundreds have stayed on. There are actions almost every day.

These are genuine Native American encampments that evoke many of the Natives' prior ways. They are highly spiritualized assemblies of peoples, extraordinary in their discipline and determination. They are called together to pray and to protect the water under the banner, "Water is Life."

They are acting in accordance with Native spiritual principles and under a code of non-violence.

Somehow over the years non-violence has been re-defined as "peaceful," but it's not. "Peaceful" implies passive and obedient. Non-violent activism is deliberately disruptive, often loud, and is almost always met with official violence. A non-violent demonstration -- such as the ones taking place almost daily in North Dakota -- will nearly always be met with increasing levels of state violence, including violent arrests and dispersal tactics, and with false accusations of violence by the demonstrators. (Cf: Occupy; BLM)

The militarization of the reaction by North Dakota -- and other -- law enforcement agencies is spectacular overkill, but much the same reaction happened in Canada when the First Nations activists got in the way of private oil interests. We've seen this script play out before, many times.

North Dakota has been bringing in police from as far away as Minnesota and Ohio under "mutual aid" agreements to "help" with controlling the Wild Indians and their allies. They have engaged in extraordinary levels of violence against non-violent activist, with hundreds arrested and many injured by rubber bullets, dog bites, tear gas, pepper spray, truncheons, and other weapons. At least one horse has been killed by police, and others injured by police or dogs (the police call the horses "weapons.") Drones sent up by the Indians to document the atrocities have been shot at by police. Many of those who have been arrested have been brutalized in custody, kept in kennel-like cages, denied medical attention for injuries or chronic conditions, forced to submit to humiliating searches, and had their property confiscated. They've been charged with "riot" when no such thing has taken place -- though police on some of their rampages can be characterized as rioting against the calm determination of the Water Protectors.

Elders and children have been particularly targeted for brutalization, pour encourager les autres.

The militarized response by police would be startling if we hadn't seen it before, particularly in Ferguson, where police behavior and use of military equipment and tactics against non-violent protest was seen by Americans on that scale for perhaps the first time. It was shocking then.

What also characterized the Ferguson response were constant and blatant lies from the authorities about the "violence" of the protesters. It was fairly obvious that in some cases, provocateurs had been seeded in the crowds, and some of the so-called "violence" was perpetrated by those provocateurs (mainly rock and bottle throwing). But in other cases, the police simply lied about being "fired upon" by members of the crowds of demonstrators or about being "assaulted" by them. They lied about "riots" too. In fact there was vandalism and arson and some instances of looting, but what they had to do with the protests, if anything, remains a mystery. This was also true in Baltimore, and more recently in Charlotte.

As some observers have pointed out, at least to some extent these unfortunate actions appear to have been provoked by police. It appears that law enforcement is trying mightily to provoke a violent response by the Water Protectors in North Dakota as well.

This is apparently counter-insurgency doctrine used nearly universally in this country in response to civil unrest, particularly against "peaceful" protest (ie: non-violent, not necessarily "peaceful" at all).

Get them to do something not "peaceful" and almost any level of crackdown violence is justified, no?

And if the activists won't cooperate, lie about them. Provoke, precipitate, seed with provocateurs. Do anything to shut down the activists and interfere with their efforts.

From outside looking in, that appears to be what's been going on as the militarized response to the Water Protectors intensifies.

And the police over and over again are showing themselves to be cowards and bullies, scared to death of these Indians and their allies, and becoming more and more violent and brutal as a result of their fear.

Cowards and bullies, the lot of them.

Yes, well. That's pretty much how America's Imperial Storm Troopers behave around the world. They are so jacked up and fearful of their adversaries and enemies that they routinely slaughter innocents, non-combatants, anyone and everyone who gets in their way or who might do so, and this behavior inevitably leads to blowback and even fiercer resistance by the target population. Inevitably.

Even the British back in the hey-day of their brief Empire knew that such behavior by their own conquering armies and mercenaries and police would inevitably produce the kind of blowback that they ultimately could not resist. Nevertheless, they routinely employed extraordinarily brutal and bloody tactics against their restive colonial subjects -- with inevitable results. The Empire self-immolated and collapsed.

On the other hand, their American descendants seem to have no self-awareness about these things and their inevitable consequences, even when they encounter them at home and abroad. It doesn't seem to occur to them that their cowardly, violent, and bloody behavior toward their "subjects" precipitates the blowback they experience and leads to their defeat due to the resistance and refusal to comply by their targets.

