Lula Returns to Power, Welcoming an Indigenous Vision of Governance in Brazil

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.

Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez, on Tuesday, January 10, denounced a new attempt on her life. Márquez reported on Twitter that her security team had found a highly destructive explosive device near her family home in the Yolombó village, in the Suárez municipality, in the Cauca department during a security check before her visit. Márquez also reported that the device had been destroyed in a controlled explosion by bomb disposal experts.

“Members of my security team found a device with more than 7 kg of explosive material on the road that leads to my family residence in the village of Yolombó, in Suárez, Cauca. It was destroyed in a controlled manner by anti-explosive personnel from the SIJIN,” Márquez tweeted along with photos of what appeared to be an improvised explosive device.

The Vice President and Minister of Equality, in another tweet, shared a police report about the incident, and said that “the attached report shows that it was another attempt on my life.”

Márquez, an environmental activist who became the first Black woman vice president of Colombia against all odds, added that “regardless, we won’t stop working every day, day after day, until we achieve Total Peace that Colombia dreams of and needs. We will not give up until it is possible to live in true harmony in each territory.”

Márquez had planned to visit her hometown in Yolombó from January 7 to 9. For this reason, a prior inspection was carried out in the areas close to her residence, when the explosives were found. Due to the characteristics and location of the device, intelligence and security personnel concluded that this was an attack against the vice president.

Integrantes de mi equipo de seguridad hallaron un artefacto con más de 7 kilos de material explosivo en la vía que conduce a mi residencia familiar en la vereda de Yolombó, en Suarez, Cauca. El mismo fue destruido de manera controlada por personal anti explosivos de la SIJIN. pic.twitter.com/gUpYQVOfFD

— Francia Márquez Mina (@FranciaMarquezM) January 10, 2023

This was not the first time that Márquez had her life threatened. In May 2022, before the presidential elections, during a campaign rally in the capital Bogotá, Márquez was pointed at with a laser when she was on stage addressing a multitude of supporters. At that time, her bodyguards immediately covered her with bulletproof shields to protect her and prevent an attack against her life.

In April 2022, the far-right paramilitary group, Águilas Negras or Black Eagles, issued death threats against several members of the left-wing Historic Pact coalition, including Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez, who were candidates at the time.

It was the third death threat that Márquez had received in less than a month. The Águilas Negras had issued two other death threats to Márquez and other progressive political and social leaders in March 2022.

Márquez, who rose to prominence for her struggle against illegal gold mining in Suárez, took office with President Gustavo Petro last year on promises of fighting inequalities, corruption, impunity, drug trafficking, paramilitarism and consolidating peace.

Violence against environmentalists, land defenders, human rights defenders, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, peasant and social leaders like Márquez is not uncommon in Colombia. Paramilitary and drug trafficking groups have been targeting those who work to defend land and natural resources in their territories and pose a threat to the organization’s illegal operations.

Colombia has lived through almost 60 years of internal armed conflict over territorial disputes between paramilitary groups, drug traffickers, the army and guerrillas, which has killed around 450,000 people and displaced over 8 million.

Colombia’s first leftist leaders, President Petro and Vice President Márquez, are determined to bring total peace to the country. The Petro-Márquez government has called on all irregular armed groups operating in different parts of the country to negotiate peace agreements.

According to Colombian human rights organization, the Institute of Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), so far, at least 23 irregular armed groups have expressed their intention to  engage in dialogue and “accept legal benefits in exchange for peace and definitive non-repetition of violence.”

The government has already begun negotiations with four groups including the dissident groups of the demobilized FARC guerilla group: the Estado Mayor Central, the Segunda Marquetalia; and the drug cartels Clan del Golfo and Los Pachencas. The peace process with the National Liberation Army (ELN) which began under the government of Juan Manuel Santos, but was suspended during the term of Iván Duque, was also restarted and the first round of talks was held in Caracas, Venezuela in December 2022.

