Latin America & the Caribbean

Images: Dahomey Royal Sandals (top) and Candomblé Doll from 1940s Bahiat (bottom). Courtesy of the National Museum of Brazil.

Rare African Antiquities Lost in Brazil Museum Fire

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – A fast-moving fire that swept Brazil's National Museum on September 2 incinerated priceless objects and reduced hundreds of African antiquities to ash, museum official are now saying.

The museum's permanent African exhibit was named Kumbukumbu – a Swahili word for the memory of people, objects and experiences. A throne from the Kingdom of Dahomey (current-day Benin) and ritual objects of Afro-Brazilian religion (Candomblé) were some of the museum's most prized possessions.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 12 September 2018

Photo: Memorial to the victims of the Río Negro massacres in Guatemala. CC BY 2.0

The Forgotten Saga of Mass Murders in Guatemala

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

Over the years, as a foreign affairs columnist of the International Herald Tribune, the author has made four visits to Guatemala.

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – In 1981 on the editorial page of the New York Times I wrote a column showing that the mass atrocities against the Indian population of Guatemala were carried out under the direct orders of the then president, Fernando Lucas Garcia. His former vice-president, Francisco Villagran Kramer, had given me information that was incontrovertible evidence of the murders.

I also showed how close was the relationship, financially and militarily, between the Guatemalan government and U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s government.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 11 September 2018

Photo: Mass rally in Cuba marked ‘Che’ Guevara’s 50th death anniversary on October 9, 2017. Credit: CubaSi

Guevara and Marx: Critical Remake of an Old Film – 9

By Roberto Massari*

This is the ninth of a nine-part series. Read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.

BOLSENA, Italy (IDN) – FADE-OUT … Scene 9[ Vallegrande, October 9, 2017]

The scene is composite, polychrome and multi-sound. On the large clearing for what in the past was to become the Vallegrande airport in Bolivia, some thousands of people convened by the government of President Evo Morales are gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Che’s fall in combat.

There are many multi-coloured flags, but mostly red with the silhouette of Korda’s famous photo, Andean and Caribbean music, and the banners of political, trade union and cultural associations of various Latin American origins. In the days that proceeded, scholars of Guevarism from various parts of the world had spoken: the author came from Italy but, incredibly, was the only one from Europe.

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Latin America & the Caribbean; 27 August 2018

Image: Countries Che Guevara visited (red) and those in which he participated in armed revolution (green). Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Guevara and Marx: Critical Remake of an Old Film – 8

By Roberto Massari*

This is the eighth of a nine-part series. Read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

BOLSENA, Italy (IDN) – MARXIST STORY: Scene 8 [Prague, 1966]

At this point we must devote attention to this polemic, trying first of all to imagine the scene: after the lengthy confinement in the Cuban ambassador’s house in Dar es Salaam, there is a drastic change of continent – from Africa to the heart of old Europe; a large villa on the outskirts of Prague; the semi-clandestine coexistence (Cuban-Czechoslovak “Operation Manuel”) with some of the closest companions (“Pombo” [b. 1940] and “Tuma” [1940-1967]); chess games; study and writing.

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; History; 26 August 2018

Photo: Guevara meeting with French existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at his office in Havana, March 1960. Sartre later wrote that Che was "the most complete human being of our time". In addition to Spanish, Guevara was fluent in French. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Guevara and Marx: Critical Remake of an Old Film – 7

By Roberto Massari*

This is the seventh of a nine-part series. Read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

BOLSENA, Italy (IDN) – HERESY STORY: Scene 7 [from Moscow to Havana, 1963-65]

The starting scene for describing this intellectual revival of Guevara’s Marxism is set in Moscow and he described it himself in one of the stenographic recordings of the bi-monthly conversations he held at the Ministry of Industry from 1962 to 1964. Here we are especially interested in some of the recordings of Che’s last year in Cuba as a minister. They are informal but precious materials; even more precious because they have not been re-elaborated or reviewed thus, reflecting Che’s immediate – and by no means diplomatic – thoughts.

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Latin America & the Caribbean; 25 August 2018

Photo: Che Guevara Statue, Santa Clara, Cuba (CC0 Public Domain).

Guevara and Marx: Critical Remake of an Old Film – 6

By Roberto Massari*

This is the sixth of a nine-part series. Read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

BOLSENA, Italy (IDN) – With regard to the “Marxism” of Marx there is not much more, because the rest of the article launches itself into a very imaginative analysis of the progress of the Cuban revolution which I leave out here without remorse.

