Tag: Brazil

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 10821 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2026-08-05 17:41:07 [post_date_gmt] => 2026-08-05 17:41:07 [post_content] =>

How a shared love of soccer transformed my long-distance friendship.

On a rainy and unseasonably cold summer night last March, my friend Mendes and I walked the long way around the stadium of a fourth division soccer team in São Paulo, Brazil. Neither of us had ever been there before and we’d gotten out of the taxi on the wrong side of the grounds. But even though we were cold and a little lost, we were determined to make it to this game.

Mendes and I have been friends for more than 15 years, although going to soccer games has only recently become a staple of our friendship. We met when he switched schools in the fifth grade, bonding over our shared love of Batman, Black Sabbath, and Scorsese films. As kids, we’d go to the movies and the bookstore together, and at the time, it felt like we were the only two people in our class who liked doing either. We’d talk about girls, study for tests together, and go looking for good burgers after late-night movie screenings.

After I went to college in New York and he stayed to attend film school in São Paulo, we remained friends. Back then, we’d find time every other week to catch up via the old video call app, Skype. But there was still physical distance, and as the years passed, there rose a feeling of a wall between us, keeping us apart.

I felt as if I was leading two lives that didn’t quite get to meet. There was the life in São Paulo I shared with my family and my old friends, filled with all the experiences that had made me who I was up until that point. Then there was my new life in New York, which I could only tell people back home about—a new school, new friends, and new experiences in a new language—that felt completely my own. Whenever Mendes and I would talk about it, I felt like I was translating a movie for him that only I got to see.

Maybe it felt the same for him. Back in São Paulo, he ran around shooting films and became a regular at old-school bars that I’d never even heard of. He fell in love with Carnaval and the hidden charms of a city we hadn’t gotten to explore fully as teenagers. But in some ways, I think it was easier for me to feel tethered to his life in a way he couldn’t be to mine. Every summer break, when it was winter in Brazil, I’d fly back home and we’d go back to our old ways. I’d meet his new friends and go to parties or ride in their cars listening to Liniker, Guilherme Held, or Baco Exu do Blues, the music that was bopping in São Paulo at the time. For about three months each year, the wall between Mendes and I became porous, and we would pass through it together. Then the summer would end, and I’d hop on a plane and go back to my other life, and the wall would turn solid again.

Soccer entered our friendship during the pandemic, which I spent back in Brazil. Though I’ve long been almost unhealthily addicted to the sport—I’ve woken up at 5 a.m. to watch random league games in different time zones, and more than once cancelled plans after my team lost a big game—Mendes had a more off-and-on relationship to it. We became fans of the same club in 2005, a few years before we’d met, when our dads introduced us to the soon-to-be champions of South America: São Paulo FC. Neither remembers much—we were eight years old at the time—but our dads have told us different versions of a similar story. Whenever São Paulo won, they’d show off the cover of the next day’s newspaper at breakfast, reading the recap of the match out loud. As São Paulo advanced in the knockouts, our dads would let us watch more and more of the games during the week, even though they came on late at night after our bedtimes. At the end of that year, São Paulo beat Liverpool FC to become world champions. I remember putting on my little uniform—shirt, shorts, and socks—and going out with my family to eat a burger and celebrate. São Paulo fans filled the streets of the city that day, dressed in their own uniforms, waving flags, wearing crazy hats, blowing horns and lighting red, black, and white smoke flares.

After those glory days, São Paulo went through a dire cold streak in the 2010s. Mendes and I would catch the occasional game together, but even then, it would be a European champions league game, or a World Cup match on TV. Then, when professional sports came back at the end of 2020, São Paulo made an improbable run at the Brazilian title. Though it ended in abject failure in the last weeks of the season (let’s not talk about that), it was enough to get Mendes and I talking about the team for the first time since I can remember.

After the end of lockdown, Mendes spent weeks at my house with me and my brother Thomas, who also lives in New York and had come home during the pandemic. If we weren’t watching a movie, the TV would be tuned to a game, or the sports channel, or old São Paulo highlights on YouTube, often on mute so we could talk over them. And it’s probably because of us specifically, but at the beginning of 2021, São Paulo won the state championship for the first time since we started supporting them.

Later that year, I left Brazil for New York again, this time for grad school. Our video chats now came through Zoom, but it didn’t take long for Mendes and I to fall into the traps of my previous years abroad—weekly conversations that turned monthly, texts that became more infrequent as we got busy with school and work. The only difference this time was our shared befuddlement with São Paulo FC (the good times were few and far between), which brought us together after every game. We’d found a way to share the same experience every week, thousands of miles between us.

By 2023, we started going to games together whenever I was home. Sometimes we’d go to cheer on our team, which desperately needed our help, but often, we just went to hang out and talk about what was going on in our lives while the match played in the background, as if we were back in my living room.

