Marquez, Maradona, Marx and Mathew Kodath: Malayalee links to Latin America

The Malayalees share common passions for the Triple M of Latin America: Marquez, Maradona and Marx. 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “one hundred years of solitude” was the #1 bestseller in Kerala at one time.The influence of Latin American literature in Kerala has been unusually deep and enduring compared to most other parts of India. Writers, translators, political activists, students, and publishers in Kerala have embraced Latin American fiction, poetry, and political thought with remarkable enthusiasm.Malayalam authors discovered in magical realism a form that resembled Kerala’s own storytelling traditions: rooted, local, political, emotional, and mythic at the same time. Malayalees consider O V Vijayan as the Marquez of Kerala.

The poetry of Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz has been  widely translated and discussed in Kerala. Neruda especially became immensely popular because he combined love poetry with revolutionary politics. The People’s Poet’s  poems on workers, miners and common people as well as hisanti-fascist and anti-imperialist themes resonated with Kerala’s Left culture. While in many Indian states, Latin American literature remained as an elite English-reading phenomenon, it entered ordinary vernacular reading culture in Kerala. 

Maradona

Maradona’s visit to Kerala in November 2012, a landmark event in the sports culture of the state, was celebrated with great fervor. The hotel (Blue Nile Hotel) room in which he had stayed in Kannur has become a museum/shrine. Memorabilia including the cutlery and other items he had used, are preserved in the room named as Maradona Suite.  

The Malayalee fascination with Maradona has later passed to Messi and other Latin American players. RivalFans of Argentina and Brazil put up banners, flags and cut outs of players during World Cup games. 

Marxism            

The Left in Kerala had drawn inspiration from the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. During a trip to Munnar in 2014, I saw posters of Che, Castro and Chavez put up in Idukki district in Kerala during a district-level conference of CPM.

           

A Marxist government of Kerala in the past took the initiative and funded the establishment of a Centre For Latin America Studies in the University of Kerala. The Centre has hosted lectures of Cuban diplomats and signed Agreements for cooperation and exchanges with Cuban and other Latin American universities.

Kerala had its first elected communist government in India and the world in 1957. After that the Communists had come to power seven more times till the 2026 election when they performed poorly. Shashi Tharoor, in his article “The Left needs to find a new vocabulary for ‘New India’”, has argued that the decline of the Communists was not just an electoral setback but a deeper ideological and social crisis. Tharoor wrote that the 2026 defeat of the Left Democratic Front might represent the closing of a historical cycle that began with the 1957 Communist victory. He called it a possible “Red Sunset” for Indian Communism. 

In this context, let us see what has happened to the Latin American Left, which has been an inspiration for the Communists in Kerala.  

In Latin America, the Left is alive and kicking, clothed in moderate democratic socialism. Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are ruled by leftist Presidents Luiz Inacio de Lula, Claudia Sheinbaum and Gustavo Petro. 

Lula is in power for the third time after coming out from the corruption scandals and imprisonment. He defeated the pro-Trump rightwing extremist Bolsonaro in the 2022 election. He is contesting in the election in October 2026 trying for an unprecedented fourth time in the Brazilian history of modern times.

The Left came to power for the first time in Mexico in the 2018 election with Lopez Obrador as President. His charisma and Inclusive Development policies had helped the election of his chosen successor Claudia Sheinbaum, who has high approval ratings. She is a pragmatic, sober and mature social democrat. 

Gustvao Petro, who was elected as the first-ever Leftist President of Colombia in 2022, was a member of theurban guerrilla movement M-19 in his youth. When his term ends this month, he is likely to be succeeded by another Leftist Iván Cepeda Castro, who is leading in the poll ratings for the next election due on 31 May 2026. The Left in Colombia had been  marginalized in the last several decades because of the stigma attached to their perceived association with guerilla groups who had waged wars against the governments.The end of thewar withFARC after the 2016 Peace Agreement has sincethenopenedthespace in the political discourse for left-wing movements and leaders.

The Left has been alternating in power regularly with the conservatives in Chile. The last president of Chile from 2022 to 2026 was the young leftist Gabriel Boric. In the first round of presidential election held in November 2025, Jeannette Jara, a card-carrying communist, got the largest number of votes with 26.8% against the conservative runner-up Antonio Kast who got 23.9%. But in the second round, she lost to Kast who managed to get the support of other centre-right candidates. Although Jara is a communist (but moderate and pragmatic), she was the candidate of the larger leftist coalition. Going by the trend in the last three decades, the Chilean left could come back to power in the next election.

Pink Tide

The Latin American Left had its moment in the first decade of this century with the so called Pink Tide, when leftist leaders swept to power in many countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela,Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, besides some Central American Countries.  

The Leftist Presidents in the region had succeeded in reducing poverty and inequality with their pro-poor policies.  The region had witnessed remarkable economic growth and prosperity in the first decade of this century. The economists called it as the “ Decade of Growth” and "Decade of Latin America”. President Lula had emerged as a role model with balanced mix of pro-poor and business- friendly policies. Lula believed in giving adequate space for the private sector business to flourish and create wealth and employment to complement the development policies of the government. This development model is known as Lulaism or Brasilia Consensus, as against the neo-liberal Washington Consensus. Latin America had experienced the “Lost Decade” in the 1980s when Washington Consensus was imposed on many countries of the region.

