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    Want to beat authoritarianism? Look to Latin America | Greg Grandin

    Inspiration on how to beat back authoritarianism is in short supply, but those searching for hope in these dark times might consider Latin America.It’s not the first place that comes to mind when thinking about democracy, associated as it is with coups, death squads, dictatorships, inequality, drug violence and now a country, El Salvador, offering itself up to Donald Trump as an offshore prison colony for deportees.It is a bleak place in many ways, especially for the jobless and the poor who flee their home countries in search of a better life somewhere else, often in the United States. The bleakness, though, only highlights the paradox: for all its maladies, for all its rightwing dictators and leftwing caudillos, for all its failings when it comes to democratic institutions, the region’s democratic spirit is surprisingly vital.Other areas of the world emerged broken from the cold war, roiled by resource conflicts, religious fundamentalism and ethnic hatreds. Think of the bloody Balkans of the 1990s or 1994’s Rwandan genocide.Not Latin America, where, by the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, most of its anti-communist dictatorships had given way to constitutional rule. With the jackboot off their necks, reformers went on the offensive, seeking to redeem not just democracy but social democracy.Today, in the United States at least, the concept of democracy is generally defined minimally, as comprising regularly held elections, a commitment to due process to protect individual rights, and institutional stability. But earlier, in the middle of the last century, a more robust vision that included economic rights prevailed – that indeed the second world war was fought not just against fascism but for social democracy. “Necessitous men are not free men,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt liked to say. Reporting from Europe in late 1945, William Shirer described a groundswell demand for social democracy, in an article headlined: Germany is finished, communists distrusted, majority wants socialism.Latin America joined in the demand, and by 1945 nearly every country understood citizenship as entailing both individual and social rights. Latin Americans broadened classical liberalism’s “right to life” to mean a right to a healthy life, which obligated the state to provide healthcare. “Democracy, political as well as social and economic,” wrote Hernán Santa Cruz, a childhood friend of Salvador Allende and a Chilean UN delegate who helped Eleanor Roosevelt draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “comprises, in my mind, an indivisible whole”.That whole was shattered to pieces by the death-squad terror of the cold war, much of it patronized by Washington, followed by the free-market neoliberal economics pushed on Latin America during that war.Yet once the repression abated and citizens were free to vote their preference, they began to elect social democrats as presidents, men and women who represented a variety of historical social movements: feminists, trade unionists, peasant organizers, Indigenous rights campaigners, heterodox economists, environmentalists and liberation theologians. Today, a large majority of Latin Americans live in countries governed by the center left. Despite the best efforts of Friedrich von Hayek and his libertarian followers in the region to convince them otherwise, most Latin Americans do not believe that welfare turns citizens into serfs.Pankaj Mishra, in his survey of the horrors inflicted on Palestinians, has written about the “profound rupture” in the “moral history of the world” since 1945. No region has done more to heal that rupture than Latin America.And no region has had as much experience beating back fascists, long after the second world war had ended, than Latin America. Rightwing authoritarians, gripped by the same obsessions that move Trump supporters in the United States, have some momentum, though they haven’t been able to escalate occasional electoral victories, including in Argentina and Ecuador, into a full-on continental kulturkampf.Center-left democrats hold the right at bay by putting forth an expansive social-democratic agenda, one flexible enough to include demands for sexual and racial equality. As the US rolls back abortion rights, momentum in Latin America moves in the other direction – Argentina, Mexico and Colombia either decriminalizing or legalizing abortion. Gay marriage and same-sex civil unions have been recognized in 11 countries.Spasms of ethnonationalist rage gripped much of the world the 1990s – Indonesia’s 1998 anti-Chinese rampage, for example. In contrast, Indigenous peoples in countries including Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and Guatemala burst into politics as the best bearers of the social democratic tradition, adding environmentalism and cultural rights to the standard menu of economic demands. Today, many countries have retreated behind an aggrieved nationalism. For the most part, Latin Americans have not. Their reaction to the depredations of corporate globalization is rarely expressed in xenophobic, antisemitic or conspiratorial tropes, as a struggle against “globalists”. Nationalism in Latin America has long been understood as a gateway to universalism.Frontline activists stand unbowed before police batons and paramilitary guns. In 2022, Latin America clocked the world’s highest murder rate of environmental activists. Unionists, students, journalists, and women’s and peasant rights activists are assassinated at a regular clip. Yet organizing continues. In Brazil during the four-year presidency of the Trump-like Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023), the Landless Workers’ Movement, already the largest social movement in the world, grew even larger.When it comes to interstate relations, Latin America is one of the most peaceful regions. There is no nuclear competition, thanks to one of the most successful arms control treaties in history, the 1967 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.In 1945, Latin American diplomats drew on their long history in opposing Washington’s interventionism to play a key role in founding the liberal multilateral order, the global system of governance now upended by Trump. Most importantly, the region’s leaders insisted that nations should be organized around the premise of cooperation, not competition, that diplomacy should be used to settle differences, and that war should be a last resort. Their post-cold war counterparts have loudly defended these principles, first against George W Bush during the war on terror, and more recently against Joe Biden and Trump, insisting that the art of diplomacy must be relearned. “Brazil has no enemies,” the country’s defense minister once said, notable considering that the Pentagon has marked out the entire globe as a battlefield.Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, among others, have criticized the return to power politics and balance-of-power diplomacy. If the past teaches anything, they say, it is that opening a belligerent multi-front balance of power – with the United States pushing against China, pushing against Russia, with all countries, everywhere, angling for dominance – will lead to more confrontation, more war. As with the United States’s shapeshifting, amorphous domestic culture war, there is no clear endgame to this new era of militarized economic competition, of war by proxy and privateer, which only increases the odds of conflict spinning out of control.One need not romanticize Latin America. To recognize the strength of the social democratic ideal in Latin America does not require one to celebrate all those who call themselves socialists, in Nicaragua and Venezuela, for example. And even those we might celebrate, such as Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum or Chile’s Gabriel Boric, preside over states loaded with significant amount of repressive power, often directed at some of their country’s most vulnerable, such as Mapuche activists in southern Chile.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut there is no other region of the world that so persistently continues to insist on taking the Enlightenment at its word, whose leftwing politicians and social movements win by advancing a program of universal humanism. Trump has transformed the United States government into a predator-state, a tormenter of citizens and non-citizens alike. Latin American social democrats – Lula in Brazil and Mexico’s Sheinbaum, Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi, and Petro in Colombia, among others – do what they can to use state power to fulfill an obligation: the ideal that all people should live in dignity.The forcefulness in which Latin American leaders such as Lula and Sheinbaum defend social rights contrasts with the timidity of the Democratic party. Biden did pass legislation suggesting it was breaking with the old neoliberal order. But Biden’s team couldn’t find its voice, unable to link a reinvestment in national industry with a renewed commitment to social citizenship. Democrats are shrill in denouncing Trump’s extremism even as they are timid in offering an alternative.Confronted with a existential crisis that people feel in their bones, the Democratic party puts forth weak-tea fixes in an enervating technocratic jargon, its counselors saying the lesson of Kamala Harris’s loss is that the party has to think even smaller, has to shake off its activist constituencies and move to the center.A recent op-ed in the New York Times urged Democrats to lay out their own Project 2029, to counter the conservative thinktank Heritage Foundation’s influential Project 2025. What did the author of the op-ed believe should be in this new project? A call for national healthcare? No. Affordable housing? No. Paid vacations, universal childcare or an increase in the minimum wage? None of that. He suggested that the Democrats promise to streamline regulations and improve “the quality” of “customer-service interactions”.Woodrow Wilson imagined a world without war. FDR imagined a world without fear or want. Today’s would-be governing liberals in the United States imagine nothing. They treat the promise of a humane future – or of any future at all – like a weight from the past, hard to bear, easy to toss aside.Democrats in the United States can’t simply mimic social democrats in Latin America; they operate in vastly different political contexts. But Latin America is a useful mirror, reflecting the considerable distance Democrats in the US have drifted from New Deal values. They might want to read Roosevelt’s Faith of the Americas speech, where he said that the best way to defuse extremism was to use government action to ensure “a more abundant life to the peoples of the whole world”.Latin America social democrats today – and not the Democratic party in the United States – are the true heirs of FDR’s vision. They know that if democracy is to be something more than a heraldic device, it must confront entrenched power. Latin American reformers know that the way to beat today’s new fascists is the same as it was in the 1930s and 1940s: by welding liberalism to a forceful agenda of social rights, by promising, in a voice simple, clear and sure, to improve the material conditions of people’s lives.“People have to have hope again,” as Lula put it in his most recent successful run for re-election, “and a full belly, with morning coffee and lunch and dinner”.What’s giving me hope nowWhat gives me hope is that in a place like Latin America, where the forces of reaction are so fierce, social movements led by feminists, peasants, first peoples, and gay and trans activists continue to fight back against fierce repression with enormous courage. Political theorists like to measure “democracy” according to institutional stability and free elections, and by that standard, many places in Latin America come up short. But if we measure democracy by courage, by a tenacity to continue to fight for universal, humane values, for a more sustainable, more equal, more human world, then Latin America carries forward the democratic ideal.

