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Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—Venezuela’s foreign affairs minister, Yván Gil, stated that the Organization of American States (OAS) lacks authority to comment on Venezuela’s internal affairs; furthermore, he reiterated that Venezuela is not a member of this organization. Minister Gil’s statements were issued in response to interventionist claims by the current head of OAS, Suriname diplomat Albert Ramdin.

Ramdin had written the following on social media: “Venezuelan authorities must ensure that the processes for appointing the attorney general and the ombudsman meet minimum standards of transparency, merit, and citizen participation… The appointment of authorities who offer credible guarantees of independence for all sectors of society can represent a fundamental step towards national reconciliation and a democratic transition.”

Gil said that it is “deeply dissonant that an official of that body would presume to comment on processes that correspond exclusively to the Venezuelan people and their constitutional order.”

This regional organization, long considered an appendage of the US Department of State, did not emit any protest after the criminal US strikes on Venezuela on January 3, which resulted in the murder of more than 100 Venezuelans and the illegal abduction and imprisonment of Constitutional President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Deputy Cilia Flores.

Minister Gil also noted that Ramdin’s statements were reminiscent of “the nefarious legacy of his predecessor Luis Almagro,” who was known for his aversion to the Venezuelan government and for supporting the Venezuelan far-right. Minister Gil reiterated that “Venezuela will continue its course of self-determination, an inalienable right of its people.”

In 2017, President Nicolás Maduro formally announced Venezuela’s withdrawal from the OAS. The legal process of Venezuela’s departure from the international organization—known by many as the US Ministry of Colonies—was finalized in 2019, based on the fact that the then-secretary general, Luis Almagro, interfered recurrently in Venezuela’s internal affairs.

The Venezuelan parliament reported last Friday that it received 21 new applications—18 for the position of ombudsperson and three for attorney general. Simultaneously, it announced the extension of the deadline for the selections, aiming at reaching unanimity in the Constitutional process despite the overwhelming Chavista majority in parliament.

Trump Boasts Disproportionate Use of Force During Assault on Venezuela, ‘Unprecedented Weapons’ Use

Among the new candidates is journalist Vladimir Villegas, brother of former Minister of Culture Ernesto Villegas, who had initially also registered for the same position but ultimately withdrew from the process following opposition criticism. Former opposition deputy Marialbert Barrios is also on the list of candidates for ombudsperson. In total, there are 78 applications for this position and 76 for attorney general.

Analysts claim that it is highly improbable that the popular United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which has dominated elections for the last 27 years, will allow the far-right Venezuelan opposition to have one of its sympathizers in the Attorney General’s Office; however, it is possible that it will allow it in the case of the Ombudsperson’s Office.

Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff

OT/JRE/SL


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Every day, President Claudia Sheinbaum gives a morning presidential press conference and Mexico Solidarity Media posts English language summaries, translated by Mexico Solidarity’s Pedro Gellert. Previous press conference summaries are available here.

Health as a Right: Results and Direct CareThe public health system is being strengthened through a universal pharmaceutical catalogue, modernized purchase system, and domestic production, with a focus on effective treatments. The measles prevention strategy is making progress, with 17.2 million vaccines administered and declining infection rates, providing coverage for children and unvaccinated adults.

Drug supplies have reached record levels, in the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) with 371.2 million doses and up to 97.6% coverage, in the Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers (ISSSTE) with 97% national coverage, and in the IMSS-Bienestar program with 162 million doses distributed throughout the country. With dignified care teams, the 079 hotline, and digital platforms, patient follow-up is guaranteed.

Science, Not Speculation, in the Gulf of MexicoIn relation to last week’s oil spill, it was reported that so far there are no reports of leaks at facilities, strengthening the hypothesis that the source is natural oil seeps, a phenomenon that is present in the area. Meanwhile, cleanup efforts, scientific analysis, and inter-institutional investigations continue to responsibly clarify the source of the spill without concealing the facts.

Energy Sovereignty: The Public Sector FirstThe 4T energy reform is recovering the country’s energy sovereignty after decades of liberalization, initiated by then president Salinas de Gortari and deepened in 2013. The new policy is that electric power generation prioritizes the public sector and that the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and Pemex are companies belonging to the people, not monopolies.

The CFE must generate at least 54% of the energy (target of 63%); in oil, Pemex has the priority, and contracts without unfair terms are permitted.

Infrastructure That Works: Accountability, Results, and a Vision for the FutureThe Felipe Angeles International Airport (AIFA) is consolidating its position. It boasts over 18 million passengers, with a record high of 25,189 in a single day, and more than one million tons of cargo transported, 97% of which is international. The most frequented destinations confirm its growth as a strategic hub.

A Strong State for Truth and IdentificationReforms to the General Population Law and the General Law on Enforced Disappearances/Abductions strengthen forensic records, national data sharing, and coordination among prosecutors’ offices, so that unidentified individuals can be identified more quickly. The goal is to build a State with greater capacity to search, identify, and provide answers in such cases.

Justice for the Sonora River: Comprehensive Remediation and HealthThe Remediation Plan calls for an investment of over 2.22 billion pesos (US$120 million) with participation from Grupo México and the federal, state, and local governments. It includes a hospital in Ures, epidemiological monitoring, a toxicology laboratory, access to drinking water, and environmental renewal. It involves not just medical care, but comprehensive remediation for the damage caused.


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This article by Cristóbal Martínez Riojas originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 edition of El Economista.

The enrollment of domestic workers in the IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute) has not taken off nearly three years after the law forced employers to register them for social security regardless of the number of days they work.

This March 30th was International Domestic Workers’ Day, and in Mexico, incorporation into social security is stagnant and even registers a slight decline.

Last February there were 59,017 domestic workers with social security , 296 fewer registrations than in May 2023 when 59,313 affiliations were reported —the date on which the obligation came into effect—, according to data from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS).

In percentage terms it represents a decrease of 0.49%, but in everyday life it is the lack of access to health and housing for this sector of the employed population in Mexico.

Social Security for Domestic Work is Now Mandatory

On May 16, 2023, the Mexican Congress unanimously approved an amendment to the Social Security Law that made IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute) affiliation mandatory for domestic workers. Previously, in 2019, a pilot program for their affiliation was in operation following a Supreme Court ruling.

Membership provides access to the insurance offered by the IMSS under its mandatory regime: medical coverage, hospital and pharmaceutical care, disability and life insurance in case of possible incapacity resulting from illness or work risk, coverage for accidents on the way to work, access to social benefits, retirement insurance, unemployment in old age and old age, among others.

However, despite being a right, it is still far from being fully realized by this employed population. In Mexico, there are approximately 2.3 million people employed in paid domestic work, representing 3.8% of the total workforce, according to the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE).

IMSS Affiliation of Domestic Workers

According to INEGI, 69.5% of people employed in domestic work do not receive any employment benefits.

“I do think it’s a great step forward that sectors of the population that were previously invisible are being included. Domestic work is undervalued by most people. They think it’s very easy. It’s a job like any other that deserves recognition because you also go and give a part of your life. I hope it reaches more people so they can have this right to health, which is universal and mandatory,” shares Rosario, a domestic worker affiliated with the IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute) who asked that her last name be omitted.

“I think it is more about dissemination, both in the media and by employers; that is, they have to inform their workers because many people have no idea.”

Rosario has been enrolled in the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) since 2014, before the pilot enrollment program and before it became mandatory. She recounts that her employer registered her with the IMSS that year because she needed surgery. However, at that time she could only access voluntary enrollment and had to wait three years to receive tertiary care, which includes surgeries.

Given this background, the IMSS only migrated Rosario’s file to the mandatory program and her employer makes her contributions annually.

Paid domestic work is mostly done by women, as nine out of ten people dedicated to these activities are women, according to data from INEGI.

According to data from INEGI, 97% of all domestic workers work without a written contract, 2.5% had one, and 0.4% said they did not know.

“They are unaware that it is already a law”

Rosario says that the two people she knows who do paid domestic work are not affiliated with the IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute). “They don’t have social security . There’s still a lot of ignorance about the fact that it’s already the law,” Rosario says.

From her perspective, it is necessary to give greater publicity to this membership program and emphasize that it is a change in the law that grants them this right.

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When is International Domestic Workers’ Day commemorated?

From her experience, Rosario believes that this program is a success, with aspects to improve, but that it gives visibility to domestic workers and grants them rights like other workers.

“I have received good care, it has been slow, but I have received it,” she adds.

Her affiliation with the IMSS has allowed her to have specialized medical care and medications for a chronic disease that was diagnosed at the Institute.

In 1988, March 30th was established as International Domestic Workers’ Day with the aim of advocating for the rights of this population, promoting their work in dignified conditions and recognizing their contribution to the global economy.

The post Domestic Work: Social Security Earned, Compliance Pending appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.


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This editorial by Juan Salazar Vázquez originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 issue of La Jornada de Oriente, the Puebla edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those ofMexico Solidarity Mediaor theMexico Solidarity Project*.*

China’s reaction to Mexico’s new tariffs revealed a problem deeper than a simple trade dispute. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce accused Mexico of imposing barriers to trade and investment and warned that it reserves the right to retaliate. Beyond the diplomatic controversy, the episode raises a fundamental question: can Mexico maintain an effective tariff policy without its own industrial strategy?

The answer, so far, appears to be negative. The Mexican government has defended these measures as an attempt to level the playing field and protect domestic production. However, in practice, Mexican trade policy is not operating with a uniform approach. If the argument is to correct asymmetries and respond to practices that harm domestic industry, then it is clear that this logic is not applied with the same rigor to all trading partners. This reveals one of the main weaknesses of the current strategy: rather than responding to a national vision of development, it seems to selectively adjust to the pressures of the North American geopolitical environment.

For more than two decades, the trade relationship between Mexico and China has assumed a strategic role, but we must recognize its asymmetrical nature. The development models implemented by both countries have been completely different. While Mexico shifted to neoliberalism, implementing an export-led growth strategy, China combined its international integration with an active industrial policy, protection of key sectors, productive financing, and the development of technological capabilities. For this reason, it consolidated its position as Mexico’s second-largest trading partner, and its share of total Mexican trade has grown significantly since 2002.

Our country is trying to reposition itself as a reliable production platform for North America, but it is doing so without resolving a fundamental contradiction: it wants to reduce its dependence on Chinese imports without having yet built a sufficiently robust industrial base to replace them.

Trade between the two countries exhibits an uneven pattern: China exports manufactured goods, machinery, and high-tech products to Mexico, while Mexico exports primarily minerals, copper, lead, and some vehicles to China. This reflects a less favorable trade position for Mexico; in fact, its trade deficit with China has grown considerably.

Added to this is a crucial element: the relationship with China cannot be understood apart from the United States. Mexico does not trade with China in a vacuum; it does so within a regional structure dominated by the USMCA and the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing. In this context, our country is trying to reposition itself as a reliable production platform for North America, but it is doing so without resolving a fundamental contradiction: it wants to reduce its dependence on Chinese imports without having yet built a sufficiently robust industrial base to replace them.

Therefore, tariffs can end up producing the opposite effect to what they promise. When there is no domestic supply capable of competitively replacing imported goods, the cost of the tariff doesn’t disappear: it is passed on. It is passed on to production chains, inputs, manufacturing costs, and ultimately, to the prices paid by businesses and consumers. Instead of triggering reindustrialization, the measure can become a mere revenue-generating mechanism or a penalty that makes domestic production more expensive.

In terms of investment, Chinese FDI in Mexico has increased since 2010, especially in manufacturing and auto parts; however, this investment has not fundamentally changed the pattern of trade integration, but rather largely replicates it. This is due to the limited capacity for support, guidance, and integration with Mexican industrial development. Nevertheless, China remains interested in increasing its FDI flows to our country. Mexico faces the challenge of better leveraging Chinese investment and strengthening its industrial capacity to overcome a structurally unequal trade relationship.

Currently, trade policy, within the framework of the USMCA, has aligned with the interests of our main trading partner, raising tariffs on Chinese goods. While the measure aims to reduce imports and promote import substitution, thereby increasing revenue, the underlying policy has thus far proven entirely ineffective, shifting the impact of the tariffs onto production costs and final prices.

The lesson is clear: without a policy aimed at increasing the productive investment rate to accompany the country’s reindustrialization process, trade barriers will be inefficient due to the rigidity of the productive structure.

The post Tariffs Without Industry: The Trap of Mexican Trade Policy Towards China appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.


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This article by Gerardo Carmona originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 issue of La Jornada Estado de México, the Mexico state edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

A judge formally charged Jesús “N”, accused of his alleged involvement in the armed attack against striking workers of the Llantera Tornel company, who were standing guard outside the Tultitlán plant on March 18.

According to the investigation by the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Mexico (FGJEM), there were approximately 50 people in the vicinity of the plant that day, including workers maintaining the strike vigil. A group of approximately 40 individuals arrived at the scene in several vehicles. Among them, according to the investigation, were Jesús “N” and Alejandro “N”.

