Stories of Resistance

The 1980s were a time of war El Salvador. The government openly attacked its citizens. Repression. Murder. Massacres. Radio Venceremos broadcasted twice a day. And it was a voice of truth. A voice of reason. A voice of resistance amid the violence and the government repression and the military bloodshed. They spoke truth to power. They offered hope to the masses—the people praying for change. Pray...

It is not a pretty bridge. Four lanes of busy traffic rush across Puente Bulnes during most hours. To the North, it buttresses against two overpasses that lead to a bustling highway. Below it, run the milky grey waters of the Mapocho River, after passing through downtown Santiago, Chile.  50 years ago, in another time, this bridge was a favorite execution site for the military and police of Chilea...

There is a place, tucked into the mountains and hills near the border between the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Puebla, where local campesinos continue to practice an ancestral tradition. They are salt farmers. And they are the last of their kind. But they are holding on. Holding on to the past in the present. Holding on to their tradition, culture and livelihood. Resisting amid the ancient salt po...

In the land of the Condor, near the base of the tallest mountain in the Western hemisphere, an Incan community lived. The people hunted, along the sheer hillsides, they farmed, they collected water from the river gushing from snowmelt. They had children, built families, and passed on traditions to generations of descendants. The land was cold, inhospitable, but their village grew and their communi...

On the Northeastern Brazilian coast, in the region of Alcântara, Maranhão, there are dozens of traditional villages of Black communities. Their families have lived here for generations — farming and fishing. They are known as quilombos. These villages were founded by their ancestors, who were either freed or who escaped enslavement on the plantations of Brazil. There are thousands of quilombos acr...

On July 17, 1936, the Nazi-backed Spanish General Federico Franco led an armed rebellion against the Spanish government. It began a bloody civil war that would last for years.  Thousands of people left their homes and traveled to Spain to stand up and defend its democratically elected government against Franco and fascism. Roughly 35,000 people from more than 50 countries would join the Spanish In...

Thousands on the streets of Brazil, Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue packed, angry and protesting US President Donald Trump and his imposition of 50% tariffs on Brazilian products. Trump’s new tariffs on Brazil are in response to the country’s trial against Trump ally, former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.  Bolsonaro is accused of leading a “criminal organization” that looked to stop his...

There are less than a hundred members of the Karipuna tribe. They live on their land in the Brazilian state of Rondonia. Their territory is demarcated, which means that it’s legally theirs. But many outsiders don’t care. Land invaders have been pushing in, hauling off hardwood and big trees and carving out pieces of their land, and dividing them up to sell. The Karipuna are resisting. This is epis...

Over the last two and a half centuries people in the US have used July 4 to make their stand against injustice, inequality, and oppression, and demand their rights. From an infamous speech by Frederick Douglass to women suffragists demanding the right to vote, civil rights protests, and a historic farm workers’ march, today we look at moments of July 4 resistance. This is episode 55 of Stories of...

Chile’s Indigenous Mapuche people have played their own version of field hockey for countless generations. Roughly 2 million Mapuche Indigenous people live across Chile and Argentina. Many have moved from their ancestral lands to the city. But they have not forgotten their past. They are using their ancestral sport, palín, to breathe life into their culture and traditions. Using their sport as a t...

Stonewall. They say it was the spark that set the fire ablaze. The start of the modern LGBTQ movement. Protests and riots that lasted for days in defense of gay rights. And from it, came gay pride parades, gay pride months, days, and celebrations far from the United States, in cities around the world.  This is episode 53 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Ex...

On June 28, 2009, Honduras exploded and the people took to the streets after the president was overthrown in a coup. One radio show followed them, reported from the protests, and became the voice of the resistance: Felix Molina’s Resistencia—Resistance. This is episode 52 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange . Independent investigative journalism, sup...

The year is 1968. Summertime. Washington, DC. And covering the National Mall are endless rows of shacks built by hundreds of poor families from across the United States. It’s called Resurrection City, and they have come to Washington to demand an end to poverty and a new economic bill of rights… for the poor. This was Martin Luther King Jr’s dream. The Poor People’s Campaign is what he’d been work...