I have told Mendes many times that I have a problem: if I could, I’d go to every game, no matter the weather or the opponent. I have dragged my dad to matchdays when there were storm warnings in effect; I have taken Mendes and my brother to games we were sure to lose. And so it was again, in March of this year, a couple of weeks before I was due to fly back to New York for work. São Paulo was playing a league game in the stadium of a fourth division team because our homegrounds had been rented out for a series of AC/DC concerts. It had been raining for days and the weather was dour. The stadium was on the other side of the city; it had no roof and none of the modern amenities and infrastructure you’d find in the home fields of higher division teams, including ours.

Mendes met me after work, unprepared for the rain, and I lent him my dad’s rain jacket. After we made our way around the walls of this stadium we’d never been to before, we were caught in a wave of fans trying to enter through the small entrance on the side of a highway. Because the stadium didn’t have metal detectors, the military police were patting down every fan, and we only managed to get in halfway through the first half, just as the rain got thicker. The pitch was muddy, the play meager, and we spent most of the match squinting to avoid the water flogging our faces, as the stormy winds teased the smell of barbecue from the restaurant next door, making us half-wish we’d stayed back to watch the game on TV.

When the final whistle blew, we’d won: two-to-zero. Mendes and I went back to my place, drenched, ordered a pizza, and talked about things I don’t even remember. The food, like the match, was an excuse to spend more time together before I left for New York again. The season carried on in unsurprisingly mediocre ways, but every other week we’d connect over watching soccer before opening up about moments with our partners, our friends, and our family that we couldn’t share in person.

Over a decade into this long-distance friendship, we’ve grown used to looking for the openings in the wall. They may not always be there. Sometimes the rain, or the military police, or losing our seven-point lead in the national championship with a handful of games left in the season only to capitulate into agony and a fourth-place finish, slows us down. But we keep looking.

Not long ago, during one of those times when I was back from school, I remember overhearing my mom on the phone with a friend, telling her I was home. “He’s seeing his brother tomorrow,” she said. “He has a brother in New York and a brother in São Paulo.”

[post_title] => Friends from Far Afield [post_excerpt] => How a shared love of soccer transformed my long-distance friendship. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => friends-from-far-afield-adult-friendship-week-soccer-sao-paulo-fc-brazil-long-distance [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2026-08-05 17:41:08 [post_modified_gmt] => 2026-08-05 17:41:08 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=10821 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

August 5, 2026August 5, 2026

Friends from Far Afield

by Franciso Attié

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 10356 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2026-03-20 02:24:54 [post_date_gmt] => 2026-03-20 02:24:54 [post_content] =>

How samba schools in Brazil are teaching Black history through the parades at Carnival.

The torrential rain couldn’t stop Unidos da Tijuca, one of the oldest samba schools in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from rehearsing in the streets. On an evening in early February, dancers flooded the Morro do Borel community, moving their bodies in unison as a crowd cheered them on, shouting their loyalty to the samba school and dancing alongside them. The crowd had been waiting for hours for the rehearsal to begin, drinking beer and barbecuing, the evening already a celebration. Now, the sound of snare drums, quick and sharp, moved each spectator to sing along to the music, as the year's anthem began to play. The performance had officially begun.

Though the parades in Rio are world-famous, attracting a global audience for Carnival each year, the greatest show in the world still belongs to these communities, where the parades—a pivotal part of the season’s festivities—originated. It is also here that these samba schools work hard year-round to honor the parades’ original purpose: bringing marginalized histories that aren’t taught in Brazilian schools to the national stage.

“Since the 1930s, samba schools have been addressing themes closely related to Brazilian history,” historian Luiz Antonio Simas tells The Conversationalist. “This created a tradition in which Brazilian history, important figures from Brazilian history, and the country's natural beauty became recurring themes [at each parade].”

Leonardo Carrato

Founded in 1931, Unidos da Tijuca is one of 12 samba schools that compete during Carnival, each putting on a parade built from scratch that highlights a different piece of forgotten Brazilian history. For this year’s parade, Unidos da Tijuca chose to tell the story of Carolina Maria de Jesus, a Black Brazilian memoirist, poet, composer, playwright, and best-selling author, most known for her book Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, published in 1960 and translated into 14 languages. Last year, the school chose to tell the story of Logun-Edé, an orisha of the Black Brazilian religion Candomblé, and the year before, the influence of Portuguese folk tales on Brazilian samba music.

Other competing schools chose different figures to celebrate this year: Acadêmicos do Salgueiro paid homage to Carnival designer and professor Rosa Magalhães, a samba school legend who won six Carnival championships in the 1980s. The samba school Paraíso de Tuiuti performed a parade about Afro-Cuban religious practices, with a whole chorus written in the Yorubá language. And the 2026 winner, Unidos do Viradouro, honored Moacyr da Silva Pinto, or Mestre Ciça, the school's legendary percussion conductor.

In telling these stories, Unidos da Tijuca and other samba schools aim to make marginalized histories—and Black history in particular—more accessible through popular culture, allowing them to keep these histories alive. The construction of the parade is a year-long process that starts again right after Carnival ends, beginning with each school democratically electing a theme, running a song competition, and translating history into a visual performance through choreography that involves hundreds of dancers.

