Pan-American Congress Against Advance of Fascism Held in Mexico City

This article by Andrea Becerril originally appeared in the August 2, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

At the start of the 2025 Pan American Congress, legislators from various countries across the continent and Mexican officials called for concrete commitments to confront the right-wing shift and fascism that is advancing worldwide. They agreed that they must speak out in defense of migrants and demand an end to the genocide in Palestine.

“It is urgent to build a viable option for the peoples of the region, to move ever closer to overcoming the culture of privilege, in a time of enormous uncertainty, where we don’t know exactly what will happen the next day,” stressed the head of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), Alicia Bárcena, during the opening of the meeting, attended by progressive legislators from the United States and Latin America.

There were calls for self-criticism, including from Alejandro Encinas, a Mexico City government official, who warned that the time was opportune not only to share experiences but also to reflect on where we have failed. “It is necessary,” he emphasized, “to acknowledge errors and even deviations in leftist governments, which, due to inefficiency and even corruption, have allowed, in certain parts of the American continent, where dictatorships had been eradicated, to now return to governments with authoritarian tendencies and xenophobic attitudes.”

Senate President Gerardo Fernández Noroña also highlighted the impressive rise of fascism. He alluded to the deportation of migrants in the United States, who are also subjected to unjust and infamous persecution, despite having worked in the neighboring country for decades. They are sent to a type of prison that was banned after World War II, the alligator-ridden Alcatraz.

“Another face of fascism,” he emphasized, “is the enormous suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people. It is inconceivable that such barbarity is happening before our eyes in the 21st century. We see how they murder the civilian population and destroy schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and places that are sacred to the people.”

“The most brutal and infamous part is the starvation of children, the entire Palestinian population, with an inconceivable level of cruelty, with the State of Israel’s determination to expel or liquidate the Palestinian people in order to seize their land.”

“Faced with this, we must break the silence, raise our voices, and say enough to this barbaric aggression,” Fernández Noroña insisted.

Likewise, the head of Semarnat, Alicia Bárcena, deplored the return of the arms race, the imposition of factional, geopolitical interests, shameful and shameless, and the naked rule of force. In this context, she added, the genocide in Gaza is a tragedy for our civilization and the entire world, and we cannot remain indifferent, nor can we remain indifferent to environmental devastation.

In a similar vein, Colombia’s Deputy Minister of Multilateral Affairs, Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir, warned that the current situation in Gaza is a tragedy that endangers the self-determination of peoples, and that countries in the global south must be called upon to go beyond recognizing the existence of the Palestinian state and severing relations with Israel.

Delia Catalina Ramírez, a member of the United States House of Representatives, believed it was necessary for progressive legislators on the continent to take up the defense of migrants, whose work has made the nation a world power. She added that it is necessary to build bonds of brotherhood and fight for freedom for everyone, and that also means freedom for Palestine.