https://portside.org/2026-03-25/global-left-midweek-march-25-2026

1. For a New Global South Alignment
2. Iran and Regional War
3. Cuba and the Global Left
4. Socialists Against the Manosphere
5. A Tale of Two Models: PTB and DSA
6. Lumumba, Sharpeville and the Women’s War of 1929
7. Socialists and Greens Win in French Elections
8. Chileans Protest Neofascist President
9. Generational Upset in Nepal
10. Brazil After Lula

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For a New Global South Alignment

Bríd Brennan, Gonzalo Berrón, Juliana Rodrigues de Senna and Sol Trumbo Vila / Transnational Institute (Amsterdam)

Amid rising fascism and a shifting capitalist order, progressive forces face a historic choice: fragmentation or solidarity. Drawing on liberation struggles, this paper calls for shared strategy and collective action to build a transformative Global South front for justice worldwide.

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Looking Hard at the Iran War

• The War Goes Regional   The Editors / MERIP (Ardmore PA)

• The Broader Reality of the Conflict   Jayati Ghosh / International Politics and Society (Brussels)

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Cuba and the Global Left

• The Stakes   Meizhu Lui / Mexico Solidarity Bulletin (Mexico City)
 

• At the Crossroads

Josué Veloz Serrade / La Tizza

[Moderator’s note: This is an excerpt from Cuba en la encrucijada de un multilateralismo hipócrita, e-translated by Portside. Read the original in Spanish here.]

The question may anger more than one person, but it is necessary: ​​what remains of international solidarity when symbolic gestures replace concrete actions? What does it truly mean to support Cuba when the noose tightens and the suffocation becomes tangible? And above all: what does it say about the geopolitical forces that claim to want a different world, the fact that they are capable of watching this suffocation without lifting a finger?

In these days of global tensions, the theory of international relations is also being dusted off, addressing peripheral realism, which describes the tendency of states to prioritize their immediate interests—trade, border stability, avoiding upsetting the hegemon—over ideological or historical alliances when imperial pressure increases. But peripheral realism is insufficient to fully explain the current behavior of Russia and China toward Cuba. Something deeper is at play here. It is the renunciation of their own desires as a condition for surviving in the system they supposedly wish to transform.

… Trapped in their own wars of attrition—Ukraine for Russia, Taiwan and the South China Sea for Beijing—both powers have consolidated a defensive posture. Their support for Cuba has been reduced to rhetoric in multilateral forums and the provision of certain resources, without structurally challenging the blockade. They do not send the necessary oil, they do not establish lines of credit that circumvent secondary sanctions, and they do not escort supplies to the island with their ships. If asked why, the answer would perhaps be the same as that of the great conformist: the moment is not opportune, the costs are too high, one must be realistic.

But realism, in this context, is another way of moving toward premature capitulation. Perhaps deep down they believe they are abandoning those who may fall first, not those who will fall last, who could be themselves. They have reached their historical limit and, instead of pushing it and breaking it, they have normalized it. In doing so, they commit a strategic miscalculation that history has already punished. Every time a power allows the hegemonic order to destroy a link without cost, that order emerges strengthened and moves one step closer to the subjugation of those who believed themselves safe. By allowing a sovereign project to be destroyed by the empire without consequence, they send a message to their own populations and other secondary actors: solidarity is a luxury we cannot afford; when your turn comes, you will be alone.

… The stance of Brazil and Colombia is perhaps the most paradigmatic example of the contemporary bankruptcy of progressivism. Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, two leaders who owe their political capital to the narrative of social transformation and regional sovereignty, have opted for what we might call a kind of low-cost symbolism, with declarations of moral support, calls for dialogue, and a discursive presence in international forums. But while the words circulate, the structural conditions of suffocation—the blockade, the lists of state sponsors of terrorism, the financial sanctions—remain intact.

Everything unfolds as if a kind of identification with the aggressor were at work, a mechanism by which the subject, subjugated to a superior force, unconsciously assimilates the values ​​and logic of that power in order to survive. It is not a conscious betrayal but an adaptation that, over time, becomes constitutive of one’s own identity. Something similar occurs with certain progressive Latin American governments; they have so thoroughly incorporated the logic of the imperial playing field—its institutions, its markets, its rules—that they can no longer imagine political action that breaks with that field, even though they proclaim it necessary in their rhetoric.

The case of Venezuela is the most painful because it represents the mutilation of a project that was once the cornerstone of regional solidarity. Today, Venezuela is de facto subject to the geopolitical decisions of the United States.

The regime of extreme sanctions, the imprisonment of Maduro and Cilia Flores, have achieved their objective: to constrain the Venezuelan state, force it to negotiate from a position of weakness, and diminish its capacity for international influence. Venezuela can no longer help Cuba because it can barely help itself. If the empire could defeat Venezuela, with the world’s largest oil reserves, what hope does a smaller country without that resource have? But the governments of the region fail to draw the correct conclusion. Instead of uniting to break the siege, they scatter, negotiate separately, and fall one after another.

… A country like Luxembourg enjoys high living standards because it is embedded in the heart of the imperial bloc. A country like Cuba has to survive despite being blockaded by imperialism. The correct question, then, is not why Cuba is not self-sufficient, but why Cuba is required to achieve a level of self-sufficiency that is not demanded of anyone else. This asymmetrical demand is not innocent; it is a cowardly, discursive trap that places the island in an ontologically impossible position, only to then present its impossibility as evidence of its failure.

