Public letter from Moira Millán to Boaventura Sousa Santos
June 9, 2023 Puelwillimapu, Patagonia
You continuously attack me, showing no remorse for your despicable actions. Therefore, I would like to express my interpretation of the documents you circulated.
Regarding the emails, the first one demonstrates my trust in you up to my arrival in Coimbra. However, I would like to let you know that the email of gratitude was not sent to you but to a dear friend in France. Also, my email had already been hacked by the time you received it, so it was compromised. The invoices and expense receipts could have easily been from any restaurant in Portugal involving someone else. Hence, these documents do not provide substantial evidence.
Regarding the email I supposedly asked for financial support, I am grateful I never approached you for assistance. You have already received significant amounts of money to research our struggles and the mechanisms of colonization and oppression that we continue to face. In reality, this email shows that you are also stingy – in addition to being an abuser, racist, and sexist. Until the presentation of this email, I was unaware that you were aware of my vulnerable and difficult situation. Despite my challenges and persecution, nothing stopped me from organizing with other Indigenous women to fight. Fortunately, these emails were sent to true supportive friends who responded and stood by me as we embarked on the path of collective and earthly dreams. I never intended to send this email to you personally, but unfortunately, you received it and showed absolute indifference. Your indifference does not surprise me, as you are part of academic extractivism – intellectual piracy that obscures the social sciences while treating Indigenous peoples as mere subjects for research, granting you great privilege and power. You have failed to consider reciprocity towards the people and activists leading the struggle against coloniality and oppression.
Your display of the emails you allegedly received from me (which I never sent to you personally) and presenting them as evidence is misleading. You are attempting to invalidate the abuse I am denouncing. In reality, your supposed “evidence” only exemplifies patriarchal mechanisms, which, until recently, enjoyed impunity. Millions of oppressed violated, and raped women depend on their tormentors for economic support. They lack the means to break free from the enslaving grip of their abusers and often have to sustain themselves under their control. If a court were to judge these tormentors, could they argue that financially supporting their victims makes them innocent? Presenting these emails as evidence is part of the perverse mechanism of subjugation and slavery.
Another topic that intrigues me is your claim that you never took me to your house. This raises many questions that shed light on the malevolence of your actions. If the apartment in the building across from the restaurant where you took me was not your home, whose was it? Did you use it to bring your victims there? Was it a property acquired with public money? Was it financed by CES or the University of Coimbra? Additionally, you explicitly told me that the restaurant belonged to your family, yet now you deny mentioning it. Why do you deny this? What do you intend to conceal with that information? What are you afraid of? Finally, you accuse us, your victims, of defamation as if we were unhinged women who would hysterically attack your image without any basis. Your words once again align you with the colonial and patriarchal narrative. As a Mapuche woman, I know denialism as an instrument of forgetfulness, a historical practice of racism and invading states. If you were honorable, you would never accuse me of fabricating events. Your demand that I retract my words is a demand for me to lie and claim your innocence. In truth, your demands reveal a profound ignorance of the ancestral essence of my people and myself. My truth is not subservient to your power.
Do you believe you can intimidate me? I am a weychafe, and I have dedicated my life to making this world a better place. I have endured attacks, political persecution, defamation, bad media attacks, repression, and more. I would never lie, nor could I ever give up. You should be ashamed of claiming solidarity with the Mapuche people. You are a vile coward and opportunist who embraces and smiles complacently at the progressive governments that have established a racist dictatorship in walljmapu.
True solidarity with us would mean confronting President Bóric about prisons being filled with Mapuche political prisoners and the ongoing revolt. You also failed to mention to Alberto Fernández that our pu lamngen in Puelmapu was unjustly imprisoned until just a few days ago. Being supportive implies principles, courage, and a deep sense of humanity, qualities you lack.
As a result of the painful and humiliating situation caused by your abuse and the realization that my institutional isolation and helplessness at the time were a response to machismo and racism, I channeled my anger and wounds like a guiding force. I embarked on a journey to the ends of the vast territories of Indigenous peoples in Argentina to establish the Movement of Indigenous Women and Diversities for Good Living. Today, I can say that I walked to heal. The academic indifference I endured was replaced by the love and strength of thousands of Indigenous women who experience the violence you embody and represent daily. Regardless of your concerns that the Right is using these complaints, you know you benefit from the system. The Right needs hypocrites like you.
Today, I can say that I walked to heal. The academic indifference I endured was replaced by the love and strength of thousands of Indigenous women who experience the violence you embody and represent daily. Regardless of your concerns that the Right is using these complaints against you, you know you benefit from the system. The Right needs hypocrites like you.
You would surely be imprisoned and persecuted if you were a true fighter for a more just world. Your voice would be inaudible before the world because they would implement all mechanisms possible to silence you – just as they do against my people, just as I have suffered in my flesh. You have been part and parcel of this system’s perverse game.
I also wrote this letter to encourage the African sisters who have been your victims to speak up. Likewise, I want to embrace every woman in Portugal who is suffering or has suffered similar situations. In a country with cruel and sexist legislation, the short statute of limitations on reporting these crimes leaves open wounds. This needs to change! Sexual crimes must not be allowed to go unpunished. Changing the patriarchal notion of time that guarantees impunity requires all of us to act, no matter where we are in the world.
