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Animal Liberation?: Perspectives from an Anti-Capitalist Xicano Stop the Torture, Stop the Death, Free the Animals and Support the A.L.F. —“Every Last Life,” Resist and Exist (1999) I’ve been a vegetarian since I was sixteen, after learning about the meat (animal product)-industrial complex and the direct violence onto animals. My individual divestment from the meat industry is due partly to the PETA videos I watched (Note: I hate PETA), the documentaries my metalhead friend shared with me, and the realization of how the meat industry was detrimental to the climate. I hated animal testing. I detested vivisection. It didn’t take me long to support animal rights, animal freedom, and spreading the (annoying “first-world”) gospel of veganism. As a young Punk, I took seriously my animal liberation politics. I supported the Animal Liberation Front’s philosophy and the work of such activists. Anarcho-Punk music itself was oriented toward animal liberation too, with politics that reflected animal liberation as parallel to human liberation. It was a time, in my early years, to reject the violence toward animals and advocating for the destruction of that system. Animal liberation was a rejection of the commodification of animals and the contestation to capitalist practices that also sought its abolition. My vegetarianism was political. Today, I keep the animal liberation spirit alive despite my animal liberation politics changing over the years. Firstly, I do not support PETA and most white vegans who are not critical of capitalism, colonialism, and Black and Indigenous autonomy. In my experience, most (pseudo) vegans are not concerned with animal liberation thus depoliticizing the politics and philosophy of veganism. I myself have not committed to veganism, partly for my reluctance to give up Mexican cheese and eggs. Yet, that spirit of rejecting and divesting from animal products is central to my daily politics. I am hesitant to take seriously those vegans who divest from animal products, critique non-vegans and traditional Indigenous practices concerning animals, and do it in the name of animal “feelings and sentience” yet have no critique of capitalism as a system of death and destruction of actual people, animals, and the land. Capitalism and white “veganism” ignores an analysis of race and class completely, making us the problem sounding like eco-fascists that they probably are. The “cruelty-free” and supposed “vegan” perspective many people adopt is the neo-liberalization and cooptation of animal liberation politics in order to market it and sell it back to “socially conscious” consumers. As a quasi-vegan myself (more like a fake vegan aspiring to oppositional veganism), I cannot speak to the extent that political vegans might speak on concerning these shifts in consumer-based veganism without a real politic. Veganism is not a diet. Veganism is not inherently cruelty-free. Veganism is a critical and radical philosophy that maintains that the dangers of capitalism commodifies animal life and thus is a threat to the Earth and all life, including humans. Without this analysis and perspective, what is veganism? From a Xicano perspective, veganism makes sense. Yet, veganism does not need to be the central naming of our animal liberation politics. Respecting and honoring a life, even when we take it to sustain our own life, must be an always conscious decision. From our plantitas to the animals we eat to give yourself life, we must ask ourselves, “what are we putting into our bodies and where does it come from?” In other words, is the food I eat a product of violence to life? Does it undermine Indigenous workers in the field? Is it a GMO, patented plant that corporations think they can own and possess as property? I can go on and on. I urge all Xican@s to re-think their politics of meat. But I also challenge myself to be conscious that everything I’ve stated in this paragraph might be off too. But, Indigenous communities consume meat! But, did our ancestors think about violent factories? Did they reduce animal life to a commodity? Did they remove themselves away from relating to the world as part and parcel to it? We must challenge the egotistical logic and rationality of the western world that compartmentalizes all life as resource and commodity. This is not the way. Traditional hunters are divorced from the meat industry, and their work challenges the capitalist nature of mass animal slaughtering. What I am not suggesting is that we eliminate meat from our diet. Our communities have taken animal life to sustain their own, but never was it reasoned through capitalist ventures. Nor do we need meat with every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner; and if we do, it is because of our situation. I acknowledge that many Indigenous cultures have done this, through the cold winters and abundance of game, it is relative to all people geographically. The over-consumption of meat and animal products is a capitalist logic designed for production and desensitization. We need to imagine other ways that already exist and have existed. Animal liberation starts with our paradigm: to be against animal testing in the products on market shelves, to stop the caging of animals for vivisection, and to re-think our gratification of meat in every meal. How do we re-invigorate our relationships with animals as relatives? I remember a conversation I had with a group of students and community members about the shifting climate and the need to shift our approaches to survival. This group conversation arose out of a discussion of The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon in a political education study group I was part of at UCLA. We spoke of the collapse of the capitalist world and the imperative to learn skills that would sustain us without markets and everyday convenience, such as growing our own food to learning the plants of the land we lived on. A friend also suggested that we needed to learn how to fast, how to go hours without food, maybe days: a practice of intermittent fasting that would help our bodies. Fasting was a daily part of life pre-capitalism, pre-convenience stores. Fasting may or may not be a necessary skill, but our knowledge of it might be useful. While I wanted to share some perspectives on animal liberation here, I also wanted to open paths toward re-thinking how we are preparing and how we are currently thinking about convenience. Animal liberation is a key struggle against capitalism. If we are to theorize sites of struggle for the life of Earth and all oppressed people the world over, we cannot forget about our animal relatives who bear the burdens of violence as well. It is important to critique apolitical veganism and neoliberalized practices that make it appear as though capitalism can be cruelty-free. Re-situating animal liberation can offer all of us a perspective toward caring for all our living relatives from the shifting mountains to the colorful sea urchins in the depths of the ocean. Akin to many Indigenous people protecting the sanctity and sacredness of non-GMO corn of the Americas, so to must we remember the sacredness of our four-legged relatives and sea creatures manufactured for death and our appetite. Hopefully, we can all make room for these discussions as we continue to build our interdependent struggles against capitalism. Free the animals, eat your meat. This is not a manifesto.
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November 2022
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