Cuba is subjected to a kind of double bind; it is given a condition it cannot fulfill, and is blamed for its non-compliance.

… What we have witnessed in this analysis is not a series of isolated tactical errors, but a profound crisis of geopolitical and moral conscience within global progressivism. The notion that solidarity is not a moral luxury reserved for good times, but a strategic necessity and, at the same time, the very definition of what it means to belong to a political project that aspires to something more than simply managing the existing order, has been lost.

Cuba is not just Cuba: it is living proof that it is possible to resist for decades the siege of the greatest power in the world and maintain a universal health system, free education, its own culture, and an inalienable dignity.

That doesn’t prove the Cuban model is perfect: it proves that the alternative to global capitalism isn’t chaos or automatic failure, but that it's possible and worthwhile to build something different, even beautiful. By destroying Cuba, the empire isn’t eliminating a military threat; it’s eliminating evidence, erasing an example. It aims to demonstrate that outside of capitalist normality, no life is possible.

Those who betray Cuba are betraying themselves. Not metaphorically, but strategically. A world order that calls itself multipolar, but fails to protect its most vulnerable members when the Master tightens the screws, is not an alternative order; it is a decentralized extension of the same domination, a system where multipolarity is merely a cosmetic form of effective unipolarity. By betraying Cuba, they are telling the Global South: “If you don’t have oil or a geographic position vital to us, don't expect anything.” In the long run, this deprives them of genuine allies and leaves them in a world where only brute force matters: a world where they, too, though powerful, are vulnerable.

When the empire looks at Cuba, it sees a small island that it can blockade and suffocate with almost no consequences. What it doesn’t see—or what it doesn’t want to see—is that this island is a dormant volcano on a global tectonic fault line.

Cuba is not just its geography; it is its history, its example, the dream of millions of people who, in some corner of the world, still believe that another world is possible. And as long as that dream exists, as long as there is a people who embody it with their daily resistance, the Master’s order will not be complete. There will always be a crack. There will always be an unanswered question.

If one day the empire forgets Vietnam, forgets Iran, forgets that people do not surrender, and dares to invade the island, it will discover that wars are not won with aircraft carriers. They are won with a people's capacity to say “no,” even if it costs them their lives. And that “no” from Cuba, multiplied by millions inside and outside the island, will be its downfall.

Meanwhile, the battle is different. It is the battle for daily life, for light, for food, for hope. And in that battle, the peoples of the world have the power to speak. Not to replace states, but to compel them to act. To remind them that history judges. That the judgment upon those who abandoned the Spanish Republic was severe and lasting.

That silence, when it can be broken, is a decision. And decisions have consequences.

The final question isn’t for Cuba. Cuba has already given its answer with 67 years of Revolution. The question is for the world. For those who claim to want a different order.

For those who signed declarations and sent messages. For those who own oil and ships but don’t send them, or who have significant votes at the UN but only use them to abstain.

Which side are you on? Are you with those waiting for states to make a decision, or with those already taking action? Are you with those sending messages of support, or with those sending ships and deciding to confront the designs of imperialism once and for all?

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Socialists Against the Manosphere

Diana O’Dwyer / Rupture (Dublin)

To paraphrase Marx and Engels, no matter how much progress we make under capitalism, short of a revolution, we cannot finally rid ourselves of the “muck of ages” — it will re-emerge in various forms until the whole rotten system is overthrown. This is apparent in two of the main fronts in the current anti-feminist backlash — reproductive rights and the family, and gender-based violence. 

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A Tale of Two Models: PTB and DSA

Joe Todd / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)

The disciplined cadre and shared line of the Belgium Workers’ Party (PTB) is directly linked to its decades-long history as a Maoist cadre organisation. Its centralised and unitary character work well in a small, densely urbanised country. The autonomy and pluralism of the DSA are rooted in its historic anti-stalinism, the weakness of the American left and the sheer scale of the USA.

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Lumumba, Sharpeville and the Women’s War of 1929

• Reopening the Lumumba Case   European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (Berlin)

• Sharpeville Remembered   Seth Thorne / GroundUp (Cape Town)

• Women Who Moved Nigeria   Deborah Eli Yusuf Tinam / Inter Press Service (New York)

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Socialists and Greens Win in French Elections

RFI (Paris)

Left aligned candidate Emmanuel Grégoire won the Paris mayoralty with about 52% of the vote. This marked a clear win against rightist Rachida Dati, who had sought to win the French capital for the right after 25 years of it being governed by the left. Left-wing parties have held onto Paris. The far right failed to take the big cities it had hoped, but made some inroads in smaller ones.

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Chileans Protest Neofascist President

• Video: World Water Day   / AFP News (Paris)

• International Women’s Day   Naomi Larsson Piñeda / openDemocracy (London)

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Generational Upset in Nepal

Kamal Dev Bhattarai / The Wire (New Delhi)

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Brazil After Lula

Andre Pagliarini / Jacobin (Brooklyn)

As Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva seeks his final term as Brazil’s president, the Left’s electoral strategy — who runs, which factions align, and how the coalition balances pragmatism with principle — is already shaping the post-Lula era of Brazilian politics.