Attackers Demanded Strike be Called Off

Initially, the aggression consisted of insults and stone-throwing, but it later escalated. According to the report, the aggressors demanded that the workers end their strike and leave the area, but when they received no response, several of the attackers pulled out firearms and shot at the strikers, injuring four workers.

Municipal police officers who responded to the scene arrested Jesús “N” and Alejandro “N”, who were then brought before a judge and taken to a state prison. There, the judge ordered criminal proceedings to be initiated against Jesús “N” for attempted aggravated homicide.

As a precautionary measure, he was ordered to be held in pretrial detention, and a two-month period was set for the completion of the supplementary investigation. Alejandro “N”, an alleged accomplice in the same events, had already been formally charged, so both face accusations stemming from the attack against the Tornel workers.

The case has once again brought the conflict at the tire factory into the spotlight, where the strike has ceased to be merely a dispute between the company and the union, becoming instead a matter of security and criminal justice. What began as a workers’ protest escalated into an armed attack against those protecting the movement.

Although the prosecution attributes participation in these events to Jesús “N”, his responsibility will have to be resolved in the following stages of the judicial process.

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This article by Mireya Cuéllar originally appeared in the March 31, 2026 issue of La Jornada Baja California, the Baja California edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

San Quintín, Baja California. How many workers are registered with the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) in San Quintín? The state Secretary of Labour, Alejandro Arregui Ibarra, hesitates. Before revealing the number, he offers an explanation: “Most agricultural workers are seasonal, meaning they are hired according to the product’s cycle and seasonality… this causes registrations and cancellations at the IMSS. The latest figure we have is that there are almost 5,000 registered workers, but the berry season is just beginning.”

According to the latest agricultural census conducted by INEGI in 2022, there were 47,197 farmworkers in San Quintín, of whom 28,841 were men and 18,356 were women. Based on this figure, there are at least 42,000 people living without any form of social security in one of the most technologically advanced agricultural areas in the country, a pioneer in protected agriculture (greenhouses and shade netting), where all irrigation is by drip system.

Raquel started harvesting cucumbers at age 8 on the Los Pinos ranch. “Since I couldn’t carry the bucket, because I couldn’t handle it, I made little piles (of the vegetables) on the ground. My dad would collect them and put them in his bucket. The same with the tomatoes. We children helped,” she recalls, adding that the situation began to change after 2015, when thousands of farmworkers blocked the Transpeninsular Highway and stopped the strawberry and tomato harvest.

“Things have improved,” she points out, “because from the age of 10—imagine, I was in fifth grade!—I was part of a group of kids who waited for the truck on Saturdays and Sundays to go weed or pick scallions, broccoli… and then, when I was 14 or 15, I went to pick strawberries. I could earn a thousand pesos a day picking them because I picked them so fast. And I even stopped studying for a year. When the inspectors came, they would warn my boss a day in advance; we were always on alert and would run and hide in the woods.”

At 36, she has worked in several agricultural fields. Her last job was with BerryMex, where she was so productive that the company helped her obtain an H2A visa so she could work at a U.S. facility. There, she selected strawberry roots during September, October, and November (a cycle she completed several years in a row). Once grown, the seedlings are brought from Nevada or California to be planted in San Quintín, in fields that operate under contract with the multinational corporation.

Guadalupe García Darío, originally from Oaxaca and a resident of the area for about 30 years, recounts that she lives without basic services in the San Francisco neighborhood and is experiencing problems with her land due to irregularities in its sale. Photo: Edgar Lima

“We are being selected to work in the US”

“They select us. One of the requirements is having a passport and no problem traveling to the United States. They take us there; we complete the initial application process. If we qualify, they take us to the consulate (in Tijuana), pay for our work visa… it costs 3,200 pesos. They don’t charge us for housing there, so we can save money. We sleep in barracks. And you have to return immediately if you want to come back the following year.”

There is no option other than “going out and paying”

The contracts at the large companies in San Quintín are for five or six months, she explains, “and they don’t always renew them, sometimes not until the following harvest year,” so there’s no other option but to work “going out and paying” for part of the year. “It’s a system that allows us to go to different ranches: to pick peas, cucumbers, whatever’s available, and since nobody asks for papers, we can start working as soon as we arrive from Oaxaca, Chiapas, or Guerrero. It also helps young couples who aren’t yet 18 and don’t have papers… even Haitians were here for a while,” she says without a hint of annoyance.

The technological development achieved by large companies allows for year-round crops, which led to the settlement of farm laborers in San Quintín, forming a community that identifies as “Oaxacalifornians,” a term that initially had a derogatory connotation, but is now reclaimed by some sectors.

In the 2020 census, 41.3 percent of those living here reported being born in Oaxaca. Raquel’s parents are from Tlaxiaco and arrived when they were 15 and 16 years old, with a six-month-old baby—her older brother—going straight to the agricultural fields.

In the 1970s and 80s, migration consisted mainly of men traveling without their families. Many of these day laborers alternated between harvesting in San Quintín, from June to September, and agricultural work in Sinaloa, which began in October and ended in late April. Later, in addition to tomatoes, spring and winter crops such as strawberries and green onions began to be grown, extending production throughout the year.

Thus, the migration pattern was transformed from temporary and individual to permanent and family-based, as noted in the study Agricultural Growth and Working Conditions in the San Quintín Valley, by the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS).

SAN QUINTIN, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO – 22JANUARY26 – Farmworkers and other residents of the Zapata colonia in the San Quintin Valley blockade the Transpeninsular Highway to protest corruption in the new government of the San Quintin municipality.

Day labourers with the highest minimum wage

The minimum wage today is 440 pesos—up from 130 pesos in 2015—the highest in the country. Businesses and public institutions are combating sexual harassment against women in the fields, children are rarely seen in the countryside, and most families no longer live in the shacks on the ranches, although their homes in the settlements are very precarious.

The United States sometimes includes labor issues in the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) negotiations. This has changed the situation for farmworkers, as the study describes over more than 150 pages.

They do not accumulate weeks of contributions to the IMSS.

However, this study, published in 2022 – one of the most up-to-date and with a large amount of data, because it obtained permission from the owners of the fields to survey the day laborers at their workplace – found that on average the day laborers accumulate only three years of contributions to the IMSS, not only because the contracts are temporary, but because, as the workers themselves expressed, they are registered for a few days and then deregistered, so that they do not accumulate weeks.

The study concludes that, although the working conditions of day laborers have changed, “this transformation has not occurred in a homogeneous way.

While some workers have formal contracts and all legally mandated benefits, it is possible to identify those who work for daily wages with different employers and without any recognized employment relationship,” which is “a consequence of the very development of the export-oriented agribusiness in the region.” However, it leaves large companies untouched.

In this regard, the study Agricultural Day Laborers and Transnational Corporations in the San Quintín Valley, by Anna Mary Garrapa, published by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, offers another angle on this export-centered development scheme.

“In true Californian style, the region shifted to intensive production of high-value crops, and thanks to technological innovations, increased yields per hectare and balanced production were achieved almost year-round. Tomatoes, the leading crop in the valley, were reduced, while varieties expanded, particularly onions, cucumbers, and finally strawberries.”

In particular, with the Driscoll’s/BerryMex model (where one acts as the exporter and the other as the producer), he explains, “the farmer receives exclusively proprietary varieties, which he has to destroy once the production quantity required by the marketing company is met… the relationship of the local company associated with them is very close and is characterized by a strong financial dependence and deep control of the entire production process…”

The valley is an extension of California

The valley is “geographically and economically much more integrated with the United States than with Mexico.” Its border location aligns with the thriving U.S. consumer markets and its primary export orientation. Berry production “represents the most emblematic phenomenon of how the valley currently constitutes a productive extension of California.”

But “despite the huge profits made in the US market for fresh berries… wage conditions and access to social protection for employees, especially temporary ones, have not substantially improved after the massive work stoppage in March 2015.”

“The separation between landowners, agricultural companies, and transnational corporations, combined with the multiple levels of labor intermediation, creates an extremely complicated context for workers, who in many cases are unable to identify the economic actors ultimately responsible for the exploitation they experience in the fields,” Garrapa concludes.

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By Carmen Navas, Maisa Bascuas and Pilar Troya – Mar 27, 2026

To break a nation, imperialism understands it must break the will of those who sustain the social fabric. In hybrid warfare, the woman is not a passive victim but a combatant cadre who reorganizes the collective will in every commune and every territory.

This March 8th, a day in which the world honors the working woman, we pay tribute to the anti-imperialist women of our continent. With their body-territories, their intellect, and their example, they are writing the most dignified pages of the contemporary history of Nuestra América.

We are moving through a stage marked by Trump’s aggression—a deepening of hybrid warfare—and a neocolonial war deployed through financial impunity and voracious extractivism. The advance of the far-right in the region is no coincidence; it seeks to impose a model of plunder where the weight of debt strangles the peoples’ sovereignty. In the face of resistance to direct invasion and the silent war of Unilateral Coercive Measures (UCMs) against Cuba and Venezuela, popular feminism emerges not only as a protest but as the backbone of survival and dignity.

Women at the Monument for the Heroines of Resistance and Independence, Caracas. 2025 (Prensa MinMujer).

  1. The 3 Lessons of Trump’s Aggression and the Neocolonial War in Latin America

The recent history of Nuestra América, marked by the shadow of the Monroe Doctrine and its update under the “Trump Corollary”—which persists as State logic in Washington—leaves us with three fundamental lessons regarding the nature of the current war against sovereignty.

1. The Woman’s Body as the First Territory of Defense
The attack of this past January 3rd against Venezuela was not just a military incursion; it was an affront to the dignity of a people that has decided to be free. On that day, 12 women gave their lives in combat. Nine of them were soldiers, members of the Presidential Honor Guard.

Imperialism understands that to break a nation, it must break the will of those who sustain the social fabric. In hybrid warfare, the woman is not a passive victim but a combatant cadre who reorganizes the collective will in every commune and every territory.

This lesson is intertwined with the “sowing” of Berta Cáceres in Honduras. A decade ago, the extractivist elite believed that by assassinating Berta, they would extinguish the voice of the Lenca people. They did not understand that her body, like those of the Venezuelan female militia (a component of the Bolivarian National Armed Force) and communards, represents resistance against dams and transnational capital.

The illegal detention of social activist Cilia Flores is yet another attempt to kidnap this symbol of dignity and political resistance. Illegally detained in the United States, Cilia Flores is a renowned social and political activist. She was the lawyer for the officers who rose up during the military insurrections of 1992, including Commander Hugo Chávez. On this day, women of the world call for her release and return to Venezuela.

2. The Resistance Economy is Feminine
In Cuba, the “silent war” of UCMs has taken the form of an unprecedented energy siege. By preventing the arrival of fuel, Washington seeks to transform daily life into a hell of scarcity. However, on the island, resistance has the face of a woman. It is they who, through popular organization and community bonds, invent daily solutions to sustain life in the face of the blockade.

This resistance economy does not seek profit, but rather the reproduction of life. While the international financial system uses debt to discipline nations, Cuban and Venezuelan women oppose it with an economy of collective care. In Venezuela, 80% of the leaders in communes and communal councils are women. They decide, plan, and execute the projects that keep the social structure afloat under the blockade. The lesson is clear: socialism in Nuestra América survives because women have transformed the private sphere into a space for political management and economic resistance against imperialist aggression.

3. Solidarity and Peace as People’s Diplomacy
The recent action by Claudia Sheinbaum’s government in Mexico, sending ships with 1,200 tons of aid to Cuba, breaks the logic of financial submission. “Sorority” is not just an interpersonal concept, but an international political category.

We also see this in the mobilization of popular organizations that, defying external pressures, coordinate the delivery of aid and mutual support between besieged nations. March 21st, saw the arrival of the Nuestra América Convoy, organized by various movements and popular organizations. This grassroots solidarity is what allows Cuba to resist and Venezuela to deepen its communal model.

When Mexico defies Washington’s pressure to give aid to the island, and when women organize themselves into feminist brigades like the “Cilia Flores Internationalist Brigade for Peace,” they are practicing a form of feminism that prioritizes the lives of families and communities above the dictates of transnational capital. Solidarity is the tenderness—and the strategy—of the people.

Gabriela Barraza (Argentina), Viviremos y venceremos [We Will Live and We Will Overcome], 2021. Available at thetricontinenal.org.

  1. The 3 Tasks Popular Feminisms Call Us to Undertake

1. Institutionalize the Communal Management of People’s Power
In Venezuela, nearly 80% of leadership roles in communal councils are held by women. They are the street spokeswomen, the ones who plan projects and execute the sovereign budget. Faced with the advance of the far-right, the response is greater people’s power. The urgent task is to strengthen the National Popular Consultation and the commune model. It is there where popular feminism manages resources and responds to the imperialist offensive.

