Honouring Willem Arondeus, Dutch artist, author, and gay anti-Nazi resistance fighter (22 August 1894 – 1 July 1943) : "Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards."

Artist and author Willem Johan Cornelis Arondéus Willem Arondeus, an openly gay member of the Dutch Resistance to the Nazis involved in falsifying IDs for Jews was executed on July 1, 1943, along with 11 co-conspirators, for fire bombing the Amsterdam Office of Public Records .

Willem was  born on August 22, 1894 in Naarden, Netherlands.as the youngest of six siblings in Naarden, Amsterdam, His parents, Hendrik Cornelis Arondeus and Catharina Wilhelmina de Vries, designed costumes for the theater. From a young age, he was a talented artist and his parents encouraged his creativity, until he came out as homosexual at age 17. 

In a time when nearly all gay people were in the closet, Willem’s parents could not accept his orientation. Their rejection led Willem to leave home, and severe all contact with his family. That part of his story is, unfortunately, all too familiar to too many LGBT+ people even to this day.  

It would have been a lot worse, had Denmark not decriminalized homosexuality in 1811. Thanks to  Napoleon,  but restrictive rules still barred homosexuality in the early 20th century.   

In 1911, the beliefs of the ruling political parties led to the age of consent for homosexuality to be changed to 21 in the Netherlands . despite the age for heterosexuality remaining at 16. Despite the first gay bar opening its doors during this time, these restrictive age rulings, along with other laws against public indencency, were used to unfairly target gay men.  

But these rulings did not intimidate Arondeus. He refused to suppress his identity as a gay man.Picking up work where he could find it, Arondeus quickly learned, though, that persistent discrimination of LGBT citizens made life difficult. Alongside living in poverty, he also struggled to find housing due to his refusal to hide his sexuality. 

He began building a career for himself as an illustrator and painter, and in 1923, he was commissioned to paint a large mural for Rotterdam City Hall. In the early 1930s, he produced nine tapestries with the coat of arms of various Dutch munipicalities which still hang in Villa Welgelegen, an official building in Haarlem. 

He was commissioned to illustrate poetry books, as well as to designing posters and calendars.

However, he never had much success as a painter and was living in abject poverty. 

In 1932 to 1941, Arondéus had a relationship with Gerrit Jan Tijssen, a greengrocer from Apeldoorn. They lived together in Apeldoorn and later in Amsterdam. In 1941, Tijssen returned to Apeldoorn because Arondéus's resistance activities made it too dangerous to stay together in Amsterdam. They never met again.

In 1935 he decided that visual arts might not be for him, and turned to poetry and writing. This turned out to be a good move. In 1938 he published two novels, Het Uilenhuis ('The Owls House') and In de bloeiende Ramenas ('In the Blossoming Winter Radish'), which were both illustrated with his own designs.

and in 1939 he published his most famous and, by all accounts, his best work “The Tragedy of the Dream” which is a biography of the Dutch painter and political activist Matthijs Maris. 

And then  in 1940 the Nazis came, and his real work began. Upon their occupation of the Netherlands at the start of the 1940s, the Germans brought with them Paragraph 175. a law first introduced by Hitler in Germany in an effort to cleanse the country of homosexual activity. The ruling, which first began by expelling any gay and lesbian organizations in Germany, was revised to make homosexual activity between men punishable by imprisonment. Even the slightest bit of suggested evidence could send them behind bars, and as a result, over 100,000 German men were arrested and 50,000 were imprisoned.  

Further, over the course of the Nazi rule, it is estimated that between 5,000 and 15,000 gay men were sent to concentration camps. Marked by pink triangle badges, they were brutally abused; and many underwent experimental medical treatments aimed at curing their sexualities.   

 Concentration Camp Prisoners with Pink Triangle Identification

In realisation  of this dire threat, like many others, Willem Arondeus joined the Dutch resistance almost immediately and he intended to do whatever he could to protect members of the homosexual community as well as the Dutch Jews.

When the Nazis came to the Netherlands, they mostly took their time with their policies. There weren’t any immediate deportations, there were no strict curfews. They were trying a subtle approach to keep the Dutch from resisting. 

This mostly worked. Many of the Dutch were fooled into thinking the Nazis weren’t as bad as everyone was saying. But the Nazis didn’t hesitate when it came to criminalizing homosexuality. and in no doubt of his and others’ fate at the hands of the Nazis, Arondeus first published the underground resistance paper Brandarisbrief and then formed the Raad van Verzet (Resistance Council) with other artists. 

At this time, he would meet Frieda Belinfante, a cellist, conductor, and a gay Jewish woman.   

Frieda Belinfante

Frieda Belinfante Frieda had become the youngest woman in Europe to lead an orchestra at that time. By 1941, she had. put away her cello to conduct a campaign of resistance and defiance against the Nazi oppressors. Using their artistic talents, the group set to work producing forged documents for Jews and others who were wanted by the Gestapo. 

Their first problem was that the Dutch identity cards were some of the hardest to counterfeit in Europe. By trial and error and sheer will and audacity (and a rather large financial contribution by Harry Heineken the prominent Dutch brewery owner), they succeeded in producing adequate counterfeit papers using a printing press. They managed to produce around 70,000 false papers that helped to hide the hunted and persecuted.  

Problems started to arise when the Nazis began to check the corresponding duplicates in the records office. The Nazi occupation of the Netherlands were issuing identification papers (called persoonsbewijs) to all Dutch men and women. To ensure this system worked as best possible the Nazis used local records to keep track of the Dutch population. 

One record set they used were the Bevolkingregisters which are similar to a Census. These records are very important in Dutch Genealogy research as they give lots of information on the households as well as family relationships.

Arondeus and the others in the resistance movement realised the records office would have to be destroyed  Arondeus and the rest of his unit constructed their riskiest plan yet: they would blow up the facility, along with the hundreds of thousands of documents inside or all their work would be in vain.  

Frieda Belinfante, said that while both of them knew the danger that would come if they were caught, each knew it was necessary to carry out their mission. 

 “He said, ‘Do you think that we see the end of this war?’ and I said ‘I don’t think so’ and he said ‘I don’t think so either,’” Belinfante recalled in a conversation the two had about the danger of their plan. “And then he said ‘Do you mind?’, and I said ‘No I don’t’, and he said ‘I don’t either.’”  

On March 26th, 1943, a group from the Dutch Resistance Movement led by Arondeus, entered the Registration building in Amsterdam disguised as Dutch policemen. They chose a late hour while the Registration Office was empty, so no innocent people would be harmed, and drugged the guards. They destroyed as many papers as they could and planted a bomb in the building.[

The next morning on March 27th, the bomb exploded and most of the building was destroyed. More than 800,000 identity cards were burned in the explosion. This operation saved the lives of many people and brought the Dutch Resistance Movement a symbolic victory over the Nazi occupation.

Amsterdam civil registry office 

But because Arondeus and his people managed to escape that night, the Nazis promised a large sum of money to anyone who could uncover the culprits. 

On April 1st, an anonymous source informed the Nazis about the Dutch Resistance Movement’s involvement, and Arondeus was arrested. He took full responsibility for bombing the Registration Office and refused to give up his comrades’ names. However, the Nazis found his notebook, which included all the names of the participants in the operation. 

ome of them managed to escape, but Arondeus and twelve more members of the Dutch Resistance Movement  including two other gay men , on July 1, 1943 were taken from their cells at six o'clock in the morning and handcuffed two by two. At the execution site in the Overveen dunes, still handcuffed to one another and without blindfolds, they were shot dead with machine guns. Frieda Belinfante herseld managed to escape execution. 

In the final days before his execution at the hands of the Nazi party, Willem Arondeus asked his lawyer Laura Mazirel  “ “Let it be known  that gays are not cowards.”

