The year is 1973.

Santiago, Chile.

Ana Maria’s father runs a liquor store just down the street from their house. Every night when he goes to lock up, pairs of feet follow him. Feet in tired shoes. Nervous feet. Wanted feet. Feet on the run. 

He guides them into the basement of his shop and maybe rolls out a blanket or two. They lie, alongside cases of the Chilean beer Escudo, or Shield, and hope that it will protect them. Sometimes they even try a bottle. They whisper to each other in the darkness. They develop plans. They talk of fighting. Or fleeing the country. Or they reminisce of better times. Times only just past. 

They sleep beside the Escudo… under the watchful eye of rows of Chilean Pisco, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Syrah.

They have restless, agitated dreams. Dreams they cannot run from. Dark dreams that descended on Chile in September, 1973, and enveloped the country in a thick grey fog. A fog that will not go away. A fog that plucked people from off the street and removed them, never to be seen again. 

But these feet are survivors.

In the morning, Ana Maria’s father comes to open the shop. He brings food. A large bowl of cazuela. Bread. Sandwiches. His wife cooks.

“I’m famished,” he tells her every morning. “So hungry.” It’s hard to tell if she knows why.

The feet eat quickly and quietly. Then they lace their shoes, grab their bag and slide out the back door into the empty street.

Thrushes and sparrows dart from tree to tree, singing their early morning song. The sun hasn’t yet crested the Andes. 

The feet walk quickly. Determined. They have no other choice. They have to… before the fog descends again. Sometimes, in 1973 Chile, it’s hard to tell which is worse, the bad dreams or the reality.

###

Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.

This is episode 33 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend. 

In honor of this episode, I’ll be posting a series of pictures of the Museum of Memory in Santiago, Chile. It’s a powerful museum focused on remembering the victims of the country’s 1973 coup, the Pinochet dictatorship, and the resistance against it, like this. Those are available exclusively for my supporters on Patreon. There you can also follow my reporting www.patreon.com/mfox. 

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 33 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
Written and produced by Michael Fox.

It’s the early 1980s.

US-backed wars are wreaking havoc across Central America.

And, in particular, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Authoritarian governments have unleashed waves of violence on their populations.

Trained death squads disappeared thousands.

There are raids. US-backed massacres. 

One after the next. 

And so tens of thousands of people begin to flee to the one place they believe they may be safe…

The United States.

The very country helping to instigate the violence in their homelands.

But the United States says they are not welcome.

President Ronald Reagan refuses to admit that these thousands are fleeing abuses and government repression back home, because it will bar the US from funneling more support to the authoritarian Central American regimes… 

So Reagan calls them “economic migrants.” 

Fleeing not violence, but poverty.

And this bars them from receiving asylum.

But if the US government will not respond, others will stand up… 

“…A government that has failed in its responsibility to society, so other institutions must act.”

Local residents in Tucson, Arizona, begin to provide aid and assistance to the waves of Central American migrants that are arriving to the US border.

In March 1982, on the second anniversary of the killing of El Salvador’s Archbishop Óscar Romero, Tucson’s Southside Presbyterian Church declared itself a sanctuary for migrants in need. 

They hang a banner outside the church. It reads: “This is a Sanctuary for the Oppressed of Central America.”

John Fife was the minister of that church and one of the founders of the Sanctuary Movement.

“Basic human rights had been violated in systematic ways. And every other possibility had been exhausted… And so the church in Tucson, Arizona remembered that God had given the communities of faith an ancient gift called sanctuary. That the church was given that gift by God to save lives, to keep families intact, to say to the government you have absolutely failed in your responsibility to do justice and therefore that failure means that the community of faith has been given a gift by God to stand up and in nonviolent direct ways say no to more deportations. No to more devastation of families.”

Other churches joined Southside Presbyterian. They would take in migrants and refugees. They would shelter them against government agents and border patrol. 

A new underground railroad for Central Americans fleeing US-backed violence abroad. 

It quickly became a national movement.

Within three years, 500 churches, synagogues and university campuses had joined and were actively protecting Central American migrants.

Good samaritans standing for their Central American brothers and sisters.

“On any given night there might be from two to 25 [refugees] sleeping in the church,” said one member of Southside Presbyterian. “The congregation set up a one-room apartment for them behind the chapel. When that was full, they slept on foam pads in the Sunday school wing.”

The US government responded. The Justice Department indicted 16 people for aiding undocumented immigrants.

“If I am guilty of anything, I am guilty of the Gospel,” said one defendant.

People protested at immigration departments in numerous cities. 

Half of those indicted were found guilty of human smuggling. Most received light sentences.

Finally, in 1990, Congress approved temporary protected status to Central Americans in need.

A tremendous victory that would benefit hundreds of thousands… millions of people. 

But the struggle continues. 

In recent decades, a New Sanctuary Movement has begun to fight to end injustices against immigrants regardless of immigration status.

Under Donald Trump’s first administration, the concept of sanctuary cities arose to respond to government policies that pushed deportations and immigrant crackdowns.

All of this is more important than ever… NOW.

Whereas in the past police and immigration officials were instructed not to arrest people in sensitive places, like churches. That policy has now been overturned.

Trump has unleashed a war on US immigrants… suspending visas and green cards and removing resident status at will.

But people are pushing back.

###

Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.

This is episode 32 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend. You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox. 

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 32 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

Below are several short videos about the Sanctuary Movement. 

This link includes an excellent talk from Presbyterian minister John Fife, which we used part of for the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwHOACm3Yaw

Sanctuary Movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUzhG8kp8E8

1980′ Sanctuary Movement was about Politics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NM8NsDpDGE

The Sanctuary Movement (Part 2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZwfdVbhsYM

Sanctuary Movement / Central Americans Refugees 1981: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0N_shkAOcc

It’s Mother’s Day, again. That time for showering your mom with cards and flowers, and chocolates and gifts… right? 

Wrong. Or at least, that was NOT the intention of the original holiday, nor the goal for the women who dreamed of it.

Peace. Unity. Solidarity was.

The year was 1870. Just after the Civil War, in the United States. More than half a million people had died.

And one woman decided to stand for peace and an end to war. 

Her name was Julia Ward Howe. She was a well-known author and poet. An abolitionist and an activist. She wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a patriotic song for the Union ahead of the war. 

And in 1870 she wrote her “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world”… Her “Mothers’ Day Proclamation.”

“Arise, then… women of this day!” She wrote.

“Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!

“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

“From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.”

She called on women to unite. To meet. To join hands across cultures and nations and lead the way for an end to war.

She called for a Mother’s Day for Peace.

Around this time an organizer and social activist from West Virginia named Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis was already picking up the cause. She’d started Mother’s Day Work Clubs in several cities to help improve health conditions. During the Civil War, they’d declared neutrality and offered medical aid and assistance to soldiers from both the North and the South.

After the war, she worked to reunite communities destroyed and divided by the fighting. Despite threats of violence, she planned a “Mothers Friendship Day.” In Pruntytown, West Virginia, they brought together soldiers from both sides, the Union and the Confederacy, to help each other heal. They sang songs. They cried.

And when Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis passed in 1905, her daughter, Anna Jarvis, made it her life’s mission to establish a day for mothers in her honor. 

She held the first Mother’s Day ceremonies in May 1908, in Philadelphia and Grafton, West Virginia. She distributed white carnations to those in attendance to symbolize the quote “truth, purity and broad-charity of mother love.”

She campaigned tirelessly for the day to be transformed into a national holiday. She organized. She wrote letters to powerful people.

And… they listened. 

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday in May a national holiday — Mother’s Day.

But… It did not go as planned. 

Jarvis saw her holiday coopted by businesses trying to make a buck. How it was being commercialized with the sale of flowers, gifts, and greeting cards.

That was not the idea. And she railed against it. 

She famously said, “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.”

She filed lawsuits against companies she said were profiting off of the holiday. 

She protested. And was arrested for obstructing the sale of flowers.

In the 1940s, she organized a petition to rescind the day.

Mother’s Day, she said, had lost its essence. Its meaning. In the name of profit.

It had lost its roots of peace. Love and Unity… 

But it is never too late. 

This Mother’s Day, let’s remember where this holiday came from.

Forgo the presents, and the flowers and the chocolate. 

And instead give your mom a hug and share with her the story of the true meaning of Mother’s Day.

A Mother’s Day for Peace.

An end to war.

An end to violence.

An end to the separation of families.

A call for unity among nations and peoples.

Regardless of the color of their skin, their language,

Or their immigration status.

###

Thanks so much for listening. 

I want to send a special thanks and shout out to the peace organization Code Pink for their excellent article that shined light on this forgotten story of Mother’s Day. The article was written over a decade ago, but nothing has changed. I was inspired to do this episode thanks to it. I’ll add a link in the show notes to that article as well as some other stories with background to this forgotten history.

As always, I’m your host Michael Fox. This is Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review. 

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 31 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

The Radical History of Mother’s Day: https://www.codepink.org/the_radical_history_of_mother_s_day

“Why Was Mother’s Day Created and Why Did Its Founder Protest Against It?”: https://medium.com/@rgdaksh03122005/why-was-mothers-day-created-and-why-did-its-founder-protest-against-it-81807571a7ee

She invented Mother’s Day — then waged a lifelong campaign against it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2024/05/11/anna-jarvis-mothers-day-founder

Revolutionary
Poet
Salvadoran
Roque Dalton was all three.
Profoundly all three.
Born on May 14, 1935.
He grew up in San Salvador 
Studied law at the University of Chile 
And later at the University of El Salvador
There he formed a writer’s group 
of up-and-coming poets and authors…
He was inspired by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Mexican painter Diego Rivera. 
Communism and revolutionary causes.

His poems are pure art
Mixing politics with poetry 
Blending verse and prose 
Humor and reality
History and current events.
Beautiful lines alongside anger at the suffering plight of humanity 
And above all… that of the downtrodden and poor of El Salvador…
Like his poem, COMO TÚ, “like you”:

“I, like you,” he writes
“love love, life, the sweet charm
of things, the celestial landscape
of January days.
My blood also boils,
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the spring of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful,
that poetry is like bread, for everyone.
And that my veins end not in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who fight for life,
love,
things,
the landscape, and bread,
the poetry of everyone.”

His poems and prose have punchlines 
innuendo
Heart and depth

“Poetry,” he wrote, “Forgive me for helping you understand
that you are not made only of words.”

His poems have humor, as he displays the tragic hypocrisies of the world
And seems to almost be winking at you.
But they are also profoundly serious.

“In the middle of the sea a whale sighs,” he writes, “and in its sigh it says: love with hunger does not satisfy.”

He writes of the past and the very, very present
Foreign invaders from forgotten times.
And the current ones… bearing gifts, wrapped in red, white and blue 
With promises of riches and so-called freedom granted by Washington… and foreign corporations.
And he was clear that, together with a group of other Latin American poets, he was trying to develop a new style of radical poetry, rooted in politics and social struggle. 

This is one of the few recordings of Roque Dalton I’ve been able to find.
In it, he says… 

“Instead of singing, our poetry poses problems. Presents conflicts. Presents ideas, which are much more effective than hymns at making people conscious of the problems in the fight for the freedom of our peoples.”