We must ensure that the territory’s resources are managed by those who inhabit and defend them, blocking the path for the impunity of militias (in Brazil, parapolice and paramilitary armed groups) and illegal power structures like those that tried to silence Marielle Franco in Brazil.

http://87.106.166.27/the-commune-and-popular-sovereignty-in-times-of-imperialist-siege/

2. Dismantle the Impunity of Neocolonial Extractivism
We cannot move toward the future without closing the wounds of impunity. The stories of Berta Cáceres in Honduras and Marielle Franco in Brazil are beacons, but also reminders of the ferocity of capital.

• Justice for Berta: Ten years after her assassination, the task is to dismantle the extractivist model that murders those who defend the commons. Punishment for the intellectual authors of Berta’s murder is an outstanding debt for the entire region in the fight against transnationals.
• Justice for Marielle: The recent conviction of the Brazão brothers in Brazil is a victory against paramilitary militias and parastatal power. The task is to eradicate the structures of political violence that damage the social fabric and attempt to silence Black women, faveladas, and dissidents who occupy spaces of power.

Berta and Marielle taught us that defending indigenous, peasant, and Afro-descendant territories and defending life in the cities is the same struggle. Their names are beacons that feed and sustain our daily resistance against patriarchy, colonialism, racism, and capitalism.

3. Push for Popular Agrarian Reform and Food Sovereignty
As our peasant sisters of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) teach us, an urgent task for grassroots feminism is the defense of the land. Popular agrarian reform is the right of women to decide over production and seeds in the face of extractivist agribusiness. For women, land is the space for the reproduction of culture and life. Without food sovereignty, national sovereignty is incomplete. We must strengthen the ties between peasant women and urban workers to guarantee that food is a right and not a commodity of debt.

  1. Message from Berta Cáceres

For the women of Nuestra América, the struggle is for life itself. Berta Cáceres, guardian of the rivers and the dignity of the peoples, left us a mandate that shakes the conscience of the entire continent:

Awaken, humanity! There is no more time. Our consciences will be shaken by the fact that we are contemplating self-destruction based on capitalism, racism, and patriarchy. In our worldviews, we are beings born of the earth, water, and corn. Of the rivers, we are ancestral custodians… Let us give our lives, if necessary, for the defense of humanity and the planet!

This cry from Berta is our compass. Faced with neocolonial aggression, our response is unity, the guardianship of our land, and unbreakable rebellion.

Long live the women who fight! Long live a free and sovereign Nuestra América! We shall overcome!

Carmen Navas is a Venezuelan political scientist, researcher at the Nuestra América Desk at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Maisa Bascuas is an Argentine political scientist, professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires, and Co-Coordinator of the Department of Feminisms of the Global South at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Pilar Troya is an Ecuadorian researcher and feminist activist. She has worked on public policies for equality and the women’s movement, and serves as Co-Coordinator of the Department of Feminisms of the Global South at Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.

(tricontinental)


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This column by Miguel Ángel Velázquez originally appeared in the March 31, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those ofMexico Solidarity Mediaor theMexico Solidarity Project*.*

It seems that finally, those in government have realized that for the ambitions of private businesses, a photo op trumps investment, and they never miss events where the important thing is to be in front of the cameras but never with a checkbook in hand.

It is obvious to almost everyone that Plan México, however well designed it may be, suffers from failed leadership that very few respect and almost no one follows, which hinders, or worse, makes impossible the flow of national investments, which is already beginning to be felt in every area of ​​the country and has injected a greater dose of uncertainty to those who do want to invest in Mexico.

But it is now impossible to hide the need to correct the course of the plan that has already broken all records for photographs, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the zero, or almost, investments that have meant that, economically, things are not as good as they should be.

It must be said, Ms. Altagracia, at the head of Plan México, simply doesn’t fit in. She has loyal and powerful friends, as well as her critics, which makes it urgent that this leadership—if we can even call it that—change hands and do more than just schedule the next photo op.

For now, it seems the plan is for there to be no plan. They talk about big investments, but where’s the money, where’s the work? It seems the plan is to show off suits and smiles for the photo op, and then, be completely forgotten. We’ve been at this for almost two years now, during which the checkbooks have languished from boredom.

A few days ago, at the initiative of the general director of the National Institute for Adult Education, Armando Contreras, an important group of businessmen met in a club in this city to launch a project in which the private sector and the government, represented at the event by the Attorney General, Ernestina Godoy, will address economic growth and security.

The project makes sense if, as we said, fewer photos can be taken and more investments made from a security project that offers lower levels of danger for companies and their members.

It is now urgent to take into consideration that, as it stands, Plan México is useless to everyone because there is no investment, and this means fewer jobs, which leads to more candidates joining organized crime groups.

And the issue of national investment is, as we said, yet another concern on President Sheinbaum’s agenda, as if she didn’t have enough on her plate. The announcements of new investments that never materialize must end now, and with them, the change or evolution of Plan México, which, from whatever perspective you look at it, has failed. Let’s hope for a happy ending, not an endless, agonizing death. Beware.

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Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—During the fourth week of March 2026, Venezuela received two additional groups of citizens under the Return to the Homeland (Vuelta a la Patria) program. These latest arrivals at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, La Guaira state, reinforce the Venezuelan state’s commitment to providing a dignified and sovereign alternative to the mass deportations orchestrated by the US regime.

The repatriation process is governed by the 2025 agreement between Caracas and Washington, serving as a vital channel for nationals fleeing the systemic failures, labor exploitation, and racist persecution that characterize the US immigration system.

On Wednesday, Deputy Mervin Maldonado, the newly appointed head of the Return to the Homeland program, was present to personally receive the migrants repatriated on the final flight of the week. On Tuesday, the National Assembly authorized Maldonado’s appointment to this executive position, replacing Camilla Fabri.

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A post shared by Mervin Maldonado (@mervinmaldonado)

Detailed flight data and statistics
Last week, a total of 302 Venezuelans were repatriated on two separate flights. With these arrivals, the program has processed 29 flights since the beginning of 2026, bringing the year’s total to 4,809 repatriated citizens.

When combined with the 23,067 citizens who returned under the current agreement in 2025, the program continues to function as a critical humanitarian bridge against imperialist hostility. The specific data for last week’s flights are as follows:

• Flight 126: Arrived on Monday, March 23, from Miami, Florida, with 131 repatriated citizens. The group included six minors, 10 women, and 115 men. The flight was operated by an airline without commercial identification.
• Flight 127: Arrived Wednesday, March 25, from Phoenix, Arizona, carrying 171 individuals. The group consisted of seven minors, 35 women, and 129 men. The flight was operated by the US-based Eastern Airlines.

Sovereign defense against imperialist-driven displacement since 2018
The Return to the Homeland program has remained a pillar of the Bolivarian Revolution’s social policy since its establishment in 2018. Over the past eight years, this state-led initiative has provided a shield for over one million citizens seeking to escape the xenophobia and carceral detention prevalent in the US and its regional subordinates.

The current migration patterns are not a coincidence but a direct result of the illegal US blockade and the multifaceted hybrid war designed to destabilize Venezuela. While the US regime initially incentivized migration to promote a “failed state” narrative, it has since pivoted to the aggressive criminalization of the very diaspora it helped produce.

Venezuelan Diplomats Set to Arrive In Washington This Week; New Head of Return to the Homeland Program

In response to this aggression, the Venezuelan government implements a comprehensive social care protocol for every returning citizen. This includes immediate medical screening, psychological support, and socioeconomic integration measures to ensure migrants can contribute to the country’s productive life. This sovereign shield remains an essential defense, reaffirming the right of all Venezuelans to build their futures in their own land, free from the shadow of imperialist intervention.

Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff

OT/JRE/SF


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This article by Nancy Escutia originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 edition of El Economista.

The title of Human Resources could disappear in companies, as an initiative to reform the Federal Labour Law (LFT) and prohibit terms such as HR or Human Capital in departments of private organizations has been presented in the Senate of the Republic.

The proposal promoted by Senator Alejandro González Yáñez, from the Workers Party (PT) caucus, seeks to add a final paragraph to Article 3 of the LFT to prohibit the naming, implementation or use of expressions such as Human Resources, Human Capital or any other analogous one.

According to the legislator, these terms objectify people and reduce them to a commodity or productive asset; therefore, he proposes that these titles be eliminated and replaced with designations that recognize the dignity, rights, and human character of working people.

“By presenting labour management as a technical or administrative matter, tensions inherent in the relationship between capital and labour are rendered invisible. Decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives, such as layoffs, restructurings, or changes in working conditions, are presented as simple resource management processes.”

He mentions that “language is never neutral” and that in the workplace, concepts should not dehumanize or subordinate people’s dignity. “This change responds to a basic principle: working to live, not living to work , understanding work as a means to happiness, personal and collective fulfillment,” he stated.

Senator Alejandro González Yáñez emphasizes in the bill that prohibiting the use of terms such as Human Resources and Human Capital does not deny the importance of these areas in organizations; however, he reiterates that this encourages viewing people as “resources”, similar to the use of words such as “capital”, “technology” and “raw materials”.

“We are witnessing how language reflects a logic in which the primary value of people lies in their ability to generate profit.” He adds that work is not only an economic activity, but also a source of identity, community, and personal fulfillment that includes individuals with aspirations, emotions, values, and rights.

The explanatory statement of the initiative indicates that when people are seen as resources, it is understood that they are elements that can be used, managed, optimized and in some cases even replaced, which dehumanizes them.

Why is the Concept of Human Resources Used?

The term HR emerged in the 1920s to refer to all personnel management processes at work, according to the research Evolution of the concept of Human Resources, from the point of view of psychology and administration, published in the journal Suma de Negocios of Konrad Lorenz University.

The study indicated that these areas were necessary within the strategic vision of companies, since the results in terms of performance, objectives and goals depended on them, in line with the increase in the quality of work and the balance and attention to the needs of the workers.

In this way, the Human Resources areas took over recruitment activities, including recruitment, onboarding, training, career development, compensation, performance evaluation, and labour-management relations, as well as research on culture, climate, turnover, job satisfaction, and resistance to change. They also promoted the design and implementation of procedures and job descriptions.

However, the initiative in the Senate states that Human Resources has now focused on policies that seek to maximize labour efficiency without paying attention to the overall well-being of people, as well as on the evaluation of their performance and productivity, which has increased work pressure and depersonalization.

“By presenting labour management as a technical or administrative matter, tensions inherent in the relationship between capital and labour are rendered invisible. Decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives, such as layoffs, restructurings, or changes in working conditions, are presented as simple resource management processes,” the proposal states.

New Titles to Replace Human Resources

With the prohibition of the use of HR in companies, the proposed reform to the Federal Labour Law proposes the use of expressions such as “people management”, “employee experience” or “labour relations”, terms that have already begun to be used in some organizations.

In this regard, Human Resources developer Sara Climent Blasco shares that changing the name of HR areas reflects “a more modern and people-centered vision,” therefore, she suggests some alternatives to consider: “People and culture,” “People operations,” “People experience,” “Talent management,” or “Culture and talent.”

Pointing out that words are not neutral, Alejandro González Yáñez adds that promoting language within the Federal Labour Law (LFT) that recognizes the dignity and complexity of the human experience will help in building fairer and more respectful work cultures.

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From his recording studio in the Playa municipality in Habana, Cuba, surrounded by pianos, consoles, and the vestiges of a career dedicated to socially conscious song, Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez analyzed the complex scenario Cuba is experiencing under the current United States siege.

The author of Ojalá and Pequeña serenata diurna was emphatic in a dialogue with the Mexican new outlet La Jornada when defining the willingness of Cubans to protect their independence: “A large part of our people would be willing to defend our sovereignty with weapons, if necessary.”

For Rodríguez, defending the island is not an abstract concept but a reality that has shaped his own life. The singer-songwriter recalled how his musical career began during his military service and his internationalist missions.

In response to recent threats from the US regime to “take over Cuba,” Rodríguez reaffirmed his ties to Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), an institution he considers his training ground.

“Imperial aggression might seem like one of our natural conditions,” he noted, explaining that the people’s response to the siege is not a momentary outburst, but the result of an “intense and sometimes contradictory life” that has forged the national character.

A history of distrust toward the ‘turbulent North’
When asked whether the civilian population would defend the island in the event of an invasion, the troubadour appealed to historical memory to justify Cuban distrust of Washington.

He mentioned events ranging from 19th-century attempts to purchase the island to the imposition of the Platt Amendment. “There is a long history of reasons for Cubans to distrust ‘the turbulent and brutal North,’ as our apostle, José Martí, described it,” he stated.

According to Rodríguez, the strength to resist the blockade and external pressures comes directly from the “forging of the nation” and a deep sense of belonging and patriotism.