The police in this country seem to have adopted this failed military counter-insurgency doctrine in their repeated efforts to deal with nonviolent civil unrest, activism and protest. It is failing just as the military is failing world wide, and for much the same reason. This cowardly violence against nonviolence driven by irrational fear -- which is induced by training and commanders -- has an inevitable consequence. And it isn't victory for the cowards. Just the opposite.

The Water Protectors in North Dakota have developed a world-wide support network. While there isn't a lot of coverage of what's going on in this country (and much of the coverage there is merely parrots official lies), notice has been taken outside the country and support has been growing exponentially. The Water Protectors have been able to raise millions of dollars through online donations, money that's being used to support the camps and provide legal defense for those who have been arrested. Thousands have assembled in the camps from time to time to engage in both community building and activism against the pipeline and to protect the water for themselves and millions of others. The permanent camps host at least 600 and often more activists, even as North Dakota's fierce winter begins.

A campaign to use Facebook to emphasize support for the Water Protectors led to more a million people signing in to FB with their stated location "Standing Rock" no matter where they were in the world. Go Fund Me efforts have raised millions of dollars to support the Water Protectors.

And now word is circulating that the pipeline may be rerouted away from the Standing Rock Reservation or... maybe... it could be canceled altogether.

That remains to be seen, but at least there is "talk."

Part of the frustration of all this is that the Bundy led armed insurrectionists in Nevada and Oregon seem to be able to get away with their actions against the Big Bad Gubmint, whereas unarmed Native or black protests are met with some of the most ridiculous threats and militarized police responses imaginable -- to protect a corporate owned pipeline. This is an almost perfect example of what cowards and bullies our police have been allowed to become. If their targets are unarmed they feel they can use any level of force they want, and the more intimidating they appear to be (with their MRAPS and LRADS and assault rifles and riot gear and whatnot) and the more violently they suppress the protest the better. Whereas if they are confronting an armed insurrection, they stand back, adopt a modest and nonthreatening posture, they negotiate, they blandish, persuade, take their time, and avoid confrontation at all costs -- at least until they are literally shamed into taking some kind of action to end the standoff. They allow the Bundys to run essentially roughshod over the very concept of law, the very idea of order.

It's been said that the Bundys and other militia types are allowed to get away with their insurrections because they are White. That may be true. I tend to think it's more because they represent a real -- armed -- threat to the authorities, whose prime directive is Force Protection. In other words, as long as the authorities believe they are under no particular threat, they can and will behave as violently as they want against protest and civil unrest. If they detect a real threat, they will back down, retreat, negotiate. Their primary interest is to protect themselves  first, after all.

Standing Rock Water Protectors say they need firewood for the impending winter. Send it if you can, but they will accept money in lieu of goods and services. Log into Facebook, if you use it, stating your location as Standing Rock. A delegation from IAIA in Santa Fe went to North Dakota about a month ago, and another one may be organized shortly. Individuals from New Mexico are frequently going to ND to stand with Standing Rock. They may not be able to stay more than a few days, but it is important to demonstrate solidarity.

And so it goes.

This is an important struggle for all of us. While Ms Ché and I cannot be there physically, we have been there in spirit. We support the activists and the camps.

[I'll add some links in due time, but for now, just Google Standing Rock and see what's going on, both from the Native perspective and from the point of view of the cowards and bullies trying -- and failing -- to suppress the Water Protectors.]

Linkies: Please watch the embedded videos. You will see just what sort of cowards and bullies the brave warriors are up against.

http://sacredstonecamp.org/blog/2016/10/23/141-water-protectors-arrested-as-police-escalate-violent-militarized-response

https://www.laprogressive.com/standing-rock-protesters-attacked

http://sacredstonecamp.org/blog/2016/10/28/police-from-5-states-escalate-violence-shoot-horses-to-clear-1851-treaty-camp

Unicorn Riot has been covering the actions at Standing Rock and elsewhere for many months. Check it out:

http://www.unicornriot.ninja/?p=10600

Cowards:

Police & Military Attack Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp from Unicorn Riot on Vimeo.

The Overclass and the Lesser People

What's going on in North Dakota is ultimately the story of America from its earliest episodes with the invaders from Europe to today. It's a microcosm of colonialism and dismissal of the Native Peoples, their interests, their concept of the universe and the place of humanity on the earth. This is pretty serious stuff, and it is the stuff of conflict between Euro-Americans and Native Americans (who we here in New Mexico call Indians as they typically call themselves, but that's another story for another time).