For hundreds of years, the Spanish banned the Incan Festival of the Sun—the Andean New Year. But since the middle of the 20th century, Inti Raymi has been back. Today, communities, cities, towns and even universities hold Inti Raymi celebrations. They make offerings, light fires and incense. They say prayers to Pachamama and Inti, the sun. They sing and dance.  And it’s not just a celebration. It...

If you walk down the street in Paraguay, you will hear people speaking Spanish, the official language of most of the countries of Latin America. But, particularly if you are in the countryside, you will also hear something else: Guaraní. It’s one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in the Americas; a mother tongue of roughly six and half million people. In particular, in Paraguay. There...

Q’eswachaka is the last Incan rope bridge. It’s located down in a valley in the Andes mountains of Peru. And in early June, the residents of four Quechua communities hold a three-day-long festival, where they rebuild the bridge from scratch. This is not just a task to be done, but an ancestral ceremony. A means of holding on to their traditions and the story—resisting modernity and the passage of...

Bruce Springsteen has never shied away from expressing his political views. And he’s not gonna back down now. “In my home, the America I love. The America I’ve written about. That has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration,” he told a crowd at a concert in Europe, in May. Donald Trump responded over Truth...

You might think that Ernesto “Che” Guevara's resistance came with the Cuban revolution. When he sailed on the yacht known as the Granma, picked up arms, fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra, and liberated the island of Cuba. Or when he denounced US intervention at the United Nations, or when he helped to lead Cuba and make it self-sufficient, despite the US embargo that still exists...

Independent journalists say they are under threat in El Salvador. At least 15 journalists have fled the country in recent weeks. Roughly a dozen more are in hiding out of fear for their safety. “There's an atmosphere of fear, of anxiety. Of insecurity,” says Oscar Orellana, the head of the community media association ARPAS. But many continue to report. They continue to denounce the unjust detentio...

Protesters have taken to the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco. They’re protesting the detention and arrest of thousands of immigrants by Donald Trump’s immigration officials.  Protests have carried on for days. They’ve shut down highways. They've shouted, “No.” Trump has responded, calling in the national guard, despite objections from local state officials. It’s the first time a president...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, his spoke novels. He was Steinbeck, Tolstoy, and Tolkien, all in one. His images capture the spirit of the poor and working classes. And they grip the viewer. Refusing to let your eyes peal from the picture before you. Pictures in black and white. Pictures that seem to have been painted by brush strokes, but which are as real as the camera equipment he used....

There is a boat sailing to Gaza right now. It carries aid for the people of Palestine. And it is called the Freedom Flotilla. It is a sign of solidarity. A sign of international resistance against Israel's war on the people of Palestine. Against the death, and destruction, and pain. Against the genocide. The goal is to break Israel's siege of Gaza. And deliver much needed humanitarian aid. The Fre...

The Chinchorro mummies are considered the oldest mummies in the world. Thousands of years older than the Egyptian mummies. And these were not pharaohs. They were everyday folks looking to hold on to what was most dear to them: The people they loved. An embrace from the past that would last for thousands upon thousands of years. That would last until today. And, hopefully, far into the future. This...

Chile’s Club Deportivo Palestino is a soccer team founded more than a century ago by Palestinian immigrants in Santiago, Chile. Chile is home to the largest Palestinian community outside of the Middle East: half a million people. The team wears the country’s colors: white, green and red. In the stands, fans wear them too, as well as keffiyehs, the black-and-white scarves that represent Palestinian...

Parán is a small Indigenous community in the hills of Huaura, in central Peru. They are peach farmers. Their orchards line the mountainside. The same mountain where a new Canadian mine, known as Invicta, was beginning to operate. They feared for their future and that the mine would contaminate their precious springs, their only source of fresh water for their town and their peach trees. In 2018, t...