Shortly after the liberation, their shared graves was found, in  a messy pit one meter dee, and in the autumn of 1945, they were reburied at the Honorary Cemetery in Bloemendaal. On Willem Arondéus's gravestone it reads: Such a death surpasses life. nelis Arondéus *

Though the bombing of the Amsterdam registry building was widely regarded after the Holocaust as a lifesaving moment in history, education about the heroic moment omitted Arondeus’ leadership due to the fact that he was a gay man.  

While his family did receive a medal of honor for his sacrifices in the years following his death, homophobia that persisted throughout the 1950s and 1960s prevented LGBT war heroes like Arondeus from getting the recognition they deserved. This went against Arondeus’ final message to his lawyer for the public to be informed of LGBT participation in the mission.  

It was only in 1984 that the Dutch government posthumously awarded  he and the others who took part in the raid on the population registery, were awarded the Resistance Memorial Cross in 1984, some 40 years after the war had ended. It is speculated that this delay in recognising him was due to his sexuality.  In 1986, he was awarded the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.  

Despite this recognition, and his last words, Willem’s sexuality was not recognized until  a TV documentary in 1990 that it become known to the general public that Arondeus, was gay. and the Dutch public finally learned the true extent of his bravery forever cementing his efforts as a symbol of heroism in the LGBT community for years to come. 

Frieda Belinfante’s contribution to the resistance was officially recognized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1994. She died one year later, at 90 years old. 

“He was a great hero who was most willing to give his life for the cause,” Belinfante said. "Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards." 

In 2023, Arondéus was a character in A Small Light, a biographical World War II television drama miniseries and his story was featured in a documentary Willem and Frida - Defying Nazis by Stephen Fry. 

Honey Bee

 

The  following poem inspired  by song a dear friend  sent  me by  Olivia Rodrigo   called  honeybee

Honey Bee

I witness the delicate wings of a honey bee

Amomg flowers, nectar rich with goodness, 

Sweet  presence more precious than gold 

Pollen so rich with sucroseness noursishment.

Busy bee never at rest, blossom to blossom 

Pollinating plants that sustain us every day,

Honey drizzling releasing golden dreams

Succulently waking eyes with utter delight.

One of nature’s best, but in steep decline 

As we continue to destroy her habitats .

And allow toxic pesticides to.destroy  

Their fight for life, is our fight for life.

Gwenyn melyn blesses us every hour  

Now is the time to reward and treasure, 

Scatter wildflower seeds to protect her

Allow her sweetness to ripen our hearts.

Celebrating the life of Working class Chilean communist poet and novelist, Nicomedes Guzmán (June 25, 1914 – June 26, 1964)

Working class Chilean communist poet and novelist, Nicomedes Guzmán, pseudonym of Óscar Vásquez Guzmán, was born in  the Club Hípico neighborhood  of Santiago, Chile on June 25, 1914, was one of the most prominent members of the Chilean literary Generation of 1938, a literary and publishing generation born out of the socio-political movements that in 1938 collectively brought a political organization, the Popular Front to power under President Pedro Aguirre Cerda. 

It is no coincidence that this president, proposing an unprecedented political method of  governing  through education, led a left-wing, transformational coalition with the strong support of artists and writers. Nicomedes Guzmán, Violeta Parra, and Volodia Tetelboim among othersworked tirelessly for the Popular Front and for Pedro Aguirre Cerda's rise to the presidency. The Chilean literary Generation of 1938,  was also  one of the proletarian movements that set the stage for the presidency of Salvador Allende. 

Of working-class origin, Guzmán became interested in literature as a child, reading the magazine "El Peneca". At a very young age he also decided to become a writer, and at 15 he managed to publish stories, poems, and drawings in this same magazine, under the pseudonym Ovaguz.  

His early novels were about what surrounded him and what he could see with his own eyes: his neighborhood, his family, his friends, and his neighbors. Therefore, reading him is a way to get to know the Santiago of yesteryear and, in particular, the lives of its poorest inhabitants.

He not only wrote about marginalization, poverty, and social injustice: he lived these realities and transformed them into literature. His works, marked a milestone in Chilean narrative for their profound portrayal of the most marginalized sectors of society. His work is extensive and varied, including novels, poetry and anthologies of deep human and social feeling.  

He was the son of Nicomedes Vásquez Arzola and Rosa Guzmán Acevedo.  Nicomedes Guzmán's real name was Oscar Nicomedes Vásquez Guzmán. He used his middle name and second surname as his artistic pseudonym as a way of honoring his father, and his mother.

His father held various jobs, including streetcar driver and occasionally ice cream vendor; his mother, a homemaker, supplemented the family income with occasional work as a domestic servant. 

In Los Hombres Obscura (The Dark Men )  from 1939 , he dedicates, his  novel to them.The novel tells the story of the lower social classes and their lives within a tenement building. It highlights the stark differences between the abusive wealthy and the most needy, those affected by the decisions of the ruling class. 

The novel has a significant ideological component, emerging from within the very society that has been marginalized, a society imbued with proletarian convictions, and is rich in political and ideological allusions.

According to Volodia Teitelboim (1916-2008) , this novel was also "the shot that signaled the start of a new era, a different stage of narrative in this Finisterre called Chile," a stage characterized by writers convinced that they wanted "to take the pulse of the people, to write in rhythm with their battered existences. They took the side of the discontented. They tried to be writers of the poor, of the rural and urban worker, of the miner, of the south and the north"

Nicomedes Guzmán's schooling was irregular and his education was largely self-taught, although he studied as an adult at the Federico Hanssen night school. He began his career as a typesetter and bookbinder's assistant, later working as a truck driver's assistant on Matucana Avenue in Santiago , a place with a vibrant, bohemian nightlife of a popular nature. 

He later worked as an assistant at a real estate agency in the heart of the Chilean capital. Thanks to the acclaim his first two works received, he was hired by the Department of Culture at the Ministry of Finance, along with Luis Sánchez Latorre .

He participated in the alliance of Chilean intellectuals created and led by Pablo Neruda, along with Pablo de Rokha. Guzmán was the author of the poetry book The Ashes and Dreams (1938) In the prologue to the book Pablo Neruda wrote: “Its whispering sweetness seems not to coexist with the scars that “Blood and Hope” imprinted on us, but it is a sign of greatness that the writer, who revealed to us the hell of the streets of Chile, has another mark of wandering delirium, dreams and ashes that add the infinite dimension of poetry.”  

He actively participated in both civic action and various areas of literature, such as writing, publishing, and printing. and of novels and stories that marked milestones in the Chilean literary tradition such as The Dark Men (1939) , Blood and Hope (1943) , Light Comes from the Sea (1951) and A Coin to the River and Other Stories (1954) and collaborations with various magazines, which helped him to conceive of literature from a broad perspective, as a set of practices that integrated illustration, typographic design, bookbinding and editing.  

His collaborations in this regard, which he carried out in the magazine El Peneca (1908-1960) , between 1931 and 1937, where, with the pseudonym " Ovaguz ", he published illustrations, sports chronicles and literary texts, marked an important milestone in his training because he was able to meet artists, such as Fidelicio Atria (1904-1965) , who influenced the development of his technical skills and his aesthetic notions.  

As a result of this knowledge, in 1934 he wrote, designed, illustrated and bound the book, unpublished until 2015, entitled Croquis del corazón (Sketch of the Heart ),  under the pseudonym Darío Octay as an ode to the love he felt for a  woman named  Lucía Salazar.

They married on June 6, 1936, in the Church of Lourdes, which at that time was undergoing the construction of a second building designed by architects Eduardo Costabal and Andrés Garafulic, with sculptor Lily Garafulic. 

