Perspectives in Times of Change

It was snowing the day in early August when I arrived at Lof Pillan Mahuiza, a Mapuche-Tehuelche community around 60 miles from Esquel, the provincial capital of Chubut, Argentina.

In Latin America, the chair occupies a central and often overlooked place in everyday life. It is present in rural homes and public plazas, inside crowded city schools and at the edges of municipal offices.

Blackness has reshaped the fabric of the Americas. From the Middle Passage to contemporary diasporas, Blackness has constituted a transhemispheric demographic, cultural and historical reality.

On a sweltering, overcast Florida afternoon on July 4th, 2025, about fifty people congregated at a multigenerational Miccosukee Seminole camp, a site rooted in history and cultural significance. Just a quarter of a mile away looms the Dade-Collier Transition and Training Airport, now hauntingly renamed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

“If you can count on waves, time will give you everything,” explains Aitor Francesena Uría, AKA ‘Gallo’ (rooster), when asked about Surf City and El Salvador.

Our modern days mark the end of an era that began in the 15th century. King Henry the Navigator and his Portuguese caravels, joined by the Crown of Castile’s three ships under Christopher Columbus launched the exploration of Africa and America that ultimately led to globalization.

Upstream from Chepe Aleta, following the winding road alongside the river that ends at El Palmarcito, after crossing what Yovani Hernández Ramírez calls the “Puentes de Plata y de Oro” (Silver and Gold Bridges), you arrive at the hamlet of Acahuaspán

Today, El Salvador’s passage from chaos to order relies on a modernization process that weaves a social and productive straw tapestry among Salvadorans as never before—such a tapestry is called “petate” in Central America

Drawing your line on a wave while surfing, your board goes where your eyes go. The Surf City campaign communicated a clear and unequivocal message to the world: El Salvador is now safe.

“El Boyita”—little buoy—is only a couple of years away from coming of age, but his eyes have already seen four murders. They were perpetrated by mareros—gang members—years ago, at a hillside of the Bálsamo—Balm—Coast, near the slum of El Chumpe, in El Salvador.