But Roque Dalton did not just write words. 
He lived them.
He attended the world youth festival in Russia
He traveled, met and spoke out against injustices
He was imprisoned. Escaped. He traveled. He lived in Czechoslovakia.
Exiled in Mexico. Exiled in Cuba. 
And trained to fight there.

In the 1970s, El Salvador was ruled by a brutal US-backed dictatorship. Repressive. Violent Hundreds of people disappeared each month.
He joined the ERP, the People’s Revolutionary Army, a guerrilla movement that would fight against the government.
But he and the leadership differed over the direction their movement would take. 
He remained outspoken. He said they needed to build their base.
And in an unthinkably treacherous crime…

The leaders of his guerrilla army killed Roque Dalton on May 10, 1975
Just four days before his 40th birthday. 
As an excuse, his murderers claimed he was a CIA agent.
And they disappeared his body.

But Roque Dalton continues to inspire even 50 years after his killing.
His poems. His books breath with life as if they were written yesterday. 
As if he were still here. 
And in a way, he still is…  continuing to inspire inside and outside El Salvador.

I once asked Santiago, the head of the Museum of Word and Image in San Salvador and the former director of Radio Venceremos, El Salvador’s guerrilla radio, what his favorite poem was. His answer was this:

Alta hora de la noche (In the Dead of the Night), by Roque Dalton.

I found this version of it online, read by none other than the iconic Argentine writer Julio Cortazar, a close friend of Roque Dalton’s.

When you learn that I have died, do not pronounce my name
because it will hold back my death and rest.

Your voice, which is the sounding of the five senses,
would be the dim beacon sought by my mist.

When you learn that I have died, whisper strange syllables.
Pronounce flower, bee, teardrop, bread, storm.

Do not let your lips find my eleven letters.
I have dreams, I loved, I have earned my silence.

Do not pronounce my name when you learn that I have died
from the dark earth I would come for your voice.

Do not pronounce my name, do not say my name
When you learn that I have died, do not pronounce my name.

Roque Dalton left a wife and three sons, who also joined in the struggle against the bloody, US-backed Salvadoran government of the 1970s and ’80s. And who have continued to demand justice and the truth about their father’s death.

Roque Dalton’s words, actions and memory still inspire… 
So many years later.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I’ll be honest, this episode really touched me. Roque Dalton has long been one of my favorite poets and there are just so many layers here. I hope you enjoyed it. I’ll add some links in the show notes to more of his poetry, Julio Cortazar reading Alta hora de la noche and the clip of him speaking about developing a new radical poetry for Latin America.

I’ll also include links for my stories from my podcast Under the Shadow about El Salvador’s Civil War in the 1980s and the Museum of Word and Image in San Salvador.

This is Episode 30 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox. 

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 30 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

HABLA ROQUE DALTON SOBRE SU OBRA POÉTICA, UNA JOYA DE VIDEO

Roque Dalton – Dolores de Cabeza

Alta hora de la noche (Roque Dalton) Recitado por Cortázar

Other Roque Dalton poems, read by Julio Cortazar

Under the Shadow:

Ricardo Jones and his wife, Neusa,
are from the Southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
Birth is their calling. 
But not just any birth. 
Home birth. Natural birth.
Humanized birth, where the mothers and their babies come first,
Where the mothers are embraced and supported,
Where they’re empowered.
Because birth is not a sickness.
It’s not an illness. It’s not a problem.
It is a gift. A passage.
It is, perhaps, the most sacred moment of a mother’s and a family’s life,
And women have been giving birth since the dawn of the human race. 
Ric Jones and his wife Neusa work together.
He is an obstetrician. Neusa is an obstetrics nurse.
But they embrace the ancestral knowledge of midwives.
And they are running uphill
Amid a system that is stacked against them. 
In Brazil… nearly 60% of births are c-sections. 
In fact, it’s one of the countries with the highest c-section rate in the world.
That is, in part, because doctors can charge more for c-sections, and they can do more births in a day.
In private hospitals, the c-section rate is even higher — around 90%.
The World Health Organization says c-section rates should be closer to 15%… 
Because in some cases, c-sections are necessary. They can save lives.
But when they aren’t necessary, more medical intervention costs more money and leads to higher risks.
Three times the risk of disease or death, over a normal birth.
Ric Jones and his wife have tried to do things the other way…
Naturally. Minimal intervention, unless it is needed.
Ric Jones and his wife, Neusa, have delivered more than 2,000 babies.
Some babies who are now parents of their own.

But for their work, Ric and Neusa Jones are under attack. 
On March 27, 2025, Ric Jones was convicted of first-degree murder, 
15 years after one of the thousands of babies he delivered died of congenital pneumonia in the hospital, 24 hours  after the child was born at home.
Ric Jones received a sentence of 14 years in prison. 
His wife, 11 years.
Ric Jones spent three weeks in prison. 
He is now out while they await the decision over the appeal…

But a movement has grown in their defense. 
Parents, midwives, doulas, birth activists are standing up.
They’ve denounced the case against them. 
They’ve denounced Ric Jones’s imprisonment.
They are demanding justice 
For Ric and Neusa Jones.
They say that for their care and their love,
And their outspokenness in defense of humanized birth,
Brazil’s medical establishment is trying to make an example out of them.
And Ric and Neusa Jones are not the only health professionals and natural-birth midwives being criminalized.
In Europe, the United States, and Latin America 
lawyers are taking midwives to court 
To try to end their work forever,
And leave the birthing to the hospitals.

Ricardo Jones says, “The criminalization of natural childbirth is an international phenomenon and is in line with the interests of the medical industry, which controls childbirth care in the West, and hospital institutions, the pharmaceutical industry, etc. that profit from longer hospital stays, drug use, beds, dressings, health insurance, ICU stays, etc. In other words, all those who profit from the “wheel of fortune” of capitalism involved in healthcare. The risk we run is the complete artificialization of birth, where no child will be born through the efforts and determination of his or her mother, but through the time and skills of a third party, who will do it according to their interests.”

But mothers, midwives, doulas, and birth activists will not go silently. 
They are speaking out.
From Brazil and across the planet, women are demanding their right to birth whenever, wherever and however they want…
Be it in a hospital or in their home. 
To birth is not just their right. It is an honor and a gift.
And it should not be up to the busy high-paid doctors and the medical establishment 
To decide how each mother should bring her child into the world.
Their right to birth how they want is under attack,
As are midwives across the planet.
But they will not go silently.
They are fighting.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening.

Today, May 5th is the Day of the Midwife. It’s really pretty surprising the number of lawsuits against midwives and natural-birth obstetricians in countries across the world that are trying to stop these powerful men and women from doing their job, and continuing with their calling.

If you’d like to learn more, I’ve included some links in the show notes.

As always, I’m your host Michael Fox. This is Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox. 

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 29 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources: 

Each country has its own rules, laws and legislation regarding home birth, natural birth, and humanized birth. 

Most of this episode is focused on Brazil, where caesarean section rates are some of the highest in the world, and natural-birth and home-birth midwives, obstetricians, and doulas say they have felt clear marginalization and abuse by mainstream health professionals.

In the United States, home births are actually on the rise, with more midwives and doulas being certified, but as more and more states move to legalize homebirth, it’s also created a legal grey area.

Overall, women and men carrying out these home and natural births in many countries say they feel targeted for their work.

Below is a small list of lawsuits against natural birth midwives in numerous countries. They say this is part of a movement to end humanized and home birth. In many of these cases, midwives were accused or convicted of manslaughter. Ric Jones was convicted of murder, intentionally killing the baby. 

Canada (2025): Midwife Gloria Lemay
Charged with manslaughter.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gloria-lemay-charged-manslaughter-1.7425173

Austria (2025): Midwife Margerete Wana
Convicted of causing the death of the baby. Supported by the baby’s mother.
https://www.instagram.com/thea.maillard/p/DGNHrG8sjSo/
https://www.theamaillard.com/post/charlotte

UK (2025): Manslaughter charges after homebirth.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/13/coffs-harbour-midwives-court-home-birth-death-baby-ntwnfb

Australia (2019): Lisa Barrett
Charged with manslaughter. Found not guilty.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/south-australian-midwife-found-not-guilty-of-manslaughter/1474102c-ccfc-4617-9f60-5be32d881b7a

United States (2019): Elizabeth Catlin
Arrested in 2019 and indicted on 95 felony accounts, including criminal homicide.
https://msmagazine.com/2025/05/04/arrest-the-midwife-documentary-film-review-laws-mennonite-new-york/

Germany (2014): Midwife Anna Rockel-Loenhoff 
Sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison for manslaughter.
https://frauenfilmfest.com/en/event/hoerkino-tod-eines-neugeborenen-eine-hebamme-vor-gericht/

Hungary (2012): Conviction of midwife Agnes Gereb. Jailed, placed under house arrest and then granted clemency.
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/agnes-gereb-persecuted-midwifery

United States (2017): Vickie Sorensen
Charged with manslaughter. Sentenced to prison.
https://apnews.com/general-news-7928ca64d42c4e67aae2c382609d296f

United States (2011): Karen Carr
Charged with manslaughter.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/midwife-karen-carr-pleads-guilty-felonies-babys-death/story?id=13583237

Here is a link to an article in English about the case against Ric Jones in Brazil, and how it fits into the larger international framework: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/midwifes-14-year-sentence-highlights-attacks-womens-autonomy-global-surge-unnecessary-c

Here is the link for the Instagram group in Brazil created in defense of Ric and Neusa Jones: https://www.instagram.com/freericjones

Here is a statement from the International Confederation of Midwives calling for an end to the criminalization of midwifery, from a decade ago: https://internationalmidwives.org/resources/statement-on-stopping-the-criminalisation-of-midwifery

An incredible resource from Ms. Magazine about midwives, midwifery in the United States, and a new documentary about a criminalized midwife and Mennonite women who supported her: https://msmagazine.com/2025/05/04/arrest-the-midwife-documentary-film-review-laws-mennonite-new-york/

Pete Seeger

Folk musician

Banjo player

Singer of songs of unity

He sang songs of joy 

He sang for the unions

For the workers and the downtrodden. 

He sang songs for change

Civil Rights songs. Folk songs.

He sang for the people 

And he also served his country

In the US military—a corporal during World War 2

Fighting Hitler, the Nazis, and the Fascists

And when he came home, he founded the Weavers

A folk music quartet, which rocketed to the top of the charts.

They sang for the unions. 

They sang for social justice and progressive politics

Joseph McCarthy began his witch hunts in Washington.

Hundreds of actors, artists, and musicians were blacklisted across the country.

That included the Weavers. They called them subversives.

They were watched by the FBI.

And they folded.

McCarthy dragged Pete Seeger in to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

He refused to answer. 

But was found guilty of contempt of court.

He was banned from playing on television and over the radio.

He was banned from performing almost anywhere.

But he played on. 

Performing for kids.

Performing in festivals.

He taught people to play the banjo. 

He recorded instruction videos and song books. 

He worked as a music teacher in schools and summer camps.

He traveled from university to university across the country 

Singing despite the protests from conservatives 

Because of the blacklist.

