Last night, I co-hosted a workshop in Manhattan about how to make more and be energetically successful and, to my delight, the majority of the room was full of people who were either daughters of immigrants or immigrants themselves.
A few of the women there even spoke about coming from humble beginnings and how they built a successful career or a business that surpassed their wildest expectations. So inspiring!
My co-host and I are Latinas and daughters of immigrants too so, almost by default, we spoke about one of the things we're most excited about...
The first Latin artist making history by being awarded Album of the Year at the Grammy's (Bad Bunny!) the same exact week of the Benito Bowl, ahh!
But we also talked about some of the dark stuff happening...ICE is officially in our city and my co-host told me she saw them right before we took the train together.
Along with that, I was silently thinking about the journalists who'd been kidnapped, the civilians who'd been killed, and the many Latinos who have been detained inhumanely.
If you've known me for a while, you know I usually live under a rock with things that involve pop culture, the news, and politics but I love history and looking at historical trends over time.
Lately, I've been more invested in current events too and I think it's because I see signs of something that I studied a lot in my international studies classes: authoritarianism and oppression, which sometimes can lead to dictatorship.
What most people don't know is that even though the United States is a symbol of democracy worldwide, there was a period of time where it actively supported authoritarian leaders.
Sometimes it even overthrew democratically elected leaders and then replaced them with right-wing dictators. One of the most famous examples of this is when the U.S. participated in the coup d'etat of Salvador Allende in 1973.
He was the then democratically elected socialist president of Chile and the U.S. backed military operation led to his death and the installation of one of the most infamous dictators in Latin America, Pinochet.
Very weird and eerie fact: when I visited Chile, I stayed with my college classmate in her grandma's house, who was either a part of the Pinochet cabinet in the 1980s or worked inside of it somehow. Her house definitely had a bit of dark energy but I digress...
During the Cold War, there were many examples of this type of U.S. interference around the world, especially in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
The U.S. wanted to secure their military bases in those regions and therefore supported some oppressive and anti-democratic governments because they were anti-communist.
So from the 1950s to the 1990s, and especially during the Nixon and Reagan presidencies, many people around the world suffered because the U.S. decided to support (or install) dictatorships in certain regions instead of democratic leaders.
If the U.S. had to choose between dictatorship and socialism in foreign countries during that time, they were most likely gonna choose dictatorship in almost every scenario.
What is socialism anyways? According to Google AI (lol), "Socialism aims to reduce inequality through social ownership or regulation of production, allowing private property and democratic reform, while Communism seeks to abolish private property and class entirely, often envisioning a stateless, moneyless society with resources distributed based on need, not contribution."
You guys know that I love money so I'm not making a case for communism but if you're curious, I personally believe a blend of capitalism and socialism can be ideal.
The democratic socialism represented by the modern-day Nordic nations, Sweden, Finland, and Norway seems to be working very well for both businesses and citizens.
But for the last half of the 20th century, the fear of communism was very real and still remains real. During the Bay of Pigs crisis in Cuba in 1959, there was a night where the whole East Coast thought they might not wake up in the morning due to nuclear war.
My dad did bomb raid drills in school. The fear was real. But so was the oppression. Below you'll see dates for some of the military coups, which often led to decades of dictatorship in each country.
The U.S. staged overthrows that were followed by dictatorships in countries like Chile (1973), Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1964), Argentina (1964), and Nicaragua (1979).
There were also U.S. backed military dictatorships in Panama (1981-1989), the Dominican Republic (1930-1961), Uruguay (1973-1985), Paraguay (1954-1989), Bolivia (1964-1982), El Salvador (1931-1979), and Haiti (1957-1986).
For the Haiti dictatorship, there's a statement that says, "Their harsh anti-communist stance was preferable for the U.S. despite their brutal record."
That brutal record included an estimated 30,000-60,000 deaths...and the U.S. provided that regime with 900 milli during that time.
Many of these dictatorships even trained their guerilla or paramilitary troops in U.S. forts and were then sent back to their respective countries to maintain military rule.
Unfortunately, there are many countries in the world, not just in Latin America, that are no stranger to dictatorship.
But the more unfortunate thing for me was discovering, as I read books about this between 2011 and 2014, that our democracy supported many of them, backing them with even more financial and military power.
During the Cold War, Russia of course did the same so for some people, it might feel justified. But unfortunately the damage was done and the repercussions of said damage can be felt everywhere.
For better or for worse, you reap what you sow. I always wondered if that karmic cycle would ever catch up to the U.S. and my hope is that it wouldn't...
But the signs of authoritarian oppression are being witnessed in many cities across the nation. I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't become more extreme.
Even though we can't undo the past, we can try to build the future in a way that doesn't repeat these same mistakes.
With the recent events in Minnesota, my activist energy has been on a high simmer and/or low boil...and I felt like I had to start sharing some of these thoughts with you.
I believe in a better world than this. I believe in better leadership than this. And sometimes that has to come from civilians...from us.
So my invitation on this brisk and cold February day is to melt the ice (pun intended) with your words, your heart, your energy, and your work.
Feel the anger (trust me I have) and then be a vision of hope, a beacon of light in any way you can be. There's no right or wrong way to do this. Even an honest conversation with yourself, your friends, or your community can send ripple effects out into the world.
Need help speaking up? Luckily I recorded this YouTube video months ago, which seems so relevant to our present moment.
In it, I share...
- An energetic throat clearing practice.
- Embodied meditation to help you communicate openly.
- How to share what's real and true in your heart no matter what the topic is.
Watch it on YouTube and whenever I feel upset, I turn to something that Obama said years ago...
"Progress is bumpy. It always has been." He went on to say that despite the ups and downs that have occurred over the past decades and centuries, the trend for increased civil rights and quality of living for humanity has always gone up.
Let's hope that we can follow this momentary valley with a beautiful peak in history.
Big hugs,
Kimberly
P.p.s. Wanna see how I'm preparing for the Benito Bowl? Go see my latest reel on Instagram :P
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