    Greg Grandin, the C Vann Woodward professor of history at Yale, is the author of the recently published, America, América: A New History of the New World, from which parts of this essay were based. More

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    Javier Milei, Trump’s ‘Favorite President,’ Has Few Deals to Offer — but Lots of Adoration

    Javier Milei of Argentina might not be that useful for the United States on economics or geopolitics — but he can help to fight the culture wars.The day after President Trump antagonized world leaders across the globe with his most sweeping set of tariffs yet, he was scheduled to fly to Florida and potentially see the one leader he has called his “favorite president.”That leader, President Javier Milei of Argentina, had flown overnight to receive an award on Thursday at a right-wing gala at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump was scheduled to also be there late Thursday — Mr. Milei said Mr. Trump would receive an award, too — and Mr. Milei said he hoped the two would meet.It was Mr. Milei’s 10th trip to the United States in 15 months as president, and nearly every time, he has met Mr. Trump or Elon Musk.Mr. Trump has posited that he is reshuffling U.S. foreign policy strictly around what is good for the United States.So what can be puzzling about his elevation of Argentina to the front row of America’s allies — Mr. Milei and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy were the only world leaders onstage at Mr. Trump’s inauguration — is that the chronically distressed South American nation is not particularly important as an economic or geopolitical partner.Instead, through Mr. Milei, Argentina has offered Mr. Trump something else he appears to crave: adoration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Argentine Leader Draws Fire After Cratering of Crypto Coin He Promoted

    The move, quickly seized upon by his political rivals, was the latest in a series that Javier Milei has made that seem to mirror President Trump.Argentina’s libertarian president, Javier Milei, has caused a political firestorm by promoting an unknown cryptocurrency token that shot up in value after his endorsement and then swiftly cratered.In a post on social media on Friday night, Mr. Milei said that the coin, called $LIBRA, would stimulate the economy and help small businesses grow. While the sudden attention gave the token an initial boost, the huge gains were erased as fear quickly spread that the coin was a scam.Mr. Milei deleted his social media post five hours later and attempted to distance himself from the venture.“I was not familiar with the details of the project,” he wrote on X, “and after having informed myself I decided not to continue disseminating it (that is why I deleted the tweet).”But Mr. Milei rapidly came under fire for his role in pushing people toward a risky investment. His dalliance with crypto also prompted comparisons with President Trump, who launched a memecoin, $Trump, last month. That token surged for a while and then crashed.A center-left coalition that opposes Mr. Milei’s libertarian government called his crypto foray “a scandal without precedent.” Another political bloc said it was seeking to create a commission in Congress to investigate what occurred.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Are US women protesting Trump by ‘swearing off sex with men’? | Arwa Mahdawi