They said he was Un-American.

But he was more American than anyone.

Reviving the songs of old 

Re-singing the music that rang from the porches of weatherbeaten homes across the hillsides of America.

He recorded folk album after album.

He helped to transform “We Shall Overcome” into a civil rights anthem. He sang it on the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. 

He helped to inspire the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. 

And he continued to play and sing throughout his life. 

His music and his legacy plays on.

Pete Seeger was born on May 3, 1919. 

He died at the age of 94, in 2014.

This is episode 28 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources:

Here is a great 2007 PBS documentary about Pete Seeger’s life. It’s called “The Power of Song”:

It’s been called the most influential protest you’ve never heard about. 

50,000 people in the streets

Descended on Washington

Day after day of nonviolent protests

Blockading roads 

Shutting down streets

Standing up for one cause: End the war in Vietnam. 

The year was 1971. The height of the war overseas.

Anti-war activists and groups, such as the May Day Collective said they would shut down Washington to demand that the troops be sent home.

That is what president Richard Nixon had promised to do when he took office, but he had only expanded operations in Vietnam.

The name of the protests was a play on words. They would take place around May 1, May Day. 

But the word mayday also means “emergency” or “crisis.”

The first days of protests began in mid-April 

With an occupation of the National Mall by Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

There were marches.

Big marches. Half a million people in the streets.

“Good evening… Marching behind flags and banners and picket signs demanding peace now, at least 200,000 anti-war protesters jammed the streets of Washington today in what was probably the biggest peace demonstration to be held since they began six years ago.”

Tent camps.

The protesters promised to disrupt activity in the city, make it impossible for politics and business to carry on as usual.

To stop government workers from getting to their jobs.

Their slogan: “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”

Richard Nixon responded with force. 

20,000 police officers, National Guard, US Marines, paratroopers and the calvary. 

One person who participated described it: “As protesters roamed downtown DC, dodging huge tear-gas barrages, they created small barricades, left disabled cars in roadways, or temporarily blocked intersections with mobile sit-ins.”

It was the quote, “Asymmetrical warfare of a guerilla force against a standing army. It was nearly impossible to defend against small decentralized bands who could shift on a dime, tie up police or troops at one spot, and then get to another place before the authorities could adjust.”

“Incredibly, the Supreme Court became involved in the camping permits. the capitol became a stage for guerrilla theater. Labor leaders and suburban mothers marched behind the leadership of hardcore anti-war activists. And thge final stages brought confrontation and vandalism in the name of peace… Every part of Washington seemed to be touched by some aspect of the intense three weeks.” 

But the police cracked down, making arrests, like the city, and the country, had never seen. 

7,000 people arrested in just one day—May 3. 

12,000 people arrested in total that week. 

It was and continues to be the largest mass arrest in the history of the United States.

Amid the dragnet, reporters and non-protesters were also ripped from the streets and locked up.

Protesters filled jails beyond capacity. People were detained in makeshift open-air prisons and in sporting arenas: The Washington Coliseum. The practice field for RFK Stadium.

They were held in deplorable conditions, often without much food, water, or bedding.

And in the end, years later, only a handful of people were convicted. 

The ACLU brought class action lawsuits.

Juries and judges awarded millions to thousands of those who were detained. 

They said their rights to free speech and due process had been violated. 

They said the arrests were unconstitutional.

Even Congress said the police and the federal government were in the wrong.

The US government’s use of preemptive mass arrests has continued as a means to clear streets, regardless if anything illegal has taken place…

…But so have the protests. 

50 years after the end of the Vietnam War, today, people are standing up in defense of Palestine. 

And they, too, have been targeted and detained, without doing anything wrong. For only exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.

And so long as there is injustice, so long as the United States is fueling violence and war abroad, there will be people in the streets.

People who will stand up. 

People who will resist. 

Like those who descended on Washington five decades ago.

On May Day 1971. 

With one demand:

“If the government won’t stop the war, we will stop the government.” 

This is episode 27 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

You can check out this excellent short documentary film about the protests:

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman covered the 50th anniversary of the protests and arrests in 2021:

Across the country, chairs sit empty around dinner tables.

Husbands, brothers, sons, mostly, are missing.

Caught up in a government dragnet that picked them off the streets.

Or took them from their homes. Or ripped them off of buses or from their workplaces.

The news gushes over how safe the country of El Salvador is today.

But for the thousands of families who’s innocent loved ones were taken from them 

And locked into high security prisons without a key…

This is not a paradise.

It’s a nightmare. 

In March 2022, President Nayib Bukele ordered a state of exception and unleashed raids that have locked up more than 70,000 people around the country. 

They are accused of being affiliated with gangs. 

Gangs that wreaked havoc in the country

with one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America (or the world).

People say they couldn’t leave their homes without fear of violence.

But in Bukele’s gang crackdown

he also picked up the innocent. 

Thousands. Tens of thousands of innocent people.

Police grabbed people with impunity. 

Without asking for proof, or a warrant.

And in jail, they are languishing. Most incommunicado from their families.

Incommunicado from a lawyer. 

Waiting for years.

And there are no charges. No court cases. No trials. No conviction. 

They are just held, indefinitely. 

Their crime: Being young. And male. And, in many cases, tattooed. 

And this system has the stamp of approval from the United States,

which is now openly participating, by sending Venezuelans to be housed in El Salvador’s jails. 

Also under the pretext of being gang members, even though many are not. 

The rule of law is dead. Habeaus corpus, buried.

Buried in the name of the war on gangs. 

Buried in the name of the United States. 

But people are fighting. 

Family members are marching. 

On May 1, International Workers Day, the family members of the detained lead the way. 

They carry signs of the loved ones who have been ripped from them. Husbands. Sons. Brothers. Breadwinners for their families, now languishing in prisons. 

They carry signs and images, strangely reminiscent of the pictures of those detained, killed, and disappeared during the 1970s and ’80s… in another time and another war, funded and backed by the United States. 

Those also kidnapped in the name of the United States.

But the Salvadorian relatives are not the only ones marching for their loved ones.

So are Venezuelans, standing up in Caracas and other cities against the illegal deportation of their compatriots to another country far away.

So are people in the United States.

But family members in El Salvador are leading the way.

They are marching. They are organizing. Demanding the freedom for their loved ones. 

Demanding to be allowed to speak to them. 

Demanding that there be justice.

Resisting, despite so much impunity.

Despite so much injustice.

###

Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.

I was in El Salvador for the May 1 march a couple of years ago, and did some reporting on the situation in the country and the widespread dentition of innocent people. I’ll add links in the show notes for some of my stories for The Real News. 

This is episode 26 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend. You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox. 

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

In El Salvador, thousands of innocent people have been locked up in Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gangs. They have been held without due process for years. But family members are standing up. And on May 1 they march, carrying the pictures and the names of their innocent loved ones detained and held without rights, with the ever-increasing support of the United States. 

This is episode 26 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Below are some links to Michael Fox’s previous reporting on this issue with The Real News.

A smooth velvet voice.

A voice that sang folk songs 

From the shores of the Caribbean.

But Harry Belafonte was so much more than that. 

He was born in Harlem, New York. 1927.

To parents from Jamaica. 

Growing up, he lived in Jamaica with his grandparents for several years before returning to the US and joining the Navy to fight in World War II.

When he returned, he worked as a janitor.

Got into theater. 

And began to sing to pay the bills. 

The Black activist and singer Paul Robeson took him under his wing. 

And Belafonte’s career took off. 

You know this song. It was the top track on Belafonte’s hit debut record, Calypso. 

That topped the charts for half a year.

And Harry Belafonte was transformed into the “King of Calypso,” a style of music which originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the late 1800s. 

He sang folk songs. Caribbean songs. Pop songs. Spiritual songs. And songs of resistance. 

His last studio album, in 1988, was a compilation of 10 protest songs against South African apartheid. 

He acted, performing in more than a dozen movies throughout his career. 

“I’m not a politician, I’m an artist, and if my art is done well, that in itself is a contribution.”

A contribution for change.

See, though Harry Belafonte was a great musician and actor, he was also, more than anything else, an activist. 

A fighter against racism and oppression, in the United States and around the world.

“As long as there is racism, I’m gonna be on fire,” he once said.

“Racismo in its subtlest and its most evil sense has worked its way into the fiber and the hearts and minds of many men and women. And with this going on, it’s had an incredible influence on my own life. I was born in the ghetto. My mother was a domestic worker. My father was a seaman. And I grew up in the West Indies. My uncles and aunts were farmers. Under British exploitation.”

He joined the civil rights movement. He marched alongside Martin Luther King. 

“To be a part of the movement that Dr. King led was the greatest moment of my life.”

He helped to fund civil rights organizing and groups. 

He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington.

When Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders were jailed,

Harry Belafonte helped to bail them out. 

When he had a hard time renting an apartment in Manhattan, because he was Black.

He bought the building and helped other Black artists move in and find a home. 

He was a true American patriot. Ever fighting for justice and equality. 

Ever fighting to make the United States better. 

He also denounced the US abroad. He demanded an end to the endless wars, apartheid, and the US blockade on Cuba.

Here’s just one clip from an interview he did with the CBC in 1967:

“I fought in the Second World War. I was told then and I fought with the knowledge that this was the war to end all wars and we were going to defeat fascism and mankind could turn its attention to the best of us in man. And now I come and my son is 10 years old, and I will arm him with everything I can, so he can be free of any primitive medieval concepts about false patriotism, about boundaries and the meaning of flags. Mankind is much bigger than all these primitive symbols. And I don’t want to see my boy with his face stuck in some rice paddy off in Vietnam, or off in some other land, protecting the interests of the establishment and trying to reward their greed with his life. I’m opposed to it.”

Harry Belafonte stood up for justice and against oppression throughout his life. 

And he remained active into his ’90s, working for prison reform, denouncing the Iraq War, George W. Bush, Trump, and so much more.

Harry Belafonte passed away on April 25, 2023.

His work and his melodies sing on.

###

Hi folks. Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox. Like so many others I am grateful to my parents to have raised me listening to Harry Belafonte. And I was even more grateful when I learned what an incredible person and activist he was…. Using his music and his success for good.

This is episode 25 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow my reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 25 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Links for some old clips of Harry Belafonte:

Harry Belafonte Interview on Activism Through Art (1958)

Harry Belafonte on racism, patriotism & war, 1967: CBC Archives | CBC

Harry Belafonte’s Best Crime Thriller? Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) | BlackTree TV

Harry Belafonte in Concert (Japan, 1960)

The Atacama Desert is the driest place on the planet.

And one of the most inhospitable.

But salt lagoons dot the barren landscape and they have given life.

Laguna Chaxa lies in the salt flats, 7,500 feet above sea level. 

Its crystal waters reflect the horizon, the never-ending terrain of salt rocks. The rows of volcanoes that line the Andes mountains to the East. 

In this lagoon, two species thrive. Brine shrimp and flamingos. The miniature shrimp multiply quickly, feeding on the phytoplankton packed with beta carotene, like carrots. The flamingos feed on the shrimp, which colors their feathers pink.

Growing the flamingo’s family tree is harder.