Ashley O’Shay’s documentary “Unapologetic” is an examination of the lives of Black women and queer activists in Chicago as they navigate the response in the streets to the police killings of Rekia Boyd in 2012 and Laquan McDonald in 2014. While the documentary provides a chilling revelation of just how long the process for “justice” for these two police killings took, it also, and perhaps more importantly, focuses on the struggles on multiple levels that the people who took to the streets and organized behind the scenes to demand that justice endured during that time. Two of those people are Janea Bonsu, an organizer with Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), and Ambrell “Bella” Gambrell, a scholar and raptivist (a rapper who is involved in political or social activism).

After an introductory soliloquy in which viewers are let in on the meaning behind the film’s title, footage appears from a direct action in what looks to be a ritzy eatery in one of Chicago’s whiter areas. Agitators—and I use that term quite intentionally and with the utmost respect—interrupt the relaxed regular dining of the mostly white patrons with a coordinated call and response, indicting the dismissal of the suffering of poor Black families struggling to put food on their tables, who were probably not far from where the visibly uncomfortable white folks were sitting. They all sat there and chit-chatted over meals that were probably overpriced.

Though some of the patrons tried to appear patient and listen attentively, many more tried even harder to ignore the agitators and get on with their meal despite them, which is the perfect representation of the way much of white U.S. society responds to Black suffering and death in general. But the comments of the testy restaurant employee, dressed in what appears to be an elf costume—which makes his testiness all the more comical and infuriating—really bring home the point that the documentary endeavors to make, but also the point that the agitators were making.

The documentary proceeds to follow Janae as she completes her doctoral dissertation while organizing with BYP100, and Ambrelle as she uses her talent as a rapper and her exposure to the criminal justice system through family incarceration as the foundation of her activism. One should not mistake the difference in these two women being one of class—both are residents of the Southside of Chicago, and both have attended and graduated college. The difference appears to be the paths each takes with that foundation that the documentary shows contributes to their organizing efforts in different ways. One pursuing a Ph.D. based on pursuing alternatives to the disastrous impact on Black women that social services and interactions with the police have. The other eschews pursuit of further education in the system that she excoriates in one of her poems recited at an early protest.

And this is one contradiction that the documentary raises, or should raise, among its audience regarding academia and organizing—how useful is academia in organizing? Because while Janae is clearly passionate about working to find solutions to the very real problems of the negative impacts of the social services system on Black women, can solutions be found inside the very systems that perpetuate those problems? There are already plenty of educated folks in the social work field and even in policing, many of them Black. When we see in the documentary how Janae’s doctoral chair counsels her that she doesn’t have to talk about everything in her dissertation, isn’t this a reflection of how the established institutions respond to Black people when we raise the alarms about that system and its impact on us? A question to ponder, but not with the aim of besmirching Janae’s pursuit of her Ph.D., because the contradiction isn’t one regarding personal choice, but it is about systemic realities and being realistic about them.

Conversely, rather than go the academic route, Ambrelle took to the streets in the pursuit of organizing her own space, especially on behalf of Black women—and particularly queer women—who have experienced victimization by the carceral state. Clearly a skilled wordsmith and masterful with rap technique, she also draws upon her own experiences with multiple generations of family exposure to incarceration, using the experience of her mother’s incarceration and then her brother—still incarcerated at the time of the making of the documentary—to help other Black women deal with the trauma of that systemic victimization.

Both women actually have experience with the carceral system impacting their families, and both connect the repression of the state as part of the “War on Drugs” to the ongoing war on Black and poor people, and how this repression destroyed the stability of even economically struggling Black communities like in the Southside of Chicago.

That both women highlight the need to elevate the voices of young, Black and queer women in the new efforts at organizing is a central theme in the documentary. The role women play in organizing—that has been too often overlooked throughout the historical reflection of the long fight for liberation for Black people—is an important and well-highlighted discussion that both women and others throughout the documentary raise. In organizing meetings and in the streets, the documentary points out several instances throughout when Black men literally take the mic from Black women while they were speaking or talk over them, thereby dominating the discussion. It seems the film focuses on the organizing that occurred after Rekia Boyd’s killing precisely because few outside of Chicago probably understood how much focus the people in the streets DID pay to her killing, despite people outside of Chicago saying that the movement writ large doesn’t pay much attention to Black women killed by police.