Resistance, criticism, and evolution
Despite his firm defense of sovereignty, Rodríguez does not shy away from self-criticism. He defines himself as a man of “questions rather than answers” and advocates for human improvement far removed from fanaticism.

He acknowledges that the energy and economic blockade seeks to stifle the hope of young people by attempting to convince them that “there is no future in their country.”

“I have always seen Cuba resist,” he stated, while supporting the need for internal reforms and an “evolution” that benefits the people—as long as these transformations do not jeopardize the status of a sovereign nation, which he considers “fundamental.”

Nuestra América Convoy Ships Arrive in Cuba After Days Without Communication (+US Extrajudicial Killings)

The role of culture in the ‘Shield’ era
In contrast to regional initiatives such as the so-called “Shield of the Americas,” which Rodríguez describes as a sign of “imperial desperation” and a return to neocolonialism, the musician defends the role of education and culture as tools for freedom.

For Rodríguez, the battle for history is still ongoing: “If Cuba falls, history will be reinvented by its enemies.”

(Telesur)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/


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This article by Mireya Cuéllar originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

San Quintín, Baja California. Unpaved streets, no streetlights or public transportation; houses without electricity, water, or drainage, with septic tanks or latrines… dirt “parks,” without trees, without swings. It’s the arid poverty of the desert. The landscape bears no relation to the fact that agricultural workers live here with the highest wages in the country, simply because the border minimum wage is 420 pesos.

Nor does it have it with the mechanization of its large agricultural fields, with the shade mesh structures, the drip irrigation systems fed by 90 desalination plants, the succulent berries that are harvested, the more than 10 billion pesos annually that the production that is raised here is worth.

It doesn’t even resemble the rest of the Baja California landscape. Poverty in the state, according to the latest census, affects 13.4 percent of the population; in San Quintín, it reaches 34.9 percent, almost three times higher.

In the state, 10 percent of the population (on average) does not have access to nutritious food; in San Quintín, the indicator rises to 20 percent; 19 percent of the streets in the state do not even have a surface covering; here it is 89 percent… and so on.

San Quintín is bordered to the north by the municipality of Ensenada and to the south by Mulegé, Baja California Sur. Its residents are settled along the 90 kilometers that run from Camalú to El Rosario, on either side of the Transpeninsular Highway. Narrow and with only two lanes, it is the only road. There are no paved streets, bypasses, ring roads, or overpasses here. When it rains, the water floods the eastern part of town, overflowing the highway and eventually reaching the bay.

“What I can say is that there isn’t a single neighborhood with all the services: drainage, drinking water, electricity, street lighting, paving,” says the mayor, Miriam Cano.

10.9% of Inhabitants Cannot Read

The federal government conducted a survey in 30,000 homes to design the Justice Plan for San Quintín. It found that 10.9 percent of residents are illiterate, 12.1 percent are illiterate, 16.5 percent cannot use a cell phone or a computer, and 73.8 percent are unfamiliar with basic computer skills. In fact, many poverty indicators for the municipality are similar to, and even higher than, those of many other municipalities in Chiapas.

Only 20 percent of the population—counted for the development of the Justice Plan—has daily access to water; 40.6 percent, every two or three days; 36 percent, once a week; and 4.7 percent, every 15 days. Each month, the Ensenada State Public Services Commission, on which they still depend, publishes the water rationing schedule for the following 30 days on its website.

That’s for those who have water, because many neighborhoods don’t lack the infrastructure to receive it, because there isn’t any water there either. What little there is is hoarded by the well owners, who sell it to those who don’t have any. Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced during her last visit that a desalination plant will be built to provide water to those who don’t have it. To build it, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) is replacing the wiring on the towers that reach the southern part of the state; the current wiring can’t handle the increased load.

The power grid doesn’t have the capacity to carry more energy, neither for the population nor for a desalination plant. The energy supply is only sufficient to operate the desalination plants on the farms, which are necessary to sustain production.

In San Quintín, everything seems to be yet to be done. Established as a municipality in 2020, they elected their first mayor, Miriam Cano, last year. Previously, it was part of the municipality of Ensenada, with the municipal seat nearly 200 kilometers away. Also needed are doctors, medicine, the offices of the Tax Administration Service (SAT), and federal, state, and municipal agencies.

One of the things included in the Justice Plan is an “integrated center,” where there will be—in theory—offices of (federal) agencies so that people don’t have to go to Ensenada for a birth certificate or to register with the Tax Administration Service (SAT). Many Indigenous farmworkers don’t register with the SAT—essential for contributing to the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS)—because they would lose more than a day of work and have to spend money on transportation to avoid the three-and-a-half-hour (sometimes four, due to traffic) bus ride between San Quintín and Ensenada.

The lack of infrastructure is not the responsibility of the owners of the agricultural fields, says Alberto Leree, founder of the Baja California Agricultural Council, which represents large producers. He recalled that in 2015, when farmworkers abandoned the fields and mobilized demanding better living conditions, the then Undersecretary of the Interior (under Enrique Peña Nieto) Luis Miranda told Governor Francisco “Kiko” Vega—at a meeting where the businessman was also present—that the conflict could be resolved with 4 billion pesos, with the federal government contributing half and the state the other half.

“Kiko Vega didn’t accept,” he said, adding that he didn’t have the money, he recalled. The movement was forged in the neighborhoods—not in the workplaces—where families spent more than 130 pesos (a day’s wage at the time) to buy water and fill a drum that lasted them less than a week. Initially, it was the lack of water that organized them. Later, they rebelled not only against their living conditions but also against their working conditions.

Photo: Édgar Lima/La Jornada Baja California

“The PAN party opposed its becoming a district.”

“There’s a racist element in the way the National Action Party (PAN) treated San Quintín,” says a local politician. He recalled that the PAN systematically refused to grant it municipal status, and when someone pressed one of the governors—the PAN governed from 1989 to 2019—his response was: “Why would we want a mayor from Oaxaca?” in Baja California.

Miriam Cano, the councilwoman nominated by Morena, says that a few months ago a federal official gave her a dirty look when she warned him.

“But today the main problem for day labourers is that it’s useless to earn 8,000 pesos a week breaking their backs if they get home and there’s no electricity, no water, no drainage, no streets, no streetlights, and nothing but aspirin at the Social Security clinic… they spend a lot on healthcare, on using their cell phones; on transportation, 50 pesos per child to get to school; a drum of salt water… up to 1,800 pesos for a water truck: of course their money disappears. The price of water is outrageous.”

Here, people are raising their university-aged children by candlelight. “You only have to look at the high school students’ hands—she taught them—. They pick squash, green beans, peas, strawberries… they come from the countryside and have achieved an education, but their neighborhoods still lack water, electricity… also due to a lack of legal certainty regarding land ownership, because someone sold them a plot of communal land cheaply, without proper documentation.”

“The ranches have solved their water problems with wells and desalination plants. Imagine the anger the farmworkers feel when they see there is water for the crops, but not for their homes, to wash dishes, bathe or cook.”

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By Amanda Gelender  –  Mar 28, 2026

All Jews must kill Zionism within Judaism

I have come to have tremendous disdain for my people, the evil we have wrought, and the demons we have become. Our craven hypocrisy, our holocaust handwringing, our selfish dissociation, our bottomless both-sidesing, our catatonic inaction, our feeble sign-waving, our condescending condemnations, our wallowing victim complex, our self-indulgent betrayals, our brazen self-centeredness, our exploitative careerism, our blood and soil racism, our liberal cowardice, our mountains of empty platitudes amongst mountains of Palestinian corpses that we annihilated in cold blood. Israel has likely killed hundreds of thousands of people in two and half years of non-stop bombardment, executions, and engineered starvation in Gaza. The depths of our sadism seemingly knows no bounds.

One of the last times that Judaism’s breath and beating heart – that prophet Moses delivered – existed and showed itself died in Auschwitz, when Jewish Zionists were already busy building what would become the Jewish death colony, “Israel.”

Whether or not an echo of Moses’ Judaism can still exist or is recuperable is yet to be determined but I can confidently state: I don’t care, that’s not why I am here**,**I do not have the willingness or desire to even entertain possibilities of Judaism’s continuity until the Zionist entity is ashes and Palestine is free.

This is not a navel-gazing fight for the ‘soul of Judaism,’ Palestine is not our ‘Jewish moral reckoning.’ There isn’t a morsel of Jewish morality in sight. Palestine is an anti-colonial and decolonial liberation struggle in which we Jews are the fascistic overlords, the vicious propagandists and funders, the militarized soldier-settlers demolishing and stealing homes, igniting West Bank pogroms, and executing children en masse. Jewish Zionists will say this evokes “antisemitic tropes” – we don’t care, your words fall entirely flat as Jews in ‘Israel’ celebrate Purim by cheering on bombings like the murder of 165 schoolgirls and staff killed by US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran. The truth of Jewish terrorism is already seared into Palestinian land, jaggedly branded and carved into Palestinian skin with Swastikas of David. Jews now dwell in and animate the age of totalitarian Judaism; I don’t want to hear about “antisemitism” or “Jewish victimhood” ever again.

Zionists insist that hating ‘Israel’ is tantamount to hating Jews, then in the same breath demand that people do not conflate Israel with Jews. When I remark to Jews that we all are responsible for ending Zionism and the ongoing Palestinian genocide, I usually hear, “Not all Jews / Say Zionists, not Jews / There are actually more Christian Zionists than Jewish ones.” Well I am speaking to Jews right now, a people who support fascist Zionism in lockstep across every institution in our community.

Enough with the incessant deflection of responsibility. Jews consider ourselves a proud collective people, an unbroken lineage from generation to generation (L’dor, vador) – up until the cracked mirror of modern Judaism reflects back nothing but terrorism, slaughter, blood, sadism, rape, and organ theft. Virtually every Jewish group supports the existence of Israel in some shape or form and we dare to point the finger at others instead of cleaning up our own filthy house?

Organized Jewish formations across our entire community keep the colony humming through diehard and consistent commitment, propaganda, money, and resources, considering strengthening and defending ‘Israel’ to not only be a mitzvah, but part of their duty towards the Jewish people and an extension of their Jewish identity. Mind you, Jewish people are currently operating a string of torture and rape dungeons in Palestine and pummeling Lebanon and Iran with airstrikes. Israeli torturers recently abducted and burned cigarettes into the thighs of a 1-year old Palestinian child. This is the “Jewish state,” this is how far gone we are.

Zionism is not fringe within Judaism: It is ubiquitous. It is incumbent upon Jewish people of conscience to make the distinction between Zionism and Judaism materially true by destroying Zionism in our own communities, not denying our widespread complicity and policing others merely observing the fascistic reality of modern Judaism.

At great cost to themselves and their peoples, Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims have stated these truths plainly for generations; writer Nada Chehade vividly describes the reality of Jewish settler-colonialism everyday. None of what I’m stating is new, it is only rare for a Jew to hear it from a Jew. Jewish people are condescendingly and racistly dismissive of Palestinians as narratives of their own decolonial struggle and insist instead upon perpetual Jewish innocence: As a people, we are woefully out of touch with both humanity and reality.

Art by Marc Rudin/Jihad Mansour featured on the back cover of the PFLP Bulletin (1981)

The fact that virtually all Jews and Jewish spaces are Zionist and support the existence of Israel is an indictment of us as a morally bankrupt people. Zero Jews could support Palestine and it would only further condemn us, certainly not those under the boot of our fascist reign, constantly developing resurgent ways to persist and resist our sadistic butchering. Jewish thoughts and feelings about Palestine do not matter, or rather they should not matter: Jewish feelings are currently given far too much weight, as the world grinds to a halt for white Jewish feelings in particular. Jewish University staff and students are currently receiving massive payouts for so-called “antisemitism” claims after the blessed Al Aqsa Flood operation ($21 million class settlement payout at Columbia). Compare this to how the hammer comes down on Arabs and Muslims experiencing actual systemic targeting, attacks, and abuse. Palestine is a generational freedom struggle, not a weepy Jewish grief circle.

Palestine doesn’t need Jewish co-signing to get free; Jews need to get serious, get out of Palestine, and rid Judaism of fascistic Zionism.

Of our own volition, Jewish people crowned Zionism a central pillar of modern Judaism and fashioned Israel into our new God. A hyper-militarized golden calf for an increasingly faithless people seeking a seat in the World of the Above (white supremacy, settlerhood, nation-building, power within Euro-Amerikan empire). We seamlessly integrated Israel and Zionism into every facet of Jewish life globally: Zionism has no borders. Israel has not become fascistic vis-à-vis Netanyahu and the Likud party, rather Israel is innately fascistic because of its settler-colonial structure – same applies to Trump and the Amerikan crusading settler-colony, Israel’s blueprint, as Dr. Mohamed Abdou articulates in Islam and Anarchism. Amerika and Israel are both irreformable and irredeemable, built out of the world established in 1492, entities erected by genocidal settlers atop mass Indigenous graves.