The couple lived in the home of José Besa, where they also shared a home with Manuel Guerrero Rodríguez, a contemporary writer of Nicomedes Guzmán and father of Professor Manuel Guerrero Ceballos, who was murdered during the civil-military dictatorship by state agents along with José Manuel Parada and Santiago Nattino, an event known as the Degollados Case, which occurred in 1985.  With marriage came Lucía and Nicomedes' first child: Oscar Vásquez Salazar—who would later become a renowned journalist and writer

In their home on Germán Riesco Street, the couple had two more daughters, Ximena and Florencia. As the family grew, they acquired their own house in the newly established El Polígono neighborhood, inaugurated in 1939 south of San Pablo Avenue, at 730 La Acacias Street (later Carlos Pezoa Véliz). 

In this house, Nicomedes Guzmán would produce his best literary and editorial works and consolidate a value-based vision regarding the daily life of a population that, despite its social diversity, largely comprised the Chilean working class. This vision would position him as a leading figure and representative of the values ​​and identity of the Chilean people.  

In this house on Carlos Pezoa Véliz Street, in the heart of El Polígono, the book of poems Croquis del Corazón (Sketches of the Heart)  was kept in a chest by Lucía Salazar even after her 81-year relationship with Nicomedes Guzmán ended. This object of love, created for this beautiful family moment, saw the light of day in 2015 when the family decided to no longer consider it a private family heirloom, but rather a part of Chilean popular culture.    

The original is donated to the National Library, who restored and preserved it, and the Victorino Lainez Publishing Cooperative together with the Al Tiro Cultural Center of the El Polígono neighborhood of Quinta Normal jointly publish 1000 facsimile copies of this important example of national and communal literature.  

The El Polígono housing complex was built in 1939 as part of the public housing policies promoted by the Popular Front government under the presidency of Pedro Aguirre Cerda. Through the Caja de la Habitación Popular (Popular Housing Fund), the State purchased the land located around San Pablo and Barros Arana streets, which had previously been part of the "Chacra el Polígono" (El Polígono Farm). The name derives from the shooting range that operated on this land for military and sporting purposes. Adjacent to the range were also some tomato fields and a school (Medina and Solar, 2010). 

Prior to this state investment in the construction of a workers' housing complex, several plots of land belonging to these farms were purchased for the subdivision and construction of the Quidora housing complex around 1915. 

With this state investment, the El Polígono complex became part of the major public works projects undertaken by the Pedro Aguirre Cerda administration in Quinta Normal.  Nicomedes Guzmán came to live in one of the first houses built during the initial phase of the settlement's development. 

The El Polígono settlement features diverse housing types that converge within a single territorial unit. Between 1939 and 1942, 290 houses were built.

Some were detached with their own front gardens, while the majority consisted of a shared entrance and a common front patio that was later divided into four separate dwellings: two on the first floor and two on the second. These latter two were accessed via a single staircase that began in the shared patio. 

Then, between 1946 and 1949, construction began on 120 apartments with a total area of ​​56 square meters. The land located at the entrance to San Pablo Street remained undeveloped until the 1960s when the State decided to build educational establishments; during that entire period, the land was used as dirt fields for playing soccer.  

The convergence of a strong and centralized state development movement, the transversal political principles among the popular classes regarding prioritizing school education to promote the growth of the country, the effective application of public policies that allowed the working classes to solve certain basic needs, including housing, and the centrality of art within the creative possibilities of Chile, motivated the formation of artists, artisans and intellectuals in the El Polígono neighborhood in the various areas of knowledge, such as La Sonora Palacios, Guillermo Prado, Richard Rojas, Homero Bascuñán, Hirohito and his group, among others.    

Nicomedes Guzmán began a literary development from El Polígono that would soon lead him to work in the Department of Culture of the Ministry of Education and as an editor at Editorial Cultura. 

He also collaborated during the 1940s in the magazine En Viaje (1933-1973) , a media outlet of the State Railway Company, where he published texts under the pseudonym - which he had already used to sign Croquis del corazón - of "Darío Octay", which he devised as a tribute to the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío and the town of Puerto Octay.  

As an editor, he conceived collections such as La honda and Novelistas contemporáneos de América , both published by Ediciones Cultura, of which he was director. He also compiled anthologies of the work of Baldomero Lillo (1867-1923) , the short stories of Marta Brunet (1897-1967) , and the poetry and prose of Carlos Pezoa Véliz (1879-1908) , all published by Editorial Zig-Zag . 

It  was Nicomedes Guzmán's literary ability to portray the harsh reality of the popular classes at the beginning of the 20th century that led him to win the Santiago Municipal Literature Prize in 1944 with  Blood and Hope  his most autobiographical work.

We witness the narrative of a working-class child, Enrique Quilodrán, the son of a machinist and a laundress.Through his childlike eyes, he observes events not only within his family but also recounts the repressions of the time. At the beginning, he writes: “And we, the children of that era, were time itself, perpetually playing, mocking that life which, in its misery, became heroic.” 

Later: “Life shook us all. Some more than others. But, if we emerged triumphant in childhood, the games of adulthood rotted into apathy and discouragement.” 

The Quilodrán family lives in a tenement located at Mapocho 2480, corner of García Reyes, a place where Nicomedes Guzmán's family also lived approximately between 1918 and 1928. “Short, with a height betrayed by just a few two-story buildings, wrinkled, dusty, the neighborhood was like an old dog abandoned by its master… Over there, San Pablo Street. Here, the tram depot and the large workshops of the Electric Company”  (Guzmán, 1943). 

Throughout the narrative, the author describes the neighborhood (“the poor neighborhood was like a flower fallen in petals of mist”), the tenement's residents (“the prostitutes, the thieves, the evangelicals, all the workers”), the economic problems such as unemployment (“the capital seemed to tremble under the weight of miserable and hungry humanity”), and the sense of impending doom, among other aspects. 

On a personal level, the narrator's father, a streetcar worker and active union leader, suffers the brunt of the repression, thus framing the story in the 1920s, with the streetcar workers' strike, supported by the Chilean Workers' Federation, as its backdrop. 

After beginning his literary life in the Quinta Normal district, Nicomedes Guzmán, having recently gained a place in the literary field, met Violeta Parra through the renowned bookseller of those years, Rafael Hurtado. Parra, having recently arrived to live on Edison Street and later, after marrying railway worker Luis Cereceda, at the Cité de las Viudas on Andes Street with Lourdes, was also beginning in the 1930s the great work of dedicating her life to art, research, writing, and creation from Quinta Normal.  

Nicomedes Guzmán separated from Lucía Salazar during the 1950s, later beginning a relationship with psychologist and social worker Esther Josefina Panay Pérez, who also lived in Quinta Normal. hey had two children, and his daughter Olaya has dedicated much of her work in the literary world to rescuing and publishing her father's work, leading, among other projects, the publication of  "Estampas populares de Chile" (Popular Scenes of Chile).

Throughout his extensive career as a writer and editor, Nicomedes Guzmán dedicated himself to establishing a vision of work and social justice and to forging new professional paths that helped diversify the understanding of literature as a body of aesthetic content. 

He also championed the work of unpublished writers and promoted that of established authors, aiming to enrich national and Latin American literary production.The Municipality of San Miguel awarded him the National People's Prize in 1961.

As a writer, he created a vision of marginality that transcended stereotypical portrayals of the working class. His work, rooted in Marxism, imbued the world he narrated with a sense of hope and historical redemption, exploring the causes and consequences of inequalities in capitalist society.  

The themes of his literary work, centered on predominant social aspects of Chilean life at the time, emphasized social injustice, the exploitation of workers, the miserable life of the suburbs, moral degradation in poverty, and corruption in power.

For many years, Guzmán's literary production was described as "the Voice of the People," a definition based on the myth that testimonial writing corresponds to the faithful transcription of a reality or a true event when, as has been shown, testimonial discourse is interfered with by the filter of memory and a subjectivity that elaborates and even invents what is supposedly real.  

