América Latina & Caribe

Santiago Niltepec, Mexico – Carlos Perez, a 30-year-old Colombian migrant from Bogota, was on track to reach the United States border with his wife and 11-year-old son by the new year.

The trouble came, however, when his wife became overwhelmed with fatigue as they reached the city of Tapachula in southern Mexico. By that point, they had travelled 2,500km — more than 1,550 miles — on foot.

So, Perez bought a bicycle. Often, he pedalled while his wife and child sat on the handlebars. On treacherous roads and at night, Perez walked alongside them as they rode slowly through darkness.

But a road accident in mid-November tore the skin from his shins and bloodied his wife and son's arms.

Speaking a day later from a temporary migrant camp in Santiago Niltepec, Perez expressed a fear that their injuries will cost them the chance to cross into the US before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, 2025.

“I don’t know if it’s possible to reach the border in time now,” Perez said.

Like many of his fellow migrants and asylum seekers, Perez fears that Trump will follow through on his pledges to "close" the US border with Mexico.

Trump, a Republican, has teased that his incoming administration plans to declare a national emergency and deploy military forces to prevent unauthorised crossings, which he likens to an "invasion".

Already, Trump has claimed that early negotiations with Mexico to crack down on migrants and asylum seekers have borne fruit.

“Mexico will stop people from going to our Southern Border, effective immediately,” Trump wrote on social media on November 27. “THIS WILL GO A LONG WAY TOWARD STOPPING THE ILLEGAL INVASION OF THE USA.”

Still, it is unclear whether his hard-knuckle rhetoric will help stem the flow of people coming to the US — or fuel it in the lead-up to his inauguration.

full article

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez renewed, in a phone call with his Syrian counterpart, Bassam al-Sabbagh, Cuba’s support and solidarity with the people and government of Syria.

"We renew Cuba's support and solidarity with the Syrian people and government in facing the attacks carried out by terrorist groups on various Syrian cities," Rodriguez stated.

He also called for "the necessity of preserving the sovereignty and unity of the brotherly Syrian state."

"It is a pleasure to receive you at the Palace of the Revolution," assured the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, to Commissar General Wang Xiaohong, State Councilor and Minister of Public Security of China.

When we talk to our Chinese friends, he said, we assure them that their visits confirm the excellent state of our bilateral relations in the political, diplomatic, economic-commercial and social fields.

And that, he said, has much to do with "the historic relations of friendship that exist between our peoples, governments and parties, which were founded by the friendship between Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz and the leader of the Asian nation, Mao Tse Tung, and have been continued over the years by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz and the Chinese leaders.

The Cuban leader also commented on these ties, which have been strengthened in the current context, and underscored how "at the present time, ties are being consolidated on the basis of the consensus reached in the meetings we have been able to hold with our friend, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and President of the Republic, Xi Jinping."

Díaz-Canel sent affectionate greetings to his Chinese counterpart, while expressing his admiration for the leadership achieved at the international level, both by President Xi Jinping himself and by China.

He commented on the follow-up given from Cuba to the proposals made by that sister nation to the international community, to implement "global initiatives that express the will to defend peace in the world, multilateralism, equality among nations and peoples, the opening of possibilities for all, and complementarity, while rejecting hegemonism, and unilateral policies, sanctions and coercion."

His visit is also an expression, he said, of support for the confrontation of the policies of cultural colonization, hegemony and subversion that the empire exercises over our nations.

In a special way, the dignitary thanked his interlocutor for "the support given to the systematic, stable cooperation between the Ministries of Public Security of both countries, in addressing issues that are of mutual interest and to face common challenges, including the challenges imposed on us to enhance cybersecurity."

In the dialogue, among other representatives of both countries, were the member of the Political Bureau and Minister of the Interior, Major General Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, and the Chinese Ambassador to Cuba, Hua Xin.

Mexico City, Mexico, December 3, 2024 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan government declared its solidarity with the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad following attacks by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in the province of Aleppo.

“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela categorically condemns all hostilities against the people of the Syrian Arab Republic, carried out by terrorists led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which have caused significant harm to the civilian population and worsened the humanitarian situation in Aleppo province,” read the statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published Saturday.

The communique further called for “an immediate end to the support provided by major Western powers and the Netanyahu regime” for the rebel forces attacking the Assad government.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro reiterated Caracas’ stance in a phone call with Assad on Monday.

HTS appears to have been motivated by a perceived weakness of its rivals in Hezbollah and Assad. The attacks by HTS, a former Al Qaeda affiliate, and their surprise rapid advances came following a ceasefire agreement between Hezbollah and Israel, opening up a new phase in the 13-year-old armed conflict.

The Venezuelan government’s statement accused HTS’ backers of seeking to “destabilize the entire region of West Asia.” The Syrian army and local allies are presently engaged in fierce clashes with HTS in the Aleppo and Hama provinces.