But while the parades are a joyful culmination of the schools’ efforts, for the communities each samba school represents, it’s the lead-up to the final performance that often most solidifies the history being celebrated.

Leonardo Carrato

That rainy Sunday was Unidos da Tijuca’s last street rehearsal before the official parade at the Sambadrone, and party dwellers excitedly gathered to watch an intimate preview of what would later earn the school 7th place in the official competition. At 6 PM, onlookers dressed in the colors of Unidos da Tijuca—blue and yellow—waited outside of the school, a tall building painted in yellow. The energy was high as people gathered, and the song composed for this year’s parade played loudly through speakers at the closest bar, along with songs from previous years: "Logun-Edé - Santo Menino que Velho Respeita" (“Logun-Edé - The Holy Child Old Men Respect”) and "O Conto de Fados" (“The Tale of Fairies”).

As the time for the performance neared, people began singing along to the story of Maria de Jesus, one that mirrors the stories of many Black women in Brazil today. A single mother of three, Maria de Jesus lived in the favela of Canindé in São Paulo, where she spent her time picking up recyclables to sell, taking care of her children, and writing about her day-to-day life. One of her notebooks from this time would eventually become her first best-selling book, Child of the Dark, which sold 10,000 copies in its first week of publication in 1960—an achievement that was unheard of at the time, and still rarely met in Brazil now.

But the majority of the community was unfamiliar with these details of Maria de Jesus’s life before Unidos da Tijuca chose to tell her story for the 2026 parade. “It’s essential that we talk about a person who has been made invisible by society and by the Brazilian people,” Mariah Dantas, one of the principal dancers, tells The Conversationalist. “Almost nobody remembers her importance, or how impactful she was at the time, and how important she is today. Because many women still live in poverty like she did… This isn’t just about telling Carolina’s story, but also about highlighting that Black women still live like that, and that this needs to change.”

Many of these same women also live in Morro do Borel, and saw themselves reflected in Maria de Jesus’s story for the first time. “It was the perfect choice,” Carlos Batata, member of Unidos da Tijuca and president of Unidos da Tijuquinha, a version of the samba school for children, tells The Conversationalist. “The story was unknown, [but] with time, people got to know more about Carolina’s work, and now people sing the samba song and relate and cry to it, because there are parts of the lyrics—a phrase, a chorus—that represents each woman’s story here.”

Leonardo Carrato

To accurately tell Maria de Jesus’s story, Unidos da Tijuca worked with an academic consultant on everything from the writing of the samba song’s lyrics, the design of thousands of costumes and five floats, and even some of the choreography. (The practice of hiring a consultant is relatively new across samba schools, a union of institutional education and popular education that only began around 10 years ago.) This year, Unidos da Tijuca collaborated with researcher Fernanda Felisberto, a literature professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who is a part of an editorial committee that has salvaged, re-edited, and published Maria de Jesus’s work in recent years.

“For a long time, we used to say that there are histories that traditional schools don’t tell, but that Carnival will tell those histories, almost as if they’re in opposition to each other,” Felisberto says. “But in reality, we are building a process that goes hand-in-hand, especially because hiring consultants has become more and more common for samba schools. So, samba schools today are learning from these traditional sources of knowledge. The challenge for Carnival is to translate that knowledge in a way that reaches more people.”

The act of performing in community is a large part of this translation, and in Morro do Borel, it is what has brought Maria de Jesus’s story back to life. “Sou a liberdade, mãe do Canindé / Muda essa história, Tijuca / Tira do meu verso a força pra vencer / Reconhece o seu lugar e luta / Esse é o nosso jeito de escrever,” both members of the samba school and party dwellers alike screamed at the top of their lungs during the street rehearsal. (“I am freedom, mother of Canindé / Change our history, Tijuca / Get the strength to win from my verses / Recognize your place in struggle / This is our way of writing.”)

Leonardo Carrato

For this year’s parade, Felisberto says the school intentionally focused on lesser known works by Maria de Jesus, like the music she composed and recorded, and the plays she wrote, which remain unreleased to the public. They hoped to show Maria de Jesus was more than her biggest successes, in part so that she is recognized for the breadth of her creative work, which never got as much exposure as her first book. “We want people to understand that Carolina was a multidimensional artist,” Felisberto says. “Child of the Dark constructed an image of Carolina that spotlighted precarity, which is how people see her today. The challenge was to humanize her, show her failures and successes beyond a narrative around her best-selling memoir.”

Like Felisberto, many view the Carnival parades not just as a celebration marginalized histories, but as a collective experience with a lasting impact. “I consider samba songs by samba schools to be historical documents,” Simas says, adding that in his 30 years working as a history teacher in public schools in Rio, he has used samba songs as pedagogical sources. “It’s a tool to start debates, we can analyze the lyrics, study the trajectory of some historical characters who are less talked about in formal education.”

