March 11, 2025
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.
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Image from The Eyes of the Earth
When the world was turned upside down … Zimbabweans, Bolivians, Guatemalans, and Haitians went on cruises around the Australian coast. Venezuelan, Iranian, and Honduran journalists observed the presidential elections in the US, and reported for the global media networks on all the abnormalities and undemocratic elements. Senegalese people went to France to teach locals how to repair their roofs and to take photos with little French children.
– Excerpt from The Eyes of the Earth.
In the empire’s story of poverty, global inequality just came to be. Whole continents just happen to have flaky infrastructure, food stress, and conflict. The colonization of Palestine never happened. No one is responsible for the droughts and flooding. Charity and armies will save Haiti.
And as Trump and much of the media and other politicians continue to stir up hate and discrimination towards migrants and refugees that are fleeing or have fled Global South countries, using language like “flooding” “illegals” and portraying them as criminals, “killers, rapists, and drug dealers” and worse, these empire stories take on the form of real policy and horrific suffering.
Refugees are fleeing cartels, organized crime, death threats, extreme poverty, discrimination, and more, only to be denied their right to request asylum at the US-Mexico border.
Writing can seem insufficient in the face of all such deliberate injustice. And yet, if the empire has its stories, we too have ours. And our story of how global inequality came to be, is also our story of its undoing.
Empire’s bombs
According to the story about the Global South – Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia – that permeates the media, movies, and schools, like invisible but hazardous pollution, people are weak and pitied victims and the Global North – the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand – is the natural savior of the world. There, lives are more comfortable because people are better. The weapon-hoarding imperialist governments just happen to have a monopoly on democracy and decency and the other countries are barbaric failures.
It seems, the global inequality of food, infrastructure, technology, dignity, and voice is not only natural, but also acceptable. And without any acknowledged causes or responsibility, charity is presented as the only remedy.
The story is apathetic and lazy. It omits the ongoing looting of the Global South through unfair trade arrangements, the deliberate and extreme wage inequality, and the debts that have been paid over and over. It overlooks the brilliant artists and intellectuals in Africa and Latin America. It violently minimizes the contributions of the Global South and dehumanizes its inhabitants. The story normalizes corporate and military invasions. The agony of billions is standard protocol.
“How has the United States survived its terrible past and emerged smelling so sweet? Not by owning up to it, not by making reparations, not by apologizing to Black Americans or native Americans, and certainly not by changing its ways (it exports its cruelties now). Like most other countries, the United States has rewritten its history. But what sets the United States apart from other countries, and puts it ahead in the race, is that it has enlisted the services of the most powerful, most successful publicity firm in the world: Hollywood.” ― Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire.
How the bombs are dropped
Movies made in Hollywood often use a yellow filter to portray countries like Mexico, Palestine, and India, media analyst Maureen Heydt notes. Rather than bright, sunny, and functioning, the filter makes the countries look dry, dirty, dangerous, and nightmarish. The U.S. and European heroes are brave for venturing into such hellish regions of the world.
Even though the Global South accounts for 83% of the world’s population, content from the Global North dominates platforms like Netflix, and Hollywood possesses between 60% and 75% of shares of the international film market. World news sections from outlets like the Guardian cover Europe and the U.S. at least 10 times more than other regions.
In academia, Global South experts face huge material obstacles, and their research is considered to be peripheral, at most supporting the “leading” research coming out of the Global North. The perception is that expertise originates in the Global North and trickles down to the inferiors below.
“Nations themselves are narrations,” wrote Edward Said, in Culture and Imperialism. The storytellers in mainstream industries construct and describe the world from Euro- and US-centric perspectives.
“Novels, memoirs, paintings, sculptures, statues, monuments, films, miniseries, advertisements, and journalism all order our reality… The arts tell us what is possible and what is not, because, among other things, they tell us who is human and who is not,” wrote Ta-Nehisi Coates, in The Message.
After death
The shoes of dead people who were never buried detached themselves and took flight, high into the sky. They banded together, and from a distance were often mistaken for flocks of plovers, pigeons, or starlings.
The murmurations were the earth’s grief ripples.
-Excerpt from The Eyes of the Earth.
Consequences
Everything changes when the story changes; when you go from a story of people walking for weeks and crossing impossible oceans so they can keep their children free from danger, to “illegal” migrants “invading”. The news changes, the policies change, who is protected, who is respected, who is feared, who is the enemy – it all changes. The consumers of empire’s stories adjust their expectations for how members of humanity should care for each other, and they see and experience a dog-eat-dog world of borders, racism, and arms tech.
