Progressive Leaders Across the Americas Unite Against Growing Global Fascism
On the final day of the Second Pan-American Congress this month, more than 60 delegates from 12 countries made their way into the Secretary of Public Education headquarters in downtown Mexico City. As leaders from the Americas walked through the building’s passages and patios, many stopped to take pictures in front of the walls lined with murals from famous artists, including Diego Rivera.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site served as the location of the final plenary of the three-day gathering aimed at uniting progressive and democratic forces in the Western hemisphere to take on rising far right authoritarianism.
Delegates representing communities from as far as Nunavut in Canada to the extreme southern tip of South America eventually took their seats in the Ibero-American Hall, a space adorned with a massive, nearly 1,500-square-foot mural, appropriately called “The Union of Latin America” by Roberto Montenegro.
From this hall, the message from Mexico was unambiguous: The peoples and the elected representatives of this hemisphere are ready to act to confront the global threat of fascism.
“We are of course facing an authoritarian threat in the world: it is the return of fascist positions to power,” María José Pizarro, a Colombian senator from the ruling Pacto Historico coalition, told Truthout. “In the face of this, we must therefore build joint strategies that allow us to confront it in the best possible way in countries where this is already happening, and in those where it is not, to prevent the return of this type of government.”
When it comes to hemispheric relations, U.S. President Donald Trump has pursued what has been described as a “divide and conquer” strategy, leveraging the national interests of one country against another and pitting neighbors against each other in order to squeeze out concessions from leaders. Trump has been able to follow this strategy to varying degrees of success, in part due to the lack of unity regarding the threat he represents to the entire world.
“ is not a regional threat, it’s not a threat to one country, it’s a threat that’s growing worldwide,” said Pizarro.
From the Atlas Network, a coalition of right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups that promote neoliberal policies globally, to Trump’s open and blatant interference inside Brazil in order to back his ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro, in the face of charges over his effort to carry out a coup after losing the 2022 election, the far right has been successful in building trans-national links.
One aim of the Pan-American Congress is to break down barriers between progressives and anti-fascists who have historically lacked an institutional space to better coordinate their own regional response.
One standout feature of this gathering was the participation of elected representatives from the United States, including Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Illinois), Delia Ramírez (D-Illinois), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan); Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs), such as interim New Democratic Party leader Don Davies, Leah Gazan, and Lori Idlout; and MPs from the governing Liberals, such as Michael Coteau, also attended.
Pizarro, who is also a potential candidate for Colombia’s 2026 presidential election, described the participation of U.S. and Canadian lawmakers at the Pan-American Congress as “fundamental” and expressed optimism that this would be the beginning of a closer relationship with progressives in North America.
“We don’t see ourselves as isolated from North America, but rather the opposite, as part of an American continent that integrates us all,” said Pizarro. “We rarely have the opportunity to listen to each other, to talk, especially today when the United States government is speaking out strongly about its position on Latin America, its relationship with Latin America, and that conversation with progressive Democratic congressmembers, of course, must be strengthened,” she added.
The enthusiasm for building closer ties goes both ways.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib said she drew inspiration from her conversations with other lawmakers fighting for their communities and the power of connecting with fellow activists across the Americas.
Tlaib drew parallels from her experience growing up in Detroit, Michigan, in a neighborhood impacted by corporate pollution with the stories she heard from colleagues at the congress from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico.
“These corporations don’t care about these borders. They come and extract, make us sick, and just leave us with nothing,” said Tlaib.
But now she says she feels “less alone in this fight against corporate greed, against corporate polluters, against those that don’t care about our communities thriving.”
Tlaib cited her conversations with Canadian MPs about the need to collaborate in the fight against the environmental threat posed by the Line 5 pipeline that threatens water systems in both the U.S. and Canada.
“We are now building these bridges and creating a movement that brings all of us together and understanding that connectivity,” Tlaib told Truthout.
Tlaib, the first Palestinian woman to serve in U.S. Congress and an important voice on the global stage speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians, also expressed gratitude at the centering of the Palestinian people’s cause at the gathering. At every event over the course of the weekend, speakers spoke up in support of Palestine in no uncertain terms, firmly expressing their solidarity.
“It’s very rare that you see that in the United States Congress, but we saw it at the Pan-American Congress,” said Tlaib.
Coming on the heels of July’s Emergency Conference on Palestine, which likewise saw world leaders gather to take action in an attempt to halt the genocide, delegates at the congress said recognizing the state of Palestine was only a starting point.
“In our view, much deeper actions, much more forceful voices — and of course, the role being played by multilateral organizations, which have been stripped of their value and the ability to defend life in the face of the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people — are essential,” said Pizarro.
Meanwhile, Colombian Deputy Minister of Multilateral Affairs Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir argued that countries with progressive governments have no choice but to break diplomatic relations with Israel.