It's a conflict that should never have been.

So often, Natives have had no real issue with Euro-invaders -- so long as they behave in a decent and cooperative manner. The problem has been that so often they don't. It appears that in many ways, they can't.

They think they have to dominate, exploit, destroy or... what? What will happen if they don't? They can't know because so many won't let go of whatever impulse for domination and destruction drives them.

Note, they still call this need, this impulse "Progress."

The Indians say, "No, this is not really 'progress' at all. It's simply a fury of destruction. Why do you do this? What is wrong with you?"

It's customary among "concerned" white people to almost worship Natives as some sort of exemplars of a Paradise Lost. If only whites could be more like the First Peoples in the Americas, how much better we all would be. Yes, that's all well and good but it presumes lack of agency and contemporary ways of life among the multiplicity of Native Peoples throughout the Americas. They are all supposedly driven by their Native Culture(s) -- thought of as a unity -- to be One With Mother Earth, yadda, yadda, in a primitive but righteous understanding of the basic elements of life, elements long forgotten by the Euro-invaders and colonists.

Well, no. This point of view kind of drives me nuts. Indians and Native societies have been so disrupted for so long by the invader-colonists that what the invaders think of as the "primitive" -- permanently primitive, mind you -- righteousness of Indian life and lore is mostly white-folk fantasy of Indians and their cultures and societies.

Indian societies were never perfect by any means, nor did they necessarily live in Paradise(s). The disruption and destruction caused by the invader-colonists -- including genocide -- left a remnant Indian population, one that had fallen so steeply that in the early part of the 20th Century, scholars and politicians and much of the popular media were convinced that the Indian Peoples would shortly become extinct.

Thus an all-out effort was undertaken to "preserve" what could be saved of ancient Indian culture and society for later scholarship and consideration (by Anglo scholars, of course) before all the Indians were gone.

I have friends a few years older or younger than me who believe -- some passionately -- that Indians are a "dying race," that the few pitiful survivors are drunks, drug addicts or criminals, that they all live on reservations where everyone is dirt poor, but where, somehow, the ancient ways and beliefs are preserved intact by medicine men and history preservers, and that those ways and beliefs are -- somehow -- intrinsically superior to those of the invader-colonist-destroyers.

I sometimes try to tell them they believe in a fantasy of Indians, one that has a long history but is basically false.

Indians are not a dying race, for one thing. They reached a low point in population over a century ago and have been on the rebound ever since. Most Indians do not live on reservations, most are not drunks, most are not dirt poor. Quite a few have been de-tribalized, even de-racialized and de-culturalized. They're not quite "white people," but they're not "Indians" in the sense that white people often think of Indians, either. They're somewhere in between.

Indian societies continue relatively intact in isolated pockets where the colonist-invaders were not able to overwhelm and suppress them, but not generally. Some Indians have as much of a fantasy view of their own cultures as many white people do, and some Indians deliberately adopt whatever white folks believe that Indians believe. Other Indians have a deep-seated understanding of their own Native cultures which they cannot and do not share much of with outsiders (not just with Anglos, but with other Indians as well). In other words, the invader-colonists as well as other tribes may never know what these other Indians know. Ever. It's not so much a secret as it's just not shared -- nor is it in some cases sharable.

Much of contemporary Indian society is not traditional or primitive at all. It is in many cases a cobbled together hybrid of limited ancient understandings and a modern (ie: culturally, socially, and economically indistinguishable from the dominant society) way of life. That's probably the way most North American Indians live today.

On the other hand, we have what's going on in North Dakota -- which strikes me as one of the most unifying means of expressing a spiritual understanding of the proper relationship of humans and the earth according to long-held tribal beliefs, beliefs adapted to the contemporary world.

This is not ancient or primitive, this is now.

There are thousands gathered near the pipeline route in North Dakota, Indians and their allies alike, to bring to bear the power and authority of a deeply rooted Native spirituality against the power and authority of crass materialism. Anti-spirituality if you will.