And in these stories we find ourselves. How we have handled danger, and how we’ve responded when someone else needed help. We locate ourselves in relation to humanity, to history, and we define the kinds of courage we admire. Stories leave us wanting to play the role of prince or princesses or scientist, invader, or movement leader. Do the fairy tales and television series leave us despising the downtrodden or identifying with them and fighting for them? How do we distribute our empathy? Who are our heroes: the invaders and the elites, or those who strive for a greater good?
Narratives can reinforce an entitlement to bomb, destroy, deport, and sanction, or they can challenge that modus operandi. The stories we subscribe to are the lens through which we see the world, they are the nature of our sensitivity, the amount of pain and harm we tolerate and allow, our mentality. Stories that glorify invasion don’t just provide moral support for violent wars and for economic hegemony, they also support an invasive mentality, where dominant classes like business owners, men, or white people conquer and control others.
This violent narrative is the vocal idea-system that supports and propels actual violence. Nothing going on right now, from fossil fuel transnationals’ impunity through to genocide, could occur without thick handbooks of word-architecture and prejudiced stereotypes and distortions to incite and sustain them.
Miguelito pointed the dentist’s mirror that could see inside things at the things he wanted to understand. He aimed it at the rays of sunlight squeezing through the market tarpaulins and settling upon his knees, and he saw big affection from the sky. He touched it to a series of bronze commemorative plaques on buildings, and he saw history bookmarks. He aimed it at cowardice and saw a yellowish retreat away from life and into oneself and excessive safety. He learned that most things had some kind of internal map and began to see the components and objects of life differently.
– Excerpt from The Eyes of the Earth.
Remember how strange and soft we are
Stories, though, are one of the most wonderful things humans create. That they have sometimes been used to justify heinous crimes demonstrates their power and potential, not their quality and essential function. More often, stories are our language of connection, exploration, values, and identity. They are a beautiful, rich, indulgence in life, and can remind us that most humans are soft and strange and worth fighting for.
Stories, novels, poems, songs, spoken word – are one of the key ways we challenge the putrid and abusive definitions that roll off the tongues of elites. In our stories, we can rescue resistance, change out the boring white men heroes, name in boldness and crude accuracy the true perpetrators of injustice, and dream and map out paths to a kind and fairer world.
In novels, we can reveal, in delicate colours, the trauma and history in bones, find patterns in how the super wealthy are elected over and over even though they are the least able to represent the majority, decode power structures, and extract, with poetic precision, the essence of life. We paint pain and exhaustion, and remember that family is more than just who a home is shared with, but also whom we share land and water and anxiety with.
To bring about a better world, we must first unravel the whole human system; identify its mechanisms, understand how it works in our brain, but also in our heart. My novel, The Eyes of The Earth, is an attempt to contribute to that, while also contemplating how that human system relates to the environment.
The thing about being a journalist-activist and writer, is that our work: our articles, our marches, our forums, can feel like whispers that quickly disappear into the inundation of Internet clutter. Narratives can feel utterly inadequate. But our movements are made of many pieces, including campaigns, strikes, and slogans. New ways of seeing are what we need to sustain us.
Books that decode injustice
The Eyes of the Earth is about an old woman refugee who, in broken Mexico city, longs for a bed. But as she navigates a world controlled by the oppressive System of Monsters, which criminalizes migrants, limits housing access, and destroys people and forests, she is forced to choose between her loyalty to a friend, and the help of a man with power. The book aims to unravel the relationships between rich and poor countries, and how those are embodied in the lives of the refugee and her tourist friend.
The novel decodes climate and global issues, and shouts, in the most magical terms, for rectification. It asks questions about exploitation, land abuse, and the right to safety and sleep. I hope to have created memorable new symbols for the trauma of imperialism, and a compelling portrait of Mexico, where I live.
Few people have read Global South authors or books located in the Global South, but there are an abundance of incredible, poignant ones that are worth diving into. The Last Gift of the Master Artists by Ben Okri is about life and creativity in Africa just before the slavers. Standing Heavy, by GauZ’ takes on France’s colonialism from a different perspective; migrant workers. The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar features a Syrian refugee girl and her journey to safety.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers. Donate
Tamara Pearson is an Australian-Mexican journalist, editor, activist, and literary fiction author. Her latest novel is The Eyes of the Earth, and she writes the Global South newsletter, Excluded Headlines.