Raising an egg under the incessant sun is not easy.

Like penguins in the frigid extremes, the flamingos here lay just one egg a year.

And there is a battle to see which predator will get to it first. The foxes, which creep down off the hillsides, or the heat of the sun, which can cook it if left to the elements. 

So the flamingos have learned to adapt.

They build bowl-shaped nests of mud and earth in the shallow waters of the lake. 

The salty waters keep the foxes away, and cool the egg, despite the hot sun.

The baby flamingo grows inside the half-submerged egg.

But even then the parents keep watch.

If the egg is too hot, they fan it with their wings or block the sun’s rays with their bodies, shading it.

They have only one young a year. It must count. 

“If it dies, the mother, heartbroken, walks into the desert and dies too,” says Ingrid, an Indigenous guide from the local Toconao community that keeps watch over the region.

And then the egg hatches, the white feathered baby breaks free into the salty waters that she and her family have called home for thousands of years.

Perfectly adapted and resisting in one of the harshest ecosystems on Earth.

###

Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.

This story might seem a little out of place for this podcast. But coming just days after Earth Day, I wanted to highlight this just incredible lifelong resistance from animals and ecosystems all around us, to adapt and hold on as best one can. I really like this one. Also… April 26 is Flamingo Day. So happy Flamingo Day. Seeing them in action in these incredibly harsh climates of Chile and Peru, I have new found respect for these big pink birds. They are NOT just Florida lawn decor.

This is episode 24 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow my reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

There you can also check out some exclusive pictures of the flamingos at Laguna Chaxa, taken both by myself and my daughter. I’ll add links in the show notes. 

See you next time.

The Atacama Desert is the driest place on the planet, and one of the most inhospitable. But salt lagoons dot the barren landscape, and flamingos are one of a number of species that have adapted to live in this harsh environment, and are battling to survive.

This is episode 24 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

This week, we celebrate Earth Day, April 22. April 26 is also Flamingo Day. So, Happy Flamingo Day!

You can see exclusive pictures of the flamingos of the Atacama desert, in Michael Fox’s Patreon page. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
Written and produced by Michael Fox.

The trail leads across the vast horizon 

traversing sharp green slopes.

A row of travelers walks on an overgrown path of stone

chiseled half a millenium ago into the hillside.

Thousands of feet above the valley floor

thousands of feet above the snaking brown Urubamba River

craggy snow-covered 17-, 18-, 19,000-foot peaks reach toward the heavens.

They are not just mountains. 

They’re Apus. 

The word means “señor,” “elder,” or “the honored ones” in Quechua. 

For the Andean Quechuan people, the apus are spirits that embody the mountains.

Spirits that protect them and their harvests.

And this group of travelers is also going to pay their respects to the ancient ones.

The path takes a sharp ascent and winds up over a pass. 

And at the top they stop, 12,000 feet up.

Here…  the land was terraced hundreds of years ago, by ancient bygone people. 

Maybe the Incas. Maybe the Killke or Qotacalla people before them.

The land is still farmed today.

But it’s barren of trees and shrubs. They were long since cut, and cleared and used.

But people in the Andes of Peru are changing that.

The guide wears a traditional red woven Andean poncho.

He sets his llamas to graze on the lush green hillside

And pulls from their packs saplings. Tiny queñua trees — polylepis, in English.

They are native to Peru.

To the highlands and the hillsides here. They thrive in the high altitudes.

They help protect the soil. They conserve water.

They are sacred. And this team is here to plant them on the edge of the ridge where they will grow big and strong.

The team breaks into the ground with a pickaxe and shovel.

They pull out the rich moist earth. 

And then say prayers to the Apus

three coca leaves in hand, blowing sacred breaths to the mountain spirits. 

In every direction they turn, saying a prayer to the mighty summits that surround them… Pitusiray, Sahuasiray, Verónica, Chicón and all of the others, even those they cannot see.

In the base of each hole where the tree will be planted, they make an offering.

Coca leaves, crackers, candy, and other sweets. 

The things that humans like, they say, are the same to be offered to Pachamama, Mother Earth, and the Apus.

The items are arranged in a gorgeous multicolored design.

And then they pour in beer. It fizzes and mixes. 

More prayers in Quechua. A moment of silence.

They ask that these trees may grow roots.

Big and strong. That they may give life

and protect this sacred place. 

The tree is a metaphor for their own future.

That the Apus may bless these little saplings and also their path ahead.

Their community. Their families and endeavours.

And then… they gently fill up the holes with the rich dark earth 

llama dung for fertilizer

brown tufts of Andean grass to hold in the moisture.

More words of prayer on this ancient hillside.

Tiny trees being planted and born.

Dreams. Hope for what may come. 

Resisting on the high mountains of the Andes.

Planting trees for tomorrow. 

###

There has been a huge push to plant these trees and other native trees across the Andes in recent years. And it’s been a tremendous success.

In recent years, local organizations, together with dozens of Indigenous communities have planted more than 10 million trees up and down the Andes. Almost half of them in the Peruvian mountains around Cusco. Many of the tree species are threatened. And many of the ecosystems at risk.

The trees help to protect and preserve the local environments and ecosystems and in particular help retain water. The communities are also holding on to their local cultures, beliefs and religion. Making offerings and prayers to Pachamama and the Apus. Offerings for the resistance of their peoples on the hillsides of the Andes. Offerings for their children and their communities. Offerings for the future.

This is episode 23 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

This week, we celebrate Earth Day, April 22. So I thought this was a perfect story to highlight the incredible work Indigenous peoples and communities are doing in the highlands of Peru.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow my reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

This is episode 23 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

This week, we celebrate Earth Day, April 22. This is a perfect story to highlight the incredible work Indigenous peoples and communities are doing in the highlands of Peru.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Many thanks to Andean Discovery for allowing me to accompany this trek and tree planting. To find out more, or to book a tour, you can visit andeandiscovery.com.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Tamara writes. She writes in her tiny apartment in bustling Puebla, Mexico, where street vendors hawk vegetables and fruits, clothes, and electronics. Where their calls ring like birdsong and the sound of city traffic bellows low like a bassoon, or a didgeridoo. 

Tamara writes beautiful phrases, linking adjective and metaphor. Inventing words, painting pictures of alebrijes and butterflies and magic. But her stories are not fanciful. They are not fast-food fairy tales or strip-mall Coca-Cola Inc.-brand fables meant to lull you to sleep and to buy their products.

Tamara’s stories have an edge. They have a point, chiseled over years. They are stories of grit. They are stories of truth. Where the hero is not an impossibly brawny white uniform-wearing man, but an elderly migrant; a homeless grandmother, fleeing violence, picking her way forward, following the breadcrumbs left by an unjust system made not for her, but for the rich. For the elites. For the wealthy tourists, with their expensive cameras, who speak loudly in foreign languages in countries they only visit to say they’ve visited, and eat their food and buy their trinkets and return home to brag.

But Tamara’s protagonists also have their superpowers. They have magic. They see mystical creatures. They paint their own worlds, just like Tamara’s pen, or keyboard stroke.

Tamara writes of injustice. She writes of inequality. She writes of poverty. Then she volunteers at a migrant shelter. She marches with the Indigenous defending their homeland, fighting foreign water companies or mining corporations. She meets. She organizes. She speaks, softly. In a throng of people, she is often the one behind the lens of a camera. Tamara carries both powerful words and silence, in the same breath. This is her superpower. She knows both when to listen and to speak. A potent potion few heroes wield.

Global inequality is her Lex Luthor. Her Joker. Her Darth Vader. This system that permits some countries, and thereby some people, to hold so much power over the rest. This system that decides who needs to fight to survive and who gets to spend their days binge watching Netflix. Who will be educated. Who should travel. Who should live and who should die. All decided by what side of a fence they were born on. What mountainside. What distant shore. What tiny dot on the planet their mothers birthed and raised them.

This global caste system — that is her greatest antagonist. And she fights it daily the only way she knows how. With the very essence of her soul.

###

Tamara Pearson is an Australian-Mexican writer and journalist. You can check out her work on her website ResistanceWords.com. I’ll add a link in the show notes.

Her latest novel, Eyes of the Earth, is a journey of magical realism about a 73-year-old homeless refugee in Mexico. Definitely check it out. 

As always, I’m your host Michael Fox. This is Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review. 

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is Stories of Resistance—a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Check out Tamara Pearson’s original publications for The Real News Network here, and follow her work at resistancewords.com. She tweets at x.com/pajaritaroja.

You can find Tamara Pearson’s latest novel, Eyes of the Earth, at resistancewords.com/novel-the-eyes-of-the-earth/

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting, and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Ecuador’s president and Trump ally Daniel Noboa has declared victory in the recent election, claiming 56% of the vote in Sunday’s presidential election, according to the country’s National Electoral Council. But analysts say Noboa’s campaign was riddled with illegalities, and that he waged a dirty fake news war against challenger Luisa González the likes of which the country has never seen—and González has challenged the legitimacy of the final vote tally. Reporting from the streets of Quito, journalist Michael Fox breaks down the political tumult in Ecuador and the implications of Noboa’s victory for Ecuadorians, for Latin America, and the new international right.

Videography / Production / Narration: Michael Fox

Transcript

Michael Fox, narrator: Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has been reelected. He’s 37 years old. The son of a banana tycoon. And a Trump ally. He was one of only three Latin American presidents to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, alongside Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele—all international figureheads of the “new right”.

Noboa’s campaign focused on one thing: Security. See, gangs and narco-groups have sent violence spiraling out of control in recent years. 

Decio Machado, political analyst: If things continue this way this year, Ecuador won’t be the second most violent country in Latin America, it will be the first.

Michael Fox, narrator: Noboa has promised to take it to the gangs. He’s building high-security prisons, like El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, and like Bukele has done to execute his war on the gangs and extrajudicial imprisonment of 2% of his country’s population, the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Daniel Noboa has also decreed states of emergency to claim exceptional powers, suspending constitutional rights in the name of the war on drugs. 

He’s even invited the United States to help. 

Daniel Noboa, Ecuador’s President [speech]: We are going to end delinquency. We are going to end criminality. We are going to do away with these miserable politicians that have kept us behind.

Michael Fox, narrator: Iron fist. Tough on crime. This is Noboa’s bread and butter. And his people love it.

According to the National Electoral Council, Noboa won Sunday’s election with 56% of the vote. His supporters danced in the streets.

Noboa supporter: I’m so happy. We’ve won again.

Michael Fox, narrator: But analysts say Noboa’s campaign was riddled with illegalities, and that he waged a dirty fake news war against challenger Luisa González the likes of which the country has never seen.

And on election night… González refused to recognize the results.

Luisa González, presidential candidate [speech]: I denounce, before the people, before the media and the world that Ecuador is living under a dictatorship. This is the biggest fraud in the history of Ecuador!

Michael Fox, narrator: Luisa González is a former national assembly member, a lawyer, and the leader of the Citizen’s Revolution. That’s the leftist political party created by former president Rafael Correa in the mid 2000s. He oversaw a tremendous increase in spending for education, healthcare, and social programs. They helped to lift almost two million people out of poverty.