However, Nicomedes Guzmán's complex writing poses a serious challenge to those addicted to rigid classifications. It is not the Voice of the People, but rather the Voice of Nicomedes Guzmán, a writer who models his imagined or reshaped stories from a familiar environment. 

The tools of his writing come from diverse literary sources, which did not conform to the hierarchy of "the canon" established by official culture, but rather to unsystematic chance encounters: the book he found in a bookstore, the book a friend lent him, the book recommended by the owner of a shop that sold old books or rented the latest ones. 

These chance encounters formed a cultural melting pot that created a heterogeneous intertextual field in which 19th-century Realism and Naturalism, the avant-garde, sentimental serials, and the cinema that, along with radio, ushered in mass culture in the 1940s, are all mixed together.  

In addition to its unsystematic nature, Guzmán's ideological position serves as the firm and explicit foundation of his entire work. His Marxist discourse aimed at social denunciation, political resistance and the utopia of equality as a counterpoint to the hegemonic nation. This political agenda conveys the hope for change in Chilean society.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Nicomedes Guzmán's health deteriorated rapidly due to complex physical and psychological factors, and he died in the El Polígono neighborhood at the age of 50 on June 26, 1964. His remains were laid in state at the Chilean Writers' Society, of which he was Director.  

Among the various photographs, paintings, pictures and works of art that to this day adorn the walls of Nicomedes Guzmán's house – which has been inhabited for several years by his son Darío Vásquez – the image of Nicomedes with Darío and Pablo Neruda at a barbecue held at the Nobel poet's house on the occasion of the visit of the Czechoslovakian football team to Chile in 1958, is one of the images that attracts the most attention within the space and that recalls the social and festive sense of the writer from Quinta Normal.      

Both sons, born and raised in the streets of the same town, El Polígono de Quinta Normal, have made a circumstantial contribution to keeping their father's memory alive. In fact, when the 100th anniversary of the writer's birth was commemorated in 2014, they carried out various activities to reconstruct his legacy, including the publication of a text, the naming of the town's library after him, the placement of a commemorative plaque on his house, and later the creation of the Nicomedes Guzmán Foundation.  Darío Vásquez still lives in the writer's house in the El Polígono neighborhood, preserving the legacy of his life and work. The son of Nicomedes Guzmán, a teacher by profession, has also been a major figure in the history of the Quinta Normal district, serving as a national leader of the Teachers' Union from the 1990s until the last union elections, when he handed over his position as General Secretary to the new generation. 

From the family home, he now safeguards the writer's legacy, as well as that of his mother, Lucía. 

The house, by his own choice, has undergone some changes to its original structure; it now has two floors, and the interior spaces have been significantly diversified.    

One of the most important works still in Nicomedes Guzmán's house is a portrait of him painted by the renowned Chilean artist Pedro Lobos. Family lore recounts that the writer, angered by Lobos's delay in finishing the painting, simply—in the midst of an argument—took it from his studio and brought it home, preventing the painter from completing and signing it. Today, this painting is the most valuable work created in honor of Nicomedes Guzmán that remains in the family home, a highly prized piece that has been separated from others which, by family wish, now form part of the Nicomedes Guzmán Archive at the National Library of Chile.   

The house of Carlos Pezoa Véliz in the El Polígono neighborhood continues to safeguard the old furniture, works, and stories of Nicomedes Guzmán, despite the political persecution that Nicomedes and his family experienced in their home in El Polígono with the promulgation of the "  Cursed Law,"  which was implemented during the governments of Gabriel González Videla and Carlos Ibáñez del Campo between 1948 and 1958. 

This law caused Nicomedes Guzmán to be under police surveillance at his home in Carlos Pezoa Véliz because of his membership in the Communist Party, as well as during the coup d'état and the subsequent civil-military dictatorship (1973-1990), which forced part of his family to be persecuted and exiled.  

The legacy of Nicomedes Guzmán continues to inspire  many. I will conclude this article by quoting Nicomedes Guzmán himself, regarding his vision of literature: “I believe that literature has a vital responsibility: to create a climate conducive to peace, to better understanding among men, in exchange for describing their struggles, telling their truths, even touching on what is corrosive in beings, confronting the aspects of human negation with virtues, particularly tenderness, which, in my understanding, is the most manly gift of man, the foundation of all acts of existence.”

Good Riddance Sir Keir Starmer

Sir Keir Starmer, arguably the most mendacious, arrogant  dishonest, authoritarian, warmongering politician of the modern era,  resigned on Monday paving the way for Britain to have its seventh prime minister in just over a decade. He said he was stepping down as leader of the governing Labour Party but would remain caretaker prime minister until a new head is chosen by the party.  

Andy Burnham, who won a special parliamentary election last week, confirmed that he will run to succeed Starmer. Burnham is also set to receive defence and security briefings on privy councillor terms so that he can be “read in” on some of the most sensitive issues in Whitehall, according to officials.  Addressing the nation from outside Number 10 on Monday morning, the spot where he delivered his first speech as prime minister two years ago. Starmer announced an end to his six years as Labour leader and two years as prime minister.  

Within two hours, it became almost certain that Starmer would be succeeded by Andy  Burnham, after his main rival Wes Streeting said he would not compete to become Labour leader.  

Streeting, the former health secretary, is now seen by some Labour MPs as the frontrunner to be chancellor in a Burnham government, although both sides insisted that no deal had been struck.  Streeting’s decision to fold in behind Burnham and urge his Labour colleagues to agree to what would be in effect a coronation of the party’s next leader has raised the prospect of an uncontested transition.  But a wild-card candidate may yet seek to trigger a Labour leadership race. Al Carns, former armed forces minister, and Darren Jones, Starmer’s chief secretary, have not ruled out a tilt at the top job.  Starmer had discussed sacking home secretary Shabana Mahmood and energy secretary Ed Miliband from his cabinet earlier this month over what he saw as disloyalty after they privately told him to outline a timetable for his departure. But he was talked out of the dramatic retaliation against the pair — who like Streeting are seen as potential candidates to be chancellor — by allies who feared it would trigger a domino effect of other ministers quitting. 

Starmer announced a timetable for the transfer of power that could result in Burnham entering Downing Street as soon as July 17 if no other Labour MP challenges him for the party leadership.

Starmer won a landslide victory in the 2024 general election, but a series of missteps badly damaged his credibility. His resignation came  the day before Britain marks the 10th anniversary of its vote to leave the European Union.

In a statement on X, Burnham praised Starmer for his “huge service to our country” and said he looked forward to an “orderly and responsible” transition. 

 “People want to see progress on economic growth, cost of living, public services, housing and opportunities for the next generation,” he said.  

Burnham was sworn in as an MP at Westminster on Monday afternoon after his emphatic victory in the Makerfield by-election last week. He was given a triumphalist welcome by Labour MPs in parliament.  Starmer was earlier cheered by his Downing Street staff as he made his farewell statement, in which he said he had rescued Labour after its disastrous 2019 election defeat, made the party electable and delivered a series of reforms following its landslide poll victory in July 2024.  

He listed economic recovery, improvements to workers’ rights, falling hospital waiting lists, cuts to illegal migration and a reduction in child poverty among his government’s achievements.

Starmer was given a largely respectful farewell by the ‘mainstream’ media, portraying him as a ‘decent’ man who put his country first. And now the same news organisations are burnishing Andy Burnham’s credentials to enter 10 Downing Street without actually submitting his record or policies to proper scrutiny.  

Starmer’s appalling record as Prime Minister were barely touched upon in his political obituaries. In particular, his complicity in the Gaza genocide was virtually whitewashed out of existence; notably by the BBC and the Guardian.  