In the past, however, I have devoted some attention to the hasty manner in which Che had dismissed some statements in that text from the two founding fathers related to Mexico and Bolivar. Here I limit myself to mentioning the piece by Guevara, but for my comment I refer to the detailed analysis I made in Che Guevara. Pensamiento y política de la utopía (pp. 54-9).

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Latin America & the Caribbean; 22 August 2018

Photo: Speaking at the UN General Assembly on December 11, 1964 on behalf of Cuba, Argentinean-born Ernesto "Che" Guevara responds to questions regarding his accent, affirming he is Cuban and willing to die for the liberation of any Latin American country. Credit: UN

Guevara and Marx: Critical Remake of an Old Film – 5

By Roberto Massari*

This is the fifth of a nine-part series. Read Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

BOLSENA, Italy (IDN) – Second half: ORTHODOXY STORY: Scene 6 [from Havana to Moscow, 1959-63]

As is well known, the revolutionary government assigned commander Guevara with tasks of great importance, but all within the economic sphere as president of the Banco Nacional de Cuba, in a first phase, and then as Minister of Industry (at the time unified in a single ministry) until the day of his resignation became operational between the end of 1964 and the spring of 1965.

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Latin America & the Caribbean; 21 August 2018

Photo (Public Domain): Cuban photographer Alberto Korda taking a picture of Che Guevara walking through a throng of cameramen down the streets in Havana, Cuba, with arms linked to his wife Aleida March in 1960.

Guevara and Marx: Critical Remake of an Old Film – 4

By Roberto Massari*

This is the fourth of a nine-part series. Read Parts 1, 2 and 3.

BOLSENA, Italy (IDN) – Everything that happened between Guatemala and Mexico is now a known story, recounted in the main biographies; but in the late 1960s Hilda was the only direct and reliable source of Che’s Marxist training, given that she had been his “teacher”: this was able to happen because she was more prepared than Ernesto, having a degree in economics, and above all because she had an anti-orthodox Marxist training with roots in APRA (therefore more genuinely Latin American) and not Sovietic (that is, Stalinist and dogmatic).

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Latin America & the Caribbean; 19 August 2018

Photo: Hilda Gadea Acosta (21 March 1925 – February 1974) – a Peruvian economist, Communist leader, author, and the first female Secretary of the Economy of the Executive National Committee for APRA, American Popular Revolutionary Alliance – was Che Guevara's first wife. She married Guevara in Mexico in September 1955, after learning she was pregnant. The marriage ended in a divorce in May 1959. They had a daughter named Hilda Beatriz "Hildita" Guevara Gadea (February 1956 – died 1995). Source: alchetron.com

Guevara and Marx: Critical Remake of an Old Film – 3

By Roberto Massari*

This is the third of a nine-part series. Read Parts 1 and 2.

BOLSENA, Italy (IDN) – FLASHBACK: Scene 3 [Lima, 1952]

To answer, it is necessary to step back in time to the first encounter with Marxism that the young Ernesto had personally experienced in Lima, Peru, during a period of his life in which he had already decided to engage in the search for his own path outside Argentina.

That is, outside of a great country where, in the early 1950s, the ideological alternative for a young radical who wanted to fight for ideals of social emancipation risked being crushed between two main poles: anti-communist Peronism or Stalinist anti-imperialism.

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Latin America & the Caribbean; 18 August 2018

Photo: Guevara atop a mule in Las Villas province, Cuba, November 1958. Wikimedia Commons.

Guevara and Marx: Critical Remake of an Old Film – 2

By Roberto Massari*

This is the second of a nine-part series. Click here for Part 1.

BOLSENA, Italy (IDN) – Scene 2 [Dar es Salaam, 1965]

Holed up in the house of the Cuban ambassador in Tanzania (Pablo Rivalta, 1925-2005), recovering from the defeat of the military expedition in Congo (“la historia de un fracaso”, as Guevara himself called it) and before moving to Prague, Che wrote an important letter to Armando Hart Dávalos (1930-2017) on December 4, 1965. Armando Hart was a historic leader of the July 26 Movement [M26-7], husband of the founder of Casa de la Américas (Haydée Santamaría Cuadrado [1920-1980]) and father of "Trotskyist-Guevarist" Celia Hart Santamaría (1963-2008), as she described herself in her last few years, before dying in a car accident.