From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject Progressive Leaders Across the Americas Unite Against Growing Global Fascism
Date August 17, 2025 12:00 AM
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PROGRESSIVE LEADERS ACROSS THE AMERICAS UNITE AGAINST GROWING GLOBAL
FASCISM  
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José Luis Granados Ceja
August 12, 2025
Truthout
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_ Mexican Senate President Gerardo Fernández Noroña said the two
defining features of the rising fascist threat in the world were the
suffering inflicted on Palestinians and the abuse of migrants by the
U.S. _

The Pan-American Congress closing on August 3, 2025, (Photo: Senate
of the Republic / Communications Office).

 

On the final day of the Second Pan-American Congress
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from 12 countries made their way into the Secretary of Public
Education headquarters in downtown Mexico City. As leaders from the
Americas walked through the building’s passages and patios, many
stopped to take pictures in front of the walls lined with murals from
famous artists, including Diego Rivera.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site served as the location of the final
plenary of the three-day gathering aimed at uniting progressive and
democratic forces in the Western hemisphere to take on rising far
right authoritarianism.

Delegates representing communities from as far as Nunavut in Canada to
the extreme southern tip of South America eventually took their seats
in the Ibero-American Hall, a space adorned with a massive, nearly
1,500-square-foot mural, appropriately called “The Union of Latin
America” by Roberto Montenegro.

From this hall, the message from Mexico was unambiguous: The peoples
and the elected representatives of this hemisphere are ready to act to
confront the global threat of fascism.

“We are of course facing an authoritarian threat in the world: it is
the return of fascist positions to power,” María José Pizarro, a
Colombian senator from the ruling Pacto Historico coalition, told
_Truthout_. “In the face of this, we must therefore build joint
strategies that allow us to confront it in the best possible way in
countries where this is already happening, and in those where it is
not, to prevent the return of this type of government.”

When it comes to hemispheric relations, U.S. President Donald Trump
has pursued what has been described
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as a “divide and conquer” strategy, leveraging the national
interests of one country against another and pitting neighbors against
each other in order to squeeze out concessions from leaders. Trump has
been able to follow this strategy to varying degrees of success, in
part due to the lack of unity regarding the threat he represents to
the entire world.

“ is not a regional threat, it’s not a threat to one country,
it’s a threat that’s growing worldwide,” said Pizarro.

From the Atlas Network, a coalition of right-wing think tanks and
advocacy groups that promote neoliberal policies globally, to
Trump’s open and blatant interference
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inside Brazil in order to back his ally, former President Jair
Bolsonaro, in the face of charges over his effort to carry out a coup
after losing the 2022 election, the far right has been successful in
building trans-national links.

One aim of the Pan-American Congress is to break down barriers between
progressives and anti-fascists who have historically lacked an
institutional space to better coordinate their own regional response.

One standout feature of this gathering was the participation of
elected representatives from the United States, including Ilhan Omar
(D-Minnesota), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Illinois), Delia Ramírez
(D-Illinois), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan); Canadian Members of
Parliament (MPs), such as interim New Democratic Party leader Don
Davies, Leah Gazan, and Lori Idlout; and MPs from the governing
Liberals, such as Michael Coteau, also attended.

Pizarro, who is also a potential candidate for Colombia’s 2026
presidential election, described the participation of U.S. and
Canadian lawmakers at the Pan-American Congress as “fundamental”
and expressed optimism that this would be the beginning of a closer
relationship with progressives in North America.

“We don’t see ourselves as isolated from North America, but rather
the opposite, as part of an American continent that integrates us
all,” said Pizarro. “We rarely have the opportunity to listen to
each other, to talk, especially today when the United States
government is speaking out strongly about its position on Latin
America, its relationship with Latin America, and that conversation
with progressive Democratic congressmembers, of course, must be
strengthened,” she added.

The enthusiasm for building closer ties goes both ways.

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib said she drew inspiration from her
conversations with other lawmakers fighting for their communities and
the power of connecting with fellow activists across the Americas.

Tlaib drew parallels from her experience growing up in Detroit,
Michigan, in a neighborhood impacted by corporate pollution with the
stories she heard from colleagues at the congress from Brazil,
Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico.

“These corporations don’t care about these borders. They come and
extract, make us sick, and just leave us with nothing,” said Tlaib.

But now she says she feels “less alone in this fight against
corporate greed, against corporate polluters, against those that
don’t care about our communities thriving.”

Tlaib cited her conversations with Canadian MPs about the need to
collaborate in the fight against the environmental threat posed by the
Line 5 pipeline that threatens water systems in both the U.S. and
Canada.

“We are now building these bridges and creating a movement that
brings all of us together and understanding that connectivity,”
Tlaib told _Truthout_.

Tlaib, the first Palestinian woman to serve in U.S. Congress and an
important voice on the global stage speaking out against Israel’s
ongoing genocide of Palestinians, also expressed gratitude at the
centering of the Palestinian people’s cause at the gathering. At
every event over the course of the weekend, speakers spoke up in
support of Palestine in no uncertain terms, firmly expressing their
solidarity.

“It’s very rare that you see that in the United States Congress,
but we saw it at the Pan-American Congress,” said Tlaib.

Coming on the heels of July’s Emergency Conference on Palestine
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world leaders gather to take action in an attempt to halt the
genocide, delegates at the congress said recognizing the state of
Palestine was only a starting point.

“In our view, much deeper actions, much more forceful voices — and
of course, the role being played by multilateral organizations, which
have been stripped of their value and the ability to defend life in
the face of the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian
people — are essential,” said Pizarro.

Meanwhile, Colombian Deputy Minister of Multilateral Affairs Mauricio
Jaramillo Jassir argued
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that countries with progressive governments have no choice but to
break diplomatic relations with Israel.