His tenure in 10 Downing Street came to just under two years, and it will be remembered for all the wrong reasons. Labour may   have  won by a landslide in 2024, gaining around two-thirds of the parliamentary seats on a third of the national turnout, thanks to the UK’s dysfunctional first-past-the-post electoral system.  but Starmer enjoyed the backing of scarcely a fifth of eligible voters, in what was the second-lowest turnout since 1885.  

By contrast, Starmer’s much more leftwing predecessor as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn – roundly dismissed by mainstream media as “unelectable” – secured 40 percent of the vote in 2017. It was the party’s biggest surge in votes since 1945.  Labour’s huge haul of seats in 2024 did not indicate widespread approval of the party’s uninspiring programme, nor was it a broad endorsement of Starmer as leader.

Starmer also displayed an astonishing lack of political nous on a wide variety of issues. On his election as PM, Starmer ditched the ten pledges he’d made during his Labour leadership campaign which had deceptively presented him as a left-leaning, progressive successor to Corbyn whom he had called his ‘friend’.   

He attempted to court right-wing Reform voters by adopting the language of the notorious Enoch Powell in warning that ‘mass immigration’ had done ‘incalculable damage’ to the British economy, and in  an infamous  speech said  that the UK could become an ‘island of strangers’.  

He attacked pensioners, people with disabilities, families on low income with more than two children (until he did a U-turn following a huge public backlash), and migrants. Hiking University Tuition Fees by 13.5% when he has previously repeatedly pledged to scrap them entirely is a total betrayal of young people.  

Then  made  the  idiotic decision to cut the winter fuel allowance which  displayed a stunning sense of political naivety, losing huge quantities of political capital for minuscule budget savings.

Against strong advice, and  with  appalling  judgement  he appointed Peter Mandelson, a close friend of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, as UK ambassador to the US.  

He waged war on the left wing of the Labour Party, suspended Jeremy Corbyn and many others, including numerous Jewish members. Incidentlly  when he inherited the Labour party, Corbyn had made it the biggest political party membership in Europe.

Starmer struggled to deliver promised economic growth, repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living. He has been hamstrung by repeated missteps.

One of the most prolific liars in politics, Keir Starmer has no principles, morales or backbone. He is a shapeshifter, saying whatever is convenient at the time to make him look ‘good’. 

Starmer is a very wealthy man who has a net worth of approximately £7.7 million who has accepted hundreds of thousands in  corporate donations and freebies than all Labour leaders since 1997.

Once in power, and under greater scrutiny, revelations showed he had been showered with more than £100,000 ($132,000) in gifts and freebies, including clothes and designer spectacles, a personal shopper for his wife, and lavish corporate hospitality, with tickets to Arsenal matches and Taylor Swift concerts.O ne top donor also loaned him an £18 million central London penthouse so that, Starmer claimed, his son could study for exams in peace.  Starmer promoted his version of Labour as the “party of change”. But this looked all too similar to the kind of sleaze familiar from years of Conservative rule.  

All of the donations were within parliament’s rules but Starmer has faced accusations of being  a  hypocrite pf  the  dirst  order  since the furore came as he  asked ordinary Britons to tighten their belts. 

Following a backlash, he announced an overhaul of hospitality rules for government ministers to try to ensure better transparency around what is accepted, and in a  damage limitation exercise Starmer has since  repaid thousands of pounds in freebies in an  attempt to restore trust in politics.

Furthermore  he and his government rushed to offer Israel unequivocal support in pursuing its genocide in Gaza, sacrificing precious political and civil liberties in the UK .To add insult to injury, Starmer performed the diplomatic pantomime of recognising a Palestinian state, in a manner that ensured it would never happen.

He undermined trial by jury and, unjustly extended the definition of ‘terrorism’, imprisoning grandmothers, priests and peaceful activists who dared support Palestine Action, an organisation that Starmer and his minions proscribed as terrorists for opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.  

He continued to arm and support Israel during the genocide despite his obligations under the Genocide Convention to take immediate action to prevent it, welcomed Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who had used genocidal language against the Palestinians in Gaza, approved visits from Israeli military officials and thwarted calls for a ceasefire. 

He also allowed the RAF’s Akrotiri base in Cyprus to be used for spy flights over Gaza, sharing intelligence with Israel that was likely used to attack targets in Gaza.  

Infamously, he even declared in a live radio interview with Nick Ferrari that Israel ‘has that right’ when asked about Israel denying electricity and water to Palestinians in Gaza and, days later, tried to gaslight the public that he had not actually said that. 

A truly shameful man who is complicit in genocide. Starmer’s appalling statements,  amounted to endorsing the collective punishment of 2.2 million civilians, a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. No government, no army, and no country can ever be above international law..

Starmer has continued to dismiss any criticism of the indiscriminate and disproportionate killing of  Starmer and Labour under his direction gave Netanyahu cover for genocide  and gave Israel the greenlight to commit one of the greatest crimes of our age. He is a vile committed zionist who has supported Israel massacring hundreds of thousands of people who provided his support diplomatically, logistically and militarily. 

Starmer is a proven liar and a fraud. As are the corrupt sycophants that surrounded him. Human rights experts have said Israel’s actions amount to collective punishment, a war crime under international law. It matters little since Israeli officials have not attempted to hide their intentions.  

 Starmers justifying Israel's collective punishment of two million Palestinians, and Labour's refusals to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, will haunt the party for a long time to come. Starmer will go down in history as the British PM a former Human Rights Barristeri ironically who has supported and enabled Israel's Palestine holocaust. 

We should never ever forgive, him.A shameful stain that will reverberate in the decades to come. Just as they invaded Iraq illegally, Keir Starmer will be known as a genocide  supporter that let little children starve. Shame on this disgusting Labour Government too.I never ever imagined a scenario where a Labour government could be aiding and abetting a genocide.

To hear him calling for Israel to commit to a ceasefire while selling it weapons was like a bartender suggesting you quit drinking as they poured out another double whiskey.Starmer even  threatened his cabinet with dismissal if they voted for a ceasefire in Gaza. He provided Israel with arms and intelligence during an ongoing genocide. The list could go on and on. 

Starmer was not merely a disappointment. He won the Labour Party leadership based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning. He promised a 'different Britain', yet his actions were a masterclass in Tory-lite politics—using the same maxed-out credit card analogies that once served the austerity brigades to justify his own failure of vision. He promised a human rights lawyer’s approach but he embraced a racist-lite version of Farage.   

On Europe, Starmer promised Brexiteers that Brexit is Brexit yet stood before those who yearn to rejoin the European Union, winked at them to make them feel that Britain would gradually reconnect, even rejoin, with the EU while offering nothing of substance. This was not leadership; it was a fraud.  

But above all else, this is a government that has learned nothing from the post-2008 era. Starmer and his Chancellor played the same tired austerity game while enabling and empowering the Finance Curse perpetrated by the City of London, throwing in forgood measure cuts in international aid to fund a military spending trickle under the guise of a "Strategic Defence Review" .

It is the same old doctrine: austerity for the masses, socialism for the financiers and the arms dealers.  History will remember Mr Starmer as a man without conviction,a Prime Minister who offered not a shred of honesty, but merely the cruel illusion of change. Remembered as an unremarkable former human rights lawyer who offered carte blanche to the gravest crimes of our age.

He is ethically decrepit because he chose, consciously, to abandon principle for power. And for that, history will indict him. His direct complicity in the genocide in Palestine and his brutal repression of human rights defenders protesting the genocide in the UK will define his legacy forever. His departure from office is only the first step toward justice. Now let him answer for his crimes in a court of law. 