From a practical standpoint, this pipeline is essentially unnecessary and is ultimately a waste of energy and resources. It's dangerous in that it can -- and likely will -- leak oil into water supplies, whether into the Missouri River or elsewhere along its route. A point has been made that this risk is somewhat less than the current method of transporting oil from the Bakken Fields to refineries by rail,  on what are colloquially known as "Bomb Trains," but that diverts attention from the fact that none of this oil needs to be extracted or transported at all. The use of petroleum is declining in the United States. Oil is often sold for less than the cost of production and transportation as it is, and many people have pointed out that it is likely that this oil will be transported and exported, because there is no real need for it in the United States, no market as it were. Consequently, the whole project is in essence a boondoggle, not the first nor the last in the petroleum industry, but one that has reached a kind of absurdity that few have before.

Even the unnecessary KXL pipeline (currently in suspension) was not as absurd as this one.

From a spiritual standpoint, the Dakota Access Pipeline is a form of rape of the Mother, for no other reason than that its makers can do so. Spiritually it's wrong in every conceivable way. In the Judeo-Christian sense, it's a sin. A mortal sin.

Why is this being done? As an assertion of Power? Or is it something else?

This goes back to the origins of the invader-colonial society that became the United States of America (Inc.). Dominance and destruction are the key elements of that society, and when they are challenged or denied, as is the case in North Dakota, then the whole edifice trembles. We see this in the current overreaction of the North Dakota and pipeline authorities to the Water Protectors (love the name) and their actions. The National Guard has been called up. Arrest warrants for journalists and spokes people issued. Checkpoints established along the highways. A tightening protective cordon established around the camps and the pipeline.

Destruction-construction continues despite the denial of permits for construction under the lake that is in the way of pipeline completion. The pipeline will go as close as it can to the Missouri River lake (Oahe) that's in the way until the permits and easements are issued. I don't think anybody doubts that.

It's almost certain that the permits and easements will be issued, it's just a matter of when.

But the actions of the Indians and their allies in North Dakota against the construction or completion of the pipeline have highlighted just how stupid and deleterious the project is. How essentially all of these pipeline projects are idiotic. The overreaction of North Dakota authorities to the actions of the protester/protectors has highlighted how stupid and deleterious the civil authorities have become in their zeal to protect the project at all costs.

This has a cumulative effect, much as civil rights and anti-war actions did back in the day, much as many other forms of activism continue to have.

I suspect that the pipeline will be completed almost on schedule, but the ultimate result will be disastrous for its builders and operators. The shame of it is one thing. The lack of need for it will be something else again. And finally, when it does break or leak, which it will, I suspect it will be quietly shut down, and eventually the Indians will be vindicated. "They were right."

Well, yes.

Isn't that already obvious?

But in the meantime, the Overclass MUST dominate the Lesser People or risk its own extinction. They dare not stop now, oh no. They must continue to the bitter end. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

The Congo Thing

[Sorry for the relatively long hiatus... it's what happens in Blogistan, so I've heard...]

I've been reading a book I received as a door prize at an event in Santa Fe a few weeks ago, a book called "Captive in the Congo, A Consul's Return to the Heart of Darkness" by Michael P. E. Hoyt.

I haven't gotten very far into it, but so far it's a pretty good read as these things go, though I take strenuous issue with the notion that the United States Government is/was somehow innocent or blameless for what happened to the Congo during and after the Belgian colonial period.

The author was appointed US Consul in Stanleyville in 1964, and within a couple of weeks, he was taken hostage along with about 250 others -- Americans, Belgians and some other Westerners and Congolese -- by rebels, "Lumumbist Rebels" they are called, who captured and held Stanleyville until the hostages were rescued by a joint Belgian/American/Cuban exile quasi-military operation that routed the rebels at least temporarily.

Who remembers any of this? I do, strangely, at least I recall parts of it, some of the names of the players and the places where some of the events of the period took place. It was on all the news at the time, but there was something fascinating about the Congolese independence movement, Patrice Lumumba, the strategic jockeying for power over Darkest Africa between the Soviet Union and the "West," the appalling behavior of the Belgians, the disgusting behavior of Americans. It was all amazing and revelatory to me at a time when I was barely conscious of politics and world events at all.

I was only 12 when the Belgian Congo achieved a very fragile independence, and only 16 when the events in this book took place.

Yet what happened -- or at least what was reported -- has left an impression on me to this day.

I wrote about Lumumba and the Belgians and the coup that overthrew him and his subsequent assassination almost five years ago now. At the time it happened, it was shocking to me, but it was being purveyed as simply the "tragic way of the world," oh well, what can you do, It's Africa, and all that.