In addition to calling for an end to the genocide against the
Palestinian people, participants in the conference discussed Trump’s
human rights violations against migrants and refugees, and the need to
confront climate change.

During his speech at the opening session, Mexican Senate President
Gerardo Fernández Noroña said the two defining features of the
rising fascist threat in the world were the suffering inflicted on
Palestinians and the abuse of migrants by the U.S.

“It is an unjust, vile, incorrect persecution where, by virtue of
being a migrant, or the color of your skin or your nationality, people
are persecuted,” said Noroña.

The mistreatment of migrants is the clearest case study on the
necessity of confronting fascism in the Americas. Trump has leaned on
allies like El Salvador’s far right President Nayib Bukele, who
infamously agreed to detain more than 230 Venezuelan migrants sent
from the U.S. in his notorious mega-prison before negotiations between
Caracas and Washington eventually secured their release.

Mexico in particular has faced enormous pressure from both U.S.
political parties to crack down on migrants transiting through its
territory as they try to reach the United States. More recently, the
Mexican government has had to face down repeated tariff threats from
Trump over the issue of migration.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has explicitly declined to become
a third-country destination for non-Mexican asylum seekers and has
resisted U.S. efforts to impose such arrangements. As a result, the
Trump administration has secured agreements with Guatemala and
Honduras instead, arrangements that ultimately serve to undermine
efforts by any one country in the region to resist the U.S.’s mass
deportation agenda.

The selection of Mexico City as the host of the Second Pan-American
Congress (the first having been held last year in Bogotá, Colombia)
offered delegates the opportunity to learn from the political project
known locally as the “Fourth Transformation,” the leftist national
political project to shift Mexico to a post-neoliberal model that
began with the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2018 and
continued under President Sheinbaum.

With the election of Sheinbaum in 2024, Mexico proved to be one of the
few countries that bucked a trend in which voters ousted incumbents
and replaced them, in many cases, with right-wing populists, such as
Javier Milei in Argentina
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Sheinbaum, who has been lauded
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for repeatedly standing up to Trump, welcomed delegates at the
National Palace, allowing representatives from throughout the
hemisphere to share their experiences resisting the U.S. president —
and also to share firsthand how Mexico has been able to not only
navigate an intemperate neighbor, but also continue to press forward
with its anti-neoliberal political agenda.

Canadian MP Leah Gazan, a member of the Wood Mountain Lakota Nation
who represents Winnipeg in Canada’s House of Commons, said her time
in Mexico left her feeling renewed and hopeful.

“What’s happened in Mexico is so inspiring … and to see women,
progressive women, strong women, leading the narrative about the
importance of humanizing politics, the importance of rooting democracy
and human rights, is a refreshing change from what we’re witnessing
in Canada right now,” Gazan told _Truthout_.

“I think we have a lot of lessons to learn from the Global South,”
said Gazan.

The challenge facing elected representatives now is translating the
positive experiences from the congress in Mexico into action in their
home countries.

During a Pan-American Congress event at the Esperanza Iris Theatre in
Mexico City, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar renewed her pledge to fight for
marginalized communities throughout the hemisphere from her place
inside the U.S. Congress, signaling to the peoples of the Global South
that they have an ally in her.

“Since being in the elected office, I’ve made an effort to set
myself apart as somebody who sees the global community as one, someone
who understands our destinies and our fates are intertwined, someone
who understands that being in the United States provides us with great
privileges but also with responsibilities,” Omar told _Truthout_.

Omar has repeatedly expressed her solidarity with the Global South,
especially Latin America, by participating in an on-the-ground
delegation
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to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in 2022, and through numerous
legislative initiatives focusing on migration and human rights.

The U.S. representative also shared her view that progressives in the
U.S., especially those in elected office, have an elevated duty to end
U.S. policies that harm people throughout the world, saying, “It is
our policies that are actively responsible for sanctions, for
militarization, for exploitation, and it is up to us to make sure that
we are lifting our voices collectively to say, ‘No, there is another
way.’”

Trump’s aggressive approach to relations with his neighbors in the
region may have caught many somewhat off guard, but more than six
months into his second term, leaders from this hemisphere have now
adapted and are forming new united strategies to take on Trump.

At the close of the 2025 Pan-American Congress, delegates reported the
discussions and proposals from the various working groups. From
efforts to advance an explicit recognition of systemic racism
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throughout the Americas, to calls for a new global order based on
human dignity
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and solidarity among nations, there was widespread consensus on the
need for stronger international cooperation to confront the global
rise of fascism, denouncing its role in migrant persecution in the
U.S., and the genocide in Gaza.

With the next Pan-American Congress set to take place in Uruguay next
year, delegates such as Omar and Tlaib expressed a sense of hope and
optimism that the gathering in Mexico City will serve as a turning
point.

“There is nothing like our sisters down south and what they deal
with, but continuously find joy in the work that they do on behalf of
the communities they serve, and that is inspiring and I’ll take that
with me,” concluded Omar.

_José Luis Granados Ceja is an anti-imperialist journalist and
political analyst based in Mexico City, with 20 years of experience
covering social movements, democracy, elections and human rights.
Follow him on Twitter: @GranadosCeja
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_Truthout is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to providing
independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social
justice issues. Since our founding in 2001, we have anchored our work
in principles of accuracy, transparency, and independence from the
influence of corporate and political forces._

_Truthout works to spark action by revealing systemic social, racial,
economic and environmental injustice and providing a platform for
progressive and transformative ideas, through in-depth investigative
reporting and critical analysis._

* Pan-American Congress
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* Mexico
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* Claudia Sheinbaum
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* Fascism
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* Palestine
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* immigrant rights
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* Rashida Tlaib
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* Rep. Ilhan Omar
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* Colombia
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