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Image from The Eyes of the Earth
When the world was turned upside down … Zimbabweans, Bolivians, Guatemalans, and Haitians went on cruises around the Australian coast. Venezuelan, Iranian, and Honduran journalists observed the presidential elections in the US, and reported for the global media networks on all the abnormalities and undemocratic elements. Senegalese people went to France to teach locals how to repair their roofs and to take photos with little French children.
– Excerpt from The Eyes of the Earth.
In the empire’s story of poverty, global inequality just came to be. Whole continents just happen to have flaky infrastructure, food stress, and conflict. The colonization of Palestine never happened. No one is responsible for the droughts and flooding. Charity and armies will save Haiti.
And as Trump and much of the media and other politicians continue to stir up hate and discrimination towards migrants and refugees that are fleeing or have fled Global South countries, using language like “flooding” “illegals” and portraying them as criminals, “killers, rapists, and drug dealers” and worse, these empire stories take on the form of real policy and horrific suffering.
Refugees are fleeing cartels, organized crime, death threats, extreme poverty, discrimination, and more, only to be denied their right to request asylum at the US-Mexico border.
Writing can seem insufficient in the face of all such deliberate injustice. And yet, if the empire has its stories, we too have ours. And our story of how global inequality came to be, is also our story of its undoing.
Empire’s bombs
According to the story about the Global South – Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia – that permeates the media, movies, and schools, like invisible but hazardous pollution, people are weak and pitied victims and the Global North – the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand – is the natural savior of the world. There, lives are more comfortable because people are better. The weapon-hoarding imperialist governments just happen to have a monopoly on democracy and decency and the other countries are barbaric failures.
It seems, the global inequality of food, infrastructure, technology, dignity, and voice is not only natural, but also acceptable. And without any acknowledged causes or responsibility, charity is presented as the only remedy.
The story is apathetic and lazy. It omits the ongoing looting of the Global South through unfair trade arrangements, the deliberate and extreme wage inequality, and the debts that have been paid over and over. It overlooks the brilliant artists and intellectuals in Africa and Latin America. It violently minimizes the contributions of the Global South and dehumanizes its inhabitants. The story normalizes corporate and military invasions. The agony of billions is standard protocol.
“How has the United States survived its terrible past and emerged smelling so sweet? Not by owning up to it, not by making reparations, not by apologizing to Black Americans or native Americans, and certainly not by changing its ways (it exports its cruelties now). Like most other countries, the United States has rewritten its history. But what sets the United States apart from other countries, and puts it ahead in the race, is that it has enlisted the services of the most powerful, most successful publicity firm in the world: Hollywood.” ― Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire.
How the bombs are dropped
Movies made in Hollywood often use a yellow filter to portray countries like Mexico, Palestine, and India, media analyst Maureen Heydt notes. Rather than bright, sunny, and functioning, the filter makes the countries look dry, dirty, dangerous, and nightmarish. The U.S. and European heroes are brave for venturing into such hellish regions of the world.
Even though the Global South accounts for 83% of the world’s population, content from the Global North dominates platforms like Netflix, and Hollywood possesses between 60% and 75% of shares of the international film market. World news sections from outlets like the Guardian cover Europe and the U.S. at least 10 times more than other regions.
In academia, Global South experts face huge material obstacles, and their research is considered to be peripheral, at most supporting the “leading” research coming out of the Global North. The perception is that expertise originates in the Global North and trickles down to the inferiors below.
“Nations themselves are narrations,” wrote Edward Said, in Culture and Imperialism. The storytellers in mainstream industries construct and describe the world from Euro- and US-centric perspectives.
“Novels, memoirs, paintings, sculptures, statues, monuments, films, miniseries, advertisements, and journalism all order our reality… The arts tell us what is possible and what is not, because, among other things, they tell us who is human and who is not,” wrote Ta-Nehisi Coates, in The Message.
After death
The shoes of dead people who were never buried detached themselves and took flight, high into the sky. They banded together, and from a distance were often mistaken for flocks of plovers, pigeons, or starlings.
The murmurations were the earth’s grief ripples.
-Excerpt from The Eyes of the Earth.
Consequences
Everything changes when the story changes; when you go from a story of people walking for weeks and crossing impossible oceans so they can keep their children free from danger, to “illegal” migrants “invading”. The news changes, the policies change, who is protected, who is respected, who is feared, who is the enemy – it all changes. The consumers of empire’s stories adjust their expectations for how members of humanity should care for each other, and they see and experience a dog-eat-dog world of borders, racism, and arms tech.