Luisa ran on this legacy, with a campaign focused on both battling crime, and also tackling unemployment and poverty. Almost 30 percent of Ecuadorians live under the poverty line. González called for unity and promised to reinvest in Ecuador. Social programs. Education.

Her supporters were excited for a return to the good days of the past.

Marlene Yacchirema, Luisa González supporter: There was a lot of security. We lived in peace for 10 years, which we had not experienced for many years. And today, it’s gotten so much worse.

Michael Fox, narrator: Polls showed her leading ahead of the vote. Even the exit polls showed a virtual tie. That is, in part why, when the results started to roll in showing a more than 10-point lead for Noboa, Luisa González’s team believed there must be something wrong.

In a historic agreement, González was endorsed by the country’s most powerful Indigenous political party. In the first round of voting in February, Pachakutik had come in third with 5% of the vote . Nevertheless, on Sunday night, González received roughly the same number of votes she had in the first round.

Luisa González is now calling for a recount. It is still unclear if the electoral council will permit it and how everything will unfold. But beyond the fraud allegations, this entire election was rife with abuse, violations, and a dirty campaign carried out by president Daniel Noboa.

Decio Machado, political analyst: We have witnessed the shadiest electoral campaign since the return of democracy in Ecuador, from the year 1979 onward. And I say shady because it’s been the campaign with the dirtiest war, with the worst fake news campaign, with the most lies, and violations of the constitution.

Lee Brown, political analyst & election observer: I came here about five days before the election, and even in those few days before the vote itself took place, it was very obvious that the election wasn’t taking place in what you and I would call free and fair conditions. So most extraordinarily, the day before the election, there was a state of emergency. And this was called in, in particular, in all the areas where Luisa’s vote was strongest in the first round, but also in the capital city. Obviously that creates a climate of fear. People couldn’t move freely. So this is the sort of context the election was taking place even before that. That was on the day before the election.

I saw in my own eyes and, you know, people were telling me clear, clear abuses of power that were taking place. One clear example is the failure for there to be a separation between the government itself and the election campaign. One of those examples is just the state spending literally hundreds of millions of pounds in grants other things in the run up to the election, effectively buying votes. So that’s caused a lot of concern for people.

Michael Fox, narrator: Above all else, this high-stakes election was defined by a rabid fake news campaign against candidate Luisa González, which clearly influenced voters.

Alejandra Costa, doctor & Noboa supporter: I don’t want socialism from other countries to be implemented here in Ecuador. I want to continue to live in freedom. And I want my nephews to have this future as well. We want a free country.

Decio Machado, political analyst: There’s been a huge fake news campaign. It’s targeted Luisa supporters and has tried to insinuate links of candidate Luisa González with drug gangs, with links to drug trafficking, with the Tren de Aragua, with Mexican cartels. There’s been a whole strategy of poisoning the Ecuadorian electorate with information through social media, WhatsApp groups, etc., and it’s been very powerful on the part of the ruling party’s candidacy and on the part of Daniel Noboa’s candidacy. It’s all clearly part of the dirtiest campaign we’ve ever seen in Ecuador.

Michael Fox, narrator: Noboa’s fake news campaign wasn’t just negative against Luisa González, it was also positive in favor of himself.

Lee Brown, political analyst & election observer: The most incredible fake news that I’ve seen is that the government is resolving the question of security, because with your own eyes you can see that with all the data points, you cannot see them.

Michael Fox, narrator: This is an interesting reality. Despite Noboa’s discourse, his state of exceptions, and his increasing the military and police on the streets… the violence, homicides, and theft in the country have actually gotten worse. 

Decio Machado, political analyst: Between January, February, and March, according to the official figures, the levels of violence have risen 70% compared with the numbers from the same period last year.

Lee Brown, political analyst & election observer: The propaganda campaign means people are really, really getting this unified message that only they can resolve this issue of security, and, on the flip side, that if you bring back the progressive movement Luisa González and representatives of the citizens Revolution, that if you were to do that then the drug the narco traffickers would take over the country.

Michael Fox, narrator: These types of lies and fake news campaigns we have seen before. From Donald Trump. From Bolsonaro, in Brazil. From Bukele, in El Salvador. They are a dirty, but highly effective tactic of the far right across the region. Their push to spread false narratives and weaponize misinformation across media platforms has been key to securing sufficient popular support and consolidating power.

Analysts expect Daniel Noboa to double down in his new term. A willing ally of Donald Trump and the United States, Noboa even traveled to the US two weeks before the election for a photo-op at Mar-A-Lago with the US president. Noboa has invited the United States to help fight his war on drugs.

Francesca Emanuele, Center for Economic and Policy Research: He is trying to get to that position of being part of the Latin American far right. And actually his policies are from the far right. He has militarized the whole country in the name of fighting crime. He is committing human rights abuses, forced disappearances with impunity, and he’s offering the US to have military bases.

So he’s definitely working to be the far right of the Americas and the far right of the world. And that’s really scary. That’s really scary for the population here in Ecuador. And I think that in the next four years, the situation is going to be worse.

Michael Fox, narrator: But there will be resistance. Social explosions are common in Ecuador when people’s rights are being trampled, or their communities disrespected, or their native lands threatened. 

Nation-wide protests shut down the country in 2019 and again in 2022 against neoliberal government reforms and the rising cost of gas and basic products.

If Luisa González and the Indigenous movement continue united, it is only a matter of time, before a new wave of protests ignites. As we have seen time and time again, in Ecuador, if rights are not respected and won at the ballot box, they will be fought for and reclaimed on the streets.

Federico Avalos is an Argentine poet. 

But he does not write the words. He recites them.

He walks the white sands, weaving through the sunbathing crowd that lays near the turquoise waters of the Atacama ocean.

“Would you like to roll the literary dice?” Federico asks.

He wears a large smile, behind a salt and pepper beard, a brimmed hat and a blue flowered shirt. 

He holds a large homemade die in his hand, numbers written on all sides. 

He hands it to a little girl who laughs and tosses it into the air. It lands on the number 6.

He opens a book with a black and white cover. The drawing of a silhouette of people marching. The words “Nunca Mas,” “Never Again,” written across it. 

He begins:

“If you can keep your head when all about you
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating…

These are the opening lines to Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” a poem about believing and hope. And making the impossible into reality.

It is cliche, but time stands still. The seagulls stop crying. The lapping of the water at the shore ceases. A boy kicks a soccer ball and it’s frozen in midair. The laughter from a group nearby pauses. 

All that is left are the words. And the images and ideas painted by Federico’s rich, deep voice. 

Federico’s arms move to the cadence of each line, as though he’s reciting to a crowd of thousands on a Victorian stage somewhere long ago, and far away.

This is both Federico’s job and his activism. A theatrical intervention. A temporal break from the digital monotony: The selfies, the tweets, the posts, the likes, the comments and the follows.

This is Federico’s resistance. Standing up to the cyber mayhem. 

Breathing art into the void. Magic. Reflection.

“I didn’t used to read much poetry,” he says. “I had a hard time. I was too distracted. In poetry, you can’t be thinking about something else. It needs your undivided attention.” 

“That’s what I like about it,” he says.

Not every poet is right for this occasion. Federico carries a book of poems by Jorge Luis Borges. But Borges is too heady. Too intellectual. Too hard to decipher under the hot sun after a glass, or two, of Chilean Pisco Sour, or while building a sand castle with your daughter.

Uruguayan great Mario Benedetti is more palatable. But there are so many. Ruben Dario, Pablo Neruda, James Joyce, Joao Pessoa.

Federico’s repertoire shifts like the tides. Rising and falling. Growing and changing. He’s adding a collection of women authors.

Federico used to work in education. That was before his family planned a road trip, and the car broke down in another country, far from home. And they ran out of money to fix it. And now, they’re camped on the edge of town and he had to find a way to survive and he began reciting poems.

“I don’t usually have that many good ideas,” he says, tossing his die in the air. “This was one of them.”

“Would you like to roll the literary dice?” He asks.

###

Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.

This is episode 21 of Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times.

April is National Poetry Month, in the United States. I am taking advantage of it to feature three stories of resistance about poets and authors this week.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review. You can support my work and find exclusive pictures and background information on my Patreon: patreon.com/mfox.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 21 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

April is poetry month in the United States. We are taking advantage to feature three stories about poetry and writing this week. This is the second of those three.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
Written and produced by Michael Fox.

A man sits at a dark wooden table in a bar in the old city of Montevideo, Uruguay.

The bar is old. Historic. It’s been around for more than a hundred years. And it looks it. 

The decor hasn’t changed much since the 1870s.

Wooden walls. Wooden tables. Italian chairs.

The bar is called the Cafe Brasileiro.

And it was a favorite of more than a few Uruguayan poets and writers. 

Mario Benedetti, Idea Vilariño, José Enrique Rodó.

They say Juan Carlos Onetti wrote the first words of his first novel here in the 1930s.

But of them all, one man is remembered in the menu… 

Eduardo Galeano.

The ingredients of the Cafe Galeano are Amaretto, Cream and dulce de leche — caramel.

Galeano frequented the Cafe Brasileiro for decades. Chair leaned back against the wall. Sometimes a pencil or a pen in hand.

Titles cannot describe him. 

He was writer, reader, journalist, editor.

But he was also historian.

Catching stories in the air.

Writing and retelling them anew.

But he did not write for the stuffy halls of the elites or academia.

He wrote for the people.

He was a truth-teller.

A myth-maker.

An essayist.

A poet.

Polishing his craft

Honing his art

Chiseling his sculptures with words

Until they were perfectly symmetrical 

Beautifully balanced 

The least common denominator of language and meaning. 

Gorgeous bouquets of words.

He was a storyteller.

And his tales had morals

Points

Punchlines.

His vignettes — tiny packets of beauty 

That remind us who we are

And where we come from.

The immense injustices carried out by the powerful

And the profound insight of the people.

His most famous book, Open Veins of Latin America, was published in 1971. 

A hard-hitting examination of the gutting of the Americas by Europe and the United States since the arrival of Columbus.

But it reads like a novel.

They say the book was one of the few items writer Isabel Allende took with her when she fled Chile with her family following the brutal 1973 coup.

He too would have to flee in 1973, when the military took over Uruguay.

He went into exile first in Argentina, and then in Spain, when Argentina also fell into its own military dictatorship in 1976.

There, he wrote his Memories of Fire trilogy. 

“I’m a writer obsessed with remembering,” he wrote once. “With remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”

His were words of wisdom.

Upside-down words.

Words that celebrated the poor and working class.

Words that denounced the global injustices by stripping them of their fake façades and painting them anew… showing who they really were.

“What a paradox today’s world is,” he writes in his posthumous 2016 book, Hunter of Stories. “In the name of freedom, we are invited to choose between the same and the same, be it on the table or on television.”

Galeano passed away exactly 10 years ago — April 13, 2015. 

His words live on.

###

My wife and I interviewed Galeano once in the mid 2000s, at the Cafe Brasileiro in Montevideo.

It was for a documentary we were doing about democracy, called Beyond Elections.

We spoke for only a few minutes. But his insight, as always, was profound.