For Unidos da Tijuca member Douglas Coutinho, studying samba songs even helped him to pass his university entry exams. “My history teacher used the samba song from 2008, ‘João e Marias’ by Imperatriz Leopoldinense, [in class],” Coutinho says. “The samba song helps teachers teach, and it helps students understand the material that is being taught.”

Leonardo Carrato

Perhaps most importantly, in telling and preserving these stories through samba parades, communities are able to reclaim the narrative from the dominant classes, which tend to dismiss or downplay the importance of marginalized histories. Sometimes, it also allows these stories to become the dominant narratives—at least, during Carnival, when the media’s attention turns to the communities these samba schools represent.

“Samba schools will tell us stories that are important for the people,” says Iara Cassano, a member of Acadêmicos do Salgueiro and a samba teacher. “The dominant narratives will tell histories that are important to the elites… Carnival gives us autonomy to tell our own histories.”

[post_title] => A History Lesson Through Samba [post_excerpt] => How samba schools in Brazil are teaching Black history through the parades at Carnival. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => samba-school-forgotten-marginalized-black-history-rio-de-janeiro-brazil-carnival-parades-unidos-da-tijuca [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2026-08-03 20:57:25 [post_modified_gmt] => 2026-08-03 20:57:25 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=10356 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

March 20, 2026August 3, 2026

A History Lesson Through Samba

by Nicole Froio

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7948 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2025-02-28 00:51:37 [post_date_gmt] => 2025-02-28 00:51:37 [post_content] =>

On the history we see—and the history we don't—in "I'm Still Here."

When Eunice Paiva first learns that her husband Rubens has been murdered in the Oscar-nominated film I’m Still Here, the audience only sees her reaction to the news, but never actually hears what has happened. The scene is bewildering to watch: Sitting on the office couch in her bathing suit, having just returned from swimming in the sea by their house, Paiva’s hair is still dripping with saltwater when she finds out her life has been changed forever. But the audience doesn’t yet know why.

I’m Still Here takes place during the Brazilian military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985, and the scene almost functions like an emotional map of the fallout of fascism in Brazil—confusion over absence of information, followed by the heaviness of grief. Rubens’s murder is only confirmed to the audience much later in the film, when his now-widow specifically asks what has happened to her husband’s body. This is when the still-hazy facts fall into place: Rubens was kidnapped and murdered by the Brazilian right-wing military dictatorship, and his family will never see him again.

I’m Still Here is based on a true story: Both in the movie and in reality, the Brazilian government wouldn’t admit to killing Rubens until 25 years after the fact. For much of the film, this unknowing leaves both Paiva and the audience on uncertain ground—how can we react to news we didn’t really hear? And how do we grieve for someone we don’t yet know is dead?

It’s not surprising that one of the most talked about performances from the Academy Awards this year is Fernanda Torres’s quiet portrayal of Eunice Paiva, for which she has been nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Yet the film’s impact is as much a credit to her performance as it is to the powerful true story behind it. The first Brazilian film to ever be nominated for Best Picture, I’m Still Here unveils a history that is often disputed or played down in both Brazil and the United States. It is a resurfacing of the prohibitive and visceral reality of living under the Brazilian military dictatorship: A “dissident” politician, Rubens Paiva was one of 434 people the regime kidnapped and murdered under the guise of stamping out communism and socialism, a move that was aided and abetted by the US during the Cold War. Rather than focus on his story, however, the film instead turns the lens on his wife, Eunice—one of the countless women and families those killings left behind. Through her perspective, there’s a surprising subtlety to I’m Still Here—and in its silences, there are embedded histories that the average non-Brazilian viewer might not be able to understand, but that give important context to the story being told.

At the end of March in 1964, the Brazilian military staged a coup d’etat in response to then-president João Goulart’s structural reforms, which sought to reduce class inequality through workers’ rights and agrarian reform. These changes were not well liked by Brazil’s elite, who, in particular, viewed the agrarian reform—which would see abandoned land redistributed to people without any—as prejudiced against owners of large swathes of land. The president’s relationship with unions and his support for the working class were also understood as the beginnings of communism in Brazil, rather than as an attempt to regulate workers’ rights in a country that was still operating under the same logics of the colonialism and slavery that founded it. The regime’s anti-communist position was an ideological win for the US, which resulted in the launching of Operation Brother Sam, a plan to logistically support the coup d’état should Goulart refuse to step down. After being forcibly ousted, Goulart was banned from running for political office for ten years and exiled to Uruguay with his family.

The violent stamping down of political dissent started early in the regime through heavy censorship of the media. The military controlled the newspapers, the radio broadcasts, and the TV news reels, only allowing positive news to be disseminated, and silencing any publications or people who had dissenting or critical opinions. Left-wing organizations and parties were dissolved and outlawed, often operating illegally to organize resistance against the government. These groups were also severely persecuted by the regime, including the Brazilian Workers’ Party, of which both Goulart and Rubens were members.