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“Minister Marcelo Montenegro and the president of the Central Bank of Bolivia, Edwin Rojas, meet with the president of the Interbank and Cross-Border Payment System (…), Hongbo Wang (…)”, confirmed the Bolivian Ministry of Economy and Public Finance on its social networks regarding the meeting held this Friday.

The text reported that during the talks, the implementation of this payment system was addressed as a new channel for financial operations in Chinese currency (yuan or renminbi) that can benefit those who carry out trade or other transactions with the Asian nation.

The CIPS is a payment system that offers clearing and settlement services for its participants in cross-border transfers and payments in Chinese currency.

According to a report by the BCB, this payment system arises from the need to transfer money to carry out operations directly between people, companies (public or private) and governments, or with the intervention of financial entities.

According to the authorities, Bolivia is targeting these operations with yuans due to its extensive trade relationship with China, mainly in imports. The bilateral trade relationship gained momentum since 2011, when exports exceeded 300 million dollars and imports 1 billion dollars.

full article

The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, asked US President-elect Donald Trump to lift the blockades imposed on Venezuela and Cuba, pointing out that these sanctions increase the flow of migrants to the US.

Sheinbaum and Trump held a phone call on Wednesday, November 27, where they discussed the issue of migration.

During her morning press conference on Thursday, November 28, Sheinbaum reported that she proposed to the US president-elect to implement new measures to to mitigate the effects of migration.

In this regard, she stressed that it is necessary to adopt a more comprehensive and coordinated approach. Therefore, she suggested the lifting of the economic blockades imposed on Venezuela and Cuba, as it would be a beneficial measure to reduce migration from those countries.

“End the blockades on Cuba and Venezuela, because all they do is make the people suffer and create phenomena like migration,” Sheinbaum declared.

Full article

Hey there, I was wondering what good ways are to learn the Spanish dialect that is most commonly spoken in the USA since America has a lot of Spanish speakers and it's the second most prevalent language after English (like English, America obviously has a different version of the language compared to for example UK or India).

I had Spanish in school but only know a few basic things. I wonder if there is some way to really get immersed in the language (other than oc moving there and speaking with native speaker in person) to naturally learn it to be able to have conversations with Spanish speakers in America that sound as local/authentic as possible (so I don't wanna focus on artificial learning that focuses too much on grammar and uncommon words that aren't that important for everyday conversations).

Japanese-style peanuts, also known as Japanese peanuts or cracker nuts (widely known in the Spanish-speaking world as cacahuates japoneses or maní japonés), are a type of snack food made from peanuts that are coated in a wheat flour dough and then fried or deep-fried. They come in a variety of different flavors. The Mexican version's recipe for the extra-crunchy shell has ingredients such as wheat flour, soy sauce, water, sugar, monosodium glutamate, and citric acid. The snacks are often sold in sealed bags, but can also be found in bulk containers

History

Japanese-style peanuts were created in Mexico during the 1940s by Japanese immigrant Yoshihei Nakatani, the father of Yoshio and Carlos Nakatani. He lost his job after the mother-of-pearl button factory he worked at, named El Nuevo Japón, was forced to close after its proprietor came under suspicion of being a spy for the Empire of Japan.

Nakatani had to find alternatives to provide for his family. He obtained a job at La Merced Market, where he initially sold Mexican candies called muéganos [es]. Later, he developed a new variety of fried snacks he named oranda that he named after the like-named fish. He also created a new version of a snack that reminded him of his homeland, mamekashi (seeds covered with a layer of flour with spices), that he adapted to Mexican tastes. Nakatani sold them in packages decorated with a geisha design made by his daughter Elvia. While his children tended to the family business, Nakatani and his wife Emma sold the snacks on local streets. Sales of the snacks were so successful that Nakatani was able to obtain his own stall at the market. With the help of Nakatani's son Armando, the family established their business under the brand Nipón in the 1950s; the name was registered as a trademark in 1977.

Nakatani never registered the patent for the snack. As a result, various competitors made their own versions of Japanese-style peanuts.

A Japanese version originated in Okinawa, called Takorina, has the image of a Mexican charro in the bag, and it is claimed to be called "Mexican-style peanuts", though the rumour has been disproven.

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This debt reached crisis proportions in the 2010s with the spending spree of the Dési Bouterse administration. Private lenders and international financial institutions queued up to make loans, often at high interest, amid the deep crash of global commodity prices. Although Bouterse is currently on the run from a twenty-year sentence for murdering political opponents, the Surinamese people still remain liable for the debts and at the mercy of anyone willing to lend money.

Even worse, the bondholders have laid claim to Suriname’s future oil revenues through a value-recovery instrument. If all goes according to plan, this will line their pockets with a staggering windfall of 30 percent of future oil revenues, up to a total of £689 million. Meanwhile, Suriname will continue to spend 27 percent of its government revenues on external debt payments over the next five years.