Almost half of the global Jewish population (~46%) are Israeli settler-squatters: They overwhelmingly support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza (82%) and the current US-Israel war on Iran (93%). Most of the rest of us live as privileged white settlers in colonies like so-called Amerika (41% of Jews). Those of us living in settler-colonies outside of Israel also neglect our responsibilities as settlers toward Indigenous Land Back and Black self-determination movements where we are; On Turtle Island, Black and Indigenous genocides have persisted for 533 years and counting.

When I state that virtually all Jews and Jewish formations are Zionist, I am including most of the very small number of Jews and Jewish organizations who self-identify as “anti-zionist” or “pro-Palestine.” Scratch the surface and you’ll find quickly that most are liberal Zionists, as Lara Kilani and the team at Good Shepherd Collective frequently note. All Jews who claim “non-zionism” are Zionist in their politics because they always disparage the resistance and conflate colonizer with colonized (ex. “We condemn both violence by Hamas and violence by Israel” or “A co-existent future on the land for both Palestinians and Israelis/Jews”).

Genuine Jewish anti-zionists unwaveringly support the total eradication of Israel (and the greater Satan: Amerika); full Land Back without a speck of Zionist or Euro-Amerikan imperial/settler-colonial control. This includes removing Jews from Palestine (while ensuring they don’t do harm where they go or further displace Indigenous peoples elsewhere), and open reverent support for Palestine’s armed resistance. Gaza’s mujahideen are at the heart of the struggle, currently spearheaded by Hamas’ Al Qassam Brigades, who executed the miraculous Al Aqsa Flood on October 7th, 2023; an operation that genuine Jewish anti-zionists unequivocally recognize as one of most prolific anti-colonial operations in history.

It is exceedingly rare to find these political commitments amongst Jews and still weak when found, as we have accomplished virtually nothing material or meaningful to stop our people from committing the most heinous and disgusting acts imaginable over the last century in occupied Palestine. Jewish people are currently raping Palestinians to death with hot metal rods in concentration camp prisons and Jewish so-called “allies” living cozy lives in the imperial core still have the audacity to moan on about “antisemitism” and “don’t blame all Jews for the actions of Israel.” This Zionist nightmare is our moral responsibility as Jews to reckon with and war against within our own ranks:

Yes, all Jews.

“Deadly Star” by Mahmoud Khalili (1984)

While self-identification with the term ‘Zionist’ has fallen out of favor as of late, support for the existence of Israel among Jewish people is still rock solid. As people of the world increasingly turn against Israel, having seen Zionism for the evil it is, Jewish people have not budged on our fascistic commitments. Do you see heated confrontations over Jewish genocide breaking out at synagogues across the world? Do you see riots of internal strife inside Jewish community and religious spaces that sell stolen Palestinian land and host IOF terrorists to speak and fundraise? No, of course not. Jews know it’s expected to support Israel at all shuls. This is considered normal Jewish life: Our “birthright” in a world that “perpetually hates us for no other reason than that we’re Jewish.” Our delusions of Jewish innocence, our grandiose self-importance, our entitled death grip on the colony goes virtually uncontested within the Jewish community.

Jewish Zionists see Palestine and align with Jews because they’re Jews; Jewish anti-zionists see Palestine and align with Palestinians because they are of the sacred Below being crushed by the Above, the salt of the earth fighting for dignity and liberation on their own land, on their own terms. The land indeed fights with them. We don’t waver or flinch on our positions because it is fellow Jewish people who are the fascists running children over alive with tanks: Anti-Zionist commitments are ethical, not identitarian.

Jewish people may differ on the Netanyahu government policies, who should lead the Zionist entity, West Bank settlements, and the like, but once you assert support for Hamas’ Al Qassam Brigades and October 7th, advocate for removing Jews from Palestine, and promote the dissolution of Israel in its entirety, you are considered by Jews to be a traitor to the Jewish community. Jews with moral clarity lack the courage, the spine, the organization, the faith, the embodied principles, and the will to force Zionism out of Judaism. To Jews who also hate Israel and what it has wrought: Be proud when they call you a traitor to their death project. Let us be “traitors” unflinchingly.

Judaism Is a Religion, Not a People; Palestine Is Not a Religion, It Is a People

All of Israel is an illegitimate settlement and all Israelis are settlers and soldiers on stolen land, not “civilians.” Jewish Zionists – both liberal and conservative – cling to notions of Jewish settler futurity in a free Palestine, arrogantly writing themselves into Palestine’s decolonized future, believing that Jewish settlers should get to remain on the land and keep at least some portion of their stolen spoils. Jewish anti-zionists should not tolerate a whiff of this entitlement amongst our own people; Palestinians should not be expected to live alongside their genocidaires.

Two and a half years in, Amerikan-made bombs are still crashing from the sky as proudly Jewish pilots pound out life in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, as proudly Jewish congregants around the world hoist and fly the Israeli flag, organize to get anti-zionists fired, suspendeddeported, and criminalized, facilitate settlement and trips to the entity, distribute resources to the Zionist military, and pray for G-d’s protection over our precious Jewish colony that has created the largest generation of child amputees in modern history. That has displaced more than one million people in Lebanon as the violent ethnic cleansing campaign for “Greater Israel” ruthlessly expands. Synagogues are no longer holy, there is no G-d where Zionism dwells. Let’s at least be honest about what we as a Jewish people have become.

Jews in Euro-Amerika send their kids to synagogues, summer camps, and Jewish schools – all Zionist – ultimately teaching them bald-faced lies about Israel (“a land without a people for a people without a land” “we made the desert bloom”), celebrating “Israel’s birthday” (The Nakba) and preparing our Jewish children to one day become Zionist settlers and soldiers themselves or to defend the Jewish state from wherever they are, as part of their Jewish identity and duty.

It is the fault of their Jewish parents, teachers, and adults in the community who put Jewish children into these Zionist Jewish institutional pipelines that brainwash and shape young Jews into becoming propagandized, anti-Arab, Islamophobic, nationalist, entitled zealots.

They will be, as you are now, woefully out of touch with the moral pulse of humanity, which increasingly understands how profoundly evil Zionism and Israel are. Jews will be the last to see, the last to understand, and it’s already way too late.

Just more reason, for those who still need it, as to why people should not look to us Jews for analysis on Palestine. We do not say anything original anyway, it’s all diluted, disembodied, and defanged, through the looking glass of the Jewish propagandists who shaped us. Treat yourself to perspectives that are not constrained and pressed through the esophagus of power.

Art by Mohammed Afefa. Depicts the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” in Berlin Germany with 19-year-old martyr Sha’ban al-Dalo who was connected to an IV drip when Israel burned him and his mother alive on October 13, 2024 after Israeli warplanes bombed their tent at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital complex in Gaza

Clearly, Jewish people only assert our Jewish collectivity when we view ourselves as heroes or victims, or with the comfortable distance of history; not when we need to take responsibility and reckon with our role as fascists in the present cataclysmic moment. Through Zionism, we bear witness to what happens when those romanticized and utopic concepts of Jewish collectivity are abusively warped toward an exceptionalism and Jewish supremacist tribalism for Euro-Amerikan imperial aims.

I also reject the framing of “Israel makes Jews unsafe/increases antisemitism” because: (1) we’re the oppressors in the context of Israel, not the victims; (2) this framing abdicates Jewish responsibility because ‘Israel’ is not an amorphous self-animating thing that merely hovers over us, it is a colony that we as Jews actively build and sustaindaily through concerted generational effort; (3) that’s not “antisemitism” it’s a reaction to Jewish-led genocide which all our institutions support; (4) you’re conceding to the propaganda that there is a “rise in antisemitism” when Jews currently do not face systemic oppression for being Jewish and the “antisemitic incidents” data is tracked such that every anti-zionist protest sign is clocked as a separate “antisemitic incident” by the ADL so; (5) enough with the Jewish victimhood, “Jewish safety” and “antisemitism” talk, it’s just a distraction from Jewish-perpetrated genocide of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.

Many will say the argument I put forth unfairly puts a target on Jewish peoples’ backs: You’re still missing the point. We support genocidal Zionism across the entirety of our faith, we put the “target” on ourselves and can take it off ourselves by relinquishing genocidal Zionism and asserting principled anti-zionism. But more fundamentally we aren’t the victims targeted by Zionism, we are the perpetrators of it: The real targets are those materially placed on Palestinians by Israelis carrying out “double tap strikes” and “Where’s Daddy?” bombings for maximal carnage of Palestinian families by Jewish soldiers.

If Jews cared about justice and embodied the spirit of our own ancestors who fought fascism, we would see Jews tearing down and burning their congregation’s Israeli flags, ejecting racist genocidal Rabbis from the Bima and synagogues, demanding that temples cut all ties to the death colony, instigating revolution within the faith to cut out the Zionist cancer. We would have been selfless and given our lives to Palestinians and the resistance in the entity, we would have engaged in treason against modern Judaism and committed open sedition against any long forsaken notion of a “collective people,” that ceased to exist over the past 100 years, let alone since the blessed Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th, 2023. If Jews had a speck of morality, we would be seeing a raging split and battle inside Judaism. None of this righteousness exists. And the genocide rages on.

Enough of our platforming and sponsored posts, our self-righteous interviews on being doxxed or fired for Palestine while Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims suffer a much worse fate for speaking truth. Enough of our vapid liberal influencer class, our careerism, our wasteful pointless electoralism, and our self-congratulatory book deals that come at the expense of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims’ flesh, skin and organs being harvested and vaporized with no identification or trail underneath concrete rubble. We as Jews are not special, and frankly “Jewish support” is often damaging in its liberal, orientalist defanging of the Palestinian struggle, regardless of one’s intentions.

God Damn Israel, a Jewish settler colony that slaughters in the hundreds of thousands under the explicit banner of protecting universal “Jewish safety.”

God Damn this sick pedophilic and raping state to which we as Jews all have colonial “birthright” under the “law of return,” a state that all our Jewish institutions uniformly support. Deflecting or underplaying this stark reality amongst our own people – daring to slander others as “antisemitic” who call it out – is a dishonest, cowardly abdication of our responsibility. Any semblance of Jewish morality is long-since dead, we killed it in Gaza.

Art by Mohammed Afefa

As journalist Laith Marouf often remarks, ‘the loudest Jewish voice today is genocide.’ He rightly advocates for Jews to battle against Zionism within our own communities, and to sacrifice beyond polemics, in a material way like Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims have since the inception of Zionism. They have lost generations and entire family lineages as they throw sand in the gears of Zionism’s unending death machine. Laith Marouf notes how there is no meaningful resistance from anti-zionist Jews fighting Jewish Zionism like there was, for instance, amongst anti-fascist Germans fighting Nazism. He asks for our consideration, “Where is the Jewish John Brown?” “Where is the Jewish Oskar Schindler?” and remarks upon how in the over a century of the Zionist project, not one Jewish person has died for the cause of Palestinian liberation. So why should Laith or any other Palestinian be expected to not conflate Judaism and Zionism, when we as Jews don’t care enough to fight and sacrifice for the separation ourselves? They shouldn’t. Palestinians owe us nothing, we owe Palestine an infinite unpayable debt that continues to rack up every single moment of every single day.

Tweets from Laith Marouf of Free Palestine TV

To be ethically Jewish at this moment in history means taking up the responsibility to actively and militantly fight Zionism. Yes, all Jews. The clock reads genocide every moment of every day. This Jewish supremacist entity relies on Jewish consent and participation to keep it functioning. If Jews withdrew our participation, let alone actively warred against it, it would crash.

We operate this Euro-Amerikan imperial military outpost, we drape it in Judaism to whitewash and protect it from scrutiny, we keep it humming for our own selfish, settler gain. Amongst a more just Jewish populace, there would be Jews protesting and confronting their Jewish spaces at every service, holiday, and gathering, there would be Jews in occupied Palestine using their military skills to support the resistance, tribunals against Jews who participated in this generational genocide, large-scale efforts to de-nazify and de-zionize our people so we won’t commit further harm.

None of this energy currently exists within Judaism. Not even one synagogue went from Zionist to anti-zionist over the last two and a half blood-soaked years. The opposite happened, in fact, many Jews doubled and tripled down on (Zionist) Judaism and support for Israel after the stunning anti-colonial Al Aqsa Flood operation.

I still know of zero genuinely anti-zionist rabbis or synagogues (at least in Euro-Amerika) that back the Palestinian armed resistance and advocate for the full dissolution of US/Israel and decolonization of the land. This is an unbelievable indictment of us.

Not even a live-streamed genocide of infants burned alive every single day by Jewish bombs and bullets has been enough to budge Jewish institutions and leaders an inch away from Zionism in any serious or material way.

While modern Judaism remains Godless – just look at flattened Gaza – Islam reveals itself as a deep well of the Below from which Palestine and its allies in the region and across the Ummah draw on for spiritual strength to resist Zionist colonization and Euro-Amerikan empire.