    Have rumours of a US sex strike been greatly exaggerated?Sex sells. Sex strikes, meanwhile, make for an irresistible headline. Ever since Donald Trump overwhelmingly won the election, there have been endless headlines about how American women are emulating South Korea’s fringe 4B movement (which encourages heterosexual women not to date, procreate, marry or have sex with men) and “swearing off sex with men” in protest.“A Sex Strike Is a Losing Strategy for American Women,” a recent op-ed in the New York Times proclaimed, for example.“No sex. No dating. No marriage. No children. Interest grows in 4B movement to swear off men,” a PBS headline declared.“Ahead of Trump’s Second Term, Calls for a Sex Strike Grow Online,” the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) wrote.It’s certainly true that there has been a spike in US interest in the 4B movement. Voluntary celibacy was growing in popularity long before the election but Trump’s victory gave it a huge boost. There are more than 100,000 videos about 4B on TikTok and there has been a surge in Google searches relating to it. There have also been various viral calls for women to withhold sex in order to protest against Trump. (Just in case you’re wondering if you have a severe case of deja vu, there were also calls for a sex strike during Trump’s first term.)But is this online chatter actually translating to offline action? It doesn’t seem that way yet. There is zero evidence that there are large-scale sex strikes protesting against Trump happening in the US. All the hand-wringing by the likes of the New York Times seems to be over something that doesn’t actually exist. The headlines treating women as some sort of monolith also obscure the fact that, according to AP VoteCast, 53% of white women voted for Trump this year.Still, that doesn’t mean that growing interest in 4B should be written off as some sort of meaningless fad. On the contrary, engagement with the movement points to the fact that many women are not taking Trump’s victory lying down. While there may be no proof of widespread strikes in the sheets, there have been plenty of demonstrations on the streets. Meanwhile, online sales of emergency contraceptives and abortion pills are rocketing before the “reproductive apocalypse” that will be Trump’s second term. With rights being rolled back and pregnancy growing increasingly dangerous in the US, women are also reconsidering whether they want to have children.Let’s say that sex strikes did actually take off, however. Might they be effective? The most famous sex strike certainly was. In the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes, women withhold sex in an attempt to end the Peloponnesian war and the ruse pays off: peace is declared. Since then, there have been plenty of other real-world sex strikes with varying results, waged everywhere from Belgium to Liberia. A small town in Colombia held a “crossed legs” protest in 2011, for example; women refused sex with their husbands until the government paved a road linking their town to the rest of the province. The protest is widely considered to have been successful.Less headline-worthy forms of protest, however, tend to be rather more effective. This, by the way, is the rather less talked-about message in Lysistrata itself. As the cultural critic and classicist Helen Morales told the Guardian back in 2022, the play isn’t just about sex strikes: “There are elder women seizing control of the treasury and the younger women withdraw their unpaid labour at home. They’re much more a model for effecting political change.”How the Taliban are erasing Afghanistan’s women – photo essay“It was important for us to look beyond the traditional representations of Afghan women as passive victims of the Taliban and show them as active players in their own lives,” say journalist Mélissa Cornet and photographer Kiana Hayeri in this piece for the Guardian.Argentina votes alone against UN resolution combating misogynistic online violenceWhich is not a huge surprise as Argentina’s President Javier Milei is incredibly rightwing and a vocal critic of the UN.Gender-fluid Mary, Queen of Scots ballet to debut at Edinburgh festival 2025It’s the latest example of a trend of gender-neutral casting in artistic productions. You can guarantee that this will drive the usual suspects completely bonkers.Armie Hammer’s mother gifted him a vasectomy for his birthdayThe disgraced actor, who has been accused of sexual abuse by multiple women, has returned to public life via a podcast. He seems to be having trouble rustling up guests so recently had his mum on the podcast, where she shared this little snippet of info.What happened to Palestinian-Egyptian actor May Calamawy’s role in Gladiator II?When Calamawy was originally cast (long before 7 October 2023) it was reported that she’d have an “important” or leading role. Now it seems like she has been all but cut from the movie – relegated to a tiny non-speaking background part. There has been a lot of speculation that this is punishment for her pro-Palestinian advocacy. As we have seen, talking about a genocide and ethnic cleansing can be a real career-killer.Sydney Sweeney says female solidarity in Hollywood is ‘fake’Wait, you’re telling me that Hollywood – a place that fetishizes unrealistic beauty ideals and where women over 40 struggle to find roles – isn’t a utopia of intersectional feminism? You’re kidding me!Iran announces ‘treatment clinic’ for women who defy strict hijab laws“It won’t be a clinic, it will be a prison,” one young woman from Iran told the Guardian.Sweden’s minister for gender equality is terrified of bananasAs someone who also hates bananas with a passion, I would like to extend my solidarity to Paulina Brandberg, whose banana-phobia has made international headlines. As one of her colleagues noted, we should be focusing on her work to help vulnerable women rather than her hatred for an alarmingly yellow fruit.The week in pawtriarchyJust in case you were wondering whether the US could get any more dystopian, it turns out that robot dogs are guarding Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago. Still, probably better to have robots rather than the real thing considering how close Trump is to Kristi Noem. The South Dakota governor, whom Trump has just picked for head of homeland security, famously wrote about shooting and killing her family dog, Cricket, and an unnamed goat. More

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    Argentina Mulls Exiting Paris Climate Deal

    The South American nation says it is considering withdrawing from the landmark agreement, which aims to limit carbon emissions and slow global warming.Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is considering withdrawing the South American nation from the Paris climate agreement that aims to curb planet-warming emissions, a drastic move that only one other world leader has made in the past: former President Donald J. Trump, who withdrew the United States during his first term.The South American country is considering leaving the 2015 agreement as part of a broad reassessment of its climate policies, Argentina’s foreign minister said on Thursday.Argentina’s review of the landmark climate deal comes as the world braces for an intended second withdrawal from the accords by President-elect Trump. If Mr. Milei also abandons the agreement, some worry it could set off a domino effect, prompting other countries to reconsider their own participation.The country has not yet made a decision on whether it will leave the accords, according to the foreign minister, Gerardo Werthein. But it is reconsidering its participation in a deal that “has a lot of elements” that Mr. Milei’s government does not agree with.“We’re re-evaluating our strategy on all matters related to climate change,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “And so far, we haven’t made any other decision beyond standing down until things are clearer.”A day earlier, Mr. Milei unexpectedly pulled out Argentina’s delegation from the annual United Nations climate conference, which is being hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, and is known as COP29 this year. In the past, Mr. Milei, a right-wing libertarian, has called the climate crisis a “socialist lie.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Gilead Agrees to Allow Generic Version of Groundbreaking H.I.V. Shot in Poor Countries

