On Colonisation

The Venezuelans I am most acquainted with are the Miss Universe winners. I dont know any personally. No, I am not some dirty old man leering at beauty queens. But like it or not, Ms Universe winners make front page news, complete with photos, in colour. Venezuela, I recall have produced more winners of this pageant that most other countries.

So, they have outwardly beautiful people. I have met only one Venezuelan and she struck me as someone with a beautiful soul inside too for she was mostly talking about her family especially her young daughter even though we were trying to crack the case.

Their land is also blessed with resources and I just learned that they have the largest reserves of oil in the world.

Beautiful people, rich resources… must be really attractive to the greedy. It’s a story as old as time. The greedy needs to be sated. But they dress their ugly desire in high faulting themes: Gold, Glory, God! 

The most honest description is Gold. They want more. More valuable things. For this, they wage wars. From ancient days to megalomaniac warriors like Alexander, Caesar and Temujin, the greedy conquered new lands. Then the game became more sophisticated. It is not necessary to spill blood. Just ink. Cunning agreements, often made to flatter the vain, meant lands are exchanged for puppet roles. 

So, with the stroke of a pen, within half a millennia, the greedy evolved from military colonisation to administrative colonisation. Under the guise of merchants, it was companies, not countries who did the deed of colonisation... persuading local ignorant chieftains to sign away their rights in exchange for puppet thrones.

A quarter of a millennia later, another form emerged. So sophisticated, it even had a tinge of good: economic development. Investors from rich and powerful countries would put up cash and in return own valuable assets in resource rich countries and extract them. All legally and all in the name of enriching the locals. This was the era I had grown up in: a time of economic colonisation. 

So for thousands of years, we have been colonising each other… but in ever more peaceful ways, until recently when the President of Venezuela (not a good man himself) was removed by another country who was lusting after Venezuela’s resources. That same country had earlier last year tore up the playbook on economic colonisation and launched trade wars against the rest of the world. This new year, barely a few days old, it has ventured into a more hostile form of colonisation.

I had always wondered about the people who were in power in the world barely a century ago... why didnt they stop a bad hateful man like Hitler. How did his own countrymen found it right to follow him. 

Then I think of the US today. And I think of the over 70million Americans who voted him into office and even more now who (outwardly) not approve of his tactics but (inwardly) dont mind making their country rich again (from resources of another). Indeed, while their previous mistakes, like Vietnam are still recovering and this is one of the better stories.

What a wicked web we weave. History repeats itself and may we learn from it.