In I’m Still Here, the civilian struggle against this enforced silence is portrayed a few times, but perhaps most notably, when Eunice sends her oldest daughter Vera to London for an improvised gap year. Preemptively guarding against her daughter’s young sense of justice, Eunice does this to prevent Vera from joining the Students’ National Union out of fear for her safety. The organization operated illegally for 21 years throughout the dictatorship, and was key in organizing protests against the military government—but the consequences of getting involved in the resistance could be fatal. At least 39 students were murdered by the regime for organizing against them. Eunice knew that Vera, a young woman raised in a bohemian, left-wing household, would want to join the struggle against the dictatorship in college, and preferred to keep her safe in Europe until the regime subsided.

But even in London, the global consequences of the dictatorship were still evident. In a letter she sends home to her mother, Vera writes that she ran into Gilberto Gil, a Brazilian musician who was arrested without trial and detained for 57 days in 1968. After Gil was released, he was exiled from Brazil, and forced to leave the country alongside many other artists, including Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, and Raul Seixas. Yet despite the dictatorship's mass censorship efforts, by the 1970s, music consumption had boomed in Brazil—and the regime aimed their attention at the genres of samba, rock, and MPB (Brazilian Popular Music), which had formed a broad front against the Christo-fascist repression of the dictatorship. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 10,000 people were exiled from the country during this period, some of whom never returned. And it wasn’t just musicians: Many artists, intellectuals, journalists, filmmakers, and poets were also forced to leave, as a part of stamping out any voice that wasn’t favorable to the regime. The artists and musicians who were allowed to stay in Brazil had to submit their work to the government for approval before it was released, just to make sure the content wasn’t critical of the regime and that it promoted conservative, Christian values to the population. In I'm Still Here, the importance of Brazilian music during these dark times is displayed through the film’s soundtrack, which features some of the exiled artists, including Veloso and Gil.

The mass exile of musicians and artists is not uncommon in Latin American history—nor are state-sponsored disappearances and murders. Rubens’s disappearance and subsequent death in I’m Still Here is representative of what happened in Brazil, but the reality is that dictatorships across the continent have left thousands of families destroyed, forcing women to take up a fight they never signed up for and demand answers from their governments. In Chile, the Pinochet regime kidnapped and murdered 3,200 people, and to this day 1,500 of the disappeared have not been found. In Argentina, the government estimates 9,000 people were killed during the country's dictatorship, while civilian groups claim the number of victims is 30,000. I’m Still Here portrays the case of Eunice, who, in addition to her grief, did not have access to her husband’s estate and bank accounts until the state finally issued a death certificate 25 years later. But it could just as easily have been about any one of the parents behind the Madres de La Plaza de Mayo, an organization in Argentina that, for 46 years, has fought to find disappeared students taken by the Argentine military regime in the 70s.

“The dictatorships of South America were not a banana republic matter,” Torres said in an interview with Vogue. “They were part of the macro politics of the time. That’s why I always repeat that [Eunice is] a victim of the Cold War; she’s not a victim of the dictatorship of a banana republic country. People treat the dictatorships in South America like something that happened on that faraway continent. But it’s all part of the same story.”

This same story continues to this day. But in exposing this complicated history of silence, I’m Still Here pushes for these silences to end contemporarily, challenging how right-wing politicians in Brazil and abroad regularly downplay the past dictatorship today in pursuit of their own political goals. If the dictatorship wasn’t that bad, they argue, then extreme-right president Jair Bolsonaro has done nothing wrong in attempting to stage a coup d’état against the newly elected left-wing president in 2022. But even the film’s Oscar campaign makes its intention explicit: to bring this history to a new audience, and to draw attention to the US’s involvement in deposing democratic regimes in Latin America in order to continuously exploit the continent for profit and labor. In the process, it has even strengthened the anti-amnesty campaign for the individuals who attempted to stage the coup in 2022.

In this sense, by telling Eunice and Rubens’s story, I’m Still Here has broken the silence that still persists, and that still helps to support fascist regimes across the globe. Despite the murders, the kidnappings, and the right-wing rewriting of history, the stories of the victims of these regimes, kept alive by the family who lost them, can never be killed. I’m Still Here is a testament to the power of political art and cinema—something the military regime wanted to exterminate at all costs. In a bid to truly commit to remembering history, I’m Still Here argues that a present-day consciousness of fascism is the only way to stop it.

[post_title] => The Women the Dictatorship Left Behind [post_excerpt] => On the history we see—and the history we don't—in "I'm Still Here." [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => im-still-here-ainda-estou-aqui-brazil-military-dictatorship-fascism-academy-awards-fernanda-torres-eunice-paiva-rubens-best-actress-picture [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2026-08-03 23:19:36 [post_modified_gmt] => 2026-08-03 23:19:36 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=7948 [menu_order] => 27 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

February 28, 2025August 3, 2026

The Women the Dictatorship Left Behind

by Nicole Froio

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 6660 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2024-02-26 17:32:37 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-02-26 17:32:37 [post_content] =>

Nearly three months after COP28, are we actually delivering on its promises?