    Many middle-income countries are left out of the deal, widening a gulf in access to critical medicines.The drugmaker Gilead Sciences on Wednesday announced a plan to allow six generic pharmaceutical companies in Asia and North Africa to make and sell at a lower price its groundbreaking drug lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that provides near-total protection from infection with H.I.V.Those companies will be permitted to sell the drug in 120 countries, including all the countries with the highest rates of H.I.V., which are in sub-Saharan Africa. Gilead will not charge the generic drugmakers for the licenses.Gilead says the deal, made just weeks after clinical trial results showed how well the drug works, will provide rapid and broad access to a medication that has the potential to end the decades-long H.I.V. pandemic.But the deal leaves out most middle- and high-income countries — including Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, China and Russia — that together account for about 20 percent of new H.I.V. infections. Gilead will sell its version of the drug in those countries at higher prices. The omission reflects a widening gulf in health care access that is increasingly isolating the people in the middle.Gilead charges $42,250 per patient per year for lenacapavir in the United States, where it is approved as a treatment for H.I.V. The company has said nothing about what lenacapavir will cost when used to prevent H.I.V. infections, a process called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.The generics makers — four companies in India, one in Pakistan and one in Egypt — are expected to sell it for much less. Researchers at Liverpool University found the drug could profitably be produced for as little as $40 per patient per year, if it were being purchased in large volumes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Olympics Has a Bad Guy: Anyone in an Argentina Jersey

    Grudges from the World Cup and rugby union have spilled over to the Games. But is this new sports feud even real?The Olympic Games have long been governed by a tacit code: If fans can’t say anything nice, they shouldn’t say anything at all. Jeering, whistling and catcalling at athletes who have spent years to make it to the pinnacle of their sports is “unacceptable,” as Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, once put it. To boo is, well, taboo.As far as the French are concerned, though, there appears to be one exception: anyone wearing the sky blue and white of Argentina.In the opening few days of the Paris Games, Argentina was booed before, during and after a men’s soccer game in Marseille. It was heartily booed for three days straight every time its men’s rugby sevens team appeared at a packed Stade de France. And it was booed again whenever one of those rugby players had the temerity to touch the ball.Its anthem was booed once more — although a little more gently — when Argentina’s team made its debut in the men’s volleyball tournament at the South Paris Arena on Saturday evening.The hostility has left some of the country’s opponents wondering what is going on. Nicholas Malouf, an Australian rugby sevens player, said he “did not know the background” behind the tension. Antony Mboya, representing Kenya in the same sport, assumed the local French crowd was just “backing an underdog.”In reality, the animosity is much more targeted. Both sides have come to understand that France, at this moment in time, does not much like Argentina. “It has become a real rivalry for us,” said Jules Briand, a French fan who traveled both to watch his team compete in rugby sevens and to indulge in a little jeering.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Pope and Argentina’s President Appear to Find Some Common Ground

    The two men hold radically different world views and the president, Javier Milei, has spoken about Francis in harsh terms, but the Vatican said their meeting was “cordial.”President Javier Milei of Argentina, who before taking office ridiculed Pope Francis as an “imbecile” and accused him of violating the Ten Commandments, met with the pontiff on Monday for an hourlong conversation that the Vatican described as “cordial.”The Vatican said in a statement that the two leaders had spoken at a private meeting about their shared will to further strengthen relations and had addressed the Milei government’s program to counter the economic crisis in Argentina, where the annual inflation rate is at 211 percent.On social media, Mr. Milei’s office posted a photograph of the pope with the president and the president’s sister, Karina Milei, one of his closest advisers.The discussions, which came a day after Mr. Milei attended a Mass for the canonization of Argentina’s first female saint, also addressed international issues, “especially ongoing conflicts and the commitment to peace among nations,” the Vatican said.The good will was not a given. Both men were born in Buenos Aires, and though the pope is a national hero to many in Argentina, where a majority of people identify as Roman Catholic, Mr. Milei, who says he is an “anarcho-capitalist” and who ran under the banner of a far-right libertarian party, has repeatedly denigrated Francis.In the years preceding his election in November, Mr. Milei often attacked the pope, who in his writings and speeches has repeatedly spoken out against free market economies for generating income inequalities that affect the most vulnerable.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More