Visual Chronicle of the Resistance in Cuba
Also in this edition: Goal in Palestine. 30 Years Since the San Andrés Accords. Stiglitz: 21st-Century Caesarism. Margaret Atwood in Mexico.
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“There is great resistance among the Cuban people. For those unfamiliar with its history, their resilience may seem puzzling. It is not. It is an entire nation that lives and breathes in rhythm and in sync with the Numancia of 133 B.C.,” writes Luis Hernández Navarro. The journalist and photojournalist Jair Cabrera Torres, both from La Jornada, traveled to the island to report on the resistance in Cuba in a series of reportages and visual chronicles. ▶️ VIDEO
At night, Callejón de Hamel in central Havana, transforms into the stage for a very distinctive, non-commercial, LGBT+, Afro-centered show, featuring murals with Santería imagery, and Yoruba symbols incorporated into the choreography. The main performers are two Afro-Cuban transgender women who sing hits by Ana Gabriel, Juan Gabriel, and other Mexican songs. They perform for their community, and few foreigners attend. Children, women, and elderly people are the audience enjoying the show.
It is a festive spectacle in the midst of one of the greatest crises. An event in which ordinary citizens celebrate. During the party, so there is no doubt where his heart lies, Mario illustrates what the Cuban people will do in the face of Trump: when Fidel delivered his final speech, “it was believed that the Americans were going to attack Cuba. And in one of those lines, the commander said: I will bid you farewell like the Romans when they were about to fight in the circus. Hail Caesar! Those who are about to die salute you.”
Joel Suárez Rodés, an electrical dispatch engineer, communist, and member of the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Marinao, is a lover of nueva trova and one of the main promoters of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center of Cuba, founded in 1987. He is a key figure in building regional networks of grassroots movements over the past 35 years, heir to the Cuban and Latin American experience of revolutionary Christianity, popular education, internationalism, and solidarity. In an interview with La Jornada, Suárez denounces: “What Trump is doing is deepening a policy of genocide, contrary to all international law. He uses hunger and the energy crisis as instruments of war. The United States has never tolerated the rebelliousness and dissent of our people and their revolution.”
Cuba has survived the blockade for nearly 70 years, but what it is experiencing now is something different, journalist Omar González Jiménez explains to La Jornada: “The world and the contexts are different. You cannot make simplistic analyses equating this moment with another.” He continues: “Today, there is a large segment that remains on the side of the Revolution, but proportionally it is smaller than the one that stood by it in the 1990s, and much smaller than in the 1960s. However, periods of crisis tend to radicalize. They bring together those who truly defend the project. The great paradox is that Trump, in setting out to destroy, ends up creating unity.”
Cuba is not a threat, Cuban artists and intellectuals declare to their counterparts around the world. And international support is growing. In Mexico, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano expressed his solidarity with the Cuban people, and Mexicans continue to speak out in response to Donald Trump’s actions against Cuba.
President Claudia Sheinbaum offered to create an air bridge to deliver aid and said that planes headed for Cuba would be able to refuel in Mexico. However, Mexico confirmed the temporary suspension of its oil shipments to Cuba following pressure from the president of the United States. Still, Sheinbaum confirmed that talks are underway to determine whether it would be feasible for Mexico to help facilitate dialogue between Cuba and the United States.
The Quote:
“The Rainbow Coalition and I welcome the founding of La Jornada, a project we consider journalistically necessary. For our part, we hope to develop ongoing and regular communication with your readers.”
—Message from Reverend Jesse Jackson published in the first edition of La Jornada, September 19, 1984. Jesse Jackson passed away on February 17.
In Case You Missed It
◻️ Goal in Palestine. Amid the rubble and the humanitarian crisis, after two years of war against its people, Gaza celebrates its first soccer tournament.
◻️ There Is No Peace Without Palestinians. President Sheinbaum announced that Mexico will not participate as a member of the Board of Peace created at the proposal of the president of the United States for the Middle East. Sheinbaum said that Mexico has formally recognized Palestine as a state, so for this initiative to be consistent with that position, both states, Palestine and Israel, should be included, “and that is not how the meeting is structured.”
◻️ Mexico ranks first in love, but… Of 23 countries surveyed, Mexico is the country where the highest percentage of respondents (86%) reported feeling loved. “Seven out of ten Mexicans say they are satisfied with their sexual and romantic life,” reported Love Life Satisfaction 2026. But other news clouds this rosy view of cupid’s favorite country: in Mexico, marriage rates are declining, and violence in romantic relationships is on the rise.
◻️ 30 Years After the San Andrés Accords, the Causes of Rebellion in Chiapas Persist. What on February 16, 1996, was presented as a historic commitment to constitutionally recognize Indigenous rights and culture ended up becoming a paradigmatic example of noncompliance, pretense, and institutional betrayal, explains lawyer Bárbara Zamora, who participated in this historic process. Thirty years after the signing of the San Andrés Accords, the situation of poverty and marginalization in Chiapas has not only failed to improve but has worsened, with the incursion of organized crime groups that now dominate the state and the border with Guatemala and Belize, laments UNAM rector Leonardo Lomelí. More on the accords in Ojarasca.
◻️ CTM to Hold Its First Elections in 90 Years. The Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), Mexico’s largest labor federation, has never in nine decades of existence held elections for its general secretary. But this year, two factions will face off to determine who will lead the federation, founded during the Cárdenas era, which now includes 1,260 affiliated grassroots unions across the country.
◻️ Stiglitz: 21st-Century Caesarism. “Ongoing efforts to derail multilateral tax cooperation lie at the heart of a global program to replace democratic governance with coercive rule by the extremely wealthy — or what we call 21st-century Caesarism…,” write Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and his colleague Jayati Ghosh in La Jornada.
◻️ Atwood in Mexico. “If you have a megaphone, hold it tight. Don’t let the American Nazis take it from you,” advised Canadian author Margaret Atwood, drawing enthusiastic applause at the International Writers’ Festival in San Miguel de Allende. Speaking about her autobiography The Book of My Lives, she explained: “I’m too old to write with scruples, regrets, doubts, or worries. I don’t have any of those left.”
