Colombia-FARC peace talks: 5 ways the Left lives on in Latin America

If FARC-Colombia peace talks are successful, it would bring to an end one of the world's longest standing conflicts. And it is a reminder of how hardcore leftist political ideology lives on in Latin America, long after the close of the cold war. Here are five lasting examples:

Cuba

Cuba is the only Communist country in Latin America, and its move to a one-party system after the Cuban Revolution in 1959 set the stage for hostile US relations that endure today.  While the Communist Party of Cuba had been active in the island nation since the 1920s, the current party makeup was organized by Fidel Castro in 1965. The system has persisted despite 50 years of embargo put in place by the US. Cuba was buoyed by the Soviet Union until its demise in 1991, underwent severe economic hardship through the '90s, and today receives support from Venezuela. While other political parties exist in Cuba, it remains a one-party system with elections that are considered a rubber stamp.

Fidel Castro headed the nation for half a century, until permanently ceding power to his brother in 2008 due to illness (he was head of the Communist Party until April 2011). Raul Castro, considered the more pragmatic of the two brothers, has implemented a series of economic reforms since taking power to revive the ailing economy, including allowing more Cubans to start their own businesses. But while Cubans and Cuba observers have hailed this economic opening, there has been no sign that political freedom will follow.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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