A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [97]
"Truth, as someone once said, is revolutionary. This is one reason those in power routinely lie. The takeover of the ambassadors house, and the consequent attention focused on the appalling conditions in Peru's prisons, conditions which up to then had been for the most part ignored, points out that when those in power lie, the only way to conduct a meaningful dialogue with them is to have in your hands a way to force them to be accountable. Even then you can be sure they will remain true only so long as you continue to hold them tightly in your hands."
I asked how he became politicized.
"Because each of us is born into already extant political systems, we are born politicized: we each must either accept (sometimes by default) or reject the political system into which we've been born. Those born and raised farther from the centers of political power are less likely to be influenced by the entire politics of servitude and slavery.
"I have long opposed capitalism and its effects on my people. I tried unarmed resistance, but soon grew to see that as useless.
To witness the murder of one's comrades, without a weapon to defend themselves, is a quick way to be convinced of that approach's futility. Almost all MRTA members have had that experience, through the disappearance of their parents, the torture of their brothers, the rape of their sisters; others have suffered the violence in their own flesh, directly."
If the government were to disappear, I asked, and the MRTA were to govern, what would they do? "Our goal is to build a society that respects the autonomy of each region. We'd continue our current program of respecting each village's grassroots organizations, we'd assist them in electing their own representatives, and together we'd develop the production of food and other necessities. We need to produce and distribute our own food. We already know how to do that. We merely need to be allowed to do so."
I asked whether writing helps bring about social change. "In our villages a high percentage of people do not read or write. But it's important that ones like you, who know how to do it, write so sensitive persons of the middle and upper classes may understand it's possible to live in a world where the lives—and the ways of living—of all beings are respected. This in no way implies it is incompatible to write and take up the rifle. Many poets and sensitive or conscientious intellectuals have done exactly this in Peru and other places."
The standoff at the ambassador's house ended on April 22— Earth Day here in the United States—of that next spring. It ended the way stand-offs between "decent" and "indecent" people so often do: with the slaughter of the decent by the indecent. A single incident stands out: as Peruvian soldiers burst into the Japanese ambassador's residence, one of the MRTA members ran into the room where a number of the hostages were being held. He aimed his automatic rifle at them, stopped, stared, turned, and walked back out of the room. Moments later he was gunned down trying to surrender.
I cannot get this image out of my mind. Again and again I picture him aiming the rifle, stopping just before the moment of inevitability, and walking away. I picture him dead. I can think of nothing that better illustrates why the world is dying, or rather being killed, and why the best, most heartfelt efforts of those of us struggling for justice and sanity so often end in betrayal, loss, and sometimes bloodshed—inevitably our own blood and the blood of those we are trying to protect.
Something that should be abundantly clear by now is that while many of us enter into this struggle because we care about life and about living, the truth is that our enemies, those who