On this day of (mis)/remembering MLK, I think about the promise of Latin America’s pink tide (into which I was born and which molded me politically) to deliver economic redistribution and socialism by peaceful means, a version of MLKs dream. 🧵

In the past 20 years, various spots in Latin/Central America have been the murder capitals of the world. It remains the most dangerous place in the hemisphere to be a journalist or a politician. A half century of coups and counter-coups have beleaguered the continent

Collapsing global economies have left many countries behind, and almost all are struggling to find an economic path forward, including Vnzla which now under US sanctions and dwindling reserves must construct a post-petrol economy to survive and has failed to begin to do so.

MLK’s peaceful vision for racial and economic transformation in the US made him into an enemy of the state for whom racial and economic violence is both foundational and necessary for its hegemony and he was murdered by those complicit in that mission of domination.

Allende, MLK’s contemporary, succeeded in achieving part of MLKs vision by winning a democratic mandate for social justice and transformation at the ballot box and without firing a single bullet. This made him into an enemy of a faraway State, the US, and he was murdered for it.