Art by Mohammed Afefa

A reckoning is coming for those responsible – including many Jews – not because of our Jewishness, but because of our unwavering, lockstep investment in Israel and Nazi-Zionism that as a community we still refuse to loosen our grip on. What is there to say? It’s a holocaust of our making. When consequences inevitably return to Jewish institutions and individuals because we proliferated this violence and refuse to release our commitment to supporting genocide, it is not “antisemitism” – it is the chickens coming roost. People will rightfully be hunting down the people and formations who facilitated these crimes for the rest of their lives, as Nazis are still sought out into old age, no matter how seemingly small their role in facilitating the slaughter. And this genocide is not only generational but ongoing; it is settler-colonial in nature and therefore not comparable to the Nazi holocaust.

The answer is for every Jewish person, synagogue, and organization to drop the colony immediately, fully, and publicly, hold our people accountable, and move resources toward Palestinian liberation on Palestine’s own terms. Yes, all Jews.

And if we don’t fulfill our responsibilities and do it ourselves, others will inevitably take it into their own hands because this affront to humanity simply will not stand.

You cannot un-roll the bulldozer from across her body. You cannot un-whip the cable lashes from across his back. You cannot bring back to life the precious martyrs in Palestine; that ship has already sailed, Judaism’s crimes will ring out for eternity. The slaughter continues everyday despite you looking away, despite you rationalizing why it’s “‘not our fault.” It is our fault, and the bloodshed won’t stop until it is forced to.

Long live Hamas’ Al Qassam Brigades, men of honor and steel, who rise from the subterranean below with homemade weapons and unshakeable faith to strike fear and fatal blows into the hearts of the Zionist enemy. Where Jews snuffed out life, Al Qassam breathed oxygen back into the body. This is the most shameful generation of Jews to ever exist. Not one of us can say we didn’t know. We are spiritually hollow, morally eviscerated. Don’t just selfishly say “Israel doesn’t represent all Jews” – fight for that distinction to be materially true by eradicating Zionism within Judaism. That is the only choice.

When it comes to the evils of Zionism, Jews would rather lie to ourselves and self-deceive than take a modicum of responsibility beyond feeble self-interested sloganeering. How long will Palestine and the region have to pay for our delusional denial, our unceasing rapturous violence, our refusal to take accountability for the ways we have destroyed so much life on this precious precarious planet?

Jews must destroy the Israeli state and the Zionist ideology in its entirety, its every node and tentacle, including Israel’s host colony: Amerika. I care more about Palestine than Judaism. If Judaism has to die for Palestine to live, kill it.

(Substack)


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By Luis Fuenmayor Toro  –  Mar 27, 2026

*“There are no right or left; that is a classification of the past,” I heard many years ago—and have since heard repeated many times—by well-prepared individuals with deep arguments. “That was the French Revolution, but with the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was over,” I heard in the 1990s, just over 30 years ago, making it a recent development in historical terms. To put it in perspective, the Earth is 4.54 billion years old and Homo sapiens sapiens is roughly 300,000 years old. However, today, everyone across the globe still speaks of the left, the right, and all their nuances. It seems these concepts have not remained buried as the wise men of that era predicted.

*I also witnessed Francis Fukuyama’s so-called “End of History.” Regardless of the fact that life and practice proved it entirely false, it maintained a following, usually within the conservative political and ideological fields. Right-wing and far-right figures, witnessing the victory of US capitalism over “real socialism,” mistook the conclusion of one battle for the end of the entire war.

*A similar phenomenon occurs with the concepts of imperialism and anti-imperialism. For some, these terms are totally “outdated” and “backward,” raised only by failed politicians—the Chavistas, in our case—who supposedly fail to understand that these concepts have “disappeared.” One wonders if they were buried by the same people who attempted to bury the left and the right. In January, was it not US imperialism that invaded and bombed us, destroyed our facilities, murdered Venezuelans, kidnapped the president and Cilia Flores, and today appropriates our wealth simply because it can? For some, it was a nameless “I-don’t-know-what” from the North that invaded us—the same entity that bombs Iran, Yemen, and Africa, threatens Cuba, and seeks to appropriate Greenland and Canada. Yet, they claim it does not exist.

*It is one thing to say that Venezuela is in the Western Hemisphere, on the very continent of the United States, and that it has not had to face them irresponsibly, as did the governments of Chávez and Maduro, instead of favoring trade relations and of all kinds with them, for geographical and geopolitical issues and the interests also of Venezuela, and another thing is to accept as good the total submission to the US “I-don’t-know-what.” They are not our protectors, nor the defenders of our freedom, nor of our democracy. They act according to their selfish interests.

*Today, our relations with the United States are based on the reality of those who have been defeated in a military confrontation. By defeating Venezuela, the US military also dealt a blow to our civic-military-police unity, the militias, the collectives, and the PSUV. This is not a matter for debate; it is visible before our eyes. The government leadership remaining in command chose the diplomatic route to face this situation, aiming to avoid further destruction and greater suffering for the Venezuelan nation. With the exceptions of Colombia and Brazil, we stood alone. No one—not even those who promised a “Vietnam in Latin America”—is currently at war. By the way, I remind you that the brave people of Vietnam shared borders with China and Russia, while our borders are quite different.

*The path chosen in the current environment is one of diplomatic resistance based on agreements and talks. However, these are not negotiations among equals. We were forced to negotiate, and the terms are dictated by them: our supposed “new ally,” “best friend,” and, for some, our “protector.” We need only look at Puerto Rico to see how a nation fares under the condition of a US protectorate.

Venezuela’s Presidential Couple Appear in New York Court; Judge Questions Legitimacy of Legal Fee Freeze

*This resistance necessitates national unity—something the “Mariacorinista” extremists reject because they are entirely aligned with the gringo “I-don-not-know-what.” This is not surprising, as we knew they would behave this way. Nor is it surprising to see deputies in the National Assembly who claim to have broken with the Maria Corina extremism but continue to avoid unity to serve their own narrow group interests.

*The terrible thing is that inside the PSUV and the deputies of the official sector in the National Assembly, there are extremists who act as if on January 3 they had not been bombed and defeated us. They ignore what happened and make it more difficult to travel the tortuous road that the nation led by Delcy Rodríguez follows. Do they have another route in mind? Well, tell it, to see if it is possible or only the continuity of the failures that led us where we are. We must leave aside desires, pretensions, and itching. We have always called for wisdom. Today, we call to wisdom those within Chavismo who disagree with the policy of accompanying the nation in the search for the rescue of lost sovereignty.

(Costa del Sol FM)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/


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40
 
 

Every day, President Claudia Sheinbaum gives a morning presidential press conference and Mexico Solidarity Media posts English language summaries, translated by Mexico Solidarity’s Pedro Gellert. Previous press conference summaries are available here.

Culture, Heritage, and Identity: Historic Investment and the Preservation of National Memory

Arts education, heritage, and identity are being strengthened through the renovation of 1,405 National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) and 220 National Institute of Anthropology and History) INAH spaces in 39 schools, with an investment of 1.5 billion pesos (US$82.87 million), with the aim of improving infrastructure and expanding enrollment. In addition, 380 million pesos (US$20.99 million) are being earmarked to restore museums and archaeological sites—an investment unprecedented in 30 years.

Dignified foreign policy: solidarity with Cuba and historical sovereignty

President Claudia Sheinbaum recalled that since 1962, Mexico has maintained a relationship of friendship, collaboration, and coordination with Cuba, being the only country to oppose the blockade of the island, arguing that such measures harm the people.

Sheinbaum reiterated that humanitarian aid will continue as part of this historical tradition and reaffirmed the Mexican government ‘s commitment to providing support, including evaluating fuel supplies within the framework of bilateral agreements and a policy of solidarity.

Defense of Mexicans abroad: firm action against abuses and international justice

Mexico will not limit itself to a diplomatic protest note and will take action to ensure justice and consular protection for its citizens abroad. At the Consulate in Los Angeles, participation as amicus curiae in the lawsuit filed by relatives of Mexicans who died in ICE custody will be announced. In addition, letters will be sent to U.S. legislators regarding deficient medical care, a letter from the Presidency of the Mexican Senate to its U.S. counterpart will be proposed, and a hearing will be held before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Energy sovereignty and fuels: domestic production and fair prices for the people

The Dos Bocas oil refinery is establishing itself as an energy pillar, ensuring stability in the national fuel supply and strengthening the country’s energy sovereignty in the face of global crises. At the same time, it was agreed to maintain diesel at 28.28 pesos (US1.56) per liter to protect family budgets, curb unjustified price hikes, and prevent abuses amid rising international oil prices.


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The post People’s Mañanera March 30 appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.


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This column by Magdalena Rosales Cruz originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 edition of El Sol del Bajío. Magdalena Rosales Cruz is a Federal Deputy for Distrito 12 Celaya, Guanajuato and a member of Morena.

The mobility of the Mexican population in the United States has undoubtedly been linked to different factors, including: their proximity, the asymmetry of their development and economic growth, all as a result of the historical particularities of both nations.

We must remember that, since the establishment of the 13 English colonies, their objective was their constant expansion, which is why it extends southwards; there is no better example than having invaded Mexico, to appropriate more than half of its territory.

In this process, with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, the population of our country became trapped in another culture, from there arises the Chicano community: Mexican-American born in the U.S., with purely Mexican roots.

In the 1960s, the term Chicano became popular as a political movement of resistance against racism, discrimination, and cultural assimilation. Today, it is used to refer to a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, or a person born in the United States of Mexican descent, and their descendants who proudly identify as Chicano. Therefore, Chicanos are now found throughout the United States.

There are approximately 40 million Mexicans or descendants of Mexicans living in the United States, making our northern neighbor the second country in the world with the largest number of Mexicans.

To meet the needs of the Mexican and Mexican-American population, the current government has developed a network of 53 consulates, in addition to mobile consulates, with the aim of bringing documentation and protection services closer to areas far from the consular headquarters, which also operate on weekends.

Mobile consulates perform an extremely important task, especially in these times, when the policies of the US administration under Donald Trump are becoming increasingly aggressive.

The demand for documents from all citizens has exponentially increased the need for services provided by consulates: issuance of Mexican passports for adults and minors in the face of threats of family separation, birth certificates, voter ID cards, assistance in obtaining welfare cards to send economic resources to Mexico, and guidance on obtaining dual nationality and for the repatriation of loved ones who have died in the United States.

In addition, they also provide guidance for consular protection through teams of lawyers, which is offered at both mobile and permanent consulates.

Also noteworthy is the collaboration of the Chicano community and organized migrants for the mobile consulates.

In most cases, these organizations are responsible for providing the best facilities, with functional spaces for the hundreds of people who come for guidance and procedures. These facilities must have internet access and adequate lighting, and provide food and play areas for the children who will spend almost the entire day at the mobile consulate.

Educational communities in Mexico and other Latin American and Caribbean countries, with experience in previous raids, offer guidance to protect minors from the likely separation from their families, actions that are part of the various cruel policies of the US government.

We must acknowledge the collective work of the Mexican community in the United States, in collaboration with the Mexican government. We must also admire our Chicanos and migrants who do so much to maintain our Mexican pride.

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The post Mexico’s Mobile Consulates in the US appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.


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This column by Ernestina Godoy Ramos originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 edition of El Universal.

Femicide is a serious violation of human rights, with a profound impact on society; behind each case, there is a story, a family, a legitimate demand for justice that cannot be ignored.

Therefore, at the initiative of the President of Mexico, in coordination with the Secretariat of Women and the Attorney General’s Office, the General Law to Prevent, Investigate, Sanction and Repair the Damage for the Crime of Femicide is being promoted, whose proposal seeks to strengthen the capacity of the State to protect, act promptly, investigate, as well as guarantee truth, justice and reparation for the victims.

The severity of femicide and its occurrence throughout the country requires a standardized approach to understanding, investigating, and punishing it. This law establishes a standardized criminal offense with precise gender-based criteria, recognizing fundamental elements such as prior violence, signs of sexual violence, power imbalances, and contexts of discrimination.

The proposal also establishes firm penalties, including prison sentences of 40 to 70 years, as well as aggravating circumstances that allow for increased sentences in cases of greater vulnerability, such as when the victims are girls, adolescents, pregnant women, or members of historically discriminated communities. Furthermore, it includes provisions for the protection of orphans, the loss of rights for the perpetrator such as parental rights, guardianship, or benefits related to assets belonging to the victims, comprehensive care, legal support, and guaranteed reparations for damages.

One of the most relevant changes in the law is that, in the event of the violent loss of a woman’s life, the State must respond from the first moment with the presumption of femicide. This requires exhaustive investigation models that apply the highest level of care, incorporating a gender perspective, specialized protocols, and reinforced due diligence so that each case is handled efficiently and with sensitivity towards the victims.

Also, the institutional structure is strengthened by proposing that prosecutors’ offices have specialized units with certified personnel.

