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As US intervention rhetoric intensifies and Latin America faces renewed political pressure, leaders from across the global left gathered in Bogotá to defend sovereignty, environmental justice, and a vision of unity rooted in José Martí’s century old call for Nuestra América.
2026 began with Venezuela’s president and wife were arrested in the middle of the night and imprisoned in New York.
Before that, US bombs had targeted civilian shipping crafts. Right now, the Trump administration is considering naval blockades in order to halt imports at the intended detriment to the already struggling Cuban economy. Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro returned this month from a meeting in the US with Donald Trump.
In response, the global socialist coalition Progressive International (‘La Internacional Progresista’) called an emergency conference in Colombia’s capital city – its name, Nuestra America, plucked from the pages of Cuban writer Jose Martí’s essay of the same name, thanks to its relevance in today’s political climate.
Martí’s essay endorses the union of ‘the pueblos’ (both the towns, and the people) in the face of the threat of American Imperialism. It was written and published almost a century and a half ago.
The conference is held in Bogota’s Candelaria district, in the historical Teatro Colon. In this same building, 10 years earlier, the Colombian government and FARC Guerrilla forces signed the Peace Treaty (‘Al Acuerdo Final de Paz’) which led to the melting down of many of the arms used throughout the conflict.
Just a few blocks away, one can visit the museum Fragmentos, Espacio de Arte y Memoria. In this space, the labours of many women abused during the conflict have transformed weapons of destruction into a piece of art designed by artist Doris Salcedo and architect Carlos Granada.
Progressive International, founded recently in 2020, is an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, feminist, not-for-or-by-profit coalition which believes in political mobilisation through solidarity.
Implementing socialist values outlined in their inaugural declaration, PI represents solidarity against ‘the diversity of struggle in the world’ through collective action ‘in a common defense of people and planet.’ In light of Martí’s 1891 essay, it becomes impossible to separate the revolutionary activism of this coalition from Martí’s call for the seed of a new, unified America.
David Adler is a political scientist, economist, self-defined radical sceptic, co-founder of PI, and tonight’s host.
A proponent of Latin American sovereignty as firm as he is an opponent of the international rise of the far right, in an interview with El Pais he described the unlawful advances of the US administration into countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and now Ecuador, as ‘las maniobras absurdas peligrosamente imperialistas de este gobierno’ (‘absurd, dangerously imperialist manouveurs’).
The first panel of the evening is headed by the ex-minster of the environment and sustainable development in Colombia, and presidential candidate of Petro’s party, Colombia Humana, Susanna Muhammad.
Muhammad labels the US government as ‘piratas’ (pirates) in their concerted attempts to invade and recolonise South America. She uses her time to go beyond the threat of American Imperialism alone, to assert that the answer to capitalism lives in the biodiversity of Latin America.
Now, she argues, the moment has arrived to renew the life systems on this planet, and raise our heads against these arms which pose not just a military, environmental, and economic threat, but also against the human dignity of Nuestra America.
After Muhammadm Bill de Blasio, Former New York Mayor, receives the microphone. De Blasio justifies people’s fear that Donald Trump does not honour democratic values. Yet nor does he have, he stresses, unwavering support from US citizens.
He cites the deployment of violent ICE agents who are attacking, killing, and facilitating the deportation of ordinary people to demonstrate that Trump is creating violence against his own citizens. In response, de Blasio reports, the opposition is growing.
Zarah Sultana, left-wing, pro-Palestine MP for Coventry is up next. She has supported hunger strikers against the genocide in Gaza. She called for the abolition of the British monarchy even before files were released incriminating Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor for his paedophilia. She also confronted the UK foreign secretary about the double standards surrounding the UK’s reaction to the ‘illegal abduction of Maduro.’
Sultana launches into a damnation of the UK government’s failure to support the sovereignty of Latin America in the face of Trump’s Imperialist advances.
‘Shame on the UK Parliament, and shame on Kier Starmer,’ Sultana proclaims. She goes on to outline the UK’s deep ‘complicity in the genocide taking place in Gaza, from weapon sales, intelligence cooperation, political cover, all of which emphasise the UK government’s disregard for international law.
‘What happens in Colombia, matters in the UK. What happens in Venezuela, matters in Palestine. What happens here, shapes people everywhere.’
Following Sultana is the formidable lawyer, politician, and Colombian Deputy Minister of Rural Development, Martha Carvajalino.
She recalls the words of Gustavo Petro, who said that ‘Gaza was only the beginning of the bets placed on the world’s sovereignty through violence, and war’.
Carvajalino calls not just for an opposition to American Imperialism, but for a movement to protect ‘la tierra, los bosques, la agua, y las amazonas’ (‘the land, the forest, the water, and the Amazon’) upon which this violence is enacted.
This is quite literally, she emphasises, a life or death situation; we must oppose the bombing and destruction of ‘our land’ – as we’ve seen through the ecocide in Gaza. We must do this, not only to ensure the sovereignty of Nuestra America but to ensure, also, that ‘los pueblos’ (‘the people’) can work the earth, eat from the earth, and above all survive with the earth as one.
The microphone is then passed to Spanish-Argentinian Gerardo Pisarello, republican deputy and representative of social-democratic party Catalunya en Comu.
Pisarello names not just the leftist candidates assassinated by the Castaño brothers in the 1980s, but also Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina (the mothers campaigning for their disappeared sons). He names indigenous men and women like Bartolina Sisa and Tupac Amaru who fought against Spanish colonial oppression in Peru, as well as figures like Ana Tijoux, Frida Kahlo, and Rosa Luxembourg.
We have beaten these giants performing in a puppet show before, he reminds us; now, we have another opportunity to defend Nuestra America. There is no doubt that we can do it again.
Pisarello is followed by Thiago Avila, a Brazilian humanitarian activist whose keffiya reminds us of the lengths he is willing to go to in order to break the Israeli siege of Gaza and create a people’s humanitarian sea corridor – he recently participated, along with Adler, in the Flotilla mission to deliver aid to Palestinian’s in the occupied West Bank.
Avila reflects on the growth of Colombia since 9 Abril 2005, a little over half a century after the assassination of education minister Jorge Eliecer Gaitan led to the eruption of violent protests in the capital city, known as ‘El Bogotazo’. At this moment, he admits, Bogota was considered the Israel of Latin America.
But now, he clarifies, Colombia has transformed into the ‘vanguard of Latin American resistance’.
What is happening is not a war, he stresses, but an apartheid and an ethnic cleansing carried out by the Israeli state against the people and land of Palestine.
During his turn, Avila makes a worthy comparison of the imperialists of Northern America with the Israeli Military in Palestine; both of whose actions demonstrate that they prefer to keep vigil over a world destroyed, rather than see a project of emancipation which could oppose their imperial regime.
He asserts, our project must be enacted together, in order to forge an alternative path to the one paved with violence.
Next is Ecuadorian Andrés Auraz, the Exminister of knowledge and human talent for his country, and a firm supporter of Jorge Glas.
Auraz reminds the audience that the US Military Forces have been deployed not because Latin America is weak, but because the US Government recognizes that Latin America has shown its force without having to deploy arms like ICE agents. Because Latin America has prioritised the lives, the health, and the education of its people.
In his soft spoken manner, Auraz reasserts the peaceful opposition of his own country against the violence of the Trump regime only a few days before this conference. The resounding ‘no!’ Ecuadorians gave in response to the possibility of their own violent resistance provides yet another example of the progressiveness of his nation.
Clemence Guette, vice president of the national assembly and voice of the working classes in France, follows him. She expresses her honour to be here, in the first country which said ‘no’ to Donald Trump.
