Stories of Resistance

This week, March 24th, is the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Argentine coup that sunk the country into a brutal U.S.-backed military dictatorship. The regime would unleash terror across Argentina, disappearing 30,000 people in just seven years. Thousands detained. Tortured. Murdered. But people would resist, like the family members of the disappeared — the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. They have mar...

This is a preview for Season 2 of Michael Fox's podcast Under the Shadow, about Trump's onslaught on Venezuela and in Latin America.  On January 3, 2026, the United States invaded Venezuela and kidnapped president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. It was the first US invasion of a Latin American country since the 1989 invasion of Panama.  The United States fired missiles and bombs that bl...

Today, people are protesting across the United States. They’re rallying. They’re walking off their jobs to mark the one-year anniversary of the inauguration of president Donald Trump.  It’s part of a nationwide protest called the “ Free America Walkout .” It’s organized by the Women’s March , the group that led the huge women’s marches against Trump in his first term. More than 400 events, rallies...

They called Ali Primera “The People’s Singer.” The Venezuelan ambassador of the Nueva Cancion, protest song, movement, which spilled across Latin America in the 1960s and ’70s, and included others like Mercedes Sosa and Victor Jara. Ali Primera sang in solidarity. He sang for rights and for justice. He sang in defense of the people, the humble and the working class. He sang in solidarity with El S...

On January 1, 1994, Indigenous peoples from Chiapas, Mexico, rose up. They took control of city halls in towns across the state. They took the state capital San Cristobal de las Casas. And they held them for days, despite a violent response from Mexico’s military. This was not just any movement confined to the mountainous jungles of Mexico. It was an Indigenous uprising against injustice. An upris...

It's late 1914. December cold in the trenches of the Western Front of World War I. Rations are in short supply. Men shiver… dreaming of home. Wishing they were far away. For months, here in the trenches, the sounds of the machine gun fire have peppered every waking moment. The whining of the bullets. The hissing and the cracking. But this morning — Christmas morning — the guns stop. It’s not plann...

On Dec. 20, each year, people march in Panama City. They march to remember the fallen. They march to continue to demand justice for the violence, the destruction, and for those who were killed in the last US invasion in Latin America—the 1989 invasion of Panama.  BIG NEWS! This podcast has won Gold in this year’s Signal Awards for best history podcast! It’s a huge honor. Thank you so much to every...

On Dec. 6, people across the United States marched. They protested. They carried banners: No war on Venezuela. No blood for oil. US hands off Venezuela. They chanted and waved Venezuelan flags. Trump says he’s coming to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. He’s promised it’s only a matter of time. The United States has amassed the largest military buildup in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cub...

In the 1980s, the United States wreaked havoc in Central America. Backing authoritarian dictatorships. Fueling massacres and violence. Funding, training, and organizing the Contras, a paramilitary organization created to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The US government was spending billions on its interventionist policies across Central America in the name of fighting so...

On Thanksgiving morning before dawn, the ferries run every 15 minutes, taking people to a sunrise gathering. An Indigenous People’s Alcatraz Thanksgiving ceremony.  The boats arrive to the island in the middle of the bay. People get off. Climb on to the island. They huddle against the chilly air and the cold winds that whip across San Francisco Bay. Lights from the cities across the water flicker...

Nov. 20 is Black Consciousness Day in Brazil. A day celebrating the struggle of Black organizations, people, and movements in Brazil. Celebrating the ongoing fight against racism. And, above all, celebrating the history of Brazil’s most historic Black leader: Zumbi dos Palmares. He was leader of the great Palmares Quilombo, present-day Alagoas, an autonomous state built by escaped slaves in the 16...

It was the Great Depression. Early 1930s. United States. More than a thousand mortgages a day were being foreclosed on. Hundreds of thousands of families were losing their homes each year.  Times were hard for everyone. Especially hard for farmers. But neighbors found a way to push back and help their friends in a very creative way. They called it a penny auction. BIG NEWS! This podcast has won Go...