However, there are contradictions even in these discussions in the film, as Ambrelle particularly describes Black men as being only interested in their position to power and as oppressors of Black women. But even with this troubling discourse about Black men, other voices in the documentary point out other possibilities, chief among them that Black men who exhibit misogynistic behavior toward Black women are largely unconscious of how some of their behavior negatively impacts Black women because they, too, are oppressed and do not realize the depth of their oppression. Just as in the questions surrounding the utility of academia in the movement, raising this contradiction is not a dig on Ambrelle, but an occasion to examine how we all talk about Black men in the spaces we all occupy in the movement.

Those contradictions that we all must wrestle with aside, the documentary delves into the hectic, exhausting, emotionally taxing life of Black organizers, activists and agitators—whatever you want to call them. The work that is done to confront city councils that refuse to listen to the demands of the people most impacted by police violence that is literally funded by their tax dollars, the difficulty balancing organizing and personal lives, the importance of strong family ties and support, and the difficulties even pursuing romantic interests are all issues among several others that remind the viewer that organizing is not a hobby. Nor is it a lifestyle. It is—for many of us—our life, our whole life. And it is such because our lives depend on it. But as the two women show in the various ways that they stay connected and grounded when they are not organizing or agitating, the necessity of having those connections and making that time for them outside of organizing and agitating is critical to their survival, too.

The documentary also presents a detailed timeline of the response of the Chicago Police Oversight Board and the mayor’s office to the police killings of Boyd and McDonald. In that timeline, we see the way now-Mayor Lori Lightfoot conducted herself in the presence of these agitators as they demanded the cop who killed Rekia be fired, but also the cold detachment as Rekia’s brother testified before the Chicago Police Board that Lightfoot presided over as president.

Watching it, you wonder how in the hell did she get away with presenting herself as a progressive after the despicable way in which she responded to these incidents and the people in that community demanding action be taken against the cops who committed them. Lightfoot’s recorded comments from that time period, and those of Rahm Emanuel, are repulsive and one wonders how the hell Lightfoot was elected mayor after the revelations of her boss Rahm Emanuel’s attempts to cover up evidence of the McDonald killing and the corruption of the Chicago District Attorney’s Office that was connected to Emanuel’s shady dealings. The politics of identity divorced from class analysis and good ol’ Democratic lesser-evilism are at play here, but it is not pointed out in the documentary. That is unfortunate, because these issues are critical drivers behind continued political malaise and stagnation among the very community the agitators are agitating on behalf of.

“Unapologetic” is a much-needed exposé into the actual lives of actual activists. It reveals that the “people in the streets” are ordinary folks struggling with ordinary life, but they also have the extraordinary desire to challenge and change this system because, as Black women and Black queer people, they also struggle with the extraordinary burdens heaped upon them by this society. That seems to be the primary focus of the documentary, though it also looks at how those ordinary people are pushed to be unapologetic about their activism and agitation—and that is a good thing. However, it leaves out the deeper discussions we need to have about the gender relations between Black men and Black women, classism, and identity reductionism that exist within this important work, all of which we cannot afford to ignore if we ever want to be healthy enough—mentally, emotionally, and as a community—to endure this continued struggle.

Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.; as well as co-founder of Luqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet that can be found on YouTube (here and here) and on Facebook; and co-host of Radio Sputnik’s “By Any Means Necessary.”

Editor’s Note: This article was produced in partnership by Peoples Dispatch and Globetrotter.

Even though the floodwaters have receded, the people of Pakistan are still trying to grapple with the death and devastation the floods have left in their wake. The floods that swept across the country between June and September have killed more than 1,700 people, injured more than 12,800, and displaced millions as of November 18.

