A Dawn that Must Break in the Face of the Western Dusk

Xul Solar (Argentina), Drago, 1927.

Greetings from the Nuestra America Office of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Last May 9, Moscow prepared to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the heroic victory of the Red Army over Nazism. Beyond the historical importance, the most interesting spice for the current times was the political unity shown in this event by the governments of China and Russia, with a strongly critical stance towards the West and by recovering a common history and narrative for the construction of a new world based on the defeat of that barbaric project. The presence of Presidents Lula Da Silva, Nicolás Maduro, Miguel Díaz-Canel and other leaders from different regions completed the outlook of what is just a sample of the acceleration of historical times in the transition of global hegemony.

It is precisely the commitment to multipolarity by the peoples of the Global South through sovereign political projects that is accelerating the transition. Although the process of change in the global order has been going on for several decades, in recent months the pace of change has been dizzying for several reasons. First of all, the economic decline of the West does not seem to have a solution. Donald Trump’s tariff policy is not having the expected results. U.S. industry is subject to the rule of finance and the Silicon Valley Consensus. This leads to a constant attempt to revitalize the economy through speculative bubbles, following the suggestions once put forward by Alan Greenspan. Thus, in terms of production, the West has nothing to offer. The BRICS+ group of countries today produce 40% of the world’s product and include 45% of the world’s population. Moreover, the BRICS+ trade, infrastructure, investment and financial agreements with other countries in the Global South involve almost all of the world’s raw material and food-producing regions. Therefore, in the face of a Global South centered in the East with a productive and inclusive means of development, the West continues to bet on financialization that only offers the peoples of the South the precariousness of life, scarcity of goods, instability and shameful inequality.

Ebony G. Patterson (Jamaica), ...they stood in a time of unknowing… for those who bear/bare witness, 2017.

Secondly, we are witnessing a moment of accelerated dissolution of the Western cultural project. The enlightenment that accompanied the birth of the Western capitalist project gave way to anti-scientific societal projects, based on apathy or fanaticism of various kinds. The West seems to oscillate between zombie neoliberalism and the construction of dismembered societies, with a sharp break of the social bond. In light of this, people suffer constant frustration as the only result of living in societies that do not contain them. In the face of this dehumanizing project, the Global South shows paths of hope based on the articulation of human knowledge and technology, economic modernization with humanity at the center and political cooperation for peace in the face of the growing and unabashed belligerence of NATO, as we laid out precisely in our last Dossier in collaboration with the Zetkin Forum.

Undoubtedly, the consolidation and expansion of the BRICS+ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) is a central phenomenon in this acceleration of the ongoing reconfiguration of the world order. Because we will not cease to repeat it, multipolarity is a project for which the peoples of the Global South must fight and not a stage already reached. This political and economic articulation of the BRICS+, especially from the agenda set out in Kazan, as Isabel Rauber has developed it, better conditions emerge for the Global South as a whole to carry forward an agenda of sovereign development, with economic cooperation that allows breaking the links of historical dependence with the Global North that have been expressed through unequal exchange, capital flight, dependence on foreign capital and the super-exploitation of labor to ensure the operation of the expansionary machine of global imperialism.

Taller 4 Rojo (Colombia), Vietnam o agresión del imperialismo a los pueblos [Vietnam or Imperialism’s Aggression Against the People], 1972.

Let’s take some aspects of BRICS+ that help think about the construction of the multipolar project for the Global South (see our Dossier 78).

