On March 9, 1990, fighters from Colombia’s M-19 guerrilla group assembled beneath the towering statue of Simon Bolivar in the center of Medellin to mark their own personal farewell to arms. Exactly 25 years later, many of the same faces returned to the same site to mark the anniversary.
The cordial meeting among Obama and Castro showed the constructive face of the opening, although the clashes on the streets of Panama City represent the rocky road ahead for US-Cuba relations. But at least the path forward is a new one, with fresh momentum emanating from the Panama Summit.
Following defeats for Evo Morales’ MAS party in Bolivian regional elections, new checks and balances to MAS power from a variety of political positions may continue to open up spaces of dissent, debate and contestation that will deepen Bolivia’s wider process of change, a process that the MAS doesn’t, nor did it ever, completely control.
Bolivia’s road toward decolonization is a rocky and contested one. But, as Bolivia's Vice Minister of Decolonization Félix Cárdenas argues below, in a bleak world full of capitalist tyrants, bloody wars and racist exploitation, the country's Process of Change under President Evo Morales continues to shine as an alternative to the dominant global order.
The enforced disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa rural teachers college has catapulted Mexico’s security crisis into the international spotlight and revealed the deep-seated ties between the government and organized crime. It has also brought to the forefront the dignified struggle and courage of the families of these students who refuse to believe that their sons have been reduced to bags of ashes.
Elisa Vega Sillo, a member of Bolivia's Vice Ministry of Decolonization, speaks about the unique work of the Vice Ministry, the role of historical memory in the country’s radical politics, and the importance of decolonizing Bolivia’s history of indigenous resistance.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019