Thursday, 28 April 2022 — The Tricontinental Takashi Murakami (Japan), Tan Tan Bo Puking – a.k.a. Gero Tan, 2002. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On April 19, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its annual World Economic Outlook, which forecasted a severe slowdown in global growth along with soaring prices. ‘For… Continue reading

Thursday, 21 April 2022 — The Tricontinental Shengtian Zheng and Jinbo Sun, Winds of Fusang, 2017. ‘Fusang’ is an ancient Chinese word referring to what some believe to be the shores of Mexico. The work is an homage to Latin America’s influence on China, particularly that of Mexican artists on the development of modern Chinese… Continue reading

Thursday, 14 April 2022 — The Tricontinental Ever Fonseca (Cuba), Homenaje a la paz (‘Homage to Peace’), 1970. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. While the United States began its illegal war against Iraq in 2003, Cuba’s President Fidel Castro spoke in Buenos Aires, Argentina. ‘Our country does not drop bombs on other peoples’,… Continue reading

It is hard to fathom the depths of our time, the terrible wars, and the confounding information that whizzes by without much wisdom. Certainties that flood the airwaves and the internet are easy to come by, but are they derived from an honest assessment of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russian banks (part of… Continue reading

Thursday, 31 March 2022 — The Tricontinental Almagul Menlibayeva (Kazakhstan), Transoxiana Dreams, 2010. Dear friends, Greetings from the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 16 March 2022, as Russia’s war on Ukraine entered its second month, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev warned his people that ‘uncertainty and turbulence in the world markets are growing, and production and trade chains are collapsing’.… Continue reading

Thursday, 17 March 2022 — The Tricontinental Chiharu Shiota (Japan), Navigating the Unknown, 2020. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The war in Ukraine has focused attention on the shifts taking place in the world order. Russia’s military intervention has been met with sanctions from the West as well… Continue reading

Thursday, 10 March 2022 — The Tricontinental Daniela Edburg (Mexico), Atomic Picnic, 2007. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 27 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin met the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov and the Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. ‘The top officials… Continue reading

Thursday, 3 March 2022 — Tricontinental Konstantin Yuon (USSR), People of the Future, 1929. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. It is impossible not to be moved by the outrageousness of warfare, the ugliness of aerial bombardment, the gruesome fears of civilians who are trapped between choices that are… Continue reading

Thursday, 24 February 2022 — The Tricontinental Ahmed Rabbani (Pakistan), Untitled (Grape Arbor), 2016. Rabbani endured 545 days of torture at the hands of the CIA before he was transferred to Guantánamo in 2004. He has been in the prison without charge since then. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Twenty years ago,… Continue reading

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. ‘[T]here is great intellectual poverty on the part of the right wing’, Héctor Béjar says in our latest dossier, A Map of Latin America’s Present: An Interview with Héctor Béjar (February 2022). ‘There is a lack of right-wing intellectuals everywhere’. Continue reading

Thursday, 3 February 2022 — The Tricontinental Amadou Sanogo (Mali), Je pense de ma tête, 2016. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In October 2021, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) held a seminar on the pandemic and education systems. Strikingly, 99% of the students in… Continue reading

On 19 January 2022, US President Joe Biden held a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. The discussion ranged from Biden’s failure to pass a $1.75 trillion investment bill (the result of the defection of two Democrats) to the increased tensions between the United States and Russia. According… Continue reading

For over a decade, Alaa Abd el-Fattah has been in and out of Egypt’s prisons, never free of the harassment of the military state apparatus. In 2011, during the high point of the revolution, Alaa emerged as an important voice of his generation and since then has been a steady moral compass despite his country’s… Continue reading

Thursday, 13 January 2022 — Tricontinental Chittaprosad, Indian Workers Read, n.d. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In October 2021, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released a report that received barely any attention: the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021, notably subtitled Unmasking disparities by ethnicity, caste, and gender. ‘Multidimensional poverty’ is… Continue reading

Thursday, 6 January 2022 — Tricontinental Ryuki Yamamoto (Japan), Chaos – Spin, 2019. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. As we enter the new year almost two years after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, the official death toll from COVID-19 sits just below 5.5 million people.… Continue reading

30 December 2021 — Tricontinental P.S. Jalaja (India), We Surely Can Change the World, 2021. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Bittersweet is the passage of this year. There have been some immense victories and some catastrophic defeats, the most terrible being the failure of the Global North countries to… Continue reading

23 December 2021 — Tricontinental Latif al-Ani (Iraq), Eid festivities in Baghdad, 1959. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 12 July 2007, two US AH-64 Apache helicopters fired 30-millimetre cannon rounds at a group of Iraqi civilians in New Baghdad. These US Army gunners murdered at least a dozen people,… Continue reading