I've spent a bit of time in the country, it's beautiful and if you like slow cooked BBQ the food is amazing.

But I've had this same conversation a million fucking times. People love their new libertarian incel president because of his "common sense" reforms. And the changing economy is "proof socialism doesn't work"

Like yeah, ok buddy. The "left" ideology is essentially 3rd way dem BS. The founder of Peronism was a simp for fucking Mussolini.

Lots of very strong opinions from people that have no fucking clue what left wing economics are or can be. It drives me insane. Like, outside of the MAGA freaks, back home people at least know the difference when I talk about this kinda shit.

Anyone else encounter this? Like there's more semi-mainstream socialist movements in LATAM, no? Why do people think these Peronist bitches are socialists?

I said my piece

https://www.telesurtv.net/policia-brasilena-confirma-que-explosiones-en-la-plaza-de-los-tres-poderes-fueron-un-ataque-suicida/

At present, Protestants account for one-third of the population, while the number of Catholics has just dipped below 50 per cent. By far the largest proportion of Brazilian Protestants are evangelicals, specifically Pentecostals, neo-Pentecostals and related branches. By the centenary of Raízes do Brasil in 2036, Protestants will outnumber Catholics in Brazil for the first time in the country’s 500-plus-year history.

In 2018, the far-Right former army captain Jair Bolsonaro shocked the country by winning the presidency, bolstered by an evangelical vote that would remain faithful to him and his socially conservative, politically reactionary and cosmologically apocalyptic politics.

No one holds Brazil as an existing paradise. Few even sustain any expectation that it will deliver on what was promised for it. And, indeed, utopian thinking probably died as far back as the 1964 military coup. But many have continued to uphold the country’s cultural traits as admirable and enviable – even models for the world.

Brazilianization’, a trope taken up by various intellectuals in recent decades, signals a universal tendency towards social inequality, urban segregation, informalisation of labour, and political corruption. Others, though, have sought to rescue a positive aspect: the country’s informality and ductility, particularly in relation to work, as well as its hybridisation, creolisation and openness to the world, made it already adapted to the new, global, postmodern capitalism that followed the Cold War.

By the 2000s, Brazil was witnessing peaceful, democratic alternation in government between centre-Left and centre-Right for practically the first time in its history. Under President Lula, it saw booming growth, combined with new measures of social inclusion. But underneath the surface of the globalisation wave that Brazil was surfing, violent crime was on the up, manufacturing was down, and inclusion was being bought on credit.

In 2013, it came to a shuddering halt. Rising popular expectations generated a crisis of representation – announced by the biggest mass street mobilisations in the country’s history. This was succeeded by economic crisis and then by institutional crisis, culminating in the parliamentary coup against Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff. Now all the energy seemed to be with a new Right-wing movement that dominated the streets. It was topped off by the election of Bolsonaro in 2018. Suddenly, eyes turned to the growing prominence of conservative Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal outlooks in national life.

So why the association of evangelicals with darkest reaction? In large part, it’s class prejudice, argues the anthropologist Juliano Spyer, whose book Povo de Deus (2020), or People of God, sparked widespread debate in the country and was a finalist in Brazil’s most prestigious nonfiction prize in 2021. For opinion-formers, the evangelical is either a poor fanatic or a rich manipulator, but the reality is that the religion is socially embedded in Brazil, particularly among the poor and Black population.

What explains this explosion? The anthropologist Gilberto Velho points to inward migration, the primary 20th-century phenomenon in Brazil. Tens of millions of poor, illiterate, rural and profoundly Catholic people from the arid northeast of Brazil migrated to big cities, especially in the industrial southeast. Spyer tells me they ‘lived through the shock of leaving the countryside for the electricity of the city – but also the shock of moving to the most vulnerable parts of the city.’ The loss of networks of support, particularly of extended family, was filled by the establishment of evangelical churches. This is why the geographer Mike Davis called Pentecostalism ‘the single most important cultural response to explosive and traumatic urbanisation’.

The ‘neo-Pentecostal movement today flourishes in a context of dismantling of labour protections,’ argues Brazil’s leading scholar of precarity, Ruy Braga. This requires less a methodical dedication to work, and more the neoliberal self-management typical of popular entrepreneurship. We are dealing not with the Protestant work ethic, but with an evangelical speculative ethic. Quantification becomes the criteria of validation, be it for believers or churches competing in the religious marketplace. ‘Blessings are consumed, praises sold, preaching purchased,’ as Alencar puts it.

Whether this is mere capitalist survival or somehow utopian depends on whether you agree with the Catholic theologian Jung Mo Sung’s assertion that evangelicals insert a metaphysical element – perfectibility; the realisation of desire through the market for those who ‘deserve’ it – into mundane society. For a critic of the prosperity gospel like Sung, this neo-Pentecostal consumer-capitalist utopia is necessarily authoritarian. Divine blessing – manifest through the crente’s increased purchasing power – is bestowed as a result of the believers’ spiritual war against the enemies of God: the ‘communists’ and the ‘gays’.

