They militarize, we organize!
Protesters in Roosevelt Square, São Paulo, Brazil, participate in the Global March for Palestine on June 10, 2025. The demonstration was part of a worldwide show of support for Gaza and demanded the severing of diplomatic relations between Brazil and Israel. Photo © Bia Borges.
Opinion • Ojalá Editorial Collective with photos by Bia Borges • 25 de julio, 2025 • Leer en castellano
We are living in times of heightened attack and anguish. We’re taking this opportunity—as we prepare to take a two-week, mid-year break—to reflect on the past months. We do so with the knowledge that hard-earned wisdom earned in previous struggles can help light the way forward—Eds.
Twenty-five years ago, among other struggles in Latin America, we were fighting against the privatization of public and collectively managed spaces and institutions. Together, we set limits on what capital could and could not do. We assembled, as in Cochabamba’s water war, threads of a “common sense of dissidence” that pushed for the reappropriation and social sovereignty over all manner of goods.
Those dissident boundaries faded over time as various forms of state-led progressivism made nationalist projects out of the work of grassroots movements and imposed strict party rule. The aspirations of movements were also diluted by right-wing governments, which went on the offensive.
Now, it seems, everything is under attack.
Donald Trump, Nayib Bukele, Daniel Noboa, and Javier Milei are its noisiest spokesmen on the American front. According to them, absolutely everything is, and must be, for sale. But what is emerging goes far beyond a neoliberal privatization program.
We are experiencing an unprecedented surge of militarism, as we behold the exponential acceleration of cruelty and contempt for people, our lands, and the fabric of life as a whole.
We have seen, through the course of this year, the constellation of struggles in resistance led by diverse coalitions and rebellious bodies in defense of their lives and desires, being encircled and besieged by a climate of aggression, cynicism, and escalating violence. Forms of domination, exploitation, and control that seemed of bygone eras are raising their heads once again.
At Ojalá, we know that these times call for deep reflection: both in understanding the changes underway, while also staying abreast of the dynamics and practices of organized resistance in favor of collective life.
Connection building, rehearsing ideas together, sharing information, and making space for diverse perspectives on what is happening: that is how we work to nurture the networks of mutual aid required to navigate the torrent of brutalities that has been unleashed.
People gathered on Paulista Avenue, São Paulo, Brazil, burn an effigy of Donald Trump during a protest against Congress on July 10, 2025. Demonstrators denounced measures including as administrative reform, cuts in social policies, and tariff increases on Brazilian products announced by the Trump administration, which reignited local debates around sovereignty and economic dependence. Photo © Bia Borges.
On social movements
Struggle and resistance movements across the Americas have held their ground despite increasingly adverse conditions. Community land defense is ongoing, while its protagonists face armed violence and forced disappearance.
In Mexico, communities are fighting oil polľution in Veracruz, illegal logging in the State of Mexico, mining in Nuevo León, exploitative tourism on the Oaxacan coast, the militarization of the Rio Bravo, and counterinsurgency in Chiapas.
In Guatemala, the criminalization of community authorities and the assassination of prominent land defenders continue. This is also the case in Argentina, where the Mapuche and Tehuelche peoples continue to protect their ancestral territory as they have done for over a century, in a context in which the Milei regime wages a war against journalists.
Far-right governments have imposed the traditional gender binary as part of their agenda, fueling hatred and endangering the lives of transgender people. In Argentina, this has strengthened alliances between social sectors affected by the neoliberal measures, including workers, pensioners, and the LGBTQIA+ community.
Also present is the struggle of parents against disappearances and murders of their children. Disappearance continues to be used to sow terror and fear.
These tactics are also being deployed in countries where war isn’t being waged in its most brutal form, such as Chile, where the disappearances of Julia Chuñil and María Ignacia González Torres continue to cause deep anguish.
Student strikes have reappeared as growing discontent among young people proliferates, refusing to remain silent in the face of increasing expropriation, gentrification, and touristification in their cities and towns. Demonstrations for Palestine continue to be sustained across the continent, just as support for Palestinian families within and outside of Gaza is maintained.