“Every country is in the United Nations,” he said. “But we only formulate recommendations. The decisions are made by the UN Security Council. And within the UN Security Council, those who decide are the countries that have the right of veto. Which are five… the five countries that watch over world peace: US, the UK, France, China, and Russia. They are also the five top producers of weapons. In other words, world peace is in the hands of the lords of war,” he said.

I’ll place a link for the interview and our documentary in the show notes. 

Thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. This is episode 20 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review. 

You can also support my work and see exclusive pictures and background information in my Patreon. That’s patreon.com/mfox.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 20 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange.  Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

April is poetry month in the United States. We are taking advantage to feature three stories about poetry and writing this week. This is the first of those three.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Here is a clip of Michael’s interview with Eduardo Galeano about the UN and international institutions:

You can watch Michael Fox and Silvia Leindecker’s full documentary, Beyond Elections, below.

In English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL4YYYiQIco&t=114s
En Español: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgdXksT92uU&t=1246s
En Portugues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5S_iKHjLBM&t=2111s

These were days of marches.

Huge marches. 

That wrapped themselves around the capital, Caracas

And, in particular, the higher-class eastern side of the city.

It was April 2002.

President Hugo Chavez had been elected four years before. 

He’d promised a revolution. A Bolivarian revolution—named after South America’s greatest Independence leader, Simon Bolivar.

And Chavez decreed dozens of laws hoping to turn the tides on the concentration of wealth in the country. They would hand large estates over to small farmers and redirect the profit from the state oil company to social services.

But the businesses and the elites did not want Chavez’s revolution.

Venezuela’s Chamber of Commerce, Fedecamaras, led strikes, marches, and protests.

And now, those marching in the streets promised to take down the government. 

Some even carried the American flag.

But as they approached the presidential palace toward the west of the city, shots began to ring down upon them.

Snipers sat high on rooftops firing into the crowd. 

One person fell. And then another. 

18 deaths. Almost 70 injured.

The news cameras captured the chaos. The people cowering. 

They filmed people being carried away. 

They said the supporters and troops of president Hugo Chavez were firing on unarmed protesters.

This was the message spread on the mainstream TV channels across Venezuela and abroad.

The message that spread like wildfire.

But those carrying out this bloodbath were not the supporters and troops of president Hugo Chavez.

They were members of the metropolitan police. And they were carrying out a coup.

Rebelling officers in the Venezuelan military used the killings as the pretext to detain the president

And accuse him of ordering the massacre.

The leaders of the coup said there was a vacuum of power. They said Chavez had resigned. 

Pedro Carmona, the head of Venezuela’s Chamber of Commerce, swore himself in as the de facto president.

Flanked by supporters, Carmona, dissolved the National Assembly, the Supreme Court. 

He suspended the attorney general, elected mayors and governors.

Carmona and his allies would rule the government on their own.

His de facto government led a violent witch hunt after Chavez government officials.

Meanwhile, the mainstream press looked away and played cartoon reruns.

But the people were not having it. 

Those from Venezuela’s poorest communities had seen their lives improve under the short four years since the election of president Hugo Chavez.

And they had seen their hopes dashed by the unelected leaders of the country’s business class and ruling elites.

So they descended from the hillsides of the poorest communities across Caracas and amassed outside of Miraflores, the presidential palace. 

They refused to recognize Pedro Carmona’s de facto government. 

They would not leave until Chavez had returned.

And that is what happened…

On April 13, Chavez’s presidential guard expelled Carmona and the coup leaders from the presidential palace. Pressure from both the people and loyal military forces led to the collapse of the coup government. It was unprecedented. The people and the military united together to defend their democratically elected leader. 

They rescued president Chavez

Who was flown back to Miraflores and returned to power.

The people would not be silent.

The people had overturned a coup.

###

Hi folks. Im your host Michael Fox.

Today in Venezuela, April 13, is remembered as El Dia de la Dignidad, the Day of Dignity. A day of grassroots resistance.

Some people in Venezuela are still confused about what happened between April 11 and April 13, 2002. The media manipulations was so great that it left a tremendous legacy of confusion.

But there have been in-depth investigations, including the documentaries, The Revolution Will Not be Televised and Llaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacre. This last film, I actually helped to translate and narrated into English more than 20 years ago. If you are interested in watching or learning more, I’ll add links in the show notes. 

This is episode 19 of Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend. You can support my work and find exclusive pictures and background information on my patreon… patreon.com/mfox.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

On April 13, Chavez’s presidential guard expelled the coup leaders and returned Chavez to power. 

Pressure from both the people and loyal military forces led to the collapse of the coup government. The people and the military united together to defend their democratically elected leader.

If you’re interested in more background, you can check out the following documentaries:

The Revolution Will Not be Televised (2003)

Llaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacre (2004): Host Michael Fox helped to translate and narrate this documentary in English.
In English: https://vimeo.com/40502430
In Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ9jE1c0XPE

This is episode 19 of Stories of Resistance — a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Water. 

The most precious resource on the planet.

And yet, in many places, there has been a push to privatize it.

This was the case in 1999, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, when the city privatized the city’s municipal water supply.

The move came at the mandate of the World Bank.

The new company was a subsidiary of the US construction firm Bechtel and several other foreign corporations.

The company raised water rates more than 30% overnight.

A manager said “If people didn’t pay their water bills their water would be turned off.”

Protests exploded in January 2000. 

Workers. Campesinos. Retirees. Even the middle class hit the streets.

They were organized under the Coordinator in Defense of Water and Life.

And they occupied Cochabamba’s main square.

Their only demand: Cancel the contract.

They held a general strike that lasted for four days. 

Police cracked down. Tear gas. Rubber bullets. 

200 protesters were arrested. More than 120 people injured. 

Protests spread to other cities. Roadblocks shut down towns and highways. 

President Hugo Banzer declared a state of siege, suspending constitutional guarantees. 

Nighttime raids. Arrests against labor leaders. 

And then… Víctor Hugo Daza.

He was a high school student in a crowd of protesters that April, when he was shot and killed by a Bolivian Army captain.

The act was recorded on camera. It reverberated across Bolivia.

Finally, the Bolivian government acquiesced.

On April 10, 2000, leaders of the protest movement signed an agreement with the national government, reversing the privatization.

The people had won.

This is episode 18 of Stories of Resistance — a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange.  Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

If you are interested in more information on the Cochabamba Water War, we recommend you check out the 2010 movie “Tambien La Lluvia,” featuring Gael García Bernal. It is a tremendous look back at that time, amid a scathing critique of how the Spanish, foreign companies, and white elites have always treated local Indigenous and campesino populations in Bolivia and across Latin America.

In the town of Vallenar, in Chile’s Southern Atacama region, a group of families live in rows of striped circus tents, on the edge of the highway under a never-ending heavy sun.

Theirs is a life on the edge. Always on the edge.

They are Chilean — their ancestors arrived here more than a century ago. 

And they are foreigners.

Somewhere in between. Always in between.

“Where are you from?” we ask.

“From everywhere,” they respond, in Spanish accents that carry in their cadence the spray of far away oceans and the chill of distant mountains.

When they are alone, they speak their own language, Romani.

A language carried with them, when they came with their belongings and their memories.

Some of their people have left behind their ancestor’s ways.

But not them. They are Roma and they will not give in.

In the day, the men work, and the women read palms, sell trinkets and give blessings.

Their young children are with them, in the shade on the edge of a busy gas station parking lot. One of the few for a hundred miles.

The locals walk quickly past. They try to avert their eyes, as if these women in colorful dresses, and their children, were as bright as the sun, or as dark as the night. Or a plague. Or a virus that might catch them up and carry them away, or their kids.

The locals grip their children’s hands. They hold their pocketbooks close. They skitter to their cars, locks their doors and drive away.

They are afraid.

They should be. These women carry the strength of generations fighting to survive. When they look at you, their eyes do not waver. They stare into your soul.

They carry weight. They carry truth, though they keep it hidden. Their gestures are smooth and defiant.

They speak magic passed down from parents and grandparents.

Real magic. Magic for the receiver. And magic that will also line their pockets.

They live in a world on the borders of society. On the edge. Their homes are malleable, like their lives — made of tarp and fabric.

They have to be. It is their means of survival. To dance on the edge of the acceptable. To give and to take. To defend their own. To hold on to their culture, their language, and their way of life.

To resist.

This is the 17th episode of Stories of Resistance. This project is co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Tomorrow, April 8, is the International Day of the Roma, or Romani, people. It takes place each year to focus attention on the discrimination and marginalization of Roma communities across the world.

Stories of Resistance is written and produced by Michael Fox. You can support his work and see exclusive pictures of many of these stories on his patron. 

The night is dark. Overcast. And, in Curitiba, cold.

Crowds amass outside the chain-link barbed-wire fence surrounding the courthouse and jail.

One group, dressed in yellow and green, sets off fireworks and cheered in euphoria.

The other, dressed in red, dances to the rhythm of drums.

And then, the sound of the spinning blades of a helicopter in the distance.

Inside is former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. 

Working-class hero. Labor leader turned iconic president.

Now, convicted of corruption. Being flown to jail.

His supporters say he’s innocent—-convicted on trumped-up charges by a biased judge hell-bent on power, and taking down the Workers Party.

As the chopper arrives, military police inside the fence open fire on Lula’s supporters. 

Rubber bullets fly. Tear gas canisters volley into the crowd. Some people fall. Others scream and run. The crowd is pushed back several blocks. They stand tougher and chant before rows of riot police.

The unthinkable has happened. 

The night is dark and cold. 

The future is bleak.

But with daybreak, something extraordinary happens.

People begin to arrive. First by the dozens and then by the hundreds.

They come by bus and car. They come from miles away. 

They line the streets outside the jail.

Tents spring up along the sidewalks in this normally sleepy residential neighborhood. 

Sleepy no more.

Two blocks from the prison, a vigil is emerging.

Round-the-clock action and organizing.

Chants, cheers, and music.

The Workers Party announces it’s moving its headquarters to the location.

“We are not leaving until Lula is free,” says one leader to cameras. “Free Lula!”

Supporters arrive from across the country to participate in the vigil. 

Some come and go. Others stay. For weeks and then months. s.

From the spent tear gas canisters shot on the night of Lula’s jailing, something today is reborn: 

A movement of resistance that will not go away, despite the attacks, the threats, the rain, sun, heat or freezing temperatures.

The vigil will see the seasons change. Winter transformed to summer, back to winter, and into spring.

And still the people stay.

And every day the crowd chants and cheers. 

“Good morning, presidente Lula!” 

“Good afternoon.” 

“Good evening.”

580 days pass. 

And then, finally, Lula is free. 

The Supreme Court tosses out the charges. The courts have tossed out every charge against him.

His former jailer, Sergio Moro, has himself come under investigation for using biased methods to convict.

The first thing Lula does when he leaves prison is speak to the crowd outside.

“Thank you so much from the depths of my heart. I have no way of repaying you other than to say that I am eternally grateful to you and I will be faithful to your struggle,” he says.

“Thank you for chanting ‘Free Lula’ over these 580 days.”

It would take almost three more years, but on October 30, 2022, the former labor leader was reelected president of Brazil. 