The ‘communists’ (who might in fact just be centrist progressives or Catholics) want to give money to the poor; these in turn may be sinners (drug users or traffickers, for instance). This goes against the way that God distributes blessings, which is to favour, economically, those who follow the prosperity gospel.

After Hurricane Rafael passed through Cuba, authorities of this country reported that they continue to advance in the work to restore the electrical system throughout the Caribbean island.

The reconnection process throughout the island is gradually advancing and in Havana several sectors already had electrical service on Friday night.

The Havana correspondent for the teleSUR news service in Spanish, Fabiola Lopez, indicated that the authorities in Havana reported that Rafael left millions in losses and added that more than 495 electricity poles and around 100 transformers that were damaged by the hurricane are being restored. She also reported that all airports, trains and long-distance bus service are back to normal.

The journalist commented that work continues intensively throughout the island in the recovery phase, which was ordered by the Cuban Civil Defense.

She also recalled that a quarter of a million people were evacuated and no deaths were reported due to the hurricane.

The teleSUR correspondent commented that electrical workers are working to recover the national electrical system and that the system from Havana to Guantanamo is already synchronized.

Full article

The ejidos and agrarian communities are the form of land tenure that covers most of the surface in the Mexican countryside; these offer important agricultural and livestock production and most of the hills, forest areas, mangroves, coasts, water, mines and various natural attractions are in their lands

The ejido in Mexico

Mainly associated with the revolutionary agrarian reform, which projected the agrarian law of 1915 as collective, undivided land that could not be sold or inherited. Throughout the 20th century, its legislation underwent various changes, in accordance with the economic and political projects of the governments in power.

The key element to understanding the introduction of ejidos in Mexico as an integral part of the laws that followed the Mexican Revolution is the historical context in which the country found itself. Historian Emilio Kouri, in his article “The Invention of the Ejido”, speaks of the ejido as a social result of the Mexican armed struggle that was the revolution, but rather as a temporary response to the social demands of the revolution.

“That a revolution destroys what is unjust or does not work in order to try something new and different -with or without success- is the usual thing, and in the case of Mexico the agrarian reform of the Revolution invented the ejido. There should be no doubt that it is a modern invention, as will be seen below. The ejido was born as a provisional, almost accidental arrangement, but in less than two decades it was consolidated as the main instrument for governmental redistribution of land (...).

However, the ejido became a major piece in the policy of agrarian distribution in Mexico, more as a political tool to establish rural peace after the fall of Porfiriato than as an effective tool to fulfill the demands of the peasants; for the post-revolutionary war period, these aspects of communal restitution and indigenous property spaces provided by the creation of the ejidos resulted in a practical policy of control. In this regard, Kourí also mentions in his article the following:

“Thus, for both political and historical reasons, the solution to the agrarian problem at that time was clear: communal property was what the humblest people of the countryside (the Indians above all) understood best, what was most convenient to their present needs and, moreover, apparently, what the Zapatistas in arms on the other side of the Ajusco said they wanted(...).

January 6 marks a century since, in the midst of a great civil war, the Carrancista faction enacted an agrarian law in Veracruz that unintentionally marked the beginning and course of the most extensive agrarian reform in the modern history of Latin America. Throughout more than seven decades, the governments emanating from the Revolution gave way to an enormous transformation of the legal order and the social distribution of rural property in Mexico.

Pushed first by the demands and struggles of new peasant organizations and soon also by the irresistible attraction of its clientelist potential, the Revolution ended up distributing a lot of land, and not only bad land. Cardenismo (assisted by the Great Depression) broke up a good part of the large haciendas, demolishing without a second thought a long-lived economic and social institution that symbolized not only the consolidation of territorial property and local power since the mid-19th century, but also the legacy of conquests, subjections and viceregal depredations.

By 1991, when the Constitution was amended to put an end to the repartition, more than two-thirds of Mexico's land and forests had been subject to agrarian reform. There is much to debate about the costs and benefits, the vices and virtues, or the aspirations and failures of the Revolution's land distribution, but in any case, what is certain is that the magnitude of that institutional change in land ownership is comparable only to that which occurred as a result of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century.

El ejido, símbolo de la Revolución Mexicana*

• La invención del ejido

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The Havana International Fair, FIHA-2024, strengthens business alliances with commercial partners and, as a sign of the support that the international business community maintains with the island, the inauguration of the Russian Federation Pavilion took place on Monday, with the presence of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez.

Viktor Koronelli, Russian ambassador, said that Russian investors are increasingly interested in the development of mutually beneficial joint projects, which at the same time seek to meet the main needs of Cuba.

Koronelli expressed that the main areas of interest are in the spheres of energy, industry, tourism, digitalization, among others.

