In order to keep going for full 524 years of conquest, you need plenty of variety in your arsenal, don't you?
Never mind, we did have it: first it was muskets and viruses, then slavery-like exploitation of indigenous labour, later damaging use of the land and management of local produce (coffee and fruit) by foreign companies which profited hugely and crippled the local economy, and finally, in the second half of the last century, political and military support for right-wing repressive governments. And don't worry, five centuries later, we still have that variety...
Clothes', and shoes', charity, which destroys the local textile and shoemaking industries, buries beautiful local dress tradition under a pile of ridiculous t-shirts' wordings, deprives whole peoples of part of their precious identity and lulls Westerners in the damn-false impression of being doing good.
Globalization, which brings in every possible society disease, from TV addiction to videogames-induced brain damage and violent habits, from junk food to shopping mania, from costly cellphones' and internet overuse to misplaced dreams of emigration, from excess of car traffic to horribly out-of-place and money-wasting Christmas silly traditions; globalization, which threatens healthier, more sustainable and economically wiser food traditions and pushes whole countries on a dangerous slope towards overweight and obesity thanks to the introduction of the wonders of McDonald's&friends.
Advertisement and the distribution of stuff to be bought, which replaces people's natural will to improve their lives with a sick drive to spend, spend, spend, for products which are not necessary, or more expensive or less healthy than their traditional alternatives.
Neo-liberism, which cuts welfare, privatises services and cuts down import tariffs to flood countries with cheap products which prevent viable local industries to develop.
Fakeducation, the local version of what should be the main way of give poor people a future and instead, when cynically observed, looks like a repressive tool: keep low classes in school years and years without teaching them anything about history, ensure they won't be able to properly read, write and count, make good efforts to prevent them from developing any sort of critical thinking (which is quite easy when you've kept their brains inactive and avoided giving them the aforementioned necessary tools of reading&co.) and you'll be sure you won't get any more dangerous revolutions. Actually, Guatemalans surprised many last year, when they got out on the streets to oust their top two politicians due to corruptions issues, but that's still a long way from a real revolution, like the one attempted 50 years ago and quashed through over 30 years of genocidal massacres by the army...
The Continuous Conquistadores seem also to have learnt the Romans' lesson well, as can be seen in the modern local version of the "panem et circenses" (bread and circus) strategy, i.e. "risitos y pista de hielo" (packed-crisps and ice-rink): don't give them development, welfare or proper jobs, just keep them fed (or at least offer them plenty of something-which-looks-like-food available everywhere at very affordable prices) and entertained with expensive foolish shows whose costs could be better used somewhere else, like an ice-skating installation on the main square of Guatemala City, of course in their cold season, (invierno-winter!), when the daytime temperatures won't ever go below 20 degrees... By the way, just for the sake of connecting thoughts, did you know the current president is a former comedian, not a protest-style comedian, just a mere showman?
A final note on food, the focus on which might seem as a picky exaggeration of ours, but we believe is instead quite fundamental, as the current nutrition habits are so damaging, not only health wise, but even financially, since poor people are spending the precious little money they have on something not necessary for their wellbeing (a packet of chemicals-covered crisps has no nutritional value) instead of saving for health expenses or to invest in education or home-improvements.
A picture should be enough: in the middle of a local, small but not tiny shop on a secondary road of the city centre, you spot a large shelf-unit nearly collapsing under the weight of so many ripe, vivid yellow bananas, a feast of taste and nutritional wonders; the sight makes you not only hungry, but also happy for all these Central and South American countries, blessed with the low cost and easy availability of fruit... if it weren't for that damn tendency of your eyes to keep looking around, which makes you take in the rest of the shop: the wall behind the shelf-unit, which now looks quite small, is completely covered by those ubiquitous hanging stacks of crisp-packets of any possible kind ("taste" doesn't seem the proper word), which cost just as much as one or two of those delicious, filling, healthy bananas, while the wall on the left boasts two full-height fridges full of sodas or sugary drinks, the other nutritional plague of these areas.
Cheer up, the next post in this series won't be about conquest but about resistance.
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