The fact that Lumumba was an African nationalist who saw the future of the Congo and Africa in general as a future freed from Euro-American colonial oppression and exploitation was what got him overthrown and killed. The Belgians had no qualms whatever about doing what wet work was necessary to maintain control over their captured territory even if a nominal independence was granted under pressure. Exterminating a pest like Lumumba was all in a day's work for the Belgian mercenaries and their allies who continued to infest the Congo long after "independence."

Americans were part of the neocolonial pattern in Africa even as all the countries of the continent were nominally freed from their colonial overlords. They would all become economic vassals of their former colonial masters or of the transnational corporate interests fostered by the United States. There would be no alternative.

And whatever ruin was brought in the wake of this new -- but not so new at all -- order would be the problems of the Natives, not of the West or the Powers the West represented.

Natives continued to struggle for freedom from neocolonialism in the Congo and elsewhere in Africa, and Hoyt makes abundantly clear what the Official Line was about that: the Rebels were savages with little or no conception of the higher purposes for which the United States and the West were "helping" in Africa; they relied on magic to achieve incoherent ends; they brutalized and killed with bloody abandon; they could not be reasoned with; they could only be met with force and crushed.

And so it would be.

I've noticed a through line of madness that's built in to the framework of the diplomatic service of which Hoyt was a part and from which he retired (like many others of his ilk have) to Santa Fe. Madness is the word I use because of the consistency of error in American foreign policy, error which literally cannot be corrected. It is built in, part of the DNA of the Foreign Service, the CIA, and all the other "helping" agencies that go to make up the Foreign Service.

Hoyt, like so many of his peers, has no conception of the policy errors he's implementing. The institutionalization of error and the inability to do anything to correct it is one of the fundamentals of American government(s) and policy, as I found out in my eleven years in the federal service.

In the Congo, the errors compound and continue. Things may get slightly better or worse at any given time, but the underlying premise of American policy in the Congo, in Africa, and in most places around the world is simply wrong. And there is no earthly way to fix it.

Thus all the nationalist and nativist uprisings we witness. People will not put up with the kinds of indignities, injustices, exploitations and worse that come with American-style or any other style of neocolonialism without resistance. The use of force to put down the rebellions ultimately leads to more and more and more of them, until inevitably the system that neocolonialism supports collapses.

The horrors that people go through in the lead-up to the collapse are unnecessary and yet somehow seem inevitable so long as colonialism and neo-colonialism is in power and able to assert power over weaker interests.

We see what a mess so much of Africa is to this day as its neocolonial exploitation continues apace. We see the rebellions of people who understand exactly what's been happening and want it stopped. We see the consistency of error in American foreign policy with regard to Africa.

This book, despite my disagreement with the premise of American exceptionalism and innocence, helps set the stage for the perpetuation of errors to come.

I am more and more convinced that changing it requires much more than an election or two...

Heart of Darkness indeed.

Down Country and the Persistence of Colonialism in New Mexico

I've been thinking about colonialism as endemic to New Mexico.

It's part of Pueblo culture and other Native culture, too, including Diné/Navajo.

I've been reading Lucy Lippard's magisterial "Down Country" (mostly) about the Tano people of the Galisteo Basin, just to the north over a ridge from our own place in the Estancia Basin. The Tano came as colonizers from the north and west in -- perhaps -- 1200AD or so; there were already scattered settlements in the Galisteo, some a thousand years old, perhaps (then again, maybe not so old.) The inhabitants were overwhelmed, driven out or incorporated into the new Tano pueblo villages, the ruins of which are found all over the Galisteo. The Spanish, in their turn, overwhelmed the Tano pueblos, and eventually, they were all abandoned, the remnant Tano people moving to Hopi-land where their descendants still are.

The Spanish settled in after a while, and they in their turn were overwhelmed and the Anglo colonists moved in. Galisteo itself has been a Tano pueblo, a Spanish pueblo and it is now (mostly) an Anglo artist colony, an offshoot of Santa Fe's art colony.  Fancy people, all 250 of them,  in their fancy houses and studios, with their fancy (non-functional) mailboxes, lording it over... well, their own domain. A domain taken from others, who took it from others, who in turn took it from others still.

I'm a colonist too. Ms Ché is in a slightly different category being Native and all, but Cherokee are not the local indigenous even so.  Cherokee are more or less in charge of IAIA, and even though it is Indian-centered and Indian run, IAIA is very much a colonial enterprise.