True to character,  in  his resignation speech, his voice breaking at times, said he accepted the verdict of Labour MPs that he was not the best person to lead the party into the next election. “I accept that answer with good grace,” 

There were  no  tears for more  than 73,000 Palestinans killed in Gaza, including at least 21,289 children, since 7 October 2023, blown to pieces or buried alive under rubble in Gaza.  Hearing Starmer tear up talking about spending more time with his kids was a special kind of enraging. How many Palestinian kids don’t have dads any more because of him. How many dads have no kids to hug because of him? Monster.

This week, a UN commission of inquiry concluded that Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip, as well as war crimes in the occupied West Bank.  

In December 2024, Amnesty International published a detailed report that explained the meaning of genocide:  ‘Under Article II of the Genocide Convention, five specific acts constitute the underlying criminal conduct of the crime of genocide, including: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Each of these acts must be committed with a general intent to commit the underlying act. However, to constitute the crime of genocide, these acts must also be committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such…” 

This specific intent is what distinguishes genocide from other crimes under international law.’ (Our emphasis)  Amnesty added a key clarification:  ‘Importantly, the perpetrator does not need to succeed in destroying the targeted group, either in whole or in part, for genocide to be established. International jurisprudence recognizes that “the term ‘in whole or in part’ refers to the intent, as opposed to the actual destruction”.  

In its submission to the International Court of Justice against Israel, South Africa presented a detailed legal case that Israel has committed genocide. This case has been backed by other states at the ICJ who have published their own findings of genocide. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied since 1967, reached similar conclusions in two reports in 2024: ‘Anatomy of a Genocide’ and ‘Genocide as Colonial Erasure’.

 In 2024, Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, concluded that Israel ‘has engaged in an intentional starvation campaign against the Palestinian people which evidences genocide and extermination’. 

Moreover, many of the world’s leading scholars on genocide, including Israeli experts, have determined that Israel has committed genocide. The evidence is simply overwhelming.  

Diverting Readers’ attention away  from the genocide the media’s whitewashing of Starmer’s complicity in Israel’s Gaza genocide and crimes against humanity is stunning. 

Starmer thanked his family, friends, colleagues and the “extraordinary” staff at Downing Street. Starmer reflected on Labour's landslide win in the 2024 general election and stated that he inherited a "Lego party, a party that was broken, and politically, financially and morally bankrupt." 

 I don't forget that Starmer  offered no support to working class people striking for better pay, while finding time to condemn every single protest that takes place in Britain. and having a career history of defending corrupt policemen and persecuting the poor. For all these  reasons  welcome this  rancid narcissistic,war mongering, serial pledge breaking, shitweasel, resignation. who will end up the most hated PM ever, with the clowns in his cabinet not far behind. 

Rejoice that Starmer is finished. History will condemn him for his support of a genocide.At today’s PMQs, Starmer ended his premiership as he began it - by conflating support for Palestinian rights and opposition to genocide with antisemitism  

His authoritarian crackdown on protest and freedom of speech has done profound damage to our society. Even  at  end of  his tenure he  revealed  himself  to  be  an  utterly  morally bankrupt  bastard.  

Good riddance to a two faced compulsive lying political prostitute. 

Few tears will flow over the death of his insipid premiership. A man who turned Britain into a Zionist police state. Get in the bin Starmer. You  wont  be  missed.Fuck you, you genocide enabling shit. Starmer you  were  a disaster for Britain. Andy Burnham  sadly  I  believe  may be even worse. 

World Refugee Day 2026 . “Until Everyone Is Safe”

Credit ;Deveron Projects , Illustrated  by Jacques Coetzer

World Refugee Day is held every year on June 20 to raise awareness about the plight of refugees around the world. It is held to show solidarity with those who have been displaced and to honor their resilience and determination to keep their families safe. 

The day is also marked to draw the public’s attention to the millions of refugees and Internally displaced persons worldwide who have been forced to flee their homes due to war, climate disaster, political instability conflict and persecution.

Only to become trapped in rigid systems that make the possibility of starting a new life a distant dream, systems that seek to strip people of their humanity and reduce people to numbers. Also to remember that throughout history and across the world, life can change in an instant.  

75 years ago, after the devastation of the Second World War, the world came together and made a promise. People forced to flee war and persecution would not be left without protection.  

That promise became the 1951 Refugee Convention. And it was made for all of us. 

World Refugee Day came into being in 2000 when the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 55/76 decided on December 4, 2000 that June 20 would be marked as World Refugee Day. The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol help protect them.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 117.8 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2025 – roughly one in every seventy people on the planet.  

This year’s UN theme, “Until Everyone Is Safe”, is rooted in the 1951 Refugee Convention and reminds us that protection is essential. Refugees, especially children and young people, continue to face disrupted learning, reduced access to essential services and increasing protection risks as support systems come under strain. Displacement often means losing a home, school, income, safety and support systems all at once.

The theme  is a reminder that safety is not a privilege reserved for the few but a fundamental right – the right to life and to a life lived in dignity. For as long as people are forced to flee conflict, climate change or persecution, our shared responsibility endures.  

The 1951 Convention carries a universal message: a person forced to seek refuge beyond their borders does not lose their rights or their dignity. It affirms that refugees must be able to live in safety, access education, work, take part in community life and look to the future with hope.  

These foundations are under growing strain. In recent years, States have witnessed a troubling trend towards closed borders, deterrence policies and the externalisation of asylum procedures. In many contexts, the principle of non-refoulement – the cornerstone guarantee that no one should be returned to danger – is being eroded, leaving people in already vulnerable situations exposed to even greater risk.  Today’s displacement crisis is shaped by a number of severe and protracted emergencies. Official figures reveal that around seven in ten refugees come from just a handful of countries: Venezuela, the occupied Palestinian territory, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan and South Sudan. 

Sudan also remains the world’s largest internal displacement crisis, with over nine million people uprooted inside the country. To these must now be added the rapidly worsening displacement in Lebanon and Iran, where recent escalation has forced more than a million people from their homes.   

 A refugee is someone who has fled to a different country to escape war or persecution. Most people who are displaced, even through conflict, stay in their own country. This is the country they have known and have ties too. Many also hope to return home one day when the threat of violence has passed. As such, they do not want to move far away. Families in this situation can end up in camps for Internally Displaced People (IDPs). 

The UNHCR estimates that 70% of refugees stay in countries neighbouring their country of origin. This is not surprising as many people want to stay closer to home if they can.  Plus the journeys that refugees are forced to make to find safety can be long and very dangerous.  

Around 76% of refugees are hosted in countries with low or middle income. The poorest countries in the world have 9% of the world’s population, but they host 16% of refugees.  

It is impossible to imagine or even understand the life of the displaced unless you experience it first. The helplessness one feels when he loses everything (landmarks, material possessions) and on top of that, the uncertainty of a better tomorrow.  

Children make up around 30% of the world population. This means that children are disproportionately affected by displacement. Many children flee with their families, but some lose their families and become unaccompanied refugees, or internally displaced people. 

The climate crisis is becoming a cause for displacement. People have been forced to leave their homes in the past due to weather events such as flooding, storms or drought. However, as such events become more severe due to climate change, more people are seeing their homes destroyed this way. They can then be forced to move elsewhere, particularly if there’s no prospect for rebuilding.  

In some countries, the changing climate is destroying livelihoods. People who live on the land are increasingly seeing their farms and food sources destroyed by droughts, floods or storms. These people, known as climate migrants, then have to move to towns and cities to seek aid and new livings. 

 We have seen this in Somalia, Bangladesh, the Philippines and more. And in a recent news story, an entire island in Panama was evacuated due to rising water levels. As the climate crisis continues unabated, there is likely to be an increase in the number people forced to flee their homes. 

Under the United Nations Refugee Convention, a refugee is someone who has fled their home country due to a well-founded fear of persecution and is unable or unwilling to return for protection.To qualify as a refugee, individuals must demonstrate that their fear of persecution is based on specific factors such as race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.  