The scale of the destruction in Pakistan was still making itself apparent as the world headed to the United Nations climate conference COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November. Pakistan was one of two countries invited to co-chair the summit. It also served as chair of the Group of 77 (G77) and China for 2022, playing a critical role in ensuring that the establishment of a loss and damage fund was finally on the summit’s agenda, after decades of resistance by the Global North.

“The dystopia has already come to our doorstep,” Pakistan’s Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman told Reuters.

By the first week of September, pleas for help were giving way to protests as survivors, living under open skies and on the sides of highways, were dying of hunger, illness, and lack of shelter.

Parts of the Sindh province, which was hit the hardest, including the districts of Dadu and Khairpur remained inundated until the middle of November. Meanwhile, certain areas of impoverished and predominantly rural Balochistan, where communities have been calling for help since July, waited months for assistance.

“Initially the floods hit Lasbela, closer to Karachi [in Sindh], so people were able to provide help, but as the flooding spread to other parts of Balochistan the situation became dire,” Khurram Ali, general secretary of the Awami Workers Party (AWP), told Peoples Dispatch. “The infrastructure of Balochistan has been neglected, the roads are damaged, and dams and bridges have not been repaired.”

The floods precipitated a massive infrastructural collapse that continues to impede rescue and relief efforts—more than 13,000 kilometers of roads and 439 bridges have been destroyed, according to a November 18 report by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Pakistan.

Speaking to Peoples Dispatch in September, Taimur Rahman, secretary-general of the Mazdoor Kissan Party (PMKP), said that the government had been “unable to effectively provide aid on any large scale, or to ensure that it reached where it was supposed to go.” This has also led to the emergence of profiteering, as gangs seize aid from trucks and sell it, Rahman added.

In these circumstances, left and progressive organizations such as the AWP and PKMP have attempted to fill the gaps by trying to provide people with basic amenities to survive the aftermath of this disaster.

Cascading Crises

On September 17, the WHO warned of a “second disaster” in Pakistan—“a wave of disease and death following this catastrophe, linked to climate change.”

The WHO has estimated that “more than 2,000 health facilities have been fully or partially damaged” or destroyed across the country, at a time when diseases such as COVID-19, malaria, dengue, cholera, dysentery, and respiratory illnesses are affecting a growing share of the population. More than 130,000 pregnant women are in need of urgent health care services in Pakistan, which already had a high maternal mortality rate even prior to the floods.

Damage to the agricultural sector, with 4.4 million acres of crops having been destroyed, has stoked fears of impending mass hunger. In a July report by the World Food Program, 5.9 million people in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh provinces were already estimated to be in the “crisis” and “emergency” phases of food insecurity between July and November 2022.

At present, an estimated 14.6 million people will be in need of emergency food assistance from December 2022 to March 2023, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Malnutrition has already exceeded emergency threshold levels in some districts, especially in Sindh and Balochistan.

Not only was the summer harvest destroyed but the rabi or winter crops like wheat are also at risk, as standing water might take months to recede in some areas, like Sindh. Approximately 1.1 million livestock have perished so far due to the floods.

This loss of life and livelihood has taken place against the backdrop of an economic crisis, characterized by a current account deficit and dwindling foreign exchange reserves.

Then came the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

As part of its attempt to resume a stalled $6 billion bailout program with the fund, Pakistan’s government imposed a hike in fuel prices and a rollback on subsidies in mid-June.

“The conditions that the IMF placed on us exacerbated the inflation and cost of living crisis,” explained Rahman. “They imposed on Pakistan tax policies that would try to balance the government’s budget on the one hand, but on the other really undermine the welfare of the people and cause such a catastrophic rise in the cost of living that it would condemn millions of people to poverty and starvation.”

By the end of August, the IMF had approved a bailout of more than $1.1 billion. By then, Pakistan’s consumer price index had soared to 27.3 percent, the highest in nearly 50 years, and food inflation increased to 29.5 percent year-on-year. By September, prices of vegetables were up by 500 percent.