In the late 1700s, Indigenous peoples in the Spanish colonies of the Andes were forced to work for the Spanish. They tilled the land, worked in the textile mills and the mines. Those that didn’t faced heavy taxes. But in early November 1780, Indigenous Incan leader Tupac Amaru II led an uprising against the Spanish that he hoped would end it all. It was the largest revolt against colonial Spain. T...

Just a year ago almost no one had ever heard of him. Just a name in a crowd. A fairly obscure member of the New York State Assembly. Just one in a packed pool of Democratic candidates running for mayor of New York City. A longshot. Now he is the leading candidate in the city’s mayoral race next Tuesday, November 4. A \Democratic socialist who has ignited a movement. A glimmer of hope amid dark day...

ICE agents are detaining thousands of people a day from communities across the country. But people are resisting. And it’s having an impact. Millions have protested in recent weeks, from the #NoKings rally to demonstrations in front of immigration detention centers, and protests against ICE in their communities. Neighbors in one Chicago suburb pushed back by yelling and honking car horns when ICE...

On October 18, 2019, protests erupted in Santiago, Chile, over a hike in the cost of public transportation. But the demonstrations quickly grew into more than that. Those in the streets demanded change—real change. They demanded more rights. They demanded a new Constitution. Police cracked down with impunity. Videos went viral of riot police beating people in the streets. Chemical water guns. Shoo...

It was once called Columbus Day, and it still is in many parts. A day to celebrate the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who supposedly “discovered” America. But America was there long before Columbus came. And so were millions of people up and down the continent. Experts estimate that there were anywhere from 60–90 million people in the Americas at the time. Possibly even more people in the...

Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in recent days. They've marched in dozens of cities. They're demanding respect and safety for the flotilla passengers kidnapped and detained by Israeli forces. They're demanding an end to the violence in Gaza and an end to their countries’ complicity in the genocide in Palestine.  BIG NEWS! This podcast is a finalist for this year’s Signal Awards for...

In Ecuador, the country's largest Indigenous movement has been leading mass protests in the streets for nearly two weeks against President Daniel Noboa’s lifting of diesel subsidies. Gas prices have spiked. They say it will impact the price of food. They’re calling their protests an “indefinite national strike.” The country is now on fire. They have faced repression. But they have vowed to continu...

Harriet Tubman is an icon for freedom. She first fled slavery with two brothers on September 17, 1849. By the following year, she was returning to save others. She traveled by night, from safe house to safe house, supported by a network of abolitionists known as the Underground Railroad. Walking north to Pennsylvania—a free state. She would make 13 trips back and forth throughout the 1850s and ear...

Brazilian educator Paulo Freire inspired and he resisted. He was imprisoned and exiled during the Brazilian dictatorship and he carried his teachings around the world. He believed literacy and learning could be tools to empower. He helped people learn to read and write, but also understand their place of oppression and rise above it. He wrote, “Education doesn’t transform the world. Education chan...

High school students are still marching in Argentina to remember the disappeared—kids like them who were kidnapped, detained, tortured and disappeared nearly a half century ago during the country’s military dictatorship. Kidnapped during an operation known as the Night of the Pencils—carried out on September 16, 1976.  This is episode 66 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast produced by The Real News...

On September 11, 1973, tanks rumbled over the streets of Santiago, Chile. Planes bombed La Moneda, the presidential palace, as US-backed General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected President Salvador Allende. It was a dark, dark moment in Chile’s history. Pinochet would unleash a bloody regime that would grip power until 1990. During his rule, thousands were rounded up, detained,...

It’s past midnight on September 6, 1971.  Across the prison, dozens of men slip out of their beds. Bricks slide out from the walls of their cells. Bodies slip out silently. They move into a tunnel that has been chiseled and dug slowly and silently for eight months, and they creep one by one underneath the prison. It is the stuff of movies. Or of legends. Or of cartoons. The only sound is the ruffl...

In August 1791, slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue revolted, rising up by the thousands. Within ten days they've taken over the whole northern province. By the following year, they controlled a third of the colony. It was the spark that would ignite the Haitian revolution — a 13-year-long endeavour. Independence would finally come on January 1, 1804. But they would have to defeat three...