MARC BECKER

• Professor at Truman State University
• Organizer and media developer for Historians Against the War
• Vietnam draft-dodger
• Has protested Free Trade talks in Latin America and the celebration of Columbus Day in the U.S.

A professor of Latin American history at Truman State University, Marc Becker is an organizer and media developer for Historians Against the War.

Becker has a long history of radicalism and antipathy for the United States. At age 18, he refused to register for the draft and fled to Canada to avoid prosecution. He now recounts to his students stories of his participation in protests against Free Trade talks in Latin America, including his numerous trips to condemn “Western intrusion” in Ecuador. Of his experience at one such protest in 2002, where his actions were met with tear gas by Ecuadorian officials, Becker has said, “For me, the impact of having been tear gassed was such that I lost my fear. They can do this, but they can’t kill us, and we come back even stronger.”

Becker condemns capitalism and what he deems America’s excessive militarism. He has protested the celebration of Columbus Day, contending that the nation that eventually grew out of Columbus’ discovery has had an overwhelmingly evil history. “Columbus’ actions,” says Becker, “launched an era of modern colonialism, rape, pillage, genocide, cultural destruction, slavery, economic and environmental devastation.”

In 2003 Becker said, “Five hundred and eleven years after [Columbus] sailed the ocean blue, globalization in the form of the FTAA, the WTO, and the IMF continues to devastate the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.”

“Christopher Columbus,” Becker elaborated, “is a classic grade school hero–and one that is built on a very tall pile of lies. ... We are told that Columbus discovered America, but yet with people living in this hemisphere for tens of thousands of years he discovered it only in the sense that a robber might be said to ‘discover’ cash in a bank vault. ... From an Indigenous point of view, far from being a hero Columbus symbolically represents the destruction of cultures, languages, and belief systems. He took lands and livelihoods away from people, and subjugated them to slavery, foreign rule, and an alien culture. His conquest meant the negation, denial, and oppression of the identity of a people. His imperialism was designed to deprive people of the resources needed to survive, condemning them to a life of poverty in a world of plenty.”