Stories of Resistance

For nearly 20 years, the women of Calama traveled into the desert each day to search for their loved ones — their husbands and partners who were ripped from them, detained, tortured, executed, and disappeared in the weeks following Chile’s US-backed 1973 coup d’état. Monday through Sunday, sun-up to sundown, they scoured the harsh desert earth with strainers and rakes, searching and hoping. And fi...

On May 22. 2006, teachers struck across the Mexican state of Oaxaca against dismal resources for schools, kids, and themselves. They were met with widespread repression. It would kick off months of protests that would unexpectedly turn Oaxaca into ground zero for one of the most radical movements Mexico has seen in the 21st century. They started holding people’s assemblies. They set up barricades...

José “Pepe” Mujica was a former political prisoner who suffered more than a decade of prison and torture under Uruguay’s military dictatorship. He rose to become the country’s president from 2010 through 2015. They called him the world’s humblest president. He was often seen driving himself in his 1987 baby blue VW bug. He lived on a farm. His clothes were simple. So were his words and his actions...

Malcolm X was born on May 19, 1925, exactly 100 hundred years ago. He would grow to become one of the greatest Black leaders in US history. Revolutionary Muslim minister. Black civil rights leader. Human rights activist. Black nationalist. He stood up to racist violence, white supremacy, and police brutality throughout his life. Malcolm X’s speeches and his words continue to inspire, even 60 years...

Augusto Sandino. The man who would lead the six-year rebellion against the US occupation of Nicaragua. The man who would become a legend across the country and also far from the shores of Central America. The United States called him a bandit. Much of Latin America called him a hero. Augusto Sandino was one of the world’s first anti-imperialist heroes of the 20th century. His story and his resista...

In times of repression and state violence, there is only one way to continue: Together. In 1973 Chile, people did what they could to survive and help others being hunted down by the regime. This is episode 33 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange . Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange's Human Rights in Action program. Ea...

In the early 1980s, one church in Tucson, Arizona, began to open its arms to the waves of migrants and refugees who were fleeing US-backed wars in Central America. They would take in migrants and refugees. They would shelter them against government agents and border patrol. A new underground railroad for Central Americans fleeing US-backed violence abroad. It quickly became a national movement. Wi...

After the Civil War, three women in different times and places celebrated the idea of a Mother’s Day for peace. For unity and solidarity. But when Mother’s Day finally did come, it was co-opted by businesses looking to profit off of it. The founder of the day railed against it. She filed lawsuits. She protested. She was arrested and she even organized a petition to stop it. But it’s never too late...

Roque Dalton is considered one of El Salvador’s greatest writers of the 20th century. His poems are pure art, mixing politics with poetry, blending verse and prose. Humor and reality. History and current events. Beautiful lines, alongside anger at the suffering plight of humanity. And above all that of the downtrodden and poor of El Salvador. But Roque Dalton did not just write words. He lived the...

Ricardo and Neusa Jones are from the Southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre. Birth is their calling. But not just any birth. Home birth. Natural birth. Humanized birth. Ricardo Jones is an obstetrician. His wife, Neusa, is an obstetrics nurse. But they embrace the ancestral knowledge of midwives. But for their work, Ric and Neusa Jones are under attack. On March 27, 2025, Ric Jones was convicted...

Folk musician. Banjo player. Singer of songs of unity. He sang songs of joy. He sang for the unions. He sang for the people. For the workers and the downtrodden. He sang songs for change. Civil Rights songs. Folk songs. Despite the Red Scare and McCarthy’s witch hunt, Pete Seeger sang on, helping to inspire the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. And he would continue to sing and play throu...

It’s been called the most influential protest you’ve never heard about. In April and May 1971, week-long protests rippled across Washington, DC. Thousands in the streets. Their slogan: “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.” The Nixon administration cracked down, arresting 7,000 people in just one day, and 12,000 people over the first week of May—the largest mass arrest...

