International Progressive Summit
Also in this edition: Mexico recovers stolen Mayan treasures. 65th anniversary of Playa Girón. Are CIA agents hunting drug traffickers in Mexico? Poniatowska recounts Octavio Paz’s last Christmas.
Lea La Jornada Internacional en español aquí.
Twenty leaders reject war and the far right
A few days ago in Barcelona, President Claudia Sheinbaum joined her counterparts, Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, and Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi, among a total of 20 progressive heads of state, to deliver a clear message against the international right-wing agenda led by Donald Trump. This Fourth Summit in Defense of Democracy concluded with a declaration from 20 countries against “military intervention in Cuba,” the war against Iran, and the lack of control over social media, which fosters disinformation and hate.
“I come from a people who recognize their origin in the great Indigenous cultures, those that were silenced, enslaved, and plundered, but were never defeated, because there are memories that cannot be conquered and roots that can never be uprooted,” President Sheinbaum declared. “When the world closed its doors to Spanish republicans, [Lázaro Cárdenas] opened Mexico’s doors to receive those fleeing pain and war. I come from a country that embraced exile and turned solidarity into action.”
Afterward, the president placed Cuba at the center of the debate of this multilateral forum and achieved the approval of a united stance against any attempt at military intervention. Likewise, she proposed a declaration, that was approved, urging that 10 percent of current global military spending on armaments be reassigned to reforestation of the planet.
But the central focus of the conference was the threat represented by President Donald Trump. “We cannot wake up every morning and go to sleep at night always with the tweet of a president threatening the world, declaring wars,” Lula stated. “No president of any country, no matter how large it may be, has the right to impose rules on other countries,” and he lamented that the United Nations is not functioning at a time when the number of armed conflicts in the world is at its highest since the Second World War.
In the final plenary session, attended by more than one thousand delegates and representatives of political parties and civil organizations from all over the world, the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, insisted that “the far right and the subservient right make a lot of noise, a lot of tweets. But these extremists are not shouting because they are winning; they are shouting because they know their time is ending. People are realizing that they have no project, that they have no solutions.” He added: “It is not enough to resist; we have to propose, to lead, we have to show that democracy can be strengthened.”
In an editorial, La Jornada stated that Sheinbaum, Sánchez, Lula da Silva, and Petro “lead governments that have reduced poverty, integrated hundreds of thousands of migrants into society, committed to peace, protected sovereignty in the face of threats from Trumpism, restored the purchasing power of the minimum wage, and, in sum, worked in favor of the majority. (…) Progressive leaders have shown that it is possible and necessary to lay the foundations of a better world even—or especially—when hegemonic winds suggest that there are no alternatives to the predominance of greed, selfishness, extreme inequality, and the law of the jungle in domestic and international relations.”
The Quote:
If they wait for another occasion/ To repeat the crime/ If they think of reoffending/ Remember Playa Girón.
—Carlos Puebla
In Case You Missed It
◻️ Mexico recovers a Mayan lintel of great cultural value that was in New York. Twelve hundred years after it was made and signed by a Mayan artist, the monumental bas-relief will return home to Mexico. The piece, which weighs nearly a ton, was removed from the Yaxchilán region at the end of the 19th century, and in its odyssey, it is known to have been in Switzerland and finally in New York.
◻️ In the midst of the U.S. escalation against Cuba, the country commemorated the 65th anniversary of Playa Girón, the epic event that made “all the peoples of the Americas a bit more free,” writes Luis Hernández Navarro, sent to the island by La Jornada. Miriam Nicado García, rector of the University of Havana, comments in an interview that despite the serious consequences of the U.S. energy blockade, academic activities have not stopped, as mechanisms have been applied so that around 25,000 students can continue their undergraduate and graduate studies. The 65th anniversary of the proclamation of the Cuban revolution as socialist was also celebrated, made one day before the intervention at Playa Girón.
◻️ Are CIA agents hunting drug traffickers in Mexico? The death of two U.S. “instructors” and two Mexican anti-drug officials in a vehicular accident in Chihuahua during the investigation of drug laboratories has reignited the question of what permission armed United States agents have to operate in Mexican territory. President Sheinbaum demanded explanations from Washington and called for an investigation, but unavoidable questions are spreading, La Jornada pointed out, adding that cooperation with Washington on security matters needs to be completely reevaluated.
◻️ The UN, human rights, and the Mexican government. After months of very public disagreements, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, met in Mexico with the President, other officials, members of collectives searching for disappeared persons, and human rights defenders. Türk expressed that the search for truth and justice by families “must be addressed.” For its part, the federal government declared that “human rights are respected in Mexico,” while human rights defenders insisted that “impunity persists.”
◻️ Pemex: The spill, the lie, and its consequences. Pemex acknowledged that the oil spill that affected nearly 900 kilometers of the Gulf of Mexico coastline and open sea was due to a leak in one of its pipelines. “They hid the true cause of the spill from the public for months. And also from the President of the Republic, who on March 19 stated that Pemex was not responsible. Who lied to her?” asks Iván Restrepo.
◻️ One hundred days of Mamdani in New York. Upon reaching 100 days in office, the young mayor, a democratic socialist and Muslim, has begun to build a universal childcare system for all children under three; an aggressive campaign to pursue landlords who violate the law and mistreat their tenants; to accelerate the construction of affordable housing; and to look for ways to reduce rents, among other initiatives to benefit the majority in the principal city of the United States.
◻️ Poniatowska, on Octavio Paz. The writer recounts the last Christmas that she and Carlos Monsiváis spent with Paz, during which the poet “was still moved by social movements and had asked both of us about Subcomandante Marcos and his communiqués that he continued reading in La Jornada.” She recalls that when she asked if they lived in the forests, he responded, “Yes, the Zapatistas are trees.”
🎧 What We’re Listening To
Boots on the ground - Massive Attack and Tom Waits
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Edited by David Brooks and Jim Cason in the United States, Tania Molina Ramírez in Mexico City, of La Jornada, and Elizabeth Coll in Tokyo, under the direction of Carmen Lira Saade and Guillermina Alvarez. More information.