PRAGOTI

A review of David S Roediger's "How Race Survived US History"

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.

The developed capitalist system, epitomized by the country privileged by nature to which European whites brought their ideas, dreams and ambitions, is today in crisis. But, it is not the usual crisis that happens once every certain number of years, or even the traumatic crisis of the 1930s; rather, the worst of all since the world started to pursue this model of growth and development.

With the global economy in tatters, the U.S. president, who was placed in that office in such an irregular and irresponsible way, has created a real predicament for all of the NATO allies and Japan, the most developed and wealthiest military, economic and technological partner of the United States in the Pacific.

The candidates of the two main parties who will decide these elections are trying to persuade the bewildered voters — many of whom have never bothered to cast a vote — that as presidential candidates, they can guarantee the well-being and consumerism of what they describe as a middle-class people, without the least intention of making real changes to what they consider to be the most perfect economic system that the world has ever known. It is the same world, of course, in the minds of each and every one of them, which is less important than the happiness of some 300 million people who account for less than five percent of the world population. The fate of the remaining 95% of humanity, war and peace, air that may be the fit to breathe or not, will depend to a great extent on the decisions of the empire’s institutional leader, whether or not that constitutional office has any real power in a period of nuclear weapons and computer-controlled space shields, in circumstances where every second counts and ethical principles are increasingly less important. Still, the more or less disastrous role played by presidents of that country cannot be overlooked.

Two reflections by Fidel Castro on the US elections and the G-7 finance ministers' meeting amidst crisis of the capitalist system and the developments around it.