The forgotten peoples: Colonialism in the Americas, By Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf

Abuja hosted the historic ‘International Conference for the Eradication of Colonialism in the World.’ There, ideas flowed like a waterfall and a firm resolve to end the human scourge was forged.

Hosted by Nigeria’s Society for International Relations Awareness (SIRA) it was chaired by Professor Ibrahim Gambari. The  over three-hundred average daily participants included the diplomatic community, retired ambassadors, journalists, labour leaders and youth activists. It was also like practical tutorial classes for  students from various universities  like University of Abuja, Bingham and Veritas, attended with an official delegation from Nile University. The intellectuals were led by the National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) Professor Emmanuel Osodeke who gave a captivating address.

The SIRA President, Owei Lakemfa welcomed participants while Prof Gambari’s opening remarks maintained that “Peace Can Only Germinate in the Soil of Social Justice”. The “Opening Address” by Oscar Lopez Riveria and Edwin Cortés, who spent 38 and 14 years respectively in US prison for their struggles to liberate Puerto Rico (PR) from United States’ colonial rule.

The Keynote Address was by  Ambassador Oubi Bachir, the representative of the POLISARIO Liberation Movement in Switzerland and to the UN and International Organisations in Geneva. The Mexican Ambassador in Nigeria Ambassador Alfredo Miranda, spoke on “The Mexican Experience in Three Hundred Years of Colonisation”.

Berta Joubert-Ceci, the Main Organiser for the International Tribunal on USA Colonial Crimes in PR, spoke on “Consequences of Colonialism in Puerto Rico (Borikén)” while Kandis Sebro of the Alba Movements Continental Assembly of the Caribbean People, spoke on “The Caribbean Colonies and the March Towards independence.” 

Maggie Vascassenno from Mujeres en Lucha, USA, addressed participants “Women In The Struggle To End Colonialism”. Estelí Capote, the General Coordinator of the Instituto Puertorriqueño de Relaciones Internaciones UN Efforts spoke on “Engaging The UN System to Speedily De-colonize the World”. 

Kazi Toure, a member of the National Jericho Movement (NJM), who was imprisoned for ten years on “conspiracy to overthrow the US government” spoke on “Sedition, Political Prisoners and the struggles for independence”. Jihad Abdulmumit, currently Chair of NJM, and former Black Panther Party/Black Liberation Army member, who spent twenty-three years as a political prisoner in US, spoke on “Building an international Peoples’ Senate.” 

Carlos R. Alicea Negrón of the Instituto Puertorriqueño addressed the conference on “The Liberation Movement in the Americas and Peoples’ Struggles for Independence” while Femi Falana, Africa’s foremost International Human Rights Lawyer, spoke on “The Legal Implications of Continued Colonialism In The World”.

John Parker of the Socialist Unity Party, USA, addressed  on “The USA in the Context of Neo-colonialism in Africa”. The presentation of Dr Olushola Magbadelo, a retired federal director, and currently, lead director, Centre for African and Asian Studies, Abuja, was on “The Imminent Dangers of Re-colonisation of Post-Colonial African States.” 

Sebro theorised that colonialism was driven by the desperate desires of the colonizing powers to exploit the human, agricultural and mineral resources of Caribbean countries for their own enrichment. She underscored the continuous disastrous effects of colonialism in many Caribbean countries, which, amongst others, have made: “the population of the diaspora surpass those  of the Islands ” She also raised the issue of  the mass exodus of  the best brains of the Caribbean to the colonising countries in the West to work.

Berta argued that US colonialism in PR had been catastrophic. She quoted many US colonial officials to buttress her point. In 1934, a US colonial police chief, Francis Riggs, bragged, during a nationwide strike by agricultural workers, that: “there will be a war to death against all Puerto Ricans”. A US medical doctor, Cornelius Packard Rhoads, boasted in a November 1931 letter: “I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off 8 (Puerto Ricans) and transplanting cancer into several more.”

She added that throughout the 1940s “hundreds of families were displaced from Vieques to make room for a US Naval storing and practicing range, leaving only one third of the island for the population.”

She claimed that in the 1960s “President Kennedy wanted to remove every person in the island, including their dead, emptying even the cemetery so there would be no reason for families to visit their deceased loved ones.” She disclosed that a former colonial Governor, Edwin Miranda, recently wrote, in a Telegram chat, that: “I saw the future, it was marvelous; there are no Puerto Ricans”.

For Riveria and Cortés, US has enforced severe austerity measures in PR which have led to drastic cuts in social services; reduction in pension; closure of 150 public schools; massive cuts in university budget; privatisation of public health; prolonged electricity outages; and the sale of national assets. Their conclusion is that: “the current U.S. agenda seems to envision a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans.” 

They submitted that  colonialism in PR has stifled economic development; undermined its social and human fabric; gentrified and damaged the environment; and led to migration wave to the extent that Puerto Ricans in US are: “nearly twice the size of that in Puerto Rico.”

Capote pointed out that US has  on some occasions succeeded in removing  PR from  the list of colonies  recognized by the UN but that the PR always succeeds to get  back on  the list due to the support of several countries. She added that PR has been utilizing the  UN Decolonization Committee, Special Political Anti-Colonialism Committee, Geneva Human Rights Commission, and the Economic and Social Development of the countries to advance the cause of PR independence. 

Caelos Alicea Negrón submitted  that UN particularly: “provides a legal-ethical-moral framework” for the colonised peoples to wage their struggle for independence. He however maintained  that: “proposals that validate or legitimize annexation or conceptual-legal sovereignties that that exclude independence” are unacceptable to Puerto Ricans. Negrón maintained that US colonialism violates international law, offends humanity, and is a crime against humanity.  

Jihad introduced a different dimension. He asserted that the US government continues a 400-year internal colonialism and genocide against the indigenous, Black, Brown and other minority peoples. He said the mechanisms for committing these include: killing minority peoples; causing serious bodily or mental harm to them; deliberately inflicting them with conditions of life calculated to physically and, or, partially destroy them – in whole or part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the minority to the other group. 

Toure linked alleged  internal colonialism and genocide in US to: “capitalism, imperialism, sexism, xenophobia and very other kind of ism, that is bent on control, and exploitation of people of colour.” 

Parker posited that whether the US President is a Black like Obama, or a woman like Kamala Harris, the US  anti-minority policies  will continue, because its  imperialism is a: “self-perpetuating money machine for the ruling class, a huge buffet for the military industrial complex and the politicians and corporations who directly and indirectly benefit from it.”

Vascassenno paid glowing tributes to the: “heroic Palestinian resistance and the international movement of mainly students and youths, numbering millions in every continent, north to south and east to west, has shown, no matter the depths of depravity of Israeli Occupation Forces against women, children and prisoners, that the Palestinian people will win. Free Palestine!” 

The conditions of the colonised countries are not fundamentally different from those in neocolonial countries. Many avenues exist for intensifying the struggles against colonialism and neocolonialism. Gambari, Bachir, Falana, and Magbadelo extensively addressed these issues.

To me, what is  clear is that  oppressed peoples, in the centre and periphery of capitalism, must unite, empathize, solidarise, and support one another to end colonialism, neo-colonialism, occupation and imperialist oppression globally.