Where we are, the Empty Quarter, has a similar pattern to that of the Galisteo Basin, though much attenuated, as no one (much) lived here to take the land from, and there were few resources easily exploitable.

The closest pueblos were fifteen/twenty miles away. This was an open grassland where buffalo roamed. The deer and the antelope played in the hills and mountains round about, among the cholla, pinon, and juniper. Before the Spanish, the Tompiro people coming from the west established a few outposts which became large pueblo trading centers, the chief product being salt which the people collected from the salt ponds to the east, the remnants of the once mighty lake that had filled the Estancia basin. The trade was between the local pueblos, the pueblos along the Rio Grande on the west side of the mountains, and the Plains tribes, chiefly the Kiowa and Comanche who roamed and were fierce in their war paint wherever and whenever they wished. They followed the buffalo, but so did the Pueblo peoples whose hunts were legendary.

The Tompiro fought the Spanish and submitted to the Spanish and that was their undoing, for once they sumitted, they no longer were able to rely on their own customs and resources to ensure their survival, they had to rely on the Spanish -- who literally had no concern for the well-being/survival of the People, only for themselves. Ultimately, the remnant Tompiro people (perhaps only a few hundred by then) left en masse and joined the Rio Grande pueblos, chiefly Isleta, just before the outbreak of the Pueblo Revolt.

They never came back. The land was empty -- except for the birds, the buffalo, the deer and the antelope, the coyotes and the occasional forays from the Kiowa and Comanche, who now had to scale the mountain passes to get to the pueblos and the Spanish settlements for slave-raiding and trade. Such an inconvenience, but they managed somehow.

This land became part of contested and competing land grants and was used primarily for sheep-raising when it was used at all. It was wild-country, no-man's land.

There were a few Spanish villages along the east foothills of the Manzanos and there was a ranch headquarters at Estancia, and that was pretty much it for settlement. The ruins of the stone-built pueblos did not dissolve back into the ground like adobe would but still stood stark, rigid and crumbling, not unlike tiny versions of Chaco and Mesa Verde.

Anglo colonists came from Texas with their multitudes of cattle and claimed the land for their own, demanding that the sheep-ranchers and their sheep withdraw forthwith. There was a notorious shoot-out after a friendly poker game. The colonists came from Texas, but the Anglo colonial enterprise was directed from California, via Boston, or vice versa. I had no idea until after I'd lived here for a while that the cattle operation was owned by the Whitneys who had a vast ranch and experimental farm outside of Sacramento which turned into one of the many microchip suburbs and where I had worked from time to time. The Whitneys came from Boston at the tail end of the Gold Rush. In New Mexico, the Whitneys claimed to be from Boston, though their entire expansion program was being run from their California ranch. Colorado didn't escape their ministrations, either, I'm told, but that's another tale for another time.

(I'm sure I've told this story before) The Whitneys fought the Oteros on the ground and in court for decades for control of the land, and finally they both lost at the Supreme Court, and the land was opened for Anglo homesteading/settlement. The railroad promptly laid tracks, and the remnants of history are all around, as are the many ruins of broken dreams. Our house was one of those ruins until we, colonists from California, "rescued" it and rehabbed it enough to live in. With the skunks underneath and the song birds nesting in the eaves.

Now and then, we still hear a coyote howl or see an eagle soar. There are no buffalo, though, no more. I don't know why not. There are vast ranches nearby where they could be raised and roam, ranches that host numerous cattle, horses, llamas, or goats, and if they can host any of those, they can host buffalo, but they don't. The pronghorn, they say, are not the Native variety -- they were hunted to extinction in historic times -- they are an imported variety from Wyoming; colonists you might say, in their own right, like the cattle, the horses, the llamas and the goats.

The Russian olives are colonists as are most of the plants that now cover the grasslands. The farms and most of their crops are colonists, though corn, beans and squash are raised in abundance and are highly sought after by city-folk who flock to the country at harvest time. Colonists. The farm nearby where the cranes roost in the daytime is a working farm, but also an "attraction," hosting thousands of school children bussed in from the city every year to see what a "real farm" is like.  Colonists.

All I'm saying is that there is no escaping colonialism in New Mexico. Even the Diné/Navajo are colonists -- coming in from the north so late in the game they were practically simultaneous arrivals with the Spanish, within a hundred years or so. They were raiders like their cousins the Apaches. The pueblo peoples feared and despised them. Some still do. Colonists all.