1. Today, as we have said, most global trade takes place on the South-South axis. Although China’s trade with Europe and the United States continues to be important, these percentages are decreasing year by year. That is why a central topic of ongoing discussion, central at the recent BRICS+ meeting in Kazan, is the possibility to displace the dollar in trade among Global South countries. This is a very important bet and responds not only to a political need but also to a material reality: the world reference currency cannot be the currency of a country that is not the most productive in global terms and, at the same time, does not alone represent most of the global trade volume. This discussion has been developed in detail in the second volume of Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横). Discussed here are the possibility of a common BRICS+ currency and the formation of a basket of currencies, among other alternatives. The best strategy for implementing a change in the financial architecture and replacing the dollar is still a debate, but acceleration is also seen at this point with China rapidly and steadily divesting from U.S. Treasury bonds.
   De-dollarization opens very important possibilities for the Global South and, in particular, for Latin America where dependence is expressed in the constant need to “produce” dollars to stabilize national economies. This only leads to over-indebtedness, of which the most embarrassing example is the Argentine government of Javier Milei.
2. For its part, an important debate is how to finance human-centered, sovereign development strategies. In this dimension, BRICS’s New Development Bank (NDB) established in 2015 is one of the institutions of greatest concrete importance when thinking about the contribution that this grouping of Global South economies provides. While the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank play at being the guarantors of the Western financialization process, the NBD has already developed infrastructure and sustainable development projects for more than 30 billion dollars. What is most interesting is that this institution sets among its priorities and strategic tasks the financing in the Global South of projects in Transportation Infrastructure; Clean Energy and Energy Efficiency; Water and Sanitation; Environmental Protection; Digital Infrastructure; Local Currency Financing and Emergency Response. These elements mark an abysmal distance from the objectives of the IMF as a guarantor of the austerity and poverty strategy for the peoples of the South.
   In addition, the appointment of former President Dilma Rousseff’s presidency of this organization in 2023 is undoubtedly excellent news for our region. Of course, the agenda and initiatives must be built by our peoples and their governments, since it is not necessarily a natural consequence that the presence of a financing institution produces a structural change.

Nazca Lines (Peru), Knife-wielding Orca, 22 meters, geoglyph. Yamagata University Institute of Nasca. Discovered with drones and AI.

3. The last aspect we would like to point out is the technological one. Today, the challenge to U.S. hegemony and the acceleration of the transition occurs because the BRICS+ countries, particularly China, have the capacity to compete with the West on the technological frontier. To a large extent, there are areas such as the entire chain of renewable energies where competition is effectively impossible for the West. In an interesting text, Gabriel Merino, a researcher and friend of our institute, develops how the BRICS+, with China at the forefront, have redefined the dispute for the control of cutting-edge technologies. The process of techno-productive change being carried out by this group of countries allows for progress in Technology Transfer and Development, offering alternatives to Western technological monopolies. As for Digital Infrastructure and Connectivity, especially with China’s investment through initiatives such as the Belt and Road, it contributes to closing the digital divide in many regions of the Global South. Finally, there is a challenge to hegemonic intellectual property, given that the “political insubordination” of the BRICS+ is in search for models of innovation and access to technology that are not completely subject to the intellectual property logics of the Global North. This is a very interesting aspect to deepen our South-South cooperation agendas.

For these reasons, for Latin America and the Global South as a whole, the multipolar world project has in BRICS+ a player of main importance. As we pointed out in Dossier 51, multipolarity appears as an opportunity for the region. The decline of U.S. hegemony and the presence of a group of countries that pose a real alternative to Western barbarism, opens new possibilities to rediscuss our sovereign development agenda once and for all.

Greetings to all,

Emiliano López

ps// In this June edition, we want to make several recommendations. First, as a tribute to the birthday of Comandante Che Guevara we suggest the reading of two books: the first one, published by the International Union of Left Publishers and compiled by our Director Vijay Prashad entitled “Che / Ernesto Guevara” (2020); the second one, published by Batalla de Ideas, entitled “Che Guevara. Los valores que me enseñó mi padre” (2023), written by one of Che’s daughters, Aleida Guevara March, for children.

We would also like to recommend the most recent book published by La Trocha Editorial of Chile, entitled “Decolonizing the Palestinian Mind” (2024), written by Haidar Eid, prefaced by Daniel Jadue, and translated by Lu Barcenilla. This book was written from a series of audios sent by the author via WhatsApp, after his building in Gaza was bombed by Israeli forces and he had to flee with his family to the city of Rafah.

Likewise, we would like to invite you to the International Seminar “Frantz Fanon: Militancy and Liberation (1925-2025)” to be held in the city of Caracas on June 26 and 27, as part of the celebration of the centenary of Frantz Fanon, convened by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Romulo Gallegos (CELARG). Those interested in registering should visit CELARG’s web page: https://www.celarg.org.ve/.

Emiliano is a militant, researcher, and professor. Since 2004, he has been active in various political movements and spaces linked to labor organising and political education within popular movements.