Dear Friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Nazim Hikmet, the Turkish Communist poet, conjured up the image of a lonely sentry in a camp of fighters in the Spanish Civil War. This volunteer is startled by the horridness of the war and wants to hold dearly to the sensitive values of solidarity and hope.

It is snowing in the night.
You stand in front of the door of Madrid.
In front of you is an army.
Killing the most beautiful things we own,
Hope, yearning, freedom and children.

Hikmet wrote this poem in 1937. The hopes of a generation of the left were laid at the feet of people like this sentry. ‘Everything my nostalgic soul hopes for smiles in the eyes of the sentry at the door of Madrid’, he sang. But then, the forces of hatred and hopelessness seized Spain. Everything seemed to end. We killed the most beautiful things in the world.

From our team in São Paulo, Brazil, comes an informative and heartfelt dossier on the destruction of the Amazon. The Amazon Rain Forest is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Diverse in every way, the Amazon is home to a fifth of the planet’s fresh water and its rich trees absorbs an incredible amount of the world’s carbon emissions. 170 different indigenous communities make their homes in the rain forest.

At the other end of the planet, in the Chagos Archipelago, the Chagossians continue to fight against the UK government to regain their sixty islands stolen from them decades ago. On the largest of these islands – Diego Garcia – sits a US military base. The International Court of Justice recently asked the UK to give the Chagossians their islands, but the UK has rejected the verdict as merely ‘advisory’ (please read my column here). Chagos, like the Amazon, is the gate of Madrid. The sentry stands guard, but the army in front is formidable. Hope seems to be vanquished at each turn. And yet.

Rajan, who is likely to become the next head of the Bank of England, is right to point his finger at the failure of capitalism to provide for the many. The question of how to take care of the many is on the table for India’s election that will begin next month. It is likely that the current government – led by the far right – will not be able to form a majority and remain in power. The next government of India will be unlikely to produce an alternative policy slate in terms of our stewardship of nature and for the creation of social equality.

In Kerala (population 34 million), however, the Left Democratic Front government has pushed an agenda to enrich public goods and to lift up the interests of the many. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research fellows Jipson John and Jitheesh PM interviewed the Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, about such an alternative. Vijayan described the agenda of the government towards the enhancement of the key areas of education, health, employment and pensions as well as the fight over how to define the culture of the society – including the emancipation of women and oppressed castes.

The picture above provides an example of what the Left government has done in Kerala. It is of the Government Higher Secondary School, Karaparamba in Kozhikode. While government schools across the world face a virtual embargo of funds and care, the schools in Kerala have been revamped. This 112-year-old school, which had thousands of students twelve years ago, had an enrolment that declined to 90 largely because of the neglect to the government schools across India.

Late last month, I spent some time in Caracas, where I met a range of people – including some from the opposition (please read my diary here). It became clear quickly that this struggle inside Venezuela is a struggle over who has the right to the country and what policies should shape its future. The old oligarchy wants to return to power, as they have over much of Latin America. They are frustrated by the Bolivarian Revolution’s commitment to the ordinary people of the country. Meanwhile, the ordinary people – the Chavistas – pledge to defend their revolution to the very end. It is a dangerous situation, made more volatile by the incendiary behaviour of the United States, Canada, Colombia and others.

Franco and Üstel wanted and Ressa wants to protect the most beautiful things around us – the most beautiful of them all being hope.

Warmly, Vijay.