Help Narco News Continue to “Brush History Against the Grain”

A Letter to Readers from Juan Trujillo in Mexico City

By Juan Trujillo
Correspondent, The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign

October 25, 2006

Dear readers of the five continents,

As you well know, in this current political and social geography of America Latina, we are living through moments that can be defined has historic. They are moments of reorganization, of change, of transformation, of revitalization, of hope and of revolution that encompass great dimensions of space and time.

It is rare that we are able to perceive the initiation, continuation and course of these processes in the heat of present events. These events break many theoretical/analytical structures, as well as others of a practical and empirical nature. We are in the presence of movements and human energy that must be analyzed through a new viewpoint, though without abandoning critical thought.

What we do in these pages of Narco News is review, listen, observe, smell and “brush history against the grain,” as Walter Benjamin would say. It is a history being woven with collective actors front and center: the exploited, the excluded, the people from below who rebel and resist the domination of capitalist modernity that turns everything into a commodity, that dehumanizes men and women without giving a thought to the degree of barbarity that results. The history of the present that we want to continue narrating is that of the “oppressed but not defeated,” as Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Bolivian sociologist and Narco News School of Authentic Journalism professor, says. It is the history of those others who seek ears, shoulders, and hearts.

In these times that seem to both last long and to fly by, it is essential to communicate, explain, narrate and report.

With your help, we will continue – from north to south, from east to west, and from below – with this noble vocation. Your support, as small as it may be, will help us to continue walking.

Make your donation online via this website:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or send a check, made out to “The Fund for Authentic Journalism,” to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 241
Natick, MA 01760

Regards, and thanks in advance,

Juan Trujillo
Mexico City Correspondent
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign

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