For decades, Latin America’s authoritarian regimes were seen as a right-wing phenomenon, with Cuba as the lone exception — a dictatorship born not from a betrayal of democracy, but of revolution. As Washington’s embargo returns to the headlines, this piece asks what that framing has long obscured: that Cuba has never had just one embargo, but two.
Analyses
- Maria Tavernini 4 December 2020An innocent kiss between a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy on the backdrop of a Hindu temple sparked controversy in India, and fury from the ruling BJP.
- Evan Pheiffer 27 November 2020Though beloved by Sufis and sultans, Üsküdar was not spared the ground-shaking reforms of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the second half of our history, we look at how Istanbul’s ‘holy land’ has fared in its two-century tryst with modernity.
- Jonathan Laurence 23 November 2020“It is possible for us to make some sort of change; I just don’t think that we should underestimate how difficult that is going to be.” Jelani Cobb, professor of Journalism at Columbia University and staff writer at the New Yorker, talks with Jonathan Laurence.
- Mark Lilla 20 November 2020The political consequences of increasingly divergent feelings, beliefs, lifestyles. A lesson from Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America”.
- Evan Pheiffer 20 November 2020Even in antiquity, all roads east began in Üsküdar. In a sense, they still do. So long as its delicate balance is not severed, Üsküdar will remain to Istanbul—the confident, pious, and prosperous focal point of the urban Anatolian experience—what Turkey is to the world: proof that Islam, capitalism, and modernity, with a dash of democratic salt, is still a dish worth serving.
- Gülay Türkmen 18 November 2020The “success story” behind the first Covid-19 vaccine, the social and economic ascent of BioNTech co-founders Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, has resonated across German, Turkish and international media. Hiding some deeper, hard facts about migration and integration, in Germany and beyond.
- Federica Zoja 10 November 2020What does the outcome of the ccountry’s constitutional referendum tell? A conversation with Algerian journalist, blogger and teacher Karim Metref
- Ilaria Romano 6 November 2020A long unresolved crisis explodes again. Russia’s (and the world’s) indifference hint to the most obvious result, at the expense of thousands of civilians.
- Matteo Fraschini Koffi 3 November 2020From Ethiopia to Liberia, from Togo to Nigeria, African women are taking the lead across the continent. And beyond.
- Rebecca Batley 20 October 2020Church and State have always been intertwined in Russia: under Tsarism God was inextricably linked to the Tsar. However recently all this has begun to change. Last year many Orthodox supporters took part in the pro democracy protests in Moscow: religious opposition to Putin is growing, there can be no doubt of that, but what this means for a government that is so intimately intertwined with the Russian Orthodox church is unclear.