While standardizing criteria for addressing the crime is essential, public policies that prevent this crime are also required. Therefore, the law includes a prevention proposal with coordination mechanisms between institutions and tools that allow for a better understanding of the phenomenon in order to act preventively: femicide risk screenings, standardized protocols that allow for institutional intervention before the crime occurs, as well as protection mechanisms for women at risk.

Because the State owes truth, justice, and reparation to those who have lost a daughter, a mother, a sister.

For those at risk, the State must provide security and protection. These actions involve recognizing the problem and acting accordingly.

Protecting women, girls and those who have been made invisible: is an obligation that we must assume with conviction.

Ernestina Godoy Ramos is the Attorney General of Mexico.

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    Mexico’s General Law to Prevent, Investigate, Sanction and Repair the Damage for the Crime of Femicide seeks to strengthen the capacity of the State to protect, act promptly, investigate, as well as guarantee truth, justice and reparation for victims.

The post A Law to Protect the Dignity & Life of Women appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.


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This column by Alejandro Calvillo originally appeared in the March 28, 2026 edition of Sin Embargo.

High consumption or use of “X product” is directly linked to increased anxiety levels. It causes high dopamine releases and momentary pleasure, followed by abrupt crashes that generate irritability, fatigue, and stress symptoms—such as tachycardia and cortisol release—creating an addictive cycle that affects mood and mental health .

What is this “X product”? What is it that we consume in this civilization from a very early age that gives us pleasure, generates addiction, affects our mood and our mental health, to such a degree that we can say that it has led us to become the society of anxiety or, rather, the society of dopamine-addiction-anxiety?

You’re probably thinking of something that might be that “X product.” First of all, it’s important to understand that it’s not just one product: it’s a vast array of products designed to generate that rush of pleasure, create addiction, and thereby capture and mold lifelong consumers from a very young age. Life, in its most intimate dimension, is dominated by corporate logic: that consumers who already use the product consume more, and that those who don’t yet use it start doing so. And the best way to achieve this is through addiction. A world of dealers who target from a very young age. And it’s not just about addiction to products we eat, drink, or inhale; it’s about ideologically shaping the citizen-consumer, creating a carefully crafted perception that is experienced as reality, all in service of power, whether economic or political.

You’ve probably heard recently that a 20-year-old woman won a multimillion-dollar judgment in Los Angeles, California, against Facebook and Instagram after it was acknowledged that the platforms had damaged her mental health and that they are designed to create addiction in their users. The extent of the addictive impact of these platforms can be appreciated when we consider that they reach a large portion of humanity. Facebook has approximately three billion users, while Instagram has around two to three billion active users.

Let’s take social media as our first “X product.” It’s a product consumed from a young age that generates a dopamine rush, a feeling of pleasure, followed by a drop in irritability, fatigue, and anxiety. And the corporation knows this very well. In legal proceedings against this company, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), an internal study known as Project Mercury was obtained, which focused on evaluating the impact of these platforms on mental health. In this study—commissioned by Meta and kept secret—a social experiment was conducted in which a group of people had their accounts deactivated for a week. After a week of being disconnected from social media, these people shared that they had experienced a decrease in their levels of anxiety, loneliness, depression, and the tendency to compare themselves to others.

The evidence of the damage to the mental health and lives of millions of people—at least two generations—may already be, to some degree, irreversible. The question is whether we will have the capacity to regulate these platforms, the use of AI, its algorithms, and its theft and capture of data, tastes, phobias, strengths, and weaknesses, for commercial and ideological exploitation.

In October 2021, I published the article “Facebook and its criminal algorithm”, where I reported on the appearance of Frances Haugen, the “Deep Throat of Facebook”, before the United States Congress testifying in relation to the actions of that company and Instagram to increase profits by spreading hate messages, promoting conspiracy theories and the psychological deterioration of adolescents.

This former Meta employee had leaked a series of internal documents from the corporation to The Wall Street Journal, revealing her sociopathic behavior. She was tasked with developing an algorithm to block racist messages against the Muslim population and various minorities, including the LGBT+ community. The project was abruptly shut down, and a Facebook executive justified the decision by saying that “prioritizing the safety of marginalized groups would be too political.” It’s not just that violent messages aren’t blocked: the algorithm tends to reward them and give them greater exposure. The documents demonstrated that the algorithms favored confrontational, conspiratorial, and violent discourses that kept users browsing longer and, therefore, exposed them to more advertising. More advertising means more profit for the corporation.

Frances Haugen started working at Facebook for one reason: because she lost her best friend to the corporation. Her best friend became interested in conspiracy theories, and the algorithm overwhelmed him with them; there was no way to continue interacting with him if you didn’t agree with his beliefs. Haugen pointed out how Meta was destroying democracy; she witnessed how Facebook was used to coordinate the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when Trump lost the election to Biden. Among the documents Haugen extracted from Meta were complaints from European political parties against these platforms, accusing them of creating confrontational political environments by amplifying the most violent messages. As these platforms become the primary media outlets, they not only have an addictive impact due to their format, but also an impact on governance, democracy, and values ​​through their content.

On the other hand, Haugen showed how these platforms exploit people’s vulnerabilities. For example, their algorithms immediately identify young women who are dissatisfied with their physical appearance, bombarding them with advertisements for cosmetics, trendy clothes, and junk therapies and advice that ultimately exacerbate those vulnerabilities. The same happens with those who suffer from other vulnerabilities, those with chronic illnesses, those who struggle with alcoholism, or those addicted to tobacco, vaping, junk food, soda, energy drinks, and so on.

In this collaboration, we discuss one of those “X products” that generate addiction and subsequently irritability and anxiety: we’re talking about the use of digital platforms. The phrase can be applied to many products, but originally, it referred to a product used daily from a very young age: sugar. This addictive product is consumed in high quantities from a very early age through sugary drinks. The consumption of these sugary drinks in Mexico—one of the highest in the world—causes 230,000 new cases of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases each year. We will discuss this product further in the context of the Copa Cola in future collaborations.

However, let’s end with some good news: the ruling in Los Angeles, California, against Meta, which recognizes the harm caused by these corporations and mandates that they begin to pay for it. This is the only way to ensure that their practices and product design are regulated, so that algorithms are designed for the well-being of the population, not for the benefit of a few at the expense of others, at the expense of dialogue and democracy.

Alejandro Calvillo is director ofEl Poder del Consumidor*, a non-profit civil association that works to defend the rights of the Mexican consumer*,as well as a sociologist with degrees in philosophy from the University of Barcelona and environment and sustainable development from El Colegio de México.

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By Youssef Fares – Mar 25, 2026

People in Gaza are following the war as though they are living it themselves, drawing constant comparisons between the brutality unfolding across different fronts and their own experience. Last week’s barrage of rockets from South Lebanon has reignited a dwindling hope.

“One of the missiles launched from Lebanon landed on the outskirts of Jabalia camp, in areas where the occupation army is positioned along what is known as the Yellow Line,” Abu Mahmoud Al-Atawneh told Al-Akhbar. “The feeling was overwhelming. It was Hezbollah, whose blood and tears are mixed with ours, sending us a message of hope: that the resistance will neither die nor be defeated, no matter how brutal and criminal the occupation becomes.”

“I’m certain this campaign will be defeated, and that it will end with the retreat of US-Israeli tyranny,” Ghassan Abdel Wahed told Al-Akhbar. “Gaza is only 365 square kilometers, smaller than a village on the outskirts of Tehran, yet the occupation army, despite two years of destruction and mass killing, has failed to decisively settle the battle with a decisive victory.”

Umm Mohammed al-Zard, for her part, sees the war through the lens of displacement. Speaking to Al-Akhbar, she said she feels she is reliving, alongside “our people” in south Lebanon, the same ordeal Gaza has endured.

“My heart aches for our people in south Lebanon,” she said. “They are generously paying the price for their dignity and their refusal of injustice. We experienced displacement in Gaza, and it is a torment worse than death. May God ease their suffering and reward them. They are our people.”

The resistance is, however, facing immense political pressure from Gulf countries. According to sources close to Hamas, Qatari authorities asked Hamas-affiliated activists living in Qatar to issue statements condemning the Iranian attack on Qatari oil facilities. When most refused, the authorities expelled several prominent activists and detained political analyst Saeed Ziad, a frequent Al-Jazeera guest throughout the two years of war on Gaza.

Israel Kills 3 Journalists in South Lebanon

The same sources said that most of the movement’s “shadow leaders” left Qatar over the past week, leaving behind only a small number from the inner circle around Khaled Meshaal. Meshaal himself, according to one source, issued “a statement in the movement’s name condemning what were described as Iranian attacks on Gulf states.”

Reflecting the depth of internal polarization within the movement, that statement was followed by a message from the Hamas leadership congratulating the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. Yet despite the efforts of Gulf media networks to manufacture hostility toward what they called “the sinking Iranian ship,” they have failed to alter the underlying mood in Gaza.

The military media of the Qassam Brigades reposted a video featuring a line by the late Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addressed to the Israeli occupation: “You will not merely suffer a shortage of tanks; you will have no tanks left,” invoking the Taybeh ambush, in which the resistance destroyed five Merkava tanks.

(al-akhbar)


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45
 
 

This article by Jared Laureles and Jessica Xantomila originally appeared in the March 28, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

The Independent Union of Goodyear Mexico Workers (SITGM) and the tire manufacturing company reached an agreement, obtaining a 5.8 percent salary increase for the benefit of more than a thousand workers at the plant located in San Luis Potosí.

This averts the strike, which was anticipated last week, after this proposal for the 2026 salary review was put to a vote.

The original demand was for a 15 percent increase. Therefore, although the increase is the “highest in the tire sector” and was approved by a majority vote, the union warned that “dissatisfaction persists” among the workforce, as the recovery of their purchasing power remains pending.

The union, affiliated with the Mexican Workers’ Union League (LSOM), indicated that various benefits are impacted, such as the 44-day Christmas bonus, the vacation bonus that ranges from 25 to 31 days (depending on seniority), the 13 percent savings fund, the social security fund, as well as the payment of the corresponding Social Security contribution.

He added that consideration should also be given to food vouchers, equivalent to 12 percent of the salary, payment for mandatory rest days worked, as well as the possible double payment for the days corresponding to the Holy Week period, if work is performed.

At Goodyear San Luis Potosí – which produces 15,000 tires daily – the 40-hour work week applies, so when a mandatory rest day must be worked, due to production needs, that day will be paid triple.

The LSOM-Goodyear section highlighted that the review was carried out by a commission made up of 10 representatives who were elected in the various areas of the factory, through the secret and direct vote of their colleagues.

More than 50 candidates registered in the process, and in order to carry out a serious negotiation it was necessary to call a strike against the company, due to its refusal to present a minimally acceptable proposal for the workforce, since initially the employer’s representation proposed a one percent increase and, until before filing the strike notice, it barely reached 4.7 percent.

“It is clear that the legacy of almost a decade of low wages, imposed by the company in collusion with the CTM, is an anomaly that must be corrected. In particular, the significant difference between the highest categories of production personnel and maintenance personnel,” SITGM pointed out.

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46
 
 

By Ben Norton  –  Mar 25, 2026

The Global South voted for a UN General Assembly resolution condemning the transatlantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity”. Europe abstained. The US, Israel, and Argentina voted against it.

The United Nations General Assembly held a vote on a resolution denouncing the transatlantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity”.

The countries of the political West refused to formally condemn the mass enslavement and trafficking of Africans.

The vast majority of UN member states, which are in the Global South, supported the resolution, with 123 votes in favor.

All of Europe abstained, except for Serbia. There were 52 abstentions in total.

Just three countries voted against the resolution: the United States, Israel, and Argentina’s right-wing regime of Javier Milei.

UN GA vote condemn slavery 2026

Paraguay’s conservative, pro-US government abstained. The right-wing, Trump-allied regimes in Bolivia and Ecuador did not vote. (Venezuela lost its right to vote, because it is unable to pay UN membership fees, due to the illegal US sanctions against it.)

Even Ireland and Spain — which in the past have broken with the pro-Israel European Union and supported Palestine — abstained in the vote.

The resolution stated:

The trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans [was] the gravest crime against humanity by reason of the definitive break in world history, scale, duration, systemic nature, brutality and enduring consequences that continue to structure the lives of all people through racialized regimes of labour, property and capital.

The capitalist nations of the West developed their economies through the enslavement and extreme exploitation of Africans.

The UN News agency wrote:

For more than 400 years, millions of people were stolen from Africa, put in shackles and shipped to the New World to toil in cotton fields and sugar and coffee plantations under scorching heat and the crack of the whip.

Denied their basic humanity and even their own names, they were forced to endure generations of exploitation with repercussions that reverberate today including persistent anti-Black racism and discrimination.

The resolution was sponsored by Ghana, whose President John Mahama said Africa wanted “reparative justice”.

