Life in the shadow of an empire

10 hours ago

Life in the shadow of an empire

How do we cross the fictive frontiers imposed between a beleaguered empire and the peripheral nations it fails to rule?


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Ballet Folklorico de Mexico at The London Coliseum UK in 2015 (Getty)
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On May 11, I joined a number of friends attending a performance of the 64th anniversary of Ballet Folklorico de Mexico at Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

Founded in 1952, Ballet Folklorico de Mexico is the brainchild of Amalia Hernandez(1917-2000), a world-renowned choreographer whose lifetime achievement is this spectacular staging of various song and dance traditions from the pre-Columbian, Hispanic, and revolutionary eras of Mexican history.

Coming to Mexico City and watching this show after the ever nastier tones of the US presidential election in which Donald Trump has verbalised and personified the systemic mendacity of North American racism towards Mexicans and other people, a sharp contrast emerges between two overwhelming power of representation and marks the varied manners in which nations live in the shadow of an amorphous empire.

Racialised delusions

In the United States, as these days best captured by Donald Trump and his followers, Mexicans and other people living in the US beyond its racialised delusions are the bete noire of enduringly nasty white supremacist fantasies.

Trump speaks of mass deportation of Mexicans, of building a tall and long wall on the southern border of the US, and of banning Muslims from entering the country in a manner that betrays the white supremacist racism that has always informed US imperialism - and he just utters it more bluntly.

Such bigoted portrayals of Americans of a different descent than Trump and his racist supporters are deeply rooted in a hateful ideology dominant in the US that wishes to belittle, denigrate, and demonise various segments of its own society to rule them more ruthlessly by the maddening logic of abusive capital and its unending need for cheap labour.

More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/05/life-shadow-empire-160522060051341.html