Reading many texts of some of the more prominent New Afrikan, Black Nationalist, Black Internationalist, Intercommunalist Black/Pan-African revolutionaries of the 20th century, I am thankful for the wisdom that they have left us. But one of the things that Black people are realizing more and more today it would seem is that nonblacks on the whole, but especially nonblack Mexicans do not belong to that romantic project of the Third World which has been steadily eroding for many years along the lines of faux solidarity. Just as Black Amerikans had to realize the myths of Amerika, they are today realizing the myths of Latin Amerika.
The errors of those black revolutionaries (thinking with Kuwasi Balagoon, George Jackson, Assata Shakur) was that they fell into the thinking that Frantz Fanon writes on in his chapter “On National Culture.” For Fanon in this text, Black culture was nothing but mystification. Two cultures such as Black Amerikans and Black South Africans should not come together on the basis of a shared Black culture (he says that two cultures can never be completely identical, which, like, okay Fanon we don’t want them to be), but on the basis of being oppressed by the same/similar enemy of Amerikan/European empire. Black culture for Fanon was based on the struggle of the masses. It makes sense in the time he was writing, of course. Through the movement of Negritude and the instrumentalization of Black culture and Blackness through the project of neo-colonialism after so called independence, one could see how Fanon, heavily invested in the Algerian liberation struggle (not a struggle for independence), would come to these conclusions. But we must stack this up against the failures of nationhood in the 20th century struggles.
I don’t purport to be a revolutionary, but Kuwasi Balagoon wrote that as revolutionaries we have to support the will of the masses. Well, in my estimation, the Black masses are moving towards a rejection of this line bound up in the idea that national culture is materially and dialectically more prescient than a Black culture. Now of course, Black culture is always already commodified, it means nothing on its own as some sort of floating signifier. We have to constantly come up against infiltrators and grifters, scalpers and bodysnatchers especially in the Latin Amerikan psyche. Those “brown” people who are trying to reclaim a Black lineage or bloodline (whatever that means) that was stolen from them because of colonization and racial caste. I think we have to focus our energy elsewhere when it comes to these people. Too much of our energy is being spent fighting these people who everyone knows are leeches instead of trying to connect with our people.
I believe that a major error in Black Amerikan organizing especially in California/Texas has been to not make a priority of seeking out the sharing of experiences, struggles, and voices of Black people in Latin Amerika. But this goes back to the myths of Latin Amerika which have been sold to us under the false pretenses of solidarity, unity, and the Third World. This goes back to the myths of nationalism. Bolivia or Venezuela may lessen the grip that US Imperialism has on them, and approaching it from a national standpoint, the Left has every reason to applaud and support that. But does this Left seek out the experiences and stories of Black people living in those countries? Or are we merely to be satisfied with these pushbacks against Amerikan Empire, and chalk up the rest to contradictions still being worked out?
As Black people still colonized in the so-called belly of the beast, we need to do more to connect with Afro-Mexicans, Afro-Caribbeans, and all Black people living in Latin Amerika. For one, to break the stranglehold of the myths of these countries as unequivocal beacons of oppression to be saved and flattened along through bullshit PSL protests and statements of unity. Nah. Black people need to come together and destroy that shit. And the infiltrators and the brown people will get left the fuck behind. And we can come together as Black people not in some tired Pan-African way which flattens the differences we have, but we can work out our struggles and contradictions together so that we can live one day in a world where we don’t have to struggle.