Returning from my Village in Honduras

Over the break, I spent the entire time in my village. I tried to spend as much time as possible with my family, especially with my mom. She recently told me that she has cancer. For this reason, I’ve spent time away from social media and Substack.

As I write these words, I am “back home” in the place that’s never really felt like home. Dwelling in the belly of the beast, I sit at my desk, staring at the computer screen, several tabs open, wondering exactly what I am going to write.

I can write about the electoral coup in Honduras that imposed a right-wing government aligned with the US and Israel. I can write about the ICE raids in Minneapolis and the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, or the protests that ensued, but I am not too sure what these words would mean in terms of changing or challenging the fascist settler colonial regime of the US. Words along cannot stop violence unless words inform action. Violence, as Fanon instructed us, can only be met with violence. Force must be met with force. Ideally, words would move mountains, but unfortunately they fall flat when radical thought is reduced to concepts, ideas, and theories that now have become property of academia, and have thus been emptied of their political and militant content.

Once uprooted from the material conditions that made it possible to articulate a revolutionary theory or concept that dialectically informs revolutionary action, these become commodities for so-called radical academics to consume and present at academic conferences complicit in genocide. It’s funny yet also tragic how revolution can so easily be reduced to an aesthetic, a demeanor, a vibe, with no substance in actual reality, struggle, or direct action. All that matters is cosplaying the revolutionary who presents a soon-to-be-published peer-reviewed article at the Marriott or Convention Center, likely while wearing a leather jacket that fits the part. Who needs revolution and collective action when the radical star professor we dearly admire can lead the way? Lead us astray I should say.

Meanwhile, people in Gaza are still being killed and starved and those in the West Bank are being arrested, tortured, and displaced by settlers. In the US, thousands are being arrested, detained in concentration camps, and deported. In Latin America, the US is reasserting its dominion over what it continues to treat as its personal backyard, free to do with it as it pleases. As I write these words, the US is choking Cuba’s oil supplies by imposing a total blockade on a small island that has ingeniously survived the US-led genocidal economic structure for decades. A total siege, no different from what Israel’s genocidal policy in Gaza.

Again, what am I supposed to write about? And what will these words mean at the end of the day? I am not too sure. All I can say for now is that do what you can wherever you are. Create alongside others the spaces that are nonexistent yet nonetheless in the process of emerging. Disrupt and abandon the spaces and institutions that seduce you to believe that without them your life is somehow meaningless. Organize, even if it seems futile at the moment. Fight for those who are at the receiving end of state-sanctioned violence. Speak up even if you’re surrounded by an ocean of silence. Constantly ask yourself what is to be done and what role you can play in existing organizations.

Ultimately, we need to remember Robin D. G. Kelley’s words: “Solidarity is not a market exchange.” It’s not a transaction that will yield personal benefits down the road. Indeed, active solidarity is likely to have serious consequences—but never more severe than those that result from doing nothing as the fascist, settler-colonial, and imperialist gears trample over us.