The Coming Insurrection

I enjoyed this weeks reading. Mostly because I could relate to many things The Coming Insurrection expressed. The first part of the book was a critique of our current system. I liked the fact that the book touched on many issues that we currently face. For example there was a lot of critique about our system of work. The book says, “we admit the necessity of getting money, regardless of the means, because it is impossible right now to do without it, but we don’t admit the necessity of working”. I feel that a lot of people have become apathetic to working in capitalism. Inequality is all around and to be working for some fast-food restaurant or as a bellboy I can imagine one becomes frustrated and in need of change.

Also the book says that we are a product of our economy. Or more specifically, “for generations we’ve been disciplined, pacified, we’ve been made into naturally productive subjects, just content to consume”. This is a clear critique of what capitalism has done to us. A lot of the population has become fixated on material possession and feels content to consume in order to create one’s identity.

I also could relate to a specific quote from the text. The book says “The proliferation of displacement and communications everywhere tears us constantly from the here and now, with the temptation of being somewhere else all the time”. We are always on our phone and using social media. Instead of being in the moment, the now, we are always some place else. The Internet and communication has allowed for this annihilation of time and space and we are never truly living in the moment but we are some place else. I find this to be a huge negative side of the progress of communication and see it as a reason for our current passivity to be active and enact change to our current system. Similar to this the book touches on another theme about the self. The book expresses that we have become alienated from our society. Specifically, “to survive the surrounding uniformity, the only option to is to reconstitute your own inner world constantly”.

I like the notion of insurrection in this book. I liked the idea to take up arms and maintain an armed presence rather than becoming a part of an armed struggle. I like this idea because it is more about instigating fear into the state. I think that this can lead the way to a revolution. Once people see that those who hold the status quo fear the masses we will be more confident to take up matters into our own hands. The book says, “ten thousand people can shake the worlds greatest economic power”. This fully means that people have the power if they come together and that gives us courage. We have seen this happen in history. However, the book does state that “there is no such thing as a peaceful insurrection”, and many times in the text violence seems to be implied as a way to meet the ends. It was also interesting to see their ideal vision of the future. Especially that their ideal society would be in communes. This is an interesting idea and I’m not completely sure how it would work out.

Week 11

It was great to read texts that specifically dealt with Canada and colonial struggles and racism. Both texts on Canada made me think of a geography class I took last semester on Latin America with Juanita Sundberg where we had a guest speaker tell stories of racism against illegal workers in Canada. The guest speaker told a story of an illegal Mexican worker who cut his finger while working and did not get any attention from his boss and did not go to the hospital even though he needed it. Some time later the boss got a much minor accident at work and got immediate medical attention. There was also a story of racism from the police against a Mexican illegal worker in Surrey. The point of the stories was to show that even though Canada is perceived as advanced and liberal, especially over the U.S, racism occurs in exactly the same way. The speaker asked the class where we thought these cases had occurred and the first answer was the U.S. Maybe because Canada is seen as being the opposite of the U.S.A in many respects, for example gun control and health care, I think this helps Canada be perceived as an open and liberal society. Also you see stories of police brutality against Afro-Americans in the U.S and almost none in Canada. This reputation of Canada helps bury the history of repression and violent acts against indigenous peoples that have been many since Europeans settled and evidently racism still exists today. Canada is no exception to racism.

The texts on Canada also made me think of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and how I was exposed to it. When I first came to Canada I was put in Totem Park, Humlesum house. The UBC website about the Totem Park residences says that the names “honor some of British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples”. From my experience living there I never saw a plaque saying why the residences had been named that way or anything showing the repression of Indigenous people in Canada. I remember thinking how this all seemed so superficial and how ridiculous it was that people thought that by naming some university residences after Indigenous peoples tribes would somehow make up for years of violent repression. It’s interesting to think about why this was my first reaction upon reading it. Maybe it’s the brief mention. Or maybe it’s the language used that says the names resemble “some” Indigenous people and there is no backstory as to why. From the beginning something just said to me that this was a ploy to bury history and show how advanced Canada has become, and that by creating a truth commission and “honoring” tribes in this manner would create a feeling that everything was good now and all bad feelings were in the past. This is similar to Sara Ahmed’s paper in which she says that the word diversity in organizations has become about image management, generating the “right image”. She specifically uses her experience from working with universities. Ahmed says that the appeal of diversity is about looking and feeling good. It is clearly a marketing appeal and it obscures inequalities. I liked the connection of diversity and marketing image in university as obscuring a rotten core with a shiny coat. I related this to my experience in UBC with finding residences named after Indigenous peoples tribes. It’s all so superficial and has no genuine intentions apart from bettering one’s image while also playing down the real issues.

Fire from the Mountain

From the texts we’ve read so far in this course Fire From the Mountain is my favorite (although I still haven’t finished reading all of it). I greatly enjoyed Omar Cabezas’ style of writing that I found to be brutally honest. The power of Che is evident in the book since in the beginning we see that Omar and his university friends, as well as in the mountain, strived to be more like Che. It was incredible to see the movement start from four students to win the elections at the university through hard work. It was eye opening to see how underground the movement was and how one had to do everything in secrecy. I found a parallel with The Underdogs in which the revolution is described like a hurricane. Cabezas describes the movement like entering a whirlwind, inside a never-ending whirlwind. Omar says that becoming a part of the movement was the end of his childhood, since you are in it until victory or death. I also got the sense at the beginning of the book that revolutions can and are fun! For example, Omar states that “with publicity we saw ourselves as much bigger than we really were”, and the devious acts such as robbing supplies and defying authority must have been an enjoyable aspect of starting the movement. Also it was great to see the relationship between the vanguard and the guerilla, since the armed forces gave spiritual fight to the vanguard, as Omar states. Furthermore, once Omar is in the mountains as a part of the guerilla he says he felt safe because he new that the student movements and people in the city were mobilizing and this gave him strength. It was also great to see how Omar adapts to life in the mountain as a guerilla fighter. At the start, when he just joins the first camp, Omar is perplexed to see around only 15 people split into groups and he thinks to himself “mother of god, what have I don’t”, as if he got involved in something that has no future. This speaks to the dangers of a revolutionary group that contains so few numbers. Omar also learns at the beginning how important the use of language is, and specifically states that colloquial language and the use of swear words greatly enhances one’s chance at getting to the masses to understand more fully the movement. Lastly, as we have already seen with armed forces in our texts the difficulty of being a part of one is emphasized. The biggest one for Omar was loneliness. Making the step from the city to the mountain, you have to leave behind everything you knew. No more girls, no more city life, no more friends, no nothing. Even smell and colors change. However, Omar also sees positives from becoming a guerilla fighter and he gets a lot of lessons, for example in humility. Omar says that becoming a part of the guerrilla enabled him to cleanse from the bourgeoisie defects, they fade out. He says that guerilla fighters despite the stereotypes are tender at heart. I think that reading Fire from the Mountain gives great insight into being a guerilla fighter, a more human aspect.