An asylum seeker is someone who has arrived in a country and formally requested asylum. Until a decision is made on their refugee status, they remain an asylum seeker. In the UK, asylum seekers do not have the same rights as refugees or British citizens, meaning, for example, that they are not permitted to work.  

Seeking asylum is a legal right available to everyone. It is not illegal to seek asylum, as it is a recognised legal process. Likewise, being refused asylum is not a criminal act – it simply means that the strict criteria required to qualify as a refugee have not been met.  

The key distinction between refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) is whether they cross an international border in search of safety. Refugees leave their home country to escape persecution, war, or violence, seeking refuge beyond national boundaries. In contrast, IDPs are forced to flee their homes due to similar threats but remain within their own country’s borders.  

Many refugees and asylum seekers face severe difficulties once they arrive in the UK. Unable to work or support themselves, many struggle for basics such as food and shelter. families struggle to survive on just £5.84 a day. Some of the key issues they encounter are the possibility of detention, living in destitution and contending with negative stereotypes/

Most of those who are granted asylum are given leave to remain for only five years, making it difficult for them to make decisions about their future, including finding work and making definite plans for their life in the UK while it remains unsafe for them to return to the country they escaped from. 

On June 17, 2026, the EU passed a new “Return Regulation”, which will bring much more severe  ‘remigration’ enforcement across the continent, allowing states to refuse, mistreat and deport people seeking refuge in Europe. 

As fellow humans we have a responsibility to respond to their specific needs in times of crisis. Many of these asylum seekers come to us as a last resort, having exhausted all alternatives, with nowhere else to turn. We should also remember  all those suffering abuse in detention centres and those facing repatriation despite the dangers that they face.  

Refugees endure numerous hardships, from the trauma of displacement to difficulties accessing vital resources and adjusting to new communities. These challenges span immediate concerns, such as securing shelter and food, to long-term struggles like language barriers, unemployment, and mental health issues. 

For more than 41 million refugees today, the right to seek safety is a lifeline. It can mean the difference between life and death. In an unpredictable world, it is a promise that must be protected.

 Refugees are too often spoken of only as victims. Yet their journeys are also journeys of resilience, resourcefulness and hope. Every displaced person carries a story of loss, but also of extraordinary resilience. We should  not see as a burden, but as our brothers or sisters. 

Solidarity is not charity from a distance; it’s the recognition that none of us is safe until everyone is safe. We should  urge governments to uphold the letter and the spirit of the Refugee Convention.

States should  respect their obligations under the 1951 Convention and translate them into concrete policies of protection, not deterrence. 

As long as people are forced to flee, our collective responsibility remains. Statistics from Amnesty International  show that many refugees who have fled conflict, persecution, hostile environment  or disease remain in volatile conditions. Even refugees who sought a better life and made the extremely dangerous journey to Europe face open hostility and daily injustices. Refugees stranded in camps and at borders have been challenged more than ever before with the toughest of living conditions and a hostile reception at international borders.
Nothing can be more heartbreaking than having to flee the place you have been born and brought up in, 70 million people are currently displaced from their homes on account of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations, of these, approximately 25 million are refugees, over half of whom are children under the age of 18, having being forced to  leave their home country and  take perilous journeys to cross international and national boundaries in search of safety elsewhere. 

A far larger number of people are displaced within their own country (internally displaced) or displaced for reasons which go beyond persecution and conflict, including drought, hunger, environmental disasters and the effects of climate change. In this context, World Refugee Day takes on ever-greater importance as a point in the year to remember, learn more about and explore ways of addressing the situation of refugees and other forcibly displaced persons.
The persecution of refugees continues, whipped up by forces of racism spreading fear and misinformation. As continuing tragedy unfolds, some of the countries most able to help are shutting their gates to people seeking asylum. Borders are closing, push backs are increasing, and hostility is rising. Avenues for legitimate escape are fading away.

Since the beginnings of civilization, we have treated refugees as deserving of our protection. Whatever our differences, we have to recognise our fundamental human obligation to shelter those fleeing from war and persecution. It is time to stop hiding behind misleading words. 

Richer nations must acknowledge refugees for the victims they are, fleeing from wars they were unable to prevent or stop. History has shown that doing the right thing for victims of war and persecution engenders goodwill and prosperity for generations. And it fosters stability in the long run.

We must remember that arms trade helps exacerbate the crisis, plus  poverty and inequality, war and conflict. Refugees have suffered unimaginable loss, and yet they are filled with the strength to triumph over adversity. The refugee crisis is a human crisis. Their story is our story. We are all human,and together, we can build a better world.We all have an important role in ensuring that refugees have the support they need. When we work together, we can help even more people feel safe from conflict, stay healthy and forge ahead to a better, stronger future.   
Today and tomorrow we must continue to stand up for refugees. We must and play our part in continuing to challenge the injustices and inequalities that fuel and helps further exacerbate this ongoing crisis, and promote a better understanding of why people seek sanctuary. It is vital more than ever that we  ensure that people seeking refugee protection remain visible and heard and are welcomed.  to provide an important opportunity for asylum seekers and refugees to be seen, listened to and valued.

We must continue to offer our love , solidarity, tolerance, warm welcome and friendship  to refugees who daily have to struggle, many of whom left feeling traumatised and marginalised. Refugees are ordinary people to whom extraordinary and often very horrible things have happened. 

The world needs to renew its commitment now to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its principles that made us strong. To offer safe harbor, both in our own countries and in the epicentres of the crises, and to help refugees restore their lives, and allow their voices to remain visible and heard, build  bridges not more obstacles or borders.It is in solidarity, hope and the recognition of our shared humanity that we continue to defend the 1951 Refugee Convention, especially on its 75th anniversary.

I support free movement and equal rights for all.  We should support the rights and dignity  of those  escaping persecution, war,  fleeing in fear, escaping danger, in search of safety, a better future. It is  essential that we offer a safe have for desperate refugees, offering them protection and dignity.

Imagine a world free of borders, it's easy if you try, the sky has none, there is only one world. no borders are necessary.No human is illegal.

 “Solidarity is the concrete recognition that the future of each individual is connected to the future of all”. – Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas (paragraph 73)

Denounced - persecuted - exiled - dispersed -   

Refused - sectioned - detained - certified -  

Wherever they seek shelter  

They should be able to call home  

Having escaped dark shadows  

Having travelled through great adversity 

 Seeking safe harbour, 

 

All should be given warm welcome  

Asylum not stigmatisation  

Protection not shame 

Dignity not criminalisation  

Breathe again, beyond pain and grief  

No Borders are necessary.

We are all Marcos

 “Marcos is gay in San Francisco; Black in South Africa; Asian in Europe; Chicano in San Isidro; anarchist in Spain; Palestinian in Israel; Indigenous in the streets of San Cristóbal; a gang kid in Neza; a rocker in CU; Jewish in Nazi Germany; an ombudsman in Sedena; a feminist within political parties; a communist after the Cold War; a prisoner in Cintalapa; a pacifist in Bosnia; Mapuche in the Andes; a teacher in the CNTE; an artist without a gallery or representation; a housewife on a Saturday night in any neighbourhood of any city in any Mexico; a guerrilla in Mexico at the end of the twentieth century; a striker in the CTM; a reporter writing filler stories for the inside pages; a macho man within the feminist movement; a woman alone on the metro at 10 p.m.; a bored pensioner in the Zócalo; a landless peasant; a marginal publisher; an unemployed worker; a doctor without a job; a nonconformist student; a dissident under neoliberalism; a writer without books or readers; and, of course, a Zapatista in southeastern Mexico."

