free themselves from the invader—exploiter, but to be exactly like him, to become another conqueror—exploiter.
During five centuries we were forced to forget everything that we were and is our pride; we were perfectly taught with the utmost perfection to despise our own and to exalt the foreign. We have lived these five centuries in a "labyrinth of solitude", always looking for our face, our ideas, our heart, in foreign places. For three centuries it was a spanish model, the model was later french during the 19th century and in the 20th century, the model is northamerican. To keep the inhumane exploitation of our peoples and the irrational plundering of our natural resources "for centuries and centuries" in favor of our colonizers, it is necessary that the people lose their Cultural identity and historical memory.
To not recognize oneself, self-denial, and despising one-self. When these five cultural elements are amputated from people, they remain silent, amnesiac, ignorant, helpless and insensitive and cultural colonialism is achieved, the essential foundation of economic colonialism. The colonized people will not desire to eject and break free from their colonizer. Instead, will want to become another colonizer of his own people.
The spaniards instead, suffered an arab invasion during eight hundred years, but their culture was never destroyed. On the contrary, during this period, Spain lived an enriching cultural diversity. Arabs, jews and spanish lived in harmony and carried out over the centuries, a great cultural exchange. The spaniards remained spanish through their culture and, when they managed to expel the arabs eight centuries later, they remained spanish and do not see on the arabs "the Muslim motherland", although many of the customs, traditions, words, cuisine and art, is intimately linked with the muslim culture. The arabs did not removed the spanish language, historical memory, knowledge and technologies, spaces and their religion, thus they only invaded, but did not colonize.
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