Fear and Oppression: Inca vs. Muslim

In 1780-1781 Tupac Amaru lead a rebellion against Spanish colonization. At the time the Spanish ruled through Incan kurakas and allowed the Incan people to express their native identities for the most part. After the rebellion all of this changed, the Spanish were enraged that the indigenous people rebelled and no longer wanted any trace of the native peoples in their colony.

Tupac Amaru, leader of the 1780-1781 rebellion agains Spanish rule.

Currently in the U.S. there is a lot of commotion over the recent decision by President Donald Trump to ban refugees from countries which have a Muslim-majority population. At 4:42 PM on Friday 1/27/2017 Trump signed the ban, stopping all refugees from entering the U.S. for 120 days, stopped Syrian refugees indefinitely, and keeps all citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the country for 90 days (all of which are nations made up of majority Muslim populations, about 218 million people).

There are many debates over whether this is constitutional and it will surely be up to the courts to make this decision. There are many people protesting this ban and trying to help those who were caught in customs when the ban passed stay in the country. These protests are taking place in airports, stopping people from catching their flights, but they may be getting what they want to some extent.  “On Saturday, after mass demonstrations across the country, a federal judge in New York ordered a halt to deportations of travelers who arrived at airports with valid visas to enter the U.S.” The judge claimed that by deporting these people it would be unfair to them as it would make it much harder for them to come back after being deported. The order kept some in the country, but sadly came too late for some.

Protests at LAX over Trump’s ban of refugees

By banning entrance of citizens from predominantly Muslim countries, is the Trump administration trying to discourage Muslim citizens from being open about their religion or coming into the country? If they are not allowed to enter the country now, will they want to in the future, or fear being looked down on because of their religion?

To an extent this is similar to the oppression of the Incan people. Not every Incan person rebelled against Spanish colonization, but all of them were punished for it. All of the Incan people were forced to give up their way of life because the Spaniards were afraid of what they were capable of. Not all Muslims are terrorists, in fact only a very small proportion of them are, but there is fear of Muslims by groups of U.S. citizens, some of which happen to be in power. This fear of the Muslims is causing them to be singled out, banned from entering the country, and scares those already in the country of what might happen in the future. Those in charge should not let fear get in the way of doing the right thing, this causes more fear by both parties involved, and loss of culture and identity by those being oppressed.

 

 

Communication and Empire

Communication has always been important to the success of nations throughout history. This is extremely relevant to the success of the Incan empire and has become more and more important as time has passed and communication has become increasingly advanced to the point where now all we have to do is speak into a device to send a message anywhere in the world instantly.

In the 15^th and 16^th centuries, the Inca people lived in the Andes, which is an extremely difficult place to survive. In order to keep their empire going they had to find a way to farm the land. How they did this was by farming different crops in different sections of the mountain and then distributing them throughout.

They had to have a way to keep track of how much of each crop was needed in various locations. For this they used quipu, a knotting system used to denote things such as the amount of food delivered and even when it was delivered. This system was extremely accurate and was a big reason they were so successful.

In modern empires communication has become increasingly important to the functionality and success of a nation. Both the speed of communication and the ability to keep others from “listening in” are extremely relevant in modern society. It seems as though the progression of communication has gone from how to be able to contact anyone in the world to how to keep as many people out of the conversation as possible in some cases.

It is amazing how much communication has changed in such a short amount of time. In the course of a couple decades we went from phone calls and email to instant messaging and social media, which has COMPLETELY changed the game. There is a twitter page that is passed down from president to president in the US (@POTUS)  for crying out loud!

Social media has been an incredible advancement in communication, we went from small chat groups to being able to speak to the entirety of participating members in the world. You can tell  everyone about you vacation, why you hate spinach, important weather or government messages, or anything you want in a matter of seconds. Social media is the most public form of communication used by most people with the means to access it. However, there are more private forms.

There is still email, which is used more formally, and text messaging, which is much more informal. Phone calls seem to happen less and less with younger generations and facetime is used often for face to face chatting. It is so interesting that we went from having very little means of speaking to one another to having so many ways of communication, all used for different purposes which seem to be just known by everyone.

It is very interesting to think about the future of communication. Will there be holographic messages like in Star Wars? Will our thoughts eventually be transmitted? There are no limits to what might happen, and with progress as it has been, it will probably happen sooner rather than later.