The rosy image of a peaceful revolution guided by its military to achieve a better tomorrow is over: the masks have all been lifted and the reality is much uglier than previously thought. Egypt's real struggle for freedom and political definition is just starting.
Bajo Aguán, a fertile agricultural region in the north of Honduras, might at first glance look like a bucolic paradise. In fact, it is part of a historic land struggle. It is also the site of a war - a strange war, undeclared and largely invisible, where only one side has arms.
I've been a Detroiter for 60 years and this is the first time in my experience that so many different organizations with different ideologies and personalities have recognized that the time has come when we must join together to resist and defeat the growing counter-revolution.
The tasks facing Mali's new president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, are many and difficult. The government administration and services — never very strong — have largely stopped working and must be restructured. Relations with the north of the country need to be harmonized, and new local leadership needs to come to the fore, and the role of Islam as a religious/political ideology needs to be discussed calmly and with good will.
In recent years, the voice and visibility of movements opposing land grabs and displacement, and demanding land reform, are increasing. Though relatively little land has been redistributed, organized movements of small farmers, indigenous peoples, and landless people are developing in size, strength, and organization. They are uniting across borders to break the nexus between land, agriculture, power, and profit.
Last December, tens of thousands of indigenous Zapatistas mobilized, peacefully and in complete silence, to occupy five municipal government office buildings in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. That same day, which coincided with the end of one cycle on the Maya calendar, Zapatistas released a communiqué, asking, “Did you hear it?”
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019