In addition to calling for an end to the genocide against the Palestinian people, participants in the conference discussed Trump’s human rights violations against migrants and refugees, and the need to confront climate change.
During his speech at the opening session, Mexican Senate President Gerardo Fernández Noroña said the two defining features of the rising fascist threat in the world were the suffering inflicted on Palestinians and the abuse of migrants by the U.S.
“It is an unjust, vile, incorrect persecution where, by virtue of being a migrant, or the color of your skin or your nationality, people are persecuted,” said Noroña.
The mistreatment of migrants is the clearest case study on the necessity of confronting fascism in the Americas. Trump has leaned on allies like El Salvador’s far right President Nayib Bukele, who infamously agreed to detain more than 230 Venezuelan migrants sent from the U.S. in his notorious mega-prison before negotiations between Caracas and Washington eventually secured their release.
Mexico in particular has faced enormous pressure from both U.S. political parties to crack down on migrants transiting through its territory as they try to reach the United States. More recently, the Mexican government has had to face down repeated tariff threats from Trump over the issue of migration.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has explicitly declined to become a third-country destination for non-Mexican asylum seekers and has resisted U.S. efforts to impose such arrangements. As a result, the Trump administration has secured agreements with Guatemala and Honduras instead, arrangements that ultimately serve to undermine efforts by any one country in the region to resist the U.S.’s mass deportation agenda.
The selection of Mexico City as the host of the Second Pan-American Congress (the first having been held last year in Bogotá, Colombia) offered delegates the opportunity to learn from the political project known locally as the “Fourth Transformation,” the leftist national political project to shift Mexico to a post-neoliberal model that began with the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2018 and continued under President Sheinbaum.
With the election of Sheinbaum in 2024, Mexico proved to be one of the few countries that bucked a trend in which voters ousted incumbents and replaced them, in many cases, with right-wing populists, such as Javier Milei in Argentina.
Sheinbaum, who has been lauded for repeatedly standing up to Trump, welcomed delegates at the National Palace, allowing representatives from throughout the hemisphere to share their experiences resisting the U.S. president — and also to share firsthand how Mexico has been able to not only navigate an intemperate neighbor, but also continue to press forward with its anti-neoliberal political agenda.
Canadian MP Leah Gazan, a member of the Wood Mountain Lakota Nation who represents Winnipeg in Canada’s House of Commons, said her time in Mexico left her feeling renewed and hopeful.
“What’s happened in Mexico is so inspiring … and to see women, progressive women, strong women, leading the narrative about the importance of humanizing politics, the importance of rooting democracy and human rights, is a refreshing change from what we’re witnessing in Canada right now,” Gazan told Truthout.
“I think we have a lot of lessons to learn from the Global South,” said Gazan.
The challenge facing elected representatives now is translating the positive experiences from the congress in Mexico into action in their home countries.
During a Pan-American Congress event at the Esperanza Iris Theatre in Mexico City, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar renewed her pledge to fight for marginalized communities throughout the hemisphere from her place inside the U.S. Congress, signaling to the peoples of the Global South that they have an ally in her.
“Since being in the elected office, I’ve made an effort to set myself apart as somebody who sees the global community as one, someone who understands our destinies and our fates are intertwined, someone who understands that being in the United States provides us with great privileges but also with responsibilities,” Omar told Truthout.
Omar has repeatedly expressed her solidarity with the Global South, especially Latin America, by participating in an on-the-ground delegation to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in 2022, and through numerous legislative initiatives focusing on migration and human rights.
The U.S. representative also shared her view that progressives in the U.S., especially those in elected office, have an elevated duty to end U.S. policies that harm people throughout the world, saying, “It is our policies that are actively responsible for sanctions, for militarization, for exploitation, and it is up to us to make sure that we are lifting our voices collectively to say, ‘No, there is another way.’”
Trump’s aggressive approach to relations with his neighbors in the region may have caught many somewhat off guard, but more than six months into his second term, leaders from this hemisphere have now adapted and are forming new united strategies to take on Trump.
At the close of the 2025 Pan-American Congress, delegates reported the discussions and proposals from the various working groups. From efforts to advance an explicit recognition of systemic racism throughout the Americas, to calls for a new global order based on human dignity and solidarity among nations, there was widespread consensus on the need for stronger international cooperation to confront the global rise of fascism, denouncing its role in migrant persecution in the U.S., and the genocide in Gaza.
With the next Pan-American Congress set to take place in Uruguay next year, delegates such as Omar and Tlaib expressed a sense of hope and optimism that the gathering in Mexico City will serve as a turning point.
“There is nothing like our sisters down south and what they deal with, but continuously find joy in the work that they do on behalf of the communities they serve, and that is inspiring and I’ll take that with me,” concluded Omar.
José Luis Granados Ceja is an anti-imperialist journalist and political analyst based in Mexico City, with 20 years of experience covering social movements, democracy, elections and human rights. Follow him on Twitter: @GranadosCeja.
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