For his part, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, head of Foreign Trade and Investment (Mincex), thanked Russia for its participation in this fair, and highlighted the extensive cooperation links between the two nations, based on instruments that are signed and ready to be used for the benefit of the countries' businessmen.

At another time, during the celebration of the Cuba-Russia Business Forum, the First Deputy Minister of Mincex, Carlos Luis Jorge Méndez, said that this space is an opportunity to strengthen trade ties and explore new avenues of business exchange.

full article

explanation: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venado_Tuerto

The two parties that have dominated Puerto Rican politics for decades, the New Progressive Party (PNP) and the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) are losing their influence as the independence fighter Juan Dalmau runs for the alliance of the Puerto Rican Independence Party and the Citizen Victory Movement.

An international Gaither survey this month shows Dalmau approaching NPP and current resident commissioner for Puerto Rico in the US House of Representatives, Jenniffer Gonzalez, and defeated the current governor Pedro Pierluisi in his party’s primary election in June.

Dalmau is a recognized leader and defender of the ideal of independence of Puerto Rico, which after being a Spanish colony in 1898 came under the rule of the USA, a country that is now a Commonwealth.

The Gaither poll shows Dalmau with 29% support compared to González’s 31%, who led with 43% in July. Jesús Manuel Ortiz from the Popular Democratic Party is in third place, followed by Javier Jiménez from the Dignity Project.

full article

Context: Argentina's ambassador to the UN (a massive piece of shit btw) voted to lift the cuban embargo, and she was immediately fired by Milei, but not before the most bootlicking newspaper celebrated the vote

(Buenos Aires, 1960 - Dique Luján, 2020) Argentine soccer player, one of the greatest in history, often compared to the legendary Pelé. Although his skill with the ball and his refined technique matched that of the Brazilian, Maradona's career was much more irregular: his difficult character, health problems and drug addiction marred part of his career, but did not prevent his genius from shining on numerous occasions. After winning the 1979 World Youth Championship with his country's national team and triumphing two years later with Boca Juniors, he began a European tour that took him to F.C. Barcelona (1982-84), Napoli (1984-91) and Sevilla (1992-93). Back in Argentina, he played for Newell's Old Boys and Boca Juniors before retiring in 1997. With the Argentine national team he participated in four World Cups and won the World Cup title in Mexico (1986), in which he had a wonderful and unforgettable performance.

Argentina's most popular soccer player was born, according to the Civil Registry, on October 30, 1960 in Lanús, although everyone identifies him as El Pelusa from Villa Fiorito, where he spent his childhood and from where he rose to fame. At the age of nine he began his love affair with soccer, when he played in a children's team known as Los Cebollitas. Don Diego, his father, ran a small soccer field in the neighborhood and managed the Estrella Roja team, which Diego Jr. joined as a teenager and in spite of his older teammates. He studied at the Avellaneda commercial school, but did not finish the first year of high school, because he spent his time playing little games (almost juggling) with the ball.

Signed by Argentinos Juniors, he made his debut in the first division in 1976, ten days before his sixteenth birthday. He continued playing for Argentinos Juniors until 1980, and although his team did not win any championship, Maradona was the top scorer in the Argentine tournaments of 1978, 1979 and 1980. In 1979 he was part of the youth team that won the world championship. In 1981 he moved to Boca Juniors (River Plate also tried to sign him), team with which he became champion that same year.

European adventure

By then, the clubs of the old continent were already the natural destination for the great promises of American soccer, and Maradona was the most outstanding. Signed in 1982 by Futbol Club Barcelona for 1,200 million pesetas (7.2 million euros, an astronomical figure at the time), he won the League Cup, the King's Cup (both in 1983) and the Spanish Super Cup (1984) with the Azulgranas, but hepatitis and a major injury affected his performance. Again for an astronomical fee, he moved to Napoli in 1984, with whom he won the 1987 and 1990 leagues, the 1989 UEFA Cup and the 1991 Italian Super Cup.

During his time in Italy, he married Claudia Villafañe, with whom he would have two daughters, Dalma and Giannina. Maradona remained with Napoli until 1991, when an anti-doping control detected cocaine consumption, for which he was suspended for fifteen months. Shortly after, he was arrested in Buenos Aires in a police raid. On April 28, 1992 he was released from prison and was charged with supplying and possessing drugs.

His international career ended stormily at Sevilla, a team with which he did not complete the 1992-1993 season. When he returned to Argentina after his European experience, he played for the Rosario club Newell's Old Boys (1993-1994) and, after serving the suspension imposed in 1994 by the international soccer authority (FIFA), he returned to the Boca Juniors jersey in 1995, in an irregular season in terms of his performance. In October 1997 he announced his definitive retirement after, once again, testing positive in an anti-doping test.