And in these stories we find ourselves. How we have handled danger, and how we’ve responded when someone else needed help. We locate ourselves in relation to humanity, to history, and we define the kinds of courage we admire. Stories leave us wanting to play the role of prince or princesses or scientist, invader, or movement leader. Do the fairy tales and television series leave us despising the downtrodden or identifying with them and fighting for them? How do we distribute our empathy? Who are our heroes: the invaders and the elites, or those who strive for a greater good?
Narratives can reinforce an entitlement to bomb, destroy, deport, and sanction, or they can challenge that modus operandi. The stories we subscribe to are the lens through which we see the world, they are the nature of our sensitivity, the amount of pain and harm we tolerate and allow, our mentality. Stories that glorify invasion don’t just provide moral support for violent wars and for economic hegemony, they also support an invasive mentality, where dominant classes like business owners, men, or white people conquer and control others.
This violent narrative is the vocal idea-system that supports and propels actual violence. Nothing going on right now, from fossil fuel transnationals’ impunity through to genocide, could occur without thick handbooks of word-architecture and prejudiced stereotypes and distortions to incite and sustain them.
Miguelito pointed the dentist’s mirror that could see inside things at the things he wanted to understand. He aimed it at the rays of sunlight squeezing through the market tarpaulins and settling upon his knees, and he saw big affection from the sky. He touched it to a series of bronze commemorative plaques on buildings, and he saw history bookmarks. He aimed it at cowardice and saw a yellowish retreat away from life and into oneself and excessive safety. He learned that most things had some kind of internal map and began to see the components and objects of life differently.
– Excerpt from The Eyes of the Earth.
Remember how strange and soft we are
Stories, though, are one of the most wonderful things humans create. That they have sometimes been used to justify heinous crimes demonstrates their power and potential, not their quality and essential function. More often, stories are our language of connection, exploration, values, and identity. They are a beautiful, rich, indulgence in life, and can remind us that most humans are soft and strange and worth fighting for.
Stories, novels, poems, songs, spoken word – are one of the key ways we challenge the putrid and abusive definitions that roll off the tongues of elites. In our stories, we can rescue resistance, change out the boring white men heroes, name in boldness and crude accuracy the true perpetrators of injustice, and dream and map out paths to a kind and fairer world.
In novels, we can reveal, in delicate colours, the trauma and history in bones, find patterns in how the super wealthy are elected over and over even though they are the least able to represent the majority, decode power structures, and extract, with poetic precision, the essence of life. We paint pain and exhaustion, and remember that family is more than just who a home is shared with, but also whom we share land and water and anxiety with.
To bring about a better world, we must first unravel the whole human system; identify its mechanisms, understand how it works in our brain, but also in our heart. My novel, The Eyes of The Earth, is an attempt to contribute to that, while also contemplating how that human system relates to the environment.
The thing about being a journalist-activist and writer, is that our work: our articles, our marches, our forums, can feel like whispers that quickly disappear into the inundation of Internet clutter. Narratives can feel utterly inadequate. But our movements are made of many pieces, including campaigns, strikes, and slogans. New ways of seeing are what we need to sustain us.
Books that decode injustice
The Eyes of the Earth is about an old woman refugee who, in broken Mexico city, longs for a bed. But as she navigates a world controlled by the oppressive System of Monsters, which criminalizes migrants, limits housing access, and destroys people and forests, she is forced to choose between her loyalty to a friend, and the help of a man with power. The book aims to unravel the relationships between rich and poor countries, and how those are embodied in the lives of the refugee and her tourist friend.
The novel decodes climate and global issues, and shouts, in the most magical terms, for rectification. It asks questions about exploitation, land abuse, and the right to safety and sleep. I hope to have created memorable new symbols for the trauma of imperialism, and a compelling portrait of Mexico, where I live.
Few people have read Global South authors or books located in the Global South, but there are an abundance of incredible, poignant ones that are worth diving into. The Last Gift of the Master Artists by Ben Okri is about life and creativity in Africa just before the slavers. Standing Heavy, by GauZ’ takes on France’s colonialism from a different perspective; migrant workers. The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar features a Syrian refugee girl and her journey to safety.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers. Donate
Tamara Pearson is an Australian-Mexican journalist, editor, activist, and literary fiction author. Her latest novel is The Eyes of the Earth, and she writes the Global South newsletter, Excluded Headlines.
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