The question is whether colonialism will continue to be imposed by force and bloodshed. That's the issue of police violence in a nutshell. That's the issue raised by so many of the Indians we've come to know in New Mexico -- who say, almost to a one, "It didn't have to be this way."

The violence was never necessary.

The taking and the stealing and the use of force and bloodshed was never necessary. Matters could be worked out (relatively) peacefully. Accommodations could be made. They still can be.

That's what I'm hoping to see happen in the next phase of opposition to police violence -- and implicitly to the violence of Anglo-colonialism.

The Spanish and the Indians learned -- the hard way -- to accommodate one another in this harsh and unforgiving land. As I've heard said, they're all related now, they're children of one another's mothers, and though they may maintain distinctive cultures, they are still family. They often unite to oppose more Anglo colonial impositions and these days they can and do succeed in their opposition.

The question is whether the Anglos will learn there is another way. In my view, they must learn.

Liars, Thieves and Murderers -- The Empire of Chaos and Disruption Knows No Bounds

This year marks the 400th Anniversary of Don Juan de Oñate's exile from New Mexico and the New World. That may seem like a minor footnote in history, and for many people, it is. Oñate is not well known outside of Texas and New Mexico, but for many people here, especially Hispanos and Pueblo Indians, his record of conquest, chaos and cruelty cannot be forgotten. Though 400 years have passed since he was sent back to Spain for those very crimes and failings, his legacy lives on as an undercurrent in New Mexican society -- which may have something to do with the levels of police and public cruelty we are experiencing today.

Oñate's advent north of the Rio Grande was a disaster for the indigenous inhabitants whom he seemed to take immense pleasure in slaughtering and crippling, thieving from, lying to, and otherwise disrupting as he and his colonists made their way through the Puebloan communities proclaiming the Mercy of Christ and the suzerainty of Felipe Rey de Castile, Leon, y Aragon, and then killing them, crippling them, raping their women, enslaving the survivors and looting their pueblos.

Those were the days. Complaints were made, and in due time, Oñate would be recalled from New Mexico, trial would be held, and ultimately Oñate would be returned to Spain where he lived out his remaining years as a minor functionary to the King. 

This Blood Summer of Chaos and Disruption seems to be an echo of those times we thought we'd gotten past. Perhaps we haven't. At least in those days, appeal could be made to the King when the sub-rulers he set over his domains got out of control. Some record could be made and at least an attempt at justice and redress could be made. Now there's no one to intervene and seemingly nothing to be done.

Will there be no end to the madness of our rulers? As the world -- at least a goodly portion of it -- spirals ever further into the pits of perdition, one must ask: what must be done, and by whom, to halt the madness, bring dignity and peace to the multitudes, end the suffering of the innocent, repair and renew the global environment, and do those other things so necessary to survival and sanity?

Among the many tomes in our library of the obscure and forgotten, we have a number of books written in glum apprehension between the wars (that is between WWI and WWII) that either predict a New War Just Around the Corner or which posit means and methods to avoid one. The enemy is posited to be Germany and Japan, just as they would be in the end. There are a few anti-communist/anti-Russian volunes, but mostly the concern is over the aggression of Germany and Japan in Europe and Asia and the lesser but still worrisome aggression of Italy in Africa. As much as the capitalist class loathed and despised the nascent Soviet Union, they did not see it as an expansionist and aggressive threat. That would come at the end of World War II when, having defeated the totalitarian expansionist German Nazis and Japanese Empire, attention was turned to the prostrate, ruined Soviet Union as the New Threat. There always has to be an existential threat, doesn't there?

Europe and Japan would be rebuilt along Anglo-American capitalist lines (with a bit of Socialism thrown in to calm the restive masses for a while) and the Soviet Union would be ham-strung and boxed and allowed to play in Eastern Europe so that no one in the West need concern themselves with that region for the time being.

Red China was the New Dragon in the East. It was, of course, the offspring of Red Russia. Dealing with that unanticipated result of the Japanese defeat in WWII would take up most of the energy of the Western powers -- ultimately leading to military stalemate in Korea and military disaster and defeat in Vietnam.