The hand of God and the goal of the century

With the Argentine national team, Maradona had already shown his magic in the team that won the World Youth Championship in Japan (1979). At senior level, Maradona was part of the national teams that took part in four world championships: Spain (1982), Mexico (1986), Italy (1990) and the United States (1994). He won the world championship in Mexico (1986) and was runner-up in Italy (1990). In the 1994 World Cup in the United States, he only played two matches; after the second, he tested positive in an anti-doping control and was suspended.

Where he shone most brightly was undoubtedly in the World Cup in Mexico, when his ability to drag the entire defense of the opposing team with his impressive dribbling and projection left the millions of fans watching the championship on television stunned. Particularly memorable was his performance in the quarterfinals: four years after the Falklands War, England and Argentina were facing each other in a match of maximum rivalry, which ended with a 2-1 victory for the Albicelestes, with two goals by Maradona.

The first of them should have been disallowed (Maradona fisted a ball that was in dispute with the British goalkeeper), but it is no less famous for that: when asked afterwards if he had scored the goal with his hand, Maradona replied that it had been “the hand of God”, and with that name he went down in history. The second goal, rightly called the goal of the century, was one of his geniuses that is hard to beat: starting from his own half, Maradona dribbled past five English players and the goalkeeper, one after the other, and scored with a left-footed shot.

Professionally, after his retirement he worked as a coach, manager of Boca Juniors, sports commentator and television presenter. Despite the numerous scandals and controversies he was involved in during and after his sporting career, Maradona continued to be idolized in his country. El Pelusa knew how to thrill soccer lovers and earned a place in the history of the sport. The song composed by Fito Páez (Dale alegría a mi corazón) and the tango Mago Diego, by Enrique Bugatti, are some of the tributes that his compatriots dedicated to him.

In 2008 he was appointed coach of the Argentine national soccer team, and his tenure, as was to be expected, was controversial: despite having the likes of Leo Messi, whom he recognized as his successor, the Albiceleste team did not make it past the quarterfinals of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. His unsuccessful coaching career continued in the United Arab Emirates, Belarus, Mexico and finally in his native Argentina; he was coach of Gimnasia La Plata when, at the age of 60, he died due to a sudden worsening of his delicate health.

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Milei received the controversial medal of the “Bolsonaro Club”. What do the 3 i’s mean and why are they criticized?

Other people who have received the medal includes Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán, among other prominent right-wing leaders.

In his brief visit to Brazil, President Javier Milei was inducted to the exclusive “Bolsonaro Club”, a distinction created by former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for his closest ideological allies.

During the induction ceremony, Milei received the “medal of the three i's”, a significant symbol within the Bolsonaro circle, with homophobic and sexist overtones. When asked about the meaning of the three i's, the Argentine president was informed by Eduardo Bolsonaro, Jair's son, of their connotations.

The first “í” stands for “imorrível” (immortal), highlighting Jair Bolsonaro's survival after the attack suffered during his presidential campaign. “They stabbed him and he is still alive,” Eduardo emphasized.

The second “í” is “imbrochável”, a word without exact translation into Spanish, which, according to Bolsonaro Jr., alludes to male virility during sexual intercourse, provoking laughter and a jocular apology to Karina Milei for the explanation.

The last “í” is “incomível” (incompatible), which the Bolsonaro family uses to indicate that they have never had sex nor romantic relationships with men.

However, the awarding of this medal was not without controversy, as it was criticized by some who consider it homophobic. On social media, there was both support and rejection of Milei's visit to Camboriú, where he met Jair Bolsonaro, highlighting the polarized opinions regarding this event and its political implications.

Painting: The Oath of the Ancestors JJ is on the right

(c. 1758-1806), former slave, general in the Haitian Revolution, first leader of independent Haiti, and a lwa in the Haitian Vodou pantheon. The specifics of Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s early life are not well documented and historians have not come to a consensus regarding his date and place of birth. He was born around the year 1758 in either west-central Africa or in the Grande Rivière region in the north of the French colony of Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean, where he spent much of his life as a slave on two plantations. In the late eighteenth century, Saint-Domingue was the most wealth-producing colony in the Americas. Much of this wealth was generated through the cultivation and export of sugar and coffee crops. Enslaved people, often purchased by the plantation owners through the transatlantic slave trade, were forced to work on plantations to produce wealth for their masters. Some enslaved people were born in the colony, but the violence inherent in the labor system meant that the laboring population could not be sustained by natural growth and therefore a majority of the slave population in Saint-Domingue was African-born.

Dessalines worked on the Duclos sugar plantation in Cormier for most of his enslaved life and was subjected to excessive violence and brutal discipline by his notoriously cruel white master. He bore the deep scars of his enslavement until his death. On the Duclos plantation, he attained the position of foreman and was eventually sold to a free black master builder named Des Salines. The fact that he kept his second master’s last name, even after the abolition of slavery, suggests that he maintained a better relationship with Des Salines than his first master.

