25 March 2021 — Tricontinental Ailén Possamay, Domestic disobedience / What they call love is unpaid labour, Concepción, Chile, 2019 Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Women around the world spend an average of four hours and twenty-five minutes per day on unpaid care work, while men spend an average… Continue reading

4 March 2021 — Tricontinental Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On a warm late February day in Santiago, I went to the grave of Victor Jara to pay homage to the man who was brutally killed on 16 September 1973. A theatre director, songwriter, and communist, Jara was… Continue reading

25 February 2021 — Tricontinental José Balmes (Chile), Lota el Silencio, 2007. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Stencilled in red on the walls of Santiago, Chile is a statement of fact: ‘your privileges are not universal’ (tus privilegios no son universales). This is a factual declaration because the… Continue reading

18 February 2021 — Tricontinental Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In 1911, a young Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) arrived in France, which had colonised his homeland of Vietnam. Though he had been raised with a patriotic spirit committed to anti-colonialism, Ho Chi Minh’s temperament did not allow him… Continue reading

11 February 2021 — Tricontinental Willie Bester (South Africa), Cross Roads, 1991. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In the early months after the World Health Organisation announced the coronavirus pandemic, the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy wrote of her hope that the pandemic would be a ‘portal, a… Continue reading

4 February 2021 — Tricontinental Oswaldo Terreros (Ecuador), Mural para la Universidad Superior de las Artes (‘Mural for the University of the Arts’), 2012. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In 2019, 613 million Indians voted to appoint their representatives to the Indian parliament (Lok Sabha). During the election… Continue reading

28 January 2021 — Tricontinental Mahmoud Sabri (Iraq), Death of a Child, 1963. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Someday the world will be free of the coronavirus. Then, we will glance backward at these years of misery inflicted by virions with spike proteins that have struck down millions of… Continue reading

21 January 2021 — Tricontinental Diego Rivera (Mexico), The Uprising, 1931. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 26 January, India’s Republic Day, thousands of farmers and agricultural workers will drive their tractors and walk into the heart of the capital, New Delhi, to bring their fight to the doors… Continue reading

7 January 2021 — Tricontinental Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The first newsletter of the new year is written in collaboration with our friend, the great linguist and prophetic voice, Noam Chomsky. What follows is a statement by Noam and me. Xiang Wang (China), Extinction, 2020 Continue reading

31 December 2020 — Tricontinental Image in homage of Bolivian people’s resistance by Tings Chak (China) Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Towards the end of November, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres addressed the German Bundestag to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations (UN). At the… Continue reading

24 December 2020 — Tricontinental Chittaprosad (India), Peace, undated. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Our year has been eclipsed by the pandemic, the rush of a virus paralysing societies across the world. Some governments offered smarter, more scientific, and humane approaches to the pandemic; many (but not all)… Continue reading

17 December 2020 — Tricontinental El Zeft (Egypt), Nefertiti in a Gas Mask, 2012. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. A decade has now slipped by since a man named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid on 17 December 2010. Bouazizi, a… Continue reading

10 December 2020 — Tricontinental Madhuri Shukla (USA), Wring, 2020 Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The night before the National Assembly elections in Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro spoke to a group of visitors at Miraflores Palace in Caracas. He recounted how he had been a member of the… Continue reading

3 December 2020 — Tricontinental Aswath (India), Lenin met India, 2020 Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Farmers and agricultural workers from northern India marched along various national highways toward India’s capital of New Delhi as part of the general strike on 26 November. They carried placards with slogans against… Continue reading

26 November 2020 — Tricontinental Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The total level of global indebtedness now sits at an astronomical $277 trillion, an increase of $15 trillion since 2019. This amount is equivalent to 365% of the global gross domestic product. The debt burden is highest in the… Continue reading

19 November 2020 — Tricontinental Cover of dossier 34: Paulo Freire and Popular Struggle in South Africa Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In 2011, the Swedish novelist Henning Mankell travelled to India to deliver the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Lecture in New Delhi. Mankell recounted an incident from Mozambique, where he lived… Continue reading

12 November 2020 — Tricontinental Leyla Tonak (USA), Lungs I, 2020 Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Finally, after much uncertainty, on the anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917, the numbers added up and US President Donald Trump found that — despite winning over 70 million votes — he would… Continue reading

In mid-October, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its World Economic Outlook report, which offered some dizzying data. For 2020, the IMF estimates that the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will decline by 4.4%, while in 2021 the global GDP will rise by 5.2%. Stagnation and decline will define the economic activity in both Europe and North… Continue reading