In Minneapolis, Minnesota, an ICE agent gunned down a woman in her car. Activists videotaped the incident so the whole world could see how the US President lied to cover up the murder by his federal agent. The Minneapolis Mayor stood at the podium and said, I saw the video, this was murder: ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis.
National media noted that the event happened just blocks from where George Floyd was murdered, a place that we now call George Floyd Square, where murals, sculptures, billboards, and transformed buildings together create a square of geographical memory.
George Floyd Square
For Minnesotans, the death of Renee Good brings up memories, not just of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis Police officers and a cover -up by the same mayor who now stood tall to decrie ICE, but also Jamar Clark and Philando Castile. Some of us have memories that go back to 1990, and the police murder of Tycel Nelson. Some remember that Terrence Franklin was killed in 2013 by Minneapolis police, a block away from the intersection where Renee Good died, and Dolal Idd, was murdered by sworn officers a 1/2 mile away, at the corner of 36th and Cedar Ave in December of 2020.
ICE is also not a new terror in Minnesota. Minnesotans began working 20 years ago to create a separation ordinance between ICE and Minneapolis police. We remember raids at meat-packing plants in 2006, and parents separated from children in Southern Minnesota and Twin Cities neighborhoods. There are even people who remember that ICE had a different name but the same game forty years ago, when INS terrorized Latino communities in West St Paul.
Minneapolis immigrant, African American, and Native American leaders have been fighting the divide-and-conquer tactics of state terror for decades. I remember a gathering at a Latine Church at the corner of 38th St. and Pleasant Ave in South Minneapolis, addressed by Somali and Hmong leaders. I remember a rally in front of the Hennepin County Government Center addressed by Anishinaabe, Somali, and Latine leaders. I remember the meeting of Black Lives Matter, Indigenous, and Latine marchers at the corner of Lake and Nicollet Avenue. The problem is, the personal memories in this paragraph are undated in my brain, and pieces are missing. We need archives so these memories do not slip away, get erased.
On the day Trump sent the first ICE contingent to Minneapolis to “Crack Down on Somalis in Minnesota,” I was visiting the Casa de la Memoria in Medellin, Colombia. Like George Floyd Square, the museum was built in a neighborhood where massacres occured and parents and children are still grieving and demanding redress. The museum includes an in-depth chronology of events that faulty memories can not confuse. It has a room dedicated to healing, telling the story of Mothers of the Disappeared who created doll versions of themselves pinned with the memories of pain and promise.
Mothers of Dissapeared in Medellin, photo at the Casa de Memoria, Medellin
The most powerful part of the museum for me was the larger-than-life video panels of survivors testifying to how they became activists. They are the untold history of Colombia, a land not just of La Violencia, but of creative, dedicated on-the-ground activists who build community and create justice out of ashes.
Video testimonies
Minneapolis and Medellin are not just connected because of these patterns of violence and grassroots activism, or because I happened to be from one place visiting the other. Colombia may not be at the top of mind to people in Minnesota, but the United States is always in the background in Colombia.
For a century, the working people of Colombia have battled not just local jefes but also US businesses like United Fruit (Chiquita), and US administrations ready to intervene under the guise of fighting Communism until 1990, and a “War on Drugs” to protect corporate interests.
La Violencia in Colombia is not over. When we arrived in Medellin, there was an attack by the ELN, a small armed group that still exists. They blew up a piece of road outside the city. A few days before, the Gustavo Petro government had killed twelve ELN combatants, some of whom were teenagers, violating a government promise not to target child soldiers.
But it was attacks from our own government that most threatened the peace during our stay in Colombia. Our seven weeks were punctuated by back and forth between Trump and Petro, and Trump’s deadly attack on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, including on the Colombian coast. Then Trump bombed Caracas and abducted Maduro and his wife. Now, Trump and Petro are negotiating. It is unclear who will win and lose from these talks.
Trump’s attacks in the Caribbean and in US cities like Minneapolis are connected. And they are not unprecedented. The difference between Trump and past leaders lies in magnitude, rhetoric, and hubris. Trump says might makes right. That is not true. Might turns day into night. Securing our memories may not turn on the light, but at least they give us the grounds with which to fight.