Nor has the organization of women and dissidents waned. In addition to fighting all forms of violence, these movements are reconfiguring themselves to respond to new challenges in their contexts: the threat of state capture in Mexico and Venezuela, and heightened economic precariousness and increasing difficulty in sustaining social reproduction in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Uruguay.
Students, family members, and members of movements held a rally for justice for Bruna Oliveira da Silva at the University of São Paulo (USP) on April 24, 2025. Oliveira da Silva, who was 28, was a master's student in tourism at USP and the mother of a seven-year-old girl. She was found dead four days after she was disappeared in the Itaquera neighborhood. Brazil ranks fifth worldwide in femicides, reflecting structural violence that continues to claim the lives of women every day. Photo © Bia Borges.
Militarism ≠ security
We find it important to emphasize that when governments talk about security and propose a range of military and police measures, they are not referring to our security and well-being. Rather, they are seeking the armed control of territories.
This armed control takes various forms and is propped up by different narratives: against “migration,” against “drug trafficking,” against “terrorism.” The endgame is generally similar: to create conditions for the plundering, exploitation, and dispossession of different peoples by destroying social and community organization to guarantee capitalist and neocolonial expansion.
Gaza is today the most extreme example of this practice, in its genocidal form. “Basically, there is an air strike every two minutes,” said Palestinian writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada in an interview with Democracy Now! “In any concentration camp in human history, people got more food than they do right now in Gaza.” In recent months, more than 1,000 people, including children, have been killed while seeking food. Most of the population has been displaced and is at risk of starvation.
This murderous project is now in full swing around the globe, at different scales and stages. The Pentagon’s budget has exceeded $1 trillion for the first time this year. In exchange, at least 12 million people in the United States will lose access to healthcare and experience severe cuts to state programs related to education and food access.
In the US, militarization is justified through hatred toward racialized migrants, especially those who have crossed the border from Mexico. The Trump administration has deployed soldiers against protesters organizing against ICE raids in Los Angeles, and there are thousands of active-duty soldiers patrolling the border with Mexico.
As Susana Draper points out, we can understand part of what is happening in the U.S. today as a “reinstatement of supremacist policies” by the regime in response to everything that anti-racist, queer, and feminist movements achieved in the past 15 years.
And militarization is also advancing in countries with governments that are supposedly progressive. Such is the case in Mexico, where a recently passed suite of reforms expands the state’s biometric data collection apparatus and grants the army unprecedented powers to spy on the population as a whole.
On International Workers' Day, protesters march on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo on May 1, 2025, to demand an end to the 6x1 workweek (only one day off per week). The demonstration was organized by the Vida Além do Trabalho (VAT) movement, which is campaigning for a constitutional reform toward a four-day workweek. The bill is stalled in Congress. Photo © Bia Borges.
The long arc of social struggle
In these times, we must forge internationalism that questions the legitimacy of nation-states, which have hardened nationalism by manufacturing crises and promoting free trade as a response to tariff threats.
Some of those protesting the impact of economic impoverishment fail to escape the cage of resurgent nationalism. Instead, we must strive to keep our targets on those actually responsible for these conditions: transnational elites, and political leaders who preach austerity and anti-corruption while diverting public funds toward the armed control of territory.
At Ojalá, we wish to foster this essential act of dialogue, not only through internal reflection and editorials like this one, but also through our commitment to publishing multiple points of view on the current moment. Nurturing a “common sense of dissidence” doesn’t mean conforming our perspectives.
Instead, we propose taking a longer view, pushing beyond the fleeting news cycle and acknowledging that throughout history there have been aggressors who have threatened social justice, as well as people who have fought to restore it.
It was in these dire contexts that resistance movements emerged, and they, with great difficulty and at great cost, secured the hard-won rights that are now under threat. Today, our task is to remember those struggles, reflect on their legacy, and seek to create space for emergence.
Our name, Ojalá, is testament to our shared desire to understand and raise up past and present acts of resistance throughout the region, and continue to hold on to hope in spite of it all.
Photos by Bia Borges
Bia Borges (São Paulo, 1998) is a photojournalist and independent documentary filmmaker. Her work focuses on social movements, feminism, and human rights across Latin America. She currently works in São Paulo, Brazil.