The day before COP28 began in the UAE last November, a damning report was released by the Centre For Climate Reporting, confirming what many had already suspected: COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber had taken multiple meetings with various oil-producing countries throughout the year, likely swaying his priorities for the conference ahead. While Al Jaber’s legitimacy had already been in question, this latest report put his credibility on a cliff. As such, COP28 began with damage control: The first move of Al Jaber’s presidency was to operate the Loss and Damage fund based on recommendations from the Transitional Committee, achieving its passage with unanimous support.

It was an easy win, but not a big enough one—and just a couple months into 2024, I worry what was and wasn’t achieved at COP28 might be an arbiter for climate action in the year to come.

Although the fund’s operation was a step in the right direction—facilitating financial resources for countries already suffering the impacts of climate change—as written, many factors could prevent it from working as intended. Most notably, the Transitional Committee’s (questionable) recommendation to name the World Bank as the operation entity, and the absence of the equity principle, would both affect the fund's ability to assist the nations most vulnerable to climate inaction. To help with this, after the failure of an agreement at SB58, COP28 agreed on the Santiago Network as the fund’s host, operationalizing technical assistance for these countries in loss and damage matters. But it’s unclear if it will be enough.

It also wouldn’t be the only agreement reached during the conference that left something to be desired. After enabling the Loss and Damage fund, the parties focused on the most pressing matter of COP28: the global stocktake decision. In Article 14, the Paris Agreement defined a period of five years for reevaluating the treaty's implementation and projecting priorities for the following period, with COP28 designated for the first assessment. This year, the most polemic aspect of this negotiation focused on the phrase “fossil fuel phase out” (FFPO), an expression embraced and proposed by the Least Developed Countries (LDC) at COP23, in hopes of more ambitious climate action. Regrettably, based on the strong opposition of various oil-producing countries, the initial presidency draft of the global stocktake did not include the phrase FFPO anywhere in the text, causing upset among those supportive of its inclusion. This latter group comprised 127 parties, including the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC), the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG), the EU, and even the US. However, despite overwhelming support, universal consensus is vital for adopting new decisions at COPs—and oil-producing countries did not give in to their demands.

Eventually, compromise was reached between the two opposing sides, and instead of using FFPO, the language was changed to include "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems" and “phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,” enabling the parties to reach an agreement. Although this small move towards ending fossil fuels is valuable, the latest draft of the stocktake leaves much room for interpretation as to what those two phrases mean—its language too vague to hold many parties accountable. For example, the text only calls for transitioning away from fossil fuels when used in energy systems, thus excluding some industries, such as transportation, from being asked to the same. There has also been talk of "transition fuels," which would be very favorable to the interests of polluting actors, allowing greenwashing commitments to take the place of actually transitioning away from fossil fuels. Ultimately, all of this suggests that although the revised text of the global stocktake decision was an improvement from the first draft, it does not ensure that polluting states and companies will not continue to exploit fossil fuels: It is merely a first step towards a better horizon, but still a very fragile one.

Helping to fortify that step, it was also decided that the Just Transition program—which advocates for shifting from an extractive to a regenerative economy worldwide, and is likely to be a vital part of the next global stocktake in 2028—would go into operation "immediately after" the end of COP28. But regarding climate finance—in other words, the means by which climate action is funded—it was decided a draft decision would be written later this year, the same year in which three workshops and three work program meetings will be held. The substance of what’s to come will remain for SB60 and COP29, and is perhaps the most impactful element of the upcoming negotiations.

In the interim, there is much that must be done—with a few key factors standing in the way. Consensus is a crucial element in climate negotiations, requiring broad agreements across parties to implement the objectives of the UNFCCC. But it remains unclear how exactly “consensus” is defined at these conferences, as Article 42 of the UNFCCC’s procedural rules—which present two alternative means to reach consensus—has not yet been adopted, leaving much space for interpretation and thus, conflict. At COP16 in Cancún, for example, Bolivia interpreted consensus to mean unanimity, and tried to block the agreed decision, believing it wasn't ambitious enough. In response, the COP16 presidency insisted that "the consensus rule does not imply unanimity, much less does it imply the possibility of a delegation exercising a right to veto after years of hard work and sacrifice [of the other parties]." Without an explicit definition, the possibility that some groups or states will attempt to block other agreements remains open.

