PRAGOTI

The Marxist historian friend of the peoples of the world.

Three out of four citizens of the United States of America today are white. The American Indian numbers have been reduced to about 2 million or less than one percent of the total population. Pragoti had earlier carried articles, taken from various sources, on the occasion of "Columbus Day" which is now often referred to as the "Day of Indegenous Resistance" and on "Thanksgiving Day" to highlight the genocidal progress of colonialism in the western hemisphere.

Continuing with this theme, we present to our readers two articles. The first one by Juan Santos argues that racial discrimination and extermination of the American Indians have been central to the the history of the United States of America and this is not some unfortunate side-story. The second is the speech given by one of the remaining descendants of the Wampanoag tribe which first encountered the bloody "pilgrims" of the Mayflower and paid for their lives with it.

It is a deep thing that people still celebrate the survival of the early colonists at Plymouth — by giving thanks to the Christian God who supposedly protected and championed the European invasion. The real meaning of all that, then and now, needs to be continually excavated. The myths and lies that surround the past are constantly draped over the horrors and tortures of our present.

Every schoolchild in the United States has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists – and of the ruthless ways of capitalism.