The Revolution

Dessalines’s whereabouts during the first years of the Haitian Revolution are unknown. By 1793, however, it is clear that he was a member of the revolutionary army under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture. He enters the historic record through his promotion to captain as a reward for his gallantry in battle. This same year, the French agents Léger Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel proclaimed the abolition of slavery in the colony. The French Assemblé Nationale ratified this decision and applied it to the entire French Empire in 1794.

During the Haitian Revolution, Saint-Domingue had become a battleground for the inter-imperial war raging throughout the Atlantic. Louverture and his army gained prominence in the French Republican army as they fought against the Spanish forces that were encroaching from the east and British forces that occupied the southern and western departments of the colony. Former slaves and free people of color fought on all three sides during these battles as they jockeyed for their own personal advantage and interests. During these conflicts, Dessalines secured the position of colonel of the Fourth Regiment in Louverture’s army in 1795. That same year, the Spanish army left the island as a result of the Treaty of Basel in which the eastern side of Hispaniola, formerly the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, was ceded to the French. The British evacuated the south in 1798. These conflicts, however, had lasting results, and even after the international wars ended, internal divisions still remained.

Louverture’s military victories won him significant power and political authority in the colony, but he struggled for control with the agents that the French metropolitan government sent to the colony. One of the key conflicts occurred between Louverture and the French agent Joseph d’Hédouville. For a brief amount of time, their interests overlapped and they were able to collaborate; it soon became clear to Louverture, however, that Hédouville was his primary competition. After the evacuation of the British, Dessalines assumed command of the region of St. Marc and from there he marched toward Cap-Français to arrest Hédouville. Hédouville was in the process of trying to escape a rebellion under the command of General Moyse Louverture. Moyse had a close relationship with his adoptive “uncle” Toussaint Louverture, but he and his followers also disagreed with some of Louverture’s policies, notably Louverture and Hédouville’s labor laws, which had been enacted in an attempt to revive the colony’s sugar and coffee plantations. Whereas Louverture and Hédouville believed that the war and the colony were not sustainable without agricultural production, Moyse supported small-scale farming and land distribution. Moyse was executed by Louverture for his act of rebellion, but Dessalines was not able to capture Hédouville and, as he fled the colony, Hédouville surrendered his power to Louverture’s rival, André Rigaud, the commander of military forces in the south.

The rivalry between Louverture and Rigaud was ingrained with conflicts based on socioracial status and skin color; Louverture represented a darker-skinned army and Rigaud one of mixed racial heritage. The conflict, however, was based on not only skin color but also political divisions. In 1799 Louverture sent Dessalines to subdue Rigaud’s separatist movement. In March 1800, in a key battle of the War of the South, as it became known, Dessalines and Louverture along with Henry Christophe gathered their vastly larger forces and defeated Rigaud and Alexandre Pétion’s forces at the city of Jacmel. The fighting continued, but Rigaud and his leading generals eventually evacuated the city of Les Cayes in August 1800, enabling Louverture to secure it. Following these battles, Dessalines’s fiancée Marie Félicité Claire Heureuse Bonheur served as a nurse and encouraged him to show mercy to the injured soldiers of Rigaud’s defeated army. Claire Heureuse was likely the daughter of a poor free black couple from Léogane. On 21 October 1801 she married Dessalines in Léogane and the wedding celebration continued for three days. Dessalines is believed to have been a passionate dancer. At the time of their wedding, Dessalines had at least four children with at least one other woman.

Once Louverture assumed the sole leadership role in the colony, he, along with Dessalines and Moyse, attempted to force the population to return to plantation labor. They viewed the export economy as the only way to sustain relative autonomy from France and to secure manufactured goods, most importantly, war materials. Dessalines was in charge of the southern and western departments and used violence or the threat of violence to coerce the laborers to assume the same jobs that they had been forced to work as slaves. This strategy may have been a tactic to appease French anxieties over the lack of productivity in the colony and to assure the metropole that the system could continue as it had previously. This was because Louverture was advocating for greater autonomy, but at the same time he did not want to anger the French government. Louverture issued a constitution in 1801 that professed continued allegiance to France but also declared autonomous government in Saint-Domingue. This document challenged the authority of Napoléon Bonaparte in France and, as a result, Bonaparte began to coordinate a military campaign to regain control of the colony. He sent a force of 30,000 men under the direction of his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc to Saint-Domingue to disarm the “rebel” army. The army arrived in early 1802, and rumors that Bonaparte and Leclerc planned to reintroduce slavery in the colony sparked massive resistance there. A series of defeats led Christophe, Louverture, and Dessalines to surrender to the French, but widespread resistance continued. Leclerc distrusted Louverture and had him deported to France, where he would die in 1803 in a prison at Fort-de-Joux in the Jura mountains.