For the climate regime's success, decisions adopted by the COP must be widely supported and legitimized. Currently, multilateralism and civil society both help ensure this is possible. At COP28, when oil-producing states opposed including FFPO in the decision text, both developing and developed nations joined forces to create the language in the current draft. But they were able to achieve this compromise, in part, because of outside support. Usually, the role of civil society is especially relevant in each stage leading up to every COP. Reports, statements, and advocacy are vital for influencing state agents in pursuing, prioritizing, and incorporating climate ambition into their decisions. At COP28, the typical preambular role of civil society was extended into the very conference itself. After receiving the presidency draft of the global stocktake decision, several demonstrations were organized within the venue in an attempt to pressure delegates to make improvements to it, and to make evident the public opinion that the original presidency draft would entail a regression for climate action. I believe these last minute demonstrations were crucial for the parties who wanted more climate ambition: Without their work and effort, the final version of the decision text would likely not have even mentioned fossil fuels at all.

Still, more consistency and clarity are needed to continue advancing climate action in the right direction, both in 2024 and beyond. The gaps in the "transitioning away" formula adopted by the parties will require immense caution moving forward. It is essential not to repeat COP26’s and COP27’s mistakes, where the former merely mentioned fossil fuels but the latter did not deliver any progress. The prospect of COP29 will not be easy, with another oil-producing host country and a former oil industry CEO as President of the Conference. All of the elements that prevented COP28 from being a fiasco are required and must be maximized in Azerbaijan. Achieving the phase out of fossil fuels depends on developing countries, especially, increasing climate action, and at COP29, developed countries should demonstrate their willingness to achieve the FFPO by committing and effectively transferring the necessary resources to these developing nations. As such, climate finance must be a priority. The fragile progress of COP28 requires a growth curve in the following COPs, setting ambitious targets and equivalent means for achieving them. Let's dream of a COP30, with the background of the Amazon in Belém do Para, actually establishing and moving towards the FFPO.

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February 26, 2024August 4, 2026

The State of Climate Action in 2024

by Pedro Cisterna Gaete

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Everything you need to know about the treaty protecting environmental defenders in Latin America.

In 1988, three days before Christmas, Francisco “Chico” Alves Mendes Filho went to take a shower in his yard when he was assassinated by local cattle ranchers with a .22 rifle.

Mendes had been a Brazilian leader of the rubber tapper workers’ union, who advocated for Indigenous people’s rights and defended the Amazon rainforest against exploitation. The cattle ranchers who’d killed him were rural landowners, hoping to continue deforesting it. This wasn’t the first killing of an environmental defender in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and it wouldn’t be the last. In 2016, almost 30 years after Chico Mendes's murder, Berta Cáceres, a Honduran Indigenous environmental defender, was killed by sicarios for her opposition to the construction of a dam in the Gualcarque River. Two different causes, two different countries, and two different times, but one motivation: to silence those who fought and defended the environment in Latin America.

Environmental defenders have contributed to halting 11% of environmentally damaging projects across the planet. However, the role comes with a high cost to their safety: Constant threats, violence, and hundreds of assassinations make their work incredibly dangerous. These attacks are mainly related to land disputes and environmental damage, and 70% are for defending forests.

Chico Mendes and his wife, Ilsamar, in 1988. Courtesy of Miranda Smith / Wikimedia.

The UN defines environmental human rights defenders as “individuals and groups who, in their personal or professional capacity and in a peaceful manner, strive to protect and promote human rights relating to the environment, including water, air, land, flora and fauna.”They use non-violent methods to protect the environment, contributing to preserving biodiversity and Indigenous rights. In 2000, the Human Rights Commission established the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, which included promoting environmental defenders' protection within their mandate. In 2019, the UN General Assembly recognized the contribution of environmental defenders to ecological protection and sustainable development, urging states to develop and appropriately fund protection initiatives for human rights defenders.

But this has proven tricky in Latin America. According to a 2021 Global Witness report titled “Last Line of Defence,” 165 environmental defenders were killed in LAC in 2020,a frightening number that illustrates how vulnerable activists are in the region. In addition, these attacks made up 73% of all attacks against environmental defenders in the world, making Latin American especially hazardous area to protect the environment. The reason behind the frequency of these attacks is closely related to the region’s long history with extractive industries as a means of economic development. LAC is largely made up of developing countries, and many have opted to prioritize economic growth over environmental regulation. Vulnerable populations, such as Indigenous communities and poor local communities, have suffered the impacts of this the most, and in parallel, also act as the last line of defense when it comes to protecting the environment.

The regional response for protecting environmental defenders: The Escazú Agreement

Even though environmental regulations in Latin American countries have progressed in recent years, activists are still being murdered and attacked, and regional cooperation is required to ensure their protection. In 2012, a collective of LAC nations decided to draft an agreement implementing Principle 10 of the UN’s Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, with the goal of creating the LAC version of the Aarhus Convention. The agreement was adopted on March 4, 2018, in Escazú, Costa Rica—giving the treaty its name: the Escazú Agreement, or Acuerdo de Escazú. On April 22, 2021, nearly a decade after discussions first began, the Escazú Agreement went into effect, becoming the first environmental treaty in LAC.

