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Letter to the United States
"I speak to The United States"

Mt Rushmore is the shrine of U.S.democracy, located in the Black Hills of South Dakota. George Washington represents the struggle for independence, Thomas Jefferson the idea of government by the people. Abraham Lincoln for his ideas on equality and the permanent union of the states, and Theodore Roosevelt for the 20th century role of the United States in world affairs.

By Frank Bracho

Introduction : The following piece was written on April 4th 2004, from a remote corner of a South American wilderness by a Venezuelan national with a close fond personal acquaintance with the US . It was written over one year prior to ominous hurricane Katrina, and four years prior to the present US-world financial quagmire; major events which attested to the prophetic chilling accuracy of the Piece. But it is also a message of love and hope, as the contents of the Message likewise indicate…In sum, more than anything else, the Message may be viewed as a moving early wake-up call, for the trying times that the US and the rest of the world are now beset with –a manifestation of a deeper-seated malaise and a prelude of even more challenging times ahead; trying times which require, indeed, great vision and courage to be met successfully.

-The Conveyor-Author of the Message

October 29th 2008

Letter to the United States

I speak to the United States

From the very heart of my land to the South, I do I speak to it from where rivers flow clear amidst pristine forests and immaculate guardian hills.

I speak from the very birthplace of Life itself, as handed down by my ancestors.

From the Tropics I speak.

From where aboriginal peoples in sacred communion with Nature still live on I speak.

I speak to it from a beautiful and generous Mother Nature.

But one too that feels besieged and fearful, because of the threat of a civilization which doesn´t comprehend her, which hurts her, and which has managed to destroy so much of the paradise that once reigned.

I speak to it from a natural Oracle where in tandem with the most sublime natural splendor, one may sense the tick-tock of the countdown to suicidal destruction advancing towards its final hour.

I speak to the United States , the great country of Chief Seattle, the one who said:

“The Earth doesn´t belong to man, man belongs to the Earth”.

Chief Seattle, among whose message disseminators stood out a translator named Benjamin Franklin Shaw; by some curious turn of history, a name echoing the one of the nation´s founding father who, almost one hundred years earlier, had contributed to her Declaration of Independence the native values of liberty, respect for life and happiness which he admired so much: Benjamin Franklin.

A kind of occurrence that doesn´t surprise us since The Great Spirit is given to resorting to this kind of coincidence to get its messages or designs across.

I speak to the country of visionary Chief Seattle, who in the last years of his life, concerned over what he saw coming, changed his native name to the Christian name of Noah, the steward of the biblical ark bent on the salvation of humanity, so that, from the new dominant culture itself, as well as from the heart of the cruelly downtrodden natives of his country, with his thundering voice he could sound the warning that the world was heading to a certain destruction if it didn´t respect the memory of the ancestors and Mother Nature.

The country of prophet Seattle who saw all that was to be: the pollution and devastation of life, the oppression of the subjugated and excluded, the possessor become possessed, happiness lost; by the insatiable greed and selfish individualism of all those who would replace the cult to The Great Spirit -or God as the white man came to name him- by the new arrogant idols of money and technology.

I speak to the country of Abraham Lincoln, another great North American with name and mission of prophet.

One who vainly tried to avert a terrible fratricidal holocaust whose roots, a cruel and addictive exploitation of slave labor, were never eradicated at the birth of the Nation.

The prophet and martyr Lincoln who also warned that corporations and money fueled by unchecked greed, could enthrone themselves as a corrupting power over the lofty goals of the new Nation.

I speak to the country of that other prophet and martyr who was Martin Luther King.

The one who, from his defense of the suffering North American blacks rose to become a universal hero when he proclaimed: “Every threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

I speak to the United States, a country also of good people.

Which generously offered many lives and material resources to contribute to save the world from an ominous and terrifying fascist threat and to reconstruct a continent ravaged by war.

A country that has had great institutions of learning of libertarian vocation in search of truth, such as the institution that gave me some years of humanist and universalist college education which sowed invaluable seeds in my life.

A country of great technological genius, and admirable productive might.

¿ Who could deny it ?

But where such power, lacking a good orientation has not led to greater happiness neither for itself nor for all the wide world that has come to fall under the influence of the North American Eagle.

Simon Bolivar, prophet of liberation, fighter out of my land for a better world, after an initial admiration for the creation of your great nation, would end up during the last years of his life warning about a North American eagle run amok: “The United States seems destined by Providence to plague The Americas of miseries in the name of freedom” -sentenced his visionary voice.

Too many foreign interventions and wars in the name of freedom or democracy have borne witness to this.

I speak to the United States because, due to the stimulus and hope it once infused in humankind, and in me personally, is a country I love.

And because, for better or for worse, it has come to have a decisive weight in the fate of the world.

I speak to the United States because I have left in its land tears of emotion standing before the awesome sight of its Grand Canyon , the sublime beauty of its silent Monument Valley , the sacred peace of its Four Corners region.

I speak to the United States because having nourished my soul with the ancestral wisdom of its guardian people The Hopis and the prophetic word of a Seattle , a Franklin, a Lincoln, a Luther King, is a country which I revere.

I speak to the United States because I feel that, having drifted from its initial foundational wisdom, it has been blinded by the materialism and greed of a voracious system; because it has sowed too many seeds of discord which are now bearing fruit, / too many “bills” up for collection, too many “goods” which have turned into “bad”.

Still unwilling to recognize today the need for a profound course correction, for itself and for all those who have lashed themselves to the fate of its might.

I speak to the United States because I feel that it is running out of time to avoid greater suffering and trauma, for itself and for all those who have joined their fate to the senseless might of this Titanic.

I speak to the United States to urge it to awaken, to urge it to change, without the numbing poison of arrogance, with the enlightening antidote of humility, with vision, with courage.

In order to reconnect with the wisdom of the Great Spirit, and convert the bad energy into good, darkness into light, death into life, unhappiness into happiness.

Such as a butterfly transmuted from insatiable voracious caterpillar into gentle splendorous winged-being.

I speak to the United States because its time of reckoning has come.

And it has to face it, because there cannot be any more waiting.

As it has come for the country from which I speak, Venezuela , and the whole world.

I speak to the United States for love and for believing in the promise of a new dawn of all and for all.

Frank Bracho

Venezuelan Amazon, April 4th, 2004

Frank Bracho, is a Venezuelan economist, former ambassador & Advisor South Commission, is the author of "Petróleo y Globalización: Reflexiones a las Puertas de un Nuevo Milenio para Una Nueva Civilización", plus a number of other books and articles related to the Issue. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.

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Petroleumworld News 11/01/08

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