United States, María Corina Machado, and the War Lobby Against Venezuela

West opposes reparations for Africans, arguing slavery was supposedly not a crime when it was committedWhat especially angered the West about the UN General Assembly resolution was its call for reparations for the African descendants of the victims of slavery.

Western governments argued that they do not owe reparations, because international law did not exist during the mass enslavement and trafficking of Africans, therefore it was supposedly not a crime.

The US representative, Dan Negrea, claimed that the resolution was “highly problematic in countless respects”, the UN News agency reported.

The US government stressed that it “does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred”.

The representative of the European Union made the same argument on the floor of the UN.

The EU criticized the resolution for implying “suggestions of a retroactive application of international rules which was non-existent at the time and claims for reparations, which is incompatible with established principles of international law”.

“References to claims for reparations also lack a sound legal basis”, the EU argued, stressing that the “principle of non-retroactivity, a fundamental cornerstone of the international legal order, must be strictly upheld”.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said the same, in a statement explaining its decision to abstain.

The British representative argued that there is “no duty to provide reparation for historical acts that were not, at the time those acts were committed, violations of international law”.

The UK insisted “that the prohibitions on slavery, the slave trade, and what are now considered crimes against humanity had not yet been established in international law at the time of the transatlantic slave trade”.

(Geopolitical Economy Report)


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Our weekly roundup of stories in the English and Spanish language press on Mexico and Mexican politics.

Patricia Boero, New Mexican Film Law Aims at Creative Sovereignty The Film Verdict. A new Mexican film law addresses the challenges posed by new technologies and increases democratic access to audiovisual production.

Luis Hernández Navarro, Bajo bloqueo de EU, 80% del pueblo cubano durante 67 años: Díaz-Canel La Jornada. “México es la tierra hermana que siempre ha estado al lado de Cuba, en las buenas y en las malas. La que siempre nos ha acompañado, la que nunca ha claudicado.”

Ricardo Wilson II, Langston Hughes: Novelist, Poet, Activist and… Translator Literary Hub. Ricardo Wilson II on the Writer’s Experience in Mexico and His Struggle to Bring Mexican and Cuban Writers to American Audiences.

México: reforma legal reabre esperanzas de las familias de localizar a desaparecidos Telesur. Las recientes reformas legales en materia de desaparición han permitido la localización de 31.946 personas vivas en lo que va del sexenio.

Sailboats of Nuestra América Convoy Arrive in Havana Telesur. Sailboats from Mexico reached Cuba safely after days of uncertain weather, marking a moment of solidarity and maritime achievement.

Alex Vasquez y Amy Stillman, Desalojos en Ciudad de México abren paso a rentas más costosas Bloomberg. Los desalojos de edificios completos generan indignación, ya que el alza de precios está expulsando a los residentes de sus propios barrios. Las tensiones siguen en aumento a medida que se acerca el Mundial.

Alex Vasquez and Amy Stillman, Mexico City Evictions Make Way for Pricier Housing Bloomberg. Evictions of whole buildings are one cause of anger as locals are priced out of more neighborhoods. Tensions are only rising as the World Cup approaches.

Kate Linthicum, Homeless and stateless: Deportees from U.S. are trapped in Mexico Los Angeles Times. Immigration officials gave her a choice for her deportation: “You can go to Congo or Mexico.”

Stephen Eisenhammer, Mexico says 40,000 of country’s 130,000 disappeared people may be alive Reuters. After a year-long review of the national registry of missing persons, officials said 40,308 entries – 31% of the total – showed ​some activity across other government records such as tax filings or birth certificates, suggesting those people could be ​alive and locatable.

China ‘reclama’ a México que perderá 9 mil mdd por sus aranceles: ‘Vemos barrera al comercio e inversión’ El Financiero. China estimó pérdidas por 9 mil 400 millones de dólares en los sectores mecánico y eléctrico del país asiático por los aranceles impuestos por México.

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The Zionist entity killed veteran Al-Manar correspondent Ali Shoeib, Al-Mayadeen journalist Fatima Ftouni, and her brother, photojournalist Mohammad Ftouni, during a double-tap drone strike on a press vehicle in southern Lebanon on Saturday, March 28.

The Israeli attack wiped out the entire media team traveling together to deliver coverage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon’s south. Media officials confirmed that the team was inside a clearly marked “PRESS” vehicle when it was bombed.

Images show the car was moving along a forested road in the town of Jezzine with very little traffic due to the forced displacement of residents, confirming a deliberate targeted strike.

The area was then targeted again with a second strike after people attempted to provide aid. The Israeli military broadcast video of the attack, claiming that Shoeib was a “terrorist in the intelligence unit of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force.”

The Israeli vile enemy has released footage of the airstrike that targeted the car of Al-Manar correspondent Ali Shoeib and Al-Mayadeen correspondent Fatima Ftouni in Jezzine along with her brother camera-man Mohamad Ftouni.

How utterly audacious and deeply criminal it is to not… https://t.co/D25mZgGflU pic.twitter.com/vXPhkvxKFl

— Marwa Osman || مروة عثمان (@Marwa__Osman) March 28, 2026

“Once again, the Israeli aggression violates the most basic rules of international law, international humanitarian law, and the laws of war, by targeting journalists, who are ultimately civilians performing a professional duty,” Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said in a statement on Saturday.

“This is a blatant crime that violates all the norms and treaties under which journalists enjoy international protection in wars,” he added.

Al-Manar TV mourned Shoeib, highlighting that he reported on events in southern Lebanon from before the 2000 liberation, through the July 2006 war, and the ongoing conflict. He also covered events in Syria and Iraq as part of his field reporting career.

“The knight of resistance media has dismounted after a long struggle, and Al-Manar’s lens and platform have once again bled the most precious blood … Al-Manar mourns him as a true media front, a support and companion to generations of resistance fighters, and a teacher and role model for generations of journalists,” the statement from the Lebanese broadcaster reads.

Shoeib was widely described as a “one-man army,” known for his bold frontline reporting and frequent direct confrontations with Israeli soldiers along the border, where he delivered real-time coverage of developments on the ground.

VIDEO | Footage shows late Al-Manar correspondent Ali Shoeib confronting Israeli soldiers on 19 September 2022 in the occupied Shebaa Farms, south Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/iCqOqmqWNn

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) March 28, 2026

Al-Mayadeen mourned the killing of Ftouni by emphasizing that she “had been in the field covering the ongoing Israeli aggression on Lebanon, doing the work she was known and loved for, bringing the reality of her people’s resistance to audiences around the world.”

“We pledge to her soul that we will remain committed to the message of resistance, freedom, and sovereignty,” Rony Alfa, the director of Al-Mayadeen’s office in Lebanon, said, adding that Fatima was “a heroine of Al-Mayadeen, the world, and Arab and international media.”

Western Silence Allows Israel To Get Away With Killing Journalists

Earlier in March, Ftouni lost seven members of her family in an Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese village of Toul, but continued reporting from high-risk areas regardless.

Before her assassination, Ftouni raised concerns about her family’s safety in Toul to Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who made light of her concerns.

VIDEO | When the late Al-Mayadeen journalist Fatima Ftouni expressed her concern to Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam about her family living in the southern Lebanese village of Toul, Salam mockingly replied that she looked healthy and that there was a doctor in the room. pic.twitter.com/gS15gA8LN5

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) March 28, 2026

Earlier this year, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) listed Israel as the leading cause of death for journalists worldwide for the third consecutive year. In Lebanon alone, the Israeli army has killed at least 22 journalists, often claiming they were “terrorists,” an unsubstantiated allegation that is widely echoed across western media outlets.

(The Cradle)


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The South African party Al Jama-ah promoted a special session in the national parliament to demand the release of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, National Assembly Deputy Cilia Flores, from US prison. On Saturday, March 27, the party presented the resolution as a matter of solidarity from South African legislators towards Venezuela and as an expression of condemnation of the Monroe Doctrine and the Donald Trump administration’s warmongering.

The resolution demanding the release of the Venezuelan presidential couple received support from representatives of most parties in the South African parliament. Among them were members of the International Relations Commission of the parliament, led by the African National Congress (ANC), and the deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, Alvin Botes. Centrist parties such as the Patriotic Alliance and Action SA also supported the initiative.

At the regular session the day before, Al Jama-ah took advantage of its only annual opportunity to propose its own resolutions, introducing the demand condemning US interventionism. Although the resolution was initially rejected, the intervention of the party’s leader, Ganief Hendricks, led to a special plenary session held virtually and behind closed doors on Saturday.

At that session, only two parties voted against the resolution: the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party, and the right-wing Freedom Front Plus.

The official position of the South African government aligns with the approved resolution. In his speech, Deputy Foreign Minister Botes called the forced transfer of the presidential couple to the US a “kidnapping” and a “military intervention,” carried out by elite US units in a military invasion that left more than a hundred dead, an event the Trump administration is trying to pass off as a “police operation.” Botes called for the end of persecution against President Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores and demanded their immediate release.

The parliamentary session took place following the call by Al Jama-ah MP Imraan Ismail Moosa, who urged his colleagues to support the international campaign #BringThemBack. In his presentation, the MP argued that the kidnapping and illegal transfer of the Venezuelan leader to the United States poses serious implications in terms of international law, sovereignty, and human rights.

Protests in Venezuela and US Demand Freedom for Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores

President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores were kidnapped by the US on January 3 through a military invasion of Venezuela. They were subsequently taken to New York and imprisoned. There, they face fabricated charges in a politically biased trial.

Moosa warned that this type of action “further challenges established principles such as the immunity of heads of state, setting a controversial precedent for the application of US domestic law extraterritorially.”

Al Jama-ah also criticized the US for violating Venezuelan sovereignty, highlighting the consequences of similar interventions against other countries. The party emphasized that the international community must condemn these actions and reinforce respect for international law. The party was one of the first to join the international campaign #BringThemBack, aimed at visibilizing the case of President Maduro and First Lady Flores and demanding their immediate release from illegal imprisonment.

(Telesur)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/SF


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The sailboats Friendship and Tiger Moth entered the port of Havana on Saturday, March 28, the last two members of the international solidarity convoy to Cuba, Nuestra América, to do so. Their arrival came after days of uncertainty and a coordinated search by specialized agencies from Mexico and Cuba, as unfavorable weather conditions and adverse winds caused significant delays and a total loss of communication.

The two vessels, which departed from Mexico’s Isla Mujeres on March 20, entered Havana Bay through its entrance channel at 4:00 p.m. local time on Saturday, assisted by harbor pilots. On board each boat were 10 activists representing various nationalities, in addition to their crews. The mission is carrying vital humanitarian aid, including medical donations for the Cuban healthcare system.

Personal de la Secretaría de Marina-Armada de México localizó y atendió a los nueve tripulantes de los veleros Friendship y Tiger Moth, reportados como no localizados desde el 23 de marzo tras zarpar de Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo, con destino a Cuba para entregar ayuda… pic.twitter.com/3HJHgWAjCn

— La Jornada (@lajornadaonline) March 28, 2026

The arrival concludes seven days of sailing. The two sailboats had been reported missing on March 23, triggering an intense search operation by the Mexican and Cuban navies, with constant oversight from Presidents Claudia Sheinbaum and Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Analysts and solidarity activists raised concerns over the loss of communication with the vessels, given that the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has been carrying out extrajudicial killings in the region since September 2025. These operations have resulted in the deaths of at least 158 people without any form of legal accountability. The most recent of these extrajudicial killings was reported on March 25.

Since the two small boats have no motors and are powered solely by wind, calculating an exact arrival date in the Cuban capital proved difficult. Hoowever, a source from the Nuestra América convoy organizers noted during search operations that the craft were being handled by experienced sailors.

On Saturday morning, the Mexican Navy (SEMAR) reported that a Persuader aircraft had located Friendship and Tiger Moth 80 nautical miles (148 km) northwest of Havana. Following the contact, a SEMAR ship provided support to the boats, and personnel performed medical checks on all occupants, confirming that they were in good health.

Activists from Nuestra América Convoy to Cuba Detained in US & Panama

US extrajudicial killings on high seas
With the 46th lethal “kinetic strike” by SOUTHCOM on March 25, which claimed four lives, the cumulative death toll of the US Operation Southern Spear has reached at least 158 victims.

This latest maritime bombing reaffirms a pattern of extreme lethality: out of 46 recorded strikes on small boats, only three survivors have been officially recovered since the inception of the campaign in early September 2025.

While US SOUTHCOM frames these actions as “applying total systemic friction,” legal analysts and activists continue to condemn the lack of transparency, the absence of due process, and the potential targeting of civilian fishing vessels.

These extrajudicial killings are being considered as a naval extension of the same US military aggression that resulted in the January 3 bombing of Caracas and other Venezuelan states and the subsequent kidnapping of the Venezuelan presidential couple.

(Telesur) with Orinoco Tribune content

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/SC


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