There's little doubt that the totalitarian governing systems that expanded during the period between the wars were ruled by liars, thieves and murderers, as all large scale governing systems seem to be, including the vaunted Democracies. The totalitarians were just more overt about it, let's say, so it was obvious. There was no lack of liars, thieves and murderers in ruling positions within the "democratic" Imperial nations. The case could be made -- and some made it -- that for all their fine words about self-determination and democracy and whatnot, the Imperial West (particularly Imperial Britain, but no less so France and Belgium... and the United States) were monstrous in their colonial enterprises.  Liars, thieves and murderers only begins to describe what what unleashed on the uncivilized peoples of the world by those powers.

Ridding the world of the "uncivilized" peoples (sub-humans, actually) was something of an idealized goal. It could be accomplished by extermination when necessary -- viz: the various conquests and exterminations of the Native Peoples of the Americas -- or by conversion and/or assimilation. But the point was to make over all of the "uncivilized" peoples into some version of "civilized" and subservient or to make them be gone.

This was the Western European colonial enterprise in a nutshell.

And here we are again.

All of the current blood-lettings and slaughter-fests under way this summer appear to be some version of the colonial wars of yore, conquests for the purposes of subjugation, extermination, control and extraction of resources, and destruction of so-called primitive cultures which threaten the brutal and cruel cultures of the West and the powers they wish to assert over everyone on earth.

Here we go again.

None of these neo-colonial wars seem to be going well, but they do go on a very long time just the same. The victims pile up in ever-growing stacks of bodies, streets run with blood, cities are laid waste. There is a repeating cycle of disruption and destruction, revolt and suppression, and with each cycle, the cruelties become normalized.

New Mexicans may have been able to get rid of Oñate when time was, but getting rid of him did not get rid of his legacy, and even the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 -- viciously revenged in the de Vargas Reconquista of 1692-95 in which thousands of Indians were slaughtered -- did not fully restore what now had passed.

The cycle of violence and destruction we're in today will no doubt pass, and perhaps some of those responsible will be judged and a sense of justice restored, but what used to be cannot be restored -- and perhaps it shouldn't be.

May we nevertheless learn to be better.

"Uncertainty" -- and The Libya Thing

What's going on in Libya is one of those Grand Mysteries of Empire that defy logic. The situation there was never apparently dire. It was just "uncertain."

And for some time now, Our Rulers have been obsessed with the notion that somehow "Uncertainty" is crimping their style and their pocketbooks, and the whole -- and only -- point of Government is to provide them (Our Rulers) with "Certainty" so that they may be comfortable in their own skins and reliably profitable as they scam the rest of humanity.

Simple.

So when things began to go south in Libya, the "Uncertainty" Principle was invoked, louder and louder, to justify military intervention. Well. Intervention. It was not entirely clear that those who were calling loudest for Intervention were aware that the kind of intervention they were calling for was actually a military intervention. It is not clear that these people understand even the most basic aspects of civilization, to tell you the truth.

Which gets us into another question of whether the Ruling Class is actually composed of ignorant and savage Barbarians. But that question will have to wait for another time.

Meanwhile, the Uncertainty in Libya filled the Rulers with dread. What if the Wrong People got hold of the Oil? You see? You see how awful it is? When rebellions erupt in Oil Rich regions, it becomes imperative to ensure that only the Right People have their grubby hands on the Oil Spigots. In Libya, the problem was that nobody knew who ultimately would have their hands on the Spigots, when and if they were turned on again, and that was intolerable.

Either the Madman Gadaffi would restore his authority and cooperation with his Oil Buddies, or the Unknown Rebels would win, with who knew what results?

Ergo, Intervention was imperative.

All the yabbering about "humanitarian" concerns is so much jejune palaver meant to mask the true nature of the mission: not to seize the Oil outright -- that's never necessary -- but only to ensure that it goes to market with as little hassle and interference as can be and that the profits from the sale of the Oil go to the Right People, not the wrong ones.

Under the circumstances, there are no "humanitarian" concerns at all.

The United States of America does not do "humanitarian interventions" in any case; we should be quite aware of that by now. The United States only does Interventions that enhance the pecuniary interests of the Government's sponsors. Unless those interests are served first and foremost, there will be no Intervention no matter how horrible the consequences for the Poor Devils on the ground.

So. What we're looking at with the Libya Thing is an Intervention intended to impose
Certainty on an Uncertain situation for the purpose of providing as much comfort and convenience to the Oil Oligarchs as possible.

That hundreds or thousands of Libyans will die in the process is of neither interest nor concern to those who must have Certainty.

Never was.