Rosa Luxemburg Foundation

05/06/2026

What is at stake in Colombia’s presidential runoff?

Four years after Gustavo Petro became Colombia’s first left-wing president, the country is facing a pivotal choice. Will Colombia continue along the path of social reform and peacebuilding, or turn toward a more conservative, security-focused agenda?

In the first round of voting, no candidate secured an outright majority. The presidential race will now be decided in a runoff on 21 June between right-wing lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and left-wing senator Iván Cepeda.

The result will determine whether Colombia continues Petro’s project of expanded social spending and negotiations with armed groups, or embarks on a different political course.

👉 Read the full analysis now: https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/54784/colombia-change-or-restoration

05/06/2026

On , it is worth asking who bears the costs of our built environment. Our new study examines the environmental impacts of cement and construction, particularly in the Global South, and explores sustainable alternatives.

Cement and construction's environmental impact - and how they could become ecologically viable

04/06/2026

, 90 years ago, the Popular Front took office in France.

The coalition of Socialists, Communists, and the Radical Party is often remembered as one of the most influential anti-fascist alliances in European history. Formed in the aftermath of the failed far-right coup attempt of February 1934, it emerged not only through negotiations between party leaders but also through grassroots pressure for left-wing unity against the growing fascist threat.

Following its electoral victory in 1936, the Popular Front government under Léon Blum introduced landmark reforms, including the 40-hour work week and paid holidays. Yet these achievements were not the product of parliamentary politics alone. They were driven by a massive wave of strikes and factory occupations involving up to 1.5 million workers.

But how did the Popular Front emerge? Why was it able to unite forces that had previously been bitter rivals? And what ultimately brought the experiment to an end?

In his short history of the Front populaire, Bernard Schmid revisits the political struggles, social movements, and historical lessons behind one of the defining left-wing governments of the twentieth century. 👉 https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/54830/a-short-history-of-the-popular-front

02/06/2026

Fifty years ago , former Bolivian president Juan José Torres was abducted and murdered in Buenos Aires as part of Operation Condor. Torres (1920–1976) was a Bolivian military officer and politician who served as president of Bolivia from 1970 to 1971. Born into a poor family in Cochabamba, he had roots in the Aymara, an Indigenous people of the Andean regions of Bolivia and Peru.

During the 1960s, Torres emerged as a leading ally of the reformist military leader Alfredo Ovando. Unlike most military rulers in Cold War Latin America, he was associated with the nationalist left and advocated social reform, national sovereignty, and a stronger political role for workers and popular movements.

In October 1970, Torres helped defeat a right-wing coup against Ovando and subsequently assumed the presidency. During his brief time in office, he expanded social programmes, increased state involvement in the economy, and established the Popular Assembly, giving trade unions and social movements a greater voice in politics.

His reforms alarmed conservative sectors at home and abroad. In August 1971, Torres was overthrown by a coup led by the right-wing dictator Hugo Banzer and forced into exile.

On 2 June 1976, he was murdered as part of Operation Condor, the US-backed campaign through which South American dictatorships coordinated the persecution, abduction, and killing of political opponents across borders.

Banzer's regime initially prevented the return of Torres' remains to Bolivia, fearing he could become a symbol of resistance. His body was returned only in 1983, after Bolivia's return to democracy.

01/06/2026

The green economy depends on lithium. But what are the consequences of the global rush for critical minerals? Join Thea Riofrancos as she launches "Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism" and discusses the tensions between climate action, resource extraction, and social justice.

LuXemburg Lecture by Thea Riofrancos

29/05/2026

“When a grave is opened, it is not just about opening an empty space in the earth: it is about opening the record of memory and deliberately tampering with it.” Ali Abu Yassin on war, memory, and the erasure of Palestinian existence in Gaza.

In Gaza, exhuming graves to erase our memory

28/05/2026

Concrete has shaped our world like no other building material, but at immense ecological cost. Our new study examines cement and construction’s environmental impact and asks what a genuinely sustainable alternative could look like.

Cement and construction's environmental impact - and how they could become ecologically viable

27/05/2026

, 100 years ago, the Rif Republic was defeated.
Its history is inseparable from Mohammed Abd el-Krim (1882–1963), a pioneering figure in Morocco’s anti-colonial resistance.
Mao Zedong described him as “the embodiment of a leader of a people’s liberation war,” and Che Guevara visited him in exile in Cairo in 1959. Abd el-Krim united rival Amazigh groups in the Rif Mountains against Spanish colonial rule.

Beginning in 1921, his forces inflicted a series of humiliating defeats on Spain through guerrilla warfare, leading to the establishment of the Rif Republic later that same year.

The republic represented a deeply contradictory form of modernization. Abd el-Krim ruled without a parliament, and Sharia served as the legal framework. At the same time, blood feuds and slavery were abolished, a school system and telephone network were established, and Jewish communities gained greater rights.

In the summer of 1925, the colonial powers struck back. France, which until then had not been directly involved in the war but controlled southern Morocco, joined Spain in a coordinated military campaign. Under the command of Philippe Pétain, later a collaborator with N**i Germany, they launched an air war in which aircraft dropped 10,000 barrels of mustard gas, largely on civilian targets. The chemical weapons had been supplied by German manufacturer Hugo Stoltzenberg.

On 27 May 1926, Abd el-Krim surrendered to French forces. He was exiled to the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and was only allowed to leave for exile in Egypt in 1947.

25/05/2026

in 2020, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by police officer Derek Chauvin.

George Floyd was stopped by police after being accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill. Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, ignoring his repeated cries of “I can’t breathe” as well as the pleas of horrified bystanders begging him to stop. Three other officers kept the crowd back as Chauvin continued to pin Floyd to the ground, even after he became unresponsive. By the time paramedics arrived, George Floyd was dead.

George Floyd’s murder sparked a wave of outrage unlike anything seen in the United States in decades. Tens of millions of people took to the streets, chanting “I can’t breathe” and demanding justice for George Floyd, systemic reform, and an end to police brutality against Black Americans. What began in the United States quickly became a global movement, with solidarity protests in more than 2,000 cities across 60 countries. Black Lives Matter became a worldwide rallying cry against racism.

In a rare case of accountability for fatal police violence, Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder in April 2021. Yet six years later, the fight against racism and systemic injustice continues.

24/05/2026

Jeremy Gilbert argues that neither the Greens nor a renewed Labour Party are likely to offer a fully satisfactory expression of socialist politics in Britain. If the far right is to be stopped, experimenting with new forms of organisation may be necessary.

As Labour reels from electoral collapse, the British left must find a strategy to stop Reform