A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [100]
The bitter truth that most of us are unwilling to face is that our enemies are institutionally and oftentimes individually psychopathological. They have the cannibal sickness. The lives of those they kill simply do not exist in the minds of the killers. This is true for victims whether the Forest Service and the timber industry speak of board feet rather than living forests, agribusiness corporations speak of 10,000 "units" in confinement instead of living hogs, or the corporate media reports that United States warplanes caused "collateral damage" in Iraq—the deaths of tens of thousands of men, women, and children in apartments, buses, and bomb shelters. Thus after the assault, Fujimori stated that he was "very sorry for the loss of three human lives," meaning the two soldiers and one hostage who died in the assault (the hostage who died was a Supreme Court Justice who had voted against Fujimori's amnesty of death squad leaders; reports vary as to whether he died of a heart attack or a bullet wound; the Peruvian Human Rights organization DeRechos alleged that he was murdered by the military). The other lives that Fujimori caused to prematurely end were evidently something less than human. Representatives of the various transnational corporations with an interest in Peru's resources stated they would change none of their genocidal and ecocidal policies. Most of the transnational fully supported the decision to use force. A representative of Mitsubishi said there was "no other way" to end the crisis. A representative of Mitsui Metal and Smelting said it was "very regrettable" that one Peruvian hostage died. He did not regret, of course, the killing of the MRTA members. What was there to regret?
Those of us in the United States, those who are at least somewhat privileged—probably white, perhaps male, possibly rich or at least not so hungry as the children of Peru—must recognize that in a world of shrinking resources it is only a matter of time until the guns are turned on us. Someone once asked John Stockwell, an ex-CIA agent whose conscience forced him to speak out against the agency, why he had not yet been killed. He said, "Because they are winning." We who are relatively privileged need to ask ourselves what we are willing to give up, what amount of security we are willing to sacrifice to change the status quo. In the wake of this action by the MRTA, and the consequent murder of those involved, we—each of us—need to question what we can do to help change things for the better, and stop the mindless destruction.
During those four months, fourteen members of the MRTA held the attention of the world, and they held back, if only for a brief time, and if only in the so-very-tiny space of one house in one city in one country in South America, the steady march of our culture as it relentlessly destroys everything it encounters. For that brief time the world was shown an alternative of determined and fully human resistance, of people fighting for their right to be on their own terms. What if there were fourteen more, or fourteen more than that, or fourteen hundred more than that? What if we each individually began to organize, knowing full well the stakes and the potential consequences—both good and bad—of our actions? What if we each in our organizations at long last said to those who run the country, those who run the companies, those who help further the destruction, run the machine, "You shall not pass. This is where I live, and this, if necessary, is where I shall die." And what if we meant it?
We are losing a one-sided and defensive war. If we learn nothing else from the bravery and deaths of the fourteen tupacamaristas, it is that we must take the offensive, we must struggle—never for a moment letting go of the life-affirming values we believe in—and bring that struggle to their doorstep instead of ours. We must learn also that resistance is never futile, and that