In El Salvador, thousands of innocent people have been locked up in Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gangs. They have been held without due process for years. But family members are standing up. And on May 1 they march, carrying the pictures and the names of their innocent loved ones detained and held without rights, with the ever-increasing support of the United States. This is episode 26 of Stories o...

Harry Belafonte. The King of Calypso. Incredible singer and actor. He performed in more than a dozen movies throughout his career. But above all else, he was an activist. A fighter against racism and oppression, in the United States and around the world. Belafonte joined the Civil Rights Movement. He marched alongside Martin Luther King. And he remained active into his 90s, working for prison refo...

The Atacama Desert is the driest place on the planet, and one of the most inhospitable. But salt lagoons dot the barren landscape, and flamingos are one of a number of species that have adapted to live in this harsh environment, and are battling to survive. This is episode 24 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange . Independent investigative journalism,...

In recent years, local organizations, together with dozens of Indigenous communities, have planted more than 10 million trees up and down the Andes, with almost half of them in the Peruvian mountains around Cusco. Many of the tree species are threatened, and many of the ecosystems at risk. The trees help to protect and preserve the local environments and ecosystems and in particular help retain wa...

The most powerful acts of resistance are sometimes the simple choices we make each day. The words we write. The pictures we take. The people we support. And the decision to step outside our home. To volunteer at migrant shelters. To stand with the most oppressed and marginalized. To fight against unjust systems. These are the daily acts of resistance of writer and reporter Tamara Pearson. You can...

Federico Avalos is an Argentine poet. But he does not write the words. He recites them. And poetry is both Federico’s job and his activism. A theatric intervention. A temporal break in time from the digital monotony: The selfies, the tweets, the posts, the likes, the comments and the follows. This is Federico's resistance. Standing up to the cyber mayhem. Breathing art into the void. Magic. Reflec...

Titles do not do Eduardo Galeano justice. He was writer, reader, journalist, editor. But he was also historian. Catching stories in the air. Writing and retelling them anew. But he did not write for the stuffy halls of the elites or academia. He wrote for the people. He was a truth teller. A myth maker. An essayist. A poet. Polishing his craft. Honing his art. Chiseling his sculptures with words,...

On April 11, 2002, a massacre occurred on the streets of Caracas, Venezuela, as rebelling officers and members of the country’s Chamber of Commerce attempted a coup against the democratically elected president Hugo Chavez. The coup lasted just two days. The people were not having it. Chavez supporters descended from the hillsides of the poorest communities across Caracas and amassed outside of Mir...

April 10 marks the 25th anniversary of the people’s victory in the Cochabamba Water War against the privatization of of their precious resource. Community members protested and shut down the streets for months in defense of their right to water after Cochabamba handed the municipal water supply over to a subsidiary of the US construction firm Bechtel. Rates spiked. People stood up. This is episode...

April 8 is the International Day of the Roma, or Romani, people. It takes place each year to focus attention on the discrimination and marginalization of Roma communities across the world.  According to researchers, there are upwards of 15 million Roma people worldwide, and 1.5 million Roma people in Latin America. They continue to hold on to their traditions & way of life, despite discriminat...

On April 7, 2018, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was jailed on charges of corruption. But his supporters said he was innocent — convicted on trumped-up charges by a biased judge hell-bent on power, and taking down the Workers Party. They launched an around the clock vigil that would last for 580 days. Finally, Brazil’s Supreme Court tossed out the conviction. Lula was free. Less than t...

In 1979 and 1980, Brazilian metal workers held huge strikes, demanding higher wages and better working conditions. They were unprecedented, and a sign of the beginning of the end of the military dictatorship. They were led by one charismatic labor leader named Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. This is episode 15 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange . Indep...

On March 31, 1964, the Brazilian military carried out a US-backed coup against the democratically elected government, installing a dictatorship that would last for 21 years. Hundreds of people were disappeared. Thousands imprisoned and tortured. But musicians stood up, singing songs that were a sometimes subtle — sometimes not-so-subtle — critique of the dictatorship.  The military regime responde...