“We went to the IMF for $1.1 billion, meanwhile, the damage to Pakistan’s economy is at least $11 billion,” said Rahman. The figure for the damages caused due to the floods now stands at $40 billion, according to the World Bank. “The IMF keeps telling us to lower tariff barriers, to take away subsidies, to liberalize trade, make the state bank autonomous, to deregulate private capital and banking, and to balance the budget,” he added.

“The ax always falls on the most vulnerable,” Rahman said. “Over half of the budget, which in itself is a small portion of the GDP, goes toward debt repayment, another quarter goes to the military and then there’s nothing left. The government is basically bankrupt.”

“The advice of the IMF is always the same—take the state out, let the private market do what it does. Well, look at what it has done: it has destroyed Pakistan’s economy… Imposing austerity at a time when Pakistan is coping with such massive floods and the economy is in freefall is the equivalent of what the British colonial state did during the Bengal famine—it took food away.”

Pakistan will be forced to borrow more money to pay back its mounting debt, all while IMF conditions hinder any meaningful recovery for the poor and marginalized. The fund has now imposed even tougher conditions on Pakistan to free up $3.5 billion in response to the floods, not nearly large enough to address $30 billion worth of economic damage. The conditions include a hike in gas and electricity prices as well as cuts in development spending.

It is in this context that activists are demanding a total cancellation of debt, and climate reparations for Pakistan.

The Global North Must Pay

Between 2010 and 2019, 15.5 million Pakistanis were displaced by natural disasters. Pakistan has contributed less than 1 percent to global greenhouse gas emissions, but remains at the forefront of the climate crisis.

Delivering the G77 and China’s opening statement at COP27, Pakistan’s Ambassador Munir Akram emphasized, “We are living in an era where many developing countries are already witnessing unprecedented devastating impacts of climate change, though they have contributed very little to it…”

“Enhanced solidarity and cooperation to address loss and damage is not charity—it is climate justice.”

In its February report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged that “historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism” have exacerbated vulnerability to climate change. Yet, even as the Global South faces an existential threat, the Global North actively impedes efforts toward redressal.

“Reparations are about taking back [what] is owed to you,” environmental lawyer Ahmad Rafay Alam told Peoples Dispatch. “As the climate crisis grows… this discourse [of reparations] is going to get stronger. It’s not just going to come from Pakistan, we will hear it from places like Afghanistan where people don’t have the infrastructure and are freezing in the winter… We’ll hear it as the Maldives and the Seychelles start sinking.”

While this struggle plays out globally, there is also justifiable anger within Pakistan over the government’s failure to prepare for the crisis, especially in the aftermath of the deadly floods of 2010.

“Everyone anticipated that this monsoon would be disastrous, and the National Disaster Management Authority had enough time to prepare,” Ali said. “However, there is nothing you can find that [shows what] the NDMA did to prepare for these monsoons. In fact, they do not even have a division to take precautionary measures.”

Holding the government accountable for its lack of preparedness, which might have contained the damage, is crucial, Alam said. However, given the sheer scale of the impact of the climate crisis on the Global South, talking about adaptation has its limitations. As Alam stressed—“There is just no way you can adapt to a 100-kilometer lake that forms in the middle of a province.”

Activists are drawing attention to infrastructure projects the state is pursuing, and how they put the environment and communities at risk. “As reconstruction takes place it is important not to repeat the mistakes of the past,” Alam said.

“The projects that are affecting riverbeds and other sensitive areas are the development projects themselves,” Ali said. He pointed out that development often takes place on agricultural or ecologically sensitive land such as forests, adding to the severity of future crises.

“It is a very dangerous situation now because imperialist profit-making is devastating the climate, affecting regions that are already maldeveloped. We are living under semi-feudal, semi-colonial conditions in Pakistan, with a strong nexus between the imperialist powers and the capitalists, all making money off our misery,” Ali stressed.

“We have no other option but to fight these forces; there is no other option but a people’s revolution.”

Tanupriya Singh is a writer at Peoples Dispatch and is based in Delhi.