Let’s Make Ours What Is Ours

Esteban Diaz

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about a poem by Roque Dalton —the Salvadoran poet and revolutionary— in which he speaks of “homeland.”

Having gotten to know people of different nationalities over these past few years living in Havana and having shared our experiences has turned me into a cultural stew that leaves me with no doubt that homeland is a fiction maintained to divide us.

It serves to slow down humanity’s evolution, which is nothing more than our collective well-being: communism, in other words.

Born of a Bolivian father and an Argentinean mother, it has always been difficult for me to completely buy into any nationalist faction or to express any degree of xenophobia or racism, or to practice any type of discrimination.

I’ve had the advantage of traveling since I was a little boy and appreciating the culture of another country, and now of several others.

In Argentina there are strong feelings of xenophobia against Bolivians and immigrants in general, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is a part of the nature of Argentineans.

These feelings present themselves throughout all of Latin America and the rest of the world.  It’s that the mass media works to sell images of sexuality, social and economic and moral status, etc. – ones that fail to delight in all the shades of race, color, sexuality, culture, thought and diverse tastes.

How long will the world have to be conditioned by the choices of just a few, those who determine how our social relations must be?

If we don’t look for an answer at the global level, we won’t find any possible solution. I believe the way to really face economic crises, ecological disaster, poverty and the various forms of exploitation is to put all states into the hands of workers, organizing ourselves in the benefit of the entire population, without privileges for anyone.

Around the entire world, there are places where factories have been taken over by the workers, and I believe that this is the most appropriate road.

However, not only the expropriation of bankrupt factories or those drained dry by the owners, but also those that are active.  In this way a confrontation will begin that will paralyze the accumulation of capital that has served only a few at the expense of working people.

To struggle together with all workers of the world against capital will herald the definitive elimination of cyclic economic crises, which always end up being paid for by the majorities, who are exploited through wage cuts, massive unemployment, the emptying of factories, currency devaluation, etc.