ALEIDA GUEVARA, daughter of Che, leading a packed hall in singing the Internationale.

Diplomats from Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia assessing the impact of Trump’s trade wars and mass deportations on Latin America. Break-out sessions looking at the continent’s place in black liberation, the new cold war and the rise of the global South. 

The annual Adelante! conference, held in the National Education Union’s Hamilton House HQ yesterday, was as inspirational and intellectually stimulating as ever, and larger than ever before — with the audience filling overflow rooms as well as the main Mander Hall for the plenary sessions.

Now in its 20th year, Adelante! is the largest conference of its kind in Europe. Built up through close co-operation between campaigns in solidarity with Latin American revolutions such as Cuba’s, Venezuela’s and Nicaragua’s, its ability to platform ambassadors, political activists and academics from around the world make it uniquely informative. 

Its alternation between rallies and seminars gives attendees an impressive choice of sessions, deep dives into the political dilemmas facing particular countries (Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela featured on Saturday), into the history of solidarity and decolonisation (such as the 50th anniversary of Cuba’s military assistance to Angola in resisting imperialism, which eventually contributed hugely to the fall of apartheid South Africa) and into broader themes from the role of the IMF on the continent to the climate crisis. As usual, the only problem was having to choose.

Understandably the shadow of Donald Trump hung over the conference. The new US president’s first moves have targeted neighbours, not least through what Colombia’s consul-general Irene Velez Torres pointed out was “the greatest deportation in the history of the United States.

“In less than three weeks thousands of people have been sent back to Latin America. Mexico has received in a couple of weeks more than 4,000, followed by Colombia and Guatemala.

“It’s been Latin American countries that have been speaking for the respect for the human rights of those migrants.

“Are migrants criminals? As our President Gustavo Petro has said, no-one is illegal.” Dr Velez noted the contradiction between the anti-migrant policies of the Trump government, likely to be imitated across the West, and its indifference to global warming and ecological collapse, which in many regions drive refugee flows.

Speakers beginning with former CND general secretary Kate Hudson highlighted the extremism of the Trump agenda: “getting rid of all collective bargaining, getting rid of diversity, equality and inclusion policies, stripping employment protections, dismantling health and education provision.”

Trump’s administration, with its 13 billionaires set to take up government posts, is the richest in history and the most nakedly dedicated to advancing the corporate interests of a tiny handful of grotesquely rich men.

Trump showed the US had “reached the end of the road with liberal imperialism, its mesh of formalities and institutions, and is entering a new phase,” she argued, but one likely to prove more dangerous than ever, as his open plans for ethnic cleansing in Gaza and encouragement of Israel’s annexation of the West Bank show.

But “terrible though these developments are, they are not the result of strength but of the decline of the US and imperialism.” Hudson said the world was divided in two: between Trump and the global far right, and between “Gaza and the global majority who support it. That’s why the mobilisations for Gaza are so remarkable: they stand for humanity and all our freedoms.”

Trump’s undisguised aggression and open demands for other countries’ territory and resources help expose the lie that the US and its allies maintain a “rules-based international order.”

Venezuelan chargé d’affaires Felix Placencia (our government refuses to accredit the country’s representative as ambassador because it won’t recognise Venezuela’s elected government — the same reason 31 tons of Venezuelan gold are still held against the country’s wishes in the Bank of England), speaking of the economic war waged on his country by the US, EU and Britain, stressed how important it is not to ape the pseudo-legal language used by powerful states to pretend their acts of bullying are lawful.

Venezuela is not subject to sanctions, but unilateral acts of economic coercion. “Sanctions are imposed by the United Nations or its security council. Not by individual governments,” he pointed out, noting that Venezuela’s income from oil exports — the majority of its foreign revenues — had been cut by 99 per cent in six years to 2020, as a result of the economic war announced by Barack Obama in 2014 when he declared it an extraordinary threat to the United States, intensified by every government since.

Cuban ambassador Ismara Vargas Walter called for Latin American unity. “We gather at a moment when our region faces enduring challenges and unprecedented opportunities,” she declared.

“History and current events intertwine, urging us to reflect on the legacy of external interference and reaffirm our commitment to sovereignty, justice and unity.”

Latin America had struggled for independence against “more than two centuries of unilateralism. The Monroe Doctrine is not a thing of the past,” she stressed, saying Cuba regretted “actions that continue to undermine our collective agency. 

“Our experience shows that even when external forces seek to divide and weaken us, the bonds of regional solidarity can prevail. Today we call on all nations of Latin America to reject policies that place narrow interests above common ones.”

Standing up to Trump is a mission that must embrace the whole world, the working classes of the West as well as a global South whose rise offers hope of ending not just US world domination, but five centuries in which European empires and successor settler states have looted and impoverished the majority of people and countries worldwide.

The rise of the far right and anti-immigrant hysteria are menaces we have to confront, as Jeremy Corbyn said in the day’s final address, but there are signs of hope everywhere too, from the immense movement in solidarity with Palestine here, to the inspirational revolutions of Latin America and the increasingly confident challenges to Western control from west Africa to China.

Resistance is about economic independence and justice, but is also an assertion of peoples and cultures who refuse to be erased, as the Cuban ambassador declared.

Fitting then that Aleida Guevara, having spoken at multiple sessions that day and over an action-packed week of appearances across Britain, admitted at the final plenary she had said all she wanted on politics already: instead taking us through a poem by Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti — Yugo y Estrella, the Yoke and the Star — before beginning to sing the Internationale. Within a few bars the hall was standing, fists raised, joining in.