The primary purpose of the treaty is to improve and guarantee the procedural human rights of access to information, public participation, and justice. Latin America is a region with severe economic inequalities that directly affect the political participation of the most vulnerable populations, excluding them from most decision-making processes. The Escazú Agreement, acknowledging this exclusionary situation and the numerous socio-environmental conflicts across the continents, sets new human rights standards, guaranteeing the most vulnerable communities are involved in environmental decision-making.

Concerning environmental defenders, the Escazú Agreement also seeks to change the dangerous circumstances they suffer across Latin America. First, the treaty states in Article 9 that “each [signing] party shall guarantee a safe and enabling environment for persons, groups and organizations that promote and defend human rights in environmental matters ” In practice, this allows environmental defenders to act freely and safely, without fear of threat or harm.

The treaty also indicates that signing countries “shall take adequate and effective measures to recognize, protect and promote” the human rights of environmental defenders. This clause focuses on civil and political rights, reinforcing their right to life, freedom of opinion, freedom of movement, personal integrity, and peaceful assembly, among others. In addition, due to the historical impunity of the criminals who have perpetrated crimes against environmental defenders, the treaty reinforces due process for preventing and punishing attacks or threats made against them.

To further effectively protect environmental defenders, in April, the first Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Escazú Agreement established an ad hoc working group to create an action plan to be presented at the next COP. According to the initial COP, this working group would allow for significant public participation, “endeavouring to include persons or groups in vulnerable situations,” especially Indigenous people and local communities. This could mean that environmental defenders who have experienced attacks or threats themselves can now be a part of creating the action plan to prevent more attacks from happening in the future.

The purpose of all these rules is to protect the legitimate political work of environmental activists across Latin America. This progress is essential for making LAC more democratic and ecological; and indeed, defending those who risk their lives to protect the environment is vital for continually improving our democracies.

The problem, however, has been getting signatories to ratify it.

The vital need to adopt the treaty

Twenty-five countries have signed the Escazú Agreement so far, but only 13 have ratified it. Some have resisted signing it based on reasons of sovereignty or the vagueness of the treaty’s obligations. For instance, before Chilean president Gabriel Boric ratified the treaty, the former government of Sebastian Piñera decided to not sign it because he believed specifically protecting environmental activists would affect equality before the law.

Colombia, however, might be the most notable country to have not yet ratified the treaty, despite having the world's highest number of murdered environmental defenders (65)in 2020. Hopefully, the newly elected President, Gustavo Petro,will ratify Escazú,complying with his campaign promise to do so; because as long as countries continue not to honor it, the murders will continue to happen. Months ago in Brazil—another country that has not ratified the treaty—two environmental defenders were murderedin the Javari Valley: Dom Phillips, a British journalist, and Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous rights defender. Since Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2019, environmental regulations have diminished in the country, as the Brazilian president continuously opens Indigenous reserves for commercial purposes, triggering environmental conflicts and putting defenders at risk. In addition, Bolsonaro's government legitimized armed land grabbers dedicated to attacking Indigenous and local communities and deforesting the Amazon by weakening all the environmental institutions focused on protecting the environment and Indigenous rights. As a result, the biggest country of LAC has aligned itself with extractive interests over human ones.

Although the situation with environmental defenders in LAC is critical, right-wing political parties and economic groups see Escazú as an obstacle to economic development. For decades, they have rejected increasing protective measures for those who oppose extractivist expansion. Political negotiations and effective treaty implementation by state parties are crucial elements for incorporating more nations into Escazú. One way to help do this is by increasing awareness of the treaty’s existence, and the goals it hopes to accomplish.

Courtesy of Camilo Freedman / APHOTOGRAFIA / Getty Images.

The Escazú Agreement: An example of defending the defenders

Following the Escazú Agreement's example, the interest in strengthening protections for environmental defenders is expanding to other continents. For example, Asia and Africa do not have any regional treaties to protect environmental defenders, but have organized cooperative networks to defend the defenders on the ground. In Africa, Natural Justice is supporting a powerful initiative, African Environmental Defenders,which aims to protect environmental defenders though an “emergency fund” to support their work. In Europe, environmental defenders are also taking priority. In 2021, the EU Parliament called its member states to take action to protect environmental defenders' human rights, showing that the threats and attacks on these activists are not only happening in the Global South.

As we face the ever-growing climate crisis, protecting the environment and our delicate ecosystems is crucial. Globally, the role of environmental defenders has been vital to stopping the ecological degradation of the planet. However, their silent and voluntary work is not recognized, despite risking their own lives to preserve the environment for the benefit of present and future generations. Therefore, it is fair and necessary to protect them and stop the impunity of those who abuse and attack activists for exploiting the environment to make a profit. By establishing the Escazú Agreement, Latin America contributed to showing an institutionalized path for protecting environmental defenders, a priority that every government should have—not only to protect the environment, but also democracy itself.

Additional fact checking by Sophia Cleary.

You Should Give a Sh*t About is an ongoing column highlighting local stories with a global impact.

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September 22, 2022August 4, 2026

You Should Give a Sh*t About: The Escazú Agreement

by Pedro Cisterna Gaete

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