Christophe, Dessalines, and a number of other commanders in the colonial armies then fought alongside Leclerc to subdue the resistance and to disarm the population. It quickly became clear to these native leaders, however, that their visions for the colony differed significantly from the goals of the Leclerc expedition. They defected and rejoined the rebel camp. Louverture’s absence in the colony paved the way for Dessalines to assume the military rank of general-in-chief in what he began to call the “Indigenous Army.” The perceived threat to universal liberty in Saint-Domingue quickly turned the revolution into a war for independence. This was an all-out war. It was characterized by extreme violence on both sides since both armies assumed that the only solution was the complete eradication of the opposing forces. Leclerc argued that the only way to make Saint-Domingue productive again was to kill the entire population and to start fresh with enslaved captives from Africa.

Dessalines’s army, aided by a bout of yellow fever that ravaged the French army, gained the upper hand. In mid-1803 Dessalines began to plan for independence. The final battled occurred outside the city of Cap-Français at Vertières, and on 29 November 1803 Dessalines signed a peace treaty with Leclerc’s successor, Donatien Marie Joseph Rochambeau, calling for the evacuation of the French army. The treaty provided for the safe evacuation of the French army and any French planters who wished to leave. It also guaranteed the security of those planters who wished to stay. Louverture had previously promised the safety of white plantation owners if they wished to return to their former plantations and Dessalines’s assurances appeared to be mirroring such a strategy. He did not keep this promise, however, and many of these white French plantation owners were killed on Dessalines’s orders.

Independence

A month after the evacuation of the French, on 1 January 1804, Dessalines gathered his generals at Gonaïves and gave a speech that declared the island’s independence from France. This speech was soon published as being addressed to the “citizens of Haiti.” In this proclamation, Dessalines swore “eternal hatred to the French” but promised not to intervene in the affairs of the other empires of the Atlantic. At the time, Dessalines was courting the governments of Britain, Spain, and the United States in an attempt to secure recognition of the island’s independence from France as well as to find trading partners. This recognition was not forthcoming. Dessalines’s speech represents the world’s second successful declaration of independence to form a lasting nation-state, after the United States, and it also created the second independent nation in the Americas. On the same day, Dessalines was named governor-general for life of “Hayti.” This proclamation emphasized the many ways that the French influence could still be felt in the new country and highlighted the need for Haitians to prepare for battle. This call to arms resulted in a series of violent and public massacres of the remaining white French citizens on the island between February and April 1804. A small number of skilled individuals were spared for their perceived usefulness to the new country and British and American merchants were protected. In describing these massacres, Dessalines declared, “I have avenged America.”

In November 1804 Dessalines proclaimed himself Emperor Jacques I of Hayti, but he did not publish a national constitution until 1805. This constitution renewed the law that prohibited slavery and undertook to regulate the social, legal, and commercial structure of the country. Dessalines assumed complete control of the governance and military leadership of the country and ruled Haiti in an authoritarian manner. The 1805 constitution declared that all Haitians were citizens of the same family and were to be considered “black.” This designation was an attempt to eliminate the socio-racial hierarchies that had carried over from the colonial period. Despite efforts like this, Dessalines’s rule, in fact, had a lot in common with the colonial period and many former slaves were forced to go back to plantation labor and once more worked the land for the benefit of others.

By late 1806 Dessalines’s authoritarian rule had inspired resistance among the leading generals of the army, who organized a plot for his overthrow. On 17 October 1806 Dessalines was assassinated by a group of rebels near Pont Rouge just outside of Port-au-Prince. He was shot and his body torn to pieces and paraded through the city. Following Dessalines’s death, a battle for national leadership ensued between the generals Henry Christophe and Alexandre Pétion. Christophe was elected to office under a new constitution in 1806, but he did not agree with the republican style of government. He and his supporters retreated to the north and published a new constitution in 1807. The country split in civil war and Pétion was elected president of the Republic of Haiti in the southern and western departments. For the next decade, the country existed under the two governments of Haiti in a civil war stalemate, which sometimes flared up into outright war.

While the Haitian government had declared independence in 1804, the French government did not immediately acknowledge its defeat and waited until 1825 to extend official diplomatic recognition to Haiti. And, even after such a long time, the French only did so in exchange for an enormous indemnity payment from the Haitian government to compensate the former plantation owners who had lost their human and territorial property during the revolution. The British, Dutch, and Danish empires implicitly recognized Haitian independence in 1826 when they sent consuls to the island, but the United States waited until 1862 to recognize Haiti’s independence. While all of these governments withheld official diplomatic recognition after the Haitian declaration of independence, merchants traded with Haiti, legally and illegally, and helped to support the island’s independence from France.

Following his death, Dessalines was incorporated into the Vodou pantheon as “Ogoun Desalin.” The figure of Ogoun in Haitian Vodou is the innovation of a syncretic amalgamation of the Catholic Saint Jacques and the African warrior spirit Ogoun. Dessalines is the only leader of Haiti to have been named to the Vodou pantheon, and this highlights his continued importance in Haiti’s history.

• Haitidoi JJ Dessalines

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