###

Hi folks. Thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. Lula was jailed on the evening of April 7, 2018, which is why I’m dropping this story today. I was there outside the federal prison that night, and I continued to do a ton of reporting on the Free Lula vigil over the next two years, as well as on Lula’s return to the presidency in 2022. You can check out my podcast Brazil on Fire for a deep dive into all of it. I have a whole episode on Lula’s jailing and the Free Lula vigil that helped to fight for his freedom. The podcast was co-produced by The Real News and NACLA. The link is in the show notes. You can also see exclusive pictures of the Free Lula vigil and support my work in my patreon… that’s patreon.com/mfox.

This is episode 16 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review. 

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 16 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

This week, in remembrance of the anniversary of Brazil’s military coup on March 31, 1964, we are taking a deep dive in Brazil. All three episodes this week look at stories of resistance in Brazil. From protest music, to general strikes against the dictatorship, to the Free Lula vigil in more recent times.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting, and support at www.patreon.com/mfox. There, you can also see Michael’s exclusive pictures of the Free Lula Vigil. 

You can check out more of Michael’s in-depth reporting of the Free Lula vigil in the following reports for The Real News and his 2022 podcast Brazil on Fire.

Resources:
Free Lula Samba at Brazil’s Carnival
Brazil’s Ex-President Lula Freed, Promises to Continue Fight for Justice
Brazil on Fire podcast
Episode 2 (Brazil on Fire podcast): Free Lula

São Bernardo do Campo is a working-class neighborhood on the edge of the city of Sao Paulo. 

Gritty. Industrial.

The Detroit of Brazil.

In the late 1970s, this is where hundreds of thousands of workers labor in the factories.

Metal workers.

Assembling the cars that run across the highways of Brazil and South America.

Volkswagen, Ford, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz.

But in the late 1970s…  Brazil’s economic miracle is over. 

Wages are squeezed. Inflation spiraling. 

Factory workers have a hard time providing for their families.

2,000 metal workers building trucks at a Saab-Scania factory are the first to cross their arms and demand higher salaries.

The movement spreads to other factories across the automobile sector.

It’s only the beginning.

Brazil’s military dictatorship still holds strong. It’s been in power for almost 15 years.

But workers have had enough. They are demanding more.

March, 1979. A new wave a strikes hits the factories of Sao Bernardino do Campo and ABC Paulista.

200,000 metal workers walk off the job. They demand better working conditions and substantial wage hikes.

The government declares the strike illegal. But the workers push on. The country hasn’t seen protests like this in years. It’s a sign of the weakening of the military regime. The beginning of the end… though that end would take years to come.

One charismatic 33-year-old metal worker leads the way. His name is Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva. He has a thick beard. A defiant stare. And he speaks the language of the working class. Of a poor upbringing in northeastern Brazil.

He leads huge rallies in the Vila Euclides Stadium. 150,000 people on May 1, International Workers Day. 

Two weeks later, the workers win, accepting a 60% salary increase.

It is only the beginning.

The next year, 1980, Lula leads even larger strikes. They demand a 40-hour work week, scheduled salary adjustments for inflation. Direct elections.

This time, the government responds with repression. Lula and a dozen other labor leaders are jailed for more than a month. Still workers press on.

Rallies. Pickets. May 1. The strike, this time, can’t continue. But a general strike will ripple across Brazil just two months later… 3 million workers walk off the job. The first general strike in almost 20 years.

The military regime cracks down. Raiding unions, tracking down leaders, and arresting workers.

But the increasing labor organizing and actions over the last two years, as well as the tremendous victories… they are all a sign of the things to come. The opening up of the regime. The democracy that would finally return to Brazil within five years.

And the man who two decades later in 2002 would finally win the presidency: Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva.

This is episode 15 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program.

Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

This week, in remembrance of the anniversary of Brazil’s military coup on March 31, 1964, we are taking a deep dive in Brazil. All three episodes this week look at stories of resistance in Brazil. From protest music, to general strikes against the dictatorship, to the Free Lula vigil in more recent times.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Here is a link to a Spotify playlist of songs written in resistance to Brazil’s military dictatorship. 

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting, and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Resources:

• 1980: The Strike with Lula Imprisoned – Memories of the Dictatorship
• March 13, 1979: The ABC Metalworkers’ Strike is Launched – Strengthening Unionism and Weakening the Military Dictatorship (DMT em Debate)
• The ABC Strikes and the End of the Dictatorship – Mundo Educação
• Video: Assembly Line (1983) – How Lula Brought the Working Class to Its Feet in the 1978–1980 Strikes
• Video: Documentary on the ABC Strikes – DMT em Debate
• Video: Assembly Line (1983) – Lula and the Strikes of 1978 to 1980
• Video: Lula – Speech to Workers During the ABC Strike (1979)
• Video: ABC Strike – Historical Footage

In times of darkness, music has often led the way.

Shining light on the injustices.

Breathing hope into the cracks.

Denouncing violence and repression… authoritarianism.

Sometimes openly. Sometimes with messages hidden between the lines.

This was true of the music written in protest to the Brazilian dictatorship.

[Music]

March 31, 1964… the military regime rolls in with a US-backed coup.

The dictatorship will last for 21 years. Hundreds are disappeared. Thousands imprisoned and tortured.

But artists stand up.

Their music inspires.

[Music]

Like this song by Chico Buarque and Gilberto Gil. It’s called “Calise,” which means Chalice. But it’s also a play on words. Cale-se means “shut up” in Portuguese. Exactly what Brazilian authorities are telling those in opposition to their regime.

The words of the song are a sometimes subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle, critique of the dictatorship.

“How difficult it is to wake up silently,” Chico Buarque sings. “If in the dead of night I get hurt. I want to let out an inhuman scream. Which is a way of being heard.”

There are so many more songs like this…. Chico Buarque’s “A pesar de voce” — “Despite You” — is written as though it’s a fight between lovers. But really, it’s a vent about the dictatorship. 

“Amanhã vai ser outro dia,” the song begins. Tomorrow will be another day.

Chico Buarque is exiled for 18 months. For a time, all of his songs are censored by the dictatorship. It’s the military’s means of silencing opposition.

Many musicians go into exile. Particularly those performing MPB, Popular Brazilian Music. Caetano Veloso. Gilberto Gil. Rita Lee. They are detained and jailed for weeks or months.

Brazil’s rock icon Raul Seixas is imprisoned and tortured for two weeks.

But still the music plays.

Still it rings on.

Still musicians write and perform… Geraldo Vandré, Gonzaguinha, Vítor Martins, João Bosco. Milton Nascimento. And so many more… 

Their words are more important than ever.

Some musicians create pseudonyms when censors are on to them. Chico Buarque releases material under the name Julinho de Adelaide. The band MPB4 becomes Coral Som Live.

They are openly defiant.

“You cut a verse, I write another,” they sing in the song Pesadelo, or “Nightmare,” by composer Paulo César Pinheiro. “You detain me alive, I escape death. Suddenly, look at me again. Disturbing the peace, demanding change.”

Resistance is sometimes loud and aggressive. Sometimes, it is melodic and beautiful.

But it is always necessary in times of darkness.

Shining light on the injustices.

Breathing hope into the cracks.

Denouncing violence and repression.

Singing songs of hope…

On March 31, 1964, the Brazilian military carried out a U.S.-backed coup against the democratically elected government, installing a dictatorship that would last for 21 years. Hundreds of people were disappeared. Thousands imprisoned and tortured. But musicians stood up, singing songs that were a sometimes subtle — sometimes not-so-subtle — critique of the dictatorship. 

The military regime responded by censoring songs, music and artists. Some, like Chico Buarque, went into exile. Others were detained, jailed and even tortured. But still the music played on. Still, artists found a way for their music to reach the people. Still, the music gave hope that “tomorrow would be another day.”

This is episode 14 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

This week, in remembrance of the anniversary of Brazil’s military coup on March 31, 1964, we are taking a deep dive in Brazil. All three episodes this week will look at stories of resistance in Brazil. From protest music, to general strikes against the dictatorship, to the Free Lula vigil in more recent times.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

To mark this anniversary, Michael Fox created a Spotify playlist of songs written in resistance to Brazil’s military dictatorship. You can check it out on his Patreon: www.patreon.com/mfox. There, you can also follow Michael’s reporting, and support his work.

‘Huelga!’ Strike.

In the 1960s, these words rang from the fields of the Central Valley, California. Even though they were banned, they were shouted from the lips of thousands, and they inspired a nation.

Cesar Chavez was the man who led the way.

And his story of struggle is more important today than ever.

[MUSIC]

United States, early 1960s.

Farmworkers have no rights.

Yet they pick the food that’s shipped to supermarket shelves

And ends on our dinner plates.

It’s backbreaking labor.

Precarious. Under the hot sun all day.

Exposed to the pesticides and the chemicals in the fields.

On some farms, the managers don’t even provide water to drink

And those working the fields are paid poverty wages.

Just $2 a day.

The average farmworker in 1960s America lives to be only 49 years old.

Many are immigrants from Mexico or the Philippines.

Or the sons and daughters of those who came.

Many are undocumented.

Treated liked cattle

Like they’re not even human.

And their poverty and precarious lives are invisible to the eyes of most of America.

But that is going to change…

[MUSIC]

Cesar Chavez was born in 1927 to parents who came from Mexico as children. 

As a young boy, he also worked in the fields.

Picking avocados, peas, and other produce.

But he also studied, he graduated from middle school and joined the Navy.

And when he got out, he went back to the fields.

He picked cotton and apricots. 

But he also learned to organize.

He joined the National Farm Labor Union

And then the Community Service Organization.

As an organizer, he worked to register Mexican-Americans to vote.

And he climbed the ranks, organizing, inspired by the non-violent struggles of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi.

Cesar Chavez’s passion was in the fields.

And the plight of those who toiled there, day after day, under the relentless sun

Just to barely survive.

[MUSIC]

1962, he moved his family to Delano, California

In the Southern San Juaquin Valley,

And together with organizer Dolores Huerta, founded the United Farm Workers of America.

In 1965, when Filipino-American farmworkers went on strike to demand higher wages for grape pickers

Cesar Chavez’s UFW joined them.

These were grapes shipped to supermarket shelves across the country

Grapes that were turned into wine.

The farmworkers struck.

They picketed. 

They marched. 

And they were attacked by the security details of the growers

And by the local police.

But they continued to strike.

They organized a grape boycott across the country,

First against one company, and then another… 

They marched 300 miles to the state capital, Sacramento.

At each stop, they spoke to crowds…

“Across the San Joaquin Valley, across California, across the entire Southwest of the United States, wherever there are Mexican people, wherever there are farm workers, our movement is spreading like flames across [a] dry plain,” they said.

“Our PILGRIMAGE is the MATCH that will light our cause for all farm workers to see what is happening here, so that they may do as we have done. The time has come for the liberation of the poor farm worker. History is on our side. MAY THE STRUGGLE CONTINUE! VIVA LA CAUSA!”

U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy backed their cause.

[KENNEDY INTERVIEW]

So did other unions, including the United Auto Workers.