"Marcos is all the rejected and oppressed minorities, resisting, rising up, shouting ‘¡Ya basta!’ – ‘Enough!’ All the minorities when it is time to speak, and the majorities when it is time to remain silent and endure. All the rejected searching for a word, their own word, the one that will restore the majority to us, the eternally fragmented. Everything that disturbs power and the good consciences, that is Marcos. And for that reason, all of us who struggle for a different world, for freedom and the emancipation of humanity, all of us are Marcos.”  

Subcomandante Marcos

Within the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, the clandestine Mexican movement rooted in anti-capitalist, Indigenous and anarchist ideas, there are around 76 commanders, but only one subcommander.  

The subcommander is the highest position in the hierarchy, despite the name, which refers to the fact that he stands below the people, who are considered the highest authority.  

Subcomandante Marcos, spokesperson and 'anti-leader' of the Zapatistas, has become a 'postmodern Che Guevara,' as one journalist put it. Known for his trademark ski mask and pipe and for his charismatic personality, though his identity was never definitively established.

The goal of the EZLN, which operated in the Chiapas region of Mexico, was to achieve a new social relationship by creating an anti-capitalist participatory democracy. It also defended the individual and collective rights of Mexico's indigenous peoples.

Chiapas, with a large indigenous Mayan population, is one of Mexico's poorest states despite rich natural resources. The Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz García, whose views were informed by liberation theology, sent catechists to teach both the Gospel and to call for social change among the indigenous communities and the mestizo immigrants from other regions of Mexico. It was in this poor, somewhat politicized indigenous population that the EZLN built its organization with tacit support from many of the Catholic catechists.

Marcos coordinated the EZLN's 1994 uprising, headed up the subsequent peace negotiations, and played a prominent role throughout the Zapatistas' struggle in the following decades. After the ceasefire the government declared on day 12 of the revolt, the Zapatistas transitioned from revolutionary guerrillas to an armed social movement, with Marcos's role transitioning from military strategist to public relations strategist. 

He became the Zapatistas' spokesperson and interface with the public, penning communiqués, holding press conferences, hosting gatherings, granting interviews, delivering speeches, devising plebiscites, organizing marches, orchestrating campaigns, and twice touring Mexico, all to attract national and international media attention and public support for the Zapatistas. and  became an  icon of the global anti-capitalist struggle .

In 2001, he headed a delegation of Zapatista commanders to Mexico City to deliver their message on promoting indigenous rights before the Mexican Congress, attracting widespread public and media attention. 

In 2006, Marcos made another public tour of Mexico, which was known as The Other Campaign.

 According to the Mexican government, he is Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, born on 19 June 1957. in Tampico, Tamaulipas, to Alfonso Guillén and Maria del Socorro Vicente.

He was the fourth of eight children. A former elementary school teacher, Alfonso owned a local chain of furniture stores, and the family is usually described as middle-class.n a 2001 interview with Gabriel García Márquez and Roberto Pombo, Guillén described his upbringing as middle class and "without financial difficulties," and said his parents fostered a love for language and reading in their children.

While still "very young", Guillén came to know of and admire Che Guevara—an admiration that would persist throughout his adulthood.

Guillén attended high school at the Instituto Cultural Tampico, a Jesuit school in Tampico.He studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) during a time when the Marxism of Louis Althusser was popular, which is reflected in Guillén's thesis.

He began teaching at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) while finishing his dissertation at the UNAM, and somewhere during this time was introduced to the Forces of National Liberation (FLN).

Several key members of the FLN's Chiapas arm, which later became the EZLN, were employed at the UAM.

In 1984, he abandoned his academic career in the capital and left for the mountains of Chiapas to convince the poor, indigenous Mayan population to organize and launch a proletarian revolution against the Mexican bourgeoisie and the federal government.

After hearing his proposition, the Chiapanecans "just stared at him," and replied that they were not urban workers, and that from their perspective the land was not property, but the heart of the community.

Debate exists as to whether Marcos visited Nicaragua in the years soon following the Sandinista Revolution that took place there in 1979, and, if he did, how many times and in what capacity. He is rumored to have done so, although no official documents (for example, immigration records) have been discovered to attest to this. 

Nick Henck argues that Guillén "may have journeyed" to Nicaragua, although to him the evidence appears "circumstantial."

Guillén's sister Mercedes Guillén Vicente was the Attorney General of the State of Tamaulipas from 2005 to 2006, and an influential member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

In a 2006 interview, Marcos stated that the Zapatista movement did not seek to take political power in Mexico, but rather to legitimise popular and Indigenous demands through forms of self-government. 

In  it's  history  s the Zapatistas established their autonomous communities, engaged in attempts to build a national indigenous movement, and carried out political propaganda against capitalism through their "Other Campaign,” it was Subcomandante Marcos who acted as the group's spokesperson. 

Since the Zapatistas' political decision-making processes are not transparent, one presumes that Marcos played a central role in shaping the EZLN's autarkic and sectarian strategy that rejected not only Mexico's corrupt political system and parties, but also coalitions and alliances with others on the Mexican left.

Marcos’s great communicative ability was also expressed through his writing. His political activity extended into literature as well. Marcos is a prolific writer whose considerable literary talents have been widely acknowledged by prominent writers and intellectuals, with hundreds of communiqués and several books being attributed to him. 

Most of his writings are anti-capitalist while advocating for indigenous people's rights. He was the creator of Old Antonio and Don Durito of the Lacandon Jungle, characters representing Indigenous culture and Western culture respectively. 

He has also written poetry, children's stories, and folktales and co-authored a crime novel. He has been hailed by Régis Debray as "the best Latin American writer today." Published translations of his writings exist in at least 14 languages.

His iconic phrase—"We are all Marcos"—is the foundation of his philosophy on collective identity, emphasizing that his mask represents every marginalized, voiceless person in the struggle for justice.

Making his first public statement in five years, in May 2014 Marcos denied claims that he was either in ill health, had died, or had been displaced or purged by the EZLN. From now on, he said, he would be known as “insurgent subcomandante Galeano,” taking his new name from  his  comrade José Luis Solis López, better known as “Galeano,” a Zapatista militant assassinated by a paramilitary group on May 2 in the autonomous Zapatista town of La Realidad. He stated that the persona of Subcomandante Marcos had been "a hologram" and no longer existed.

In stepping down, Marcos pointed to demographic changes in the thirty-year old organization as new younger, indigenous leaders stepped forward replacing an older largely mestizo leadership, several of whom came out of the student and guerrilla struggles of the 1970s and 1980s. 

Here are some further  thoughts from Subcomandante Marcos to reflect upon.His words have always bought me comfort and have been a source of much inspiration. Another world is not only possible it is inevitable.

" What do we have to ask forgiveness for? What are we going to be forgiven for? Who has to ask for forgiveness and who can grant it?"  

"If we remained silent, we would die. Without words, we would not exist. We fight to speak out against oblivion, against death, for memory and for life. We fight out of fear of dying the death of oblivion...it is necessary to create a new world. A world where many worlds fit, where all worlds fit."

"I am who I am and you are who you are. Let's build a world where I can be myself without ceasing to be me, where you can be yourself without ceasing to be you, and where neither you nor I force the other to be like me or like you."

"Love is like a teacup that every day falls to the ground and breaks to pieces. In the morning the pieces are gathered and with a little moisture and a little warmth, the pieces are glued together, and again there is a little teacup. He who is in love spends life fearing that the terrible day will come when the teacup is so broken that it can no longer mended."

"In our dreams we have seen another world, an honest world, a world decidedly more fair than the one in which we now live. We saw that in this world there was no need for armies; peace, justice and liberty were so common that no one talked about them as far-off concepts, but as things such as bread, birds, air, water, like book and voice. "  

 "History is nothing more than scribbles that men and women write on the ground of time. Power writes its scribble, praises it as sublime writing, and worships it as the only truth. The mediocre merely read the scribbles. The fighter spends his time scribbling on pages. The excluded don't know how to write...yet."

Subcomandante Marcos