Cesar Chavez was a steadfast believer in non-violent activism.

When it seemed members of his movement were turning to violence to fight back,

He launched a hunger strike that would last for 25 days.

It was the first of three that he could carry out throughout his life. 

On July 4, 1969, at the pinnacle of the California grape boycott campaign,

Cesar Chavez was featured on the cover of Time Magazine.

One year later, growers finally caved.

They signed contracts with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.

They agreed to raise wages, start a healthcare plan for workers, and implement safety measures over the use of pesticides in the fields.

It was a huge victory after a 5-year-long strike.

“¡Si se puede!” Yes, we can!

Cesar Chavez would continue to organize for farmworkers for the next two decades, until he passed at the age of 66, in 1993.

His deep legacy lives on. 

Cesar Chavez was born on March 31, 1927.

In 2014, then-US president Barack Obama declared March 31st Cesar Chavez Day—a US federal holiday. 

Today, March 31, is Cesar Chavez Day, a holiday celebrating the birth and life of the great US farmworker labor leader. In 1962, Cesar Chavez co-founded the United Farm Workers, alongside Dolores Huerta. 

The organization would go on to wage strikes and boycotts, winning tremendous victories for workers picking the crops in the fields of California and elsewhere in the United States. In 1969, he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 1970, Chavez and the UFW won higher wages for grape pickers after a 5-year-long California grape strike.

Chavez’s legacy lives on today.

But that legacy is also complicated. Cesar Chavez and the UFW fought for immigration reform, but also fought undocumented immigration (and pushed for deportations), under the pretext that undocumented migrants were used to drive down wages and break UFW strikes. 

This is our special Cesar Chavez Day bonus episode of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting, and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

He stood up against genocide. 

And for this, he was ambushed at his home, abducted, and arrested. Arrested without cause. Arrested without a warrant. By plainclothes officers who refused to give their names.

Just handcuffed and shoved into the back of a car, while his wife — eight months pregnant — watches and tries to understand what’s happening.

This is not a scene from some dark chapter of a distant past filled with black-and-white photos of bygone dictatorships. This happened here, in the United States of America, in March of this year. It’s happening here right now. 

Mahmoud Khalil was a graduate student at Columbia University last year when he led protests against Israel’s US-backed Occupation of historic Palestine and genocidal slaughter of Palestinians. 

But now, speaking out carries a high price.

And free speech is no longer so free.

Mahmoud Khalil is a U.S. resident, born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. But Trump officials say they’ve striped him of his Green Card, and they’re holding him in an ICE jail in Louisiana… far from his home in New York. Far from his wife. Unable to communicate with his lawyers or the outside world for days after his illegal abduction.

But Mahmoud Khalil is, still, not silent.

And he is not alone. 

As he stood up for the Palestinians facing Israeli bombs and the barrels of their guns, others are standing up for Khalil. People have rallied for his freedom. Hundreds. Thousands.

From New York City to Boston. Phoenix to Miami. North Carolina to Oklahoma City. Jewish peace activists protested inside Trump Tower. The people will not be silent as the powerful try to silence the people’s freedom to speak.

To be willingly silent now will mean more unwilling silence later. 

Because, as we’re already seeing, Mahmoud Khalil is only the first of many. The first of many to be detained. The first of many to be silenced. For themselves standing against occupation and violence. Or even standing next to those who do.

But the people will not be quiet.

Not in the 1960s, denouncing the war in Vietnam.

Not in the 1980s, against the war in Nicaragua.

Not in the 2020s, against the war in Palestine.

And not now… 

In defense of those standing up for what’s right and for their rights.

In defense of the people’s inalienable right to speak up and speak freely.

In defense of life and those who fight for peace. 

In defense of Mahmoud Khalil. 

On March 8, 2025, ICE agents detained, without a warrant, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil at his home in New York City. Khalil is a US resident, but Trump officials said they’d stripped him of his green card. His crime? Standing up and speaking out against the US-backed Israeli attack on Palestine. As a graduate student at Columbia University last year, he helped to lead protests against Israeli genocide in Gaza.

And just as he stood up for the Palestinians, others are standing up for Khalil. People have rallied for his freedom across the country.

Folksinger David Rovics latest song is called Mahmoud Khalil, you can listen to it here. You can check out and subscribe to Rovics’ Substack, here, and sign up for his podcast on Spotify. 

This is episode 13 of Stories of Resistance—a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

You can see his exclusive pictures of many of the episodes and support Stories of Resistance at www.patreon.com/mfox.

The response rolled in like a tidal wave. 

Unexpected and overwhelming…

Growing until it would crash across the entire country.

People marched in every city. On every highway. 

They took over roads. Shut down traffic.

And promised to stay in the streets until their voices were heard.

And it was not a small sliver of society. 

It was everyone…  students, teachers, workers, environmentalists… Indigenous communities. 

But also the middle class and even the wealthy. Businessmen and bankers. 

They marched. They chanted. A resounding choir echoed “No” across the country, their voices bouncing from shore to shore. Refusing to cave or to be silenced.

The focus of their rage? A new government contract with a mine—the largest open-pit copper mine in Central America. 300,000 metric tons of copper a year. More than half of Panamanian exports. It had been under operation for a few years, but never under a legal contract. The Panamanian Supreme Court had ruled it unconstitutional. The president Laurentino Cortizo vowed to renegotiate the deal.

When they were done, the president announced the news to huge fanfare, heralding the windfall profits, the jobs and the benefits the Canadian mining company—First Quantum—would bestow on the country. Congress approved the contract the same day.

But Panamanians were not having it.

They and their ancestors had lived through a century of US invasions and occupation. The area around the Panama Canal was known as the Canal Zone and for a hundred years it had belonged to Uncle Sam. A segregated apartheid zone, roughly half the size of Rhode Island, smack dab in the middle of their country. Off limits to Panamanians except for those working for, and serving the whims of the military personnel and the families living under the Stars and Stripes.

And this new contract smelled very similar. It ceded land and sovereign rights to the Canadian company for extended periods of time.

Panama’s president promised the profits would strengthen the country’s Social Security fund and increase pensions. He cheered for the jobs.

Panamanians did not care. They were not going to hand over a piece of their country to a foreign nation EVER AGAIN. 

“The sovereignty of our country is in danger. That’s why I’m here,” said one protester in a yellow raincoat, marching under a thick downpour. That sentiment, echoed the voices of thousands — millions — across the country. And they kept their promises to stay in the streets, despite everything.

Days turned to weeks, which turned into month. The roadblocks shut down the country. Gas ran out at filling stations. Supermarket shelves grew empty. And still the protests continued…. Until. November 28, 2023. The day that celebrates Panama’s independence from Spain. 

That morning, the country’s Supreme Court of Justice ruled the new mining contract unconstitutional.

Protesters waved the red, white, and blue Panamanian flag. They danced in the streets in front of the Supreme Court. They sang the national anthem.

The people had done what the president and Congress would not. They had defended their country against the interests of a foreign nation, which had promised money and development—-but at what cost? The destruction of their environment. The loss of a chunk of Panamanian land in the hands of a foreign entity… again?

Not happening.

The US occupation of Panama is not ancient history, here. It is still in the forefront of everyone’s mind. So are the decades of blood, sweat, and tears that it took to finally win back the region of the Panama Canal from the United States in 1999.

They remember the 1989 US invasion. They remember the thousands killed. They remember what it was like to have a US enclave in the middle of their country. And Panamanians are not going back there again.

Not at the hands of a Canadian copper mine. And certainly not at the order of Donald Trump.

This is episode 12 of Stories of Resistance — a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Michael Fox reported from the ground in Panama throughout the months-long protests. You can see his reporting for The Real News here.  You can see his pictures of the protests, here on his Patreon, where you can also support his work: www.patreon.com/mfox.

The streets of Buenos Aires are cold. Colder than they should be in April, 1977. Because people—students and young adults, in particular–are missing. Snatched by military officers of the regime and never heard from again.

Their absence is colder than the harshest winter storm. Their silence louder than the most violent thunderclap or shot from the soldier’s submachine gun.

Mothers search desperately for their children. They visit the police. Government offices. People in uniforms just shake their heads.

They find no answers. The mothers decide they must do something. 

And so, on Saturday, April 30, 1977, fourteen women meet in the plaza in front of the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace. They demand to know where their children are. 

“By ourselves, we will achieve nothing,” says Azucena Villaflor. Her son and his girlfriend were kidnapped exactly five months before. 

But this is the Argentine dictatorship, installed just a year before, on March 24, 1976, and meetings in public of more than two people are banned.

A police officer approaches. He orders them to keep moving.

And so… the women take each other arm in arm, and, two by two, begin to walk around the obelisk in the center of the square. One small, iconic act of resistance, in the face of so much darkness… so much pain.

The mothers decide to return each week. 

But instead of on a Saturday, they will march on Thursdays, when there are people in the square. People who will witness their suffering, their pain, and their simple yet brazen act of resistance, in the middle of a harsh, cold, violent dictatorship.

Within a few months, they will begin to wear white pañuelos on their heads as they march—the baby diapers of their lost children—as a way to recognize each other in crowds.

But they, too, are targeted.

In December 1977, three mothers—Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino, and María Ponce de Bianco—are themselves kidnapped and disappeared.

Still, the mothers march.

“We were not heroines,” says Taty Almeida. “We did what any mother would do for her child.”

“They called us crazy,” she says. “And we were crazy. Crazy with pain, rage, and helplessness.”

And so begins the five-decade-long struggle of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. A struggle that lasts until today.

They will become one of the most iconic groups of resistance in Latin America, continuing to demand the return of their children and grandchildren, alive, until today.

The mothers will inspire similar groups across the Americas. They will demand justice and memory.

30,000 people were disappeared in Argentina under the US-backed military dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983. Babies of the disappeared were stolen and raised by military officials as their own. 

The Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have, today, found almost 140 of their grandchildren, and given them back their true identities.

The Mothers and Grandmothers are still marching today—every Thursday around the obelisk in the center of the Plaza de Mayo. Like they did that first time in 1977. Five decades ago.

Today is March 24… the anniversary of the 1976 coup that led to the brutal Argentine dictatorship. In Argentina, it’s known as the National Day for Memory and Truth and Justice. It honors the victims of the military regime. Each year, big marches and demonstrations are held in Buenos Aires to mark the date. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are always front and center. In fact, the center of the events is usually the Plaza de Mayo, which thanks to the mothers and grandmothers, has become the iconic image of the struggle against the Argentine dictatorship and the fight for truth and justice. Today, under the government of Javier Milei, these acts of resistance have become even more important. Milei has criticized the country’s policies of justice. His government has defunded memorial sites and closed investigations into the crimes of the past. His allies have vocally backed former military officers serving time for torture and crimes against humanity.

The demands for justice and the resistance, defending the true memory of the past, continues as acute and as important as ever. 

This is the eleventh episode of Stories of Resistance—a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting, see his pictures of the Plaza de Mayo, and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Michael is currently working on Season 2 of his podcast Under the Shadow, about Plan Condor and the U.S.-backed South American dictatorships of the 1960s and 70s. It’s expected to be released in 2026. You can listen to the first season, here.