Setbacks to the Left

Unfortunately, the extremist leftist presidents like Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales (Bolivia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador) had stigmatized the Left in the region with their hubris, polarization and anachronistic rhetoric. The Chavistas in Venezuela have mismanaged the economy and damaged democracy. The country has suffered seriously with high inflation, devaluation of currency, shortage of foreign exchange and day to day needs of the people. The country became an easy target for Trump’s intervention and kidnapping of President Maduro, who is in an American jail.

The leftist government of Cuba has been strangulated and crippled by the illegal American sanctions in the last seven decades. President Obama admitted the failure of this unjust policy and started opening towards Cuba. But President Trump has resumed the hostile policies and has threatened to take over the country. He has imposed cruel blockade of fuel imports hurting the economy and making life miserable for all the Cubans. This is the most challenging time for Cuba, which has so far survived numerous American attempts of subversion, intervention, invasion and assassination attempts against Fidel Castro.

The leftist government of President Ortega has betrayed the noble Sandinista Revolution and has become a pathetic dynastic family dictatorship filled with corruption and scandals.

Evo Morales  became the first-ever indigenous president of Bolivia and remained in power from 2006 to 2019. During this time, he emancipated the native Indians who were marginalized by the oligarchs of European origin since colonization. The Bolivian economy became stable, growing and prosperous while millions of indigenous poor joined the middle class. But he had succumbed to hubris and self-destroyed his legacy, leftist political party and the process of empowerment of the indigenous population. He wanted to stay in in power indefinitely and did not allow his successor to govern. Now the power has gone back to the same old oligarchs. 

Future of the Left

Given the large number of poor people (over a quarter of the 600 million total population) and extreme disparity in wealth, the Left will continue to have space in Latin American politics. Of course, there is no scope for hard core communism. The leftists need to be moderate and pragmatic within the democratic framework. There will be reaction from the right, as it has been there historically. Besides, Trump has inspired and emboldened the new hard right leaders like Bolsonaro and Javier Milei. The oligarchic ruling and business elite will continue to resist leftist reforms and engineer right-wing rule whenever they can. . But they will not be durable. The cycle of Left vs Right will continue in the future, for sure.  

MN Roy

While talking about the Left in Latin America, it is interesting for Indians to note thatMN Roy, the Bengali revolutionary, was a co-founder of the Communist Party of Mexico during his stay in Mexico from 1917 to 1919. Roy had left India in 1915 to seek German assistance for armed revolt against British rule. He travelled through Southeast Asia, Japan and the United States. When the US entered the war in 1917, Indian revolutionaries linked to the Indo-German conspiracy came under surveillance. Roy fled to Mexico with his American wife Evelyn Trent. Roy’s political outlook changed profoundly in Mexico which had just come out of the historic Mexican Revolution. Itwas one of the most important revolutions of the 20th century. It transformed Mexico politically, socially and culturally, and deeply influenced later movements across Latin America. It began as a revolt against dictatorship but evolved into a massive social revolution involving peasants, workers, intellectuals and reformers.

Roy moved away from purely nationalist revolutionary politics toward international socialism and communism.He learned Spanish and wrote articles for the Mexican newspapers. In 1917, Roy and Mexican socialists founded the Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido Socialista Obrero). After seeing the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, they renamed it as Mexican Communist Party in 1919. This was the first communist party founded outside Russia.Roy’s activities in Mexico attracted the attention of Vladimir Lenin and the Communist International (Comintern). In 1920, Roy was invited to Moscow for the Second Congress of the Comintern. Lenin personally received him.The Mexican government had given Roy a diplomatic passport for his trip to Moscow. They gave the passport in the false name of Roberto Vila Garcia to avoid the British and American surveillance and harassment. Roy came back to India and gave up on communism in his later years. But he was so attached to Mexico and called it as 'the land of his rebirth’. Roy’s land of birth, Bengal has also given up on Communism. The Marxists who ruled West Bengal for 31 years from 1977 to 2011, have now been wiped out from the state.  

Mathew Kodath

While Malayalees have been getting inspiration from Latin America, Mathew Kodath, a Malayalee entrepreneur, has inspired Latin America with his films focussing on socio cultural issues. He has migrated to Honduras and is settled there with his Honduran wife. He is a prominent film maker in Spanish. Two of his successful films are: Amor y Frijoles (Love and Beans-It was Honduras’s submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film) and Quien paga la cuenta ( who pays the bill). In these films he has explored issues such as migration abroad, unemployment, remittances, cultural identity and emotional attachment to homeland which resonate with the people of Kerala besides Latin Americans. Hondurans have an American Dream like the Gulf Dream of Keralites. About 1.3 million out of the total population of 10 million Hondurans live in US. Their remittances are an important source of income for Honduras as it is for Kerala.

Mexico's Gender Parity Revolution

                                                       

Mexico has emerged as one of the world’s leading examples of gender parity in politics, with women occupying nearly half of the country’s positions of political power.

President Claudia Sheinbaum’s 22-member cabinet includes 11 women. 

Women hold 64 of the 128 seats in the federal Senate and 251 of the 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. 

Nearly 44 percent of Mexico’s states — 13 out of 31 — are governed by women.

The growing centrality of women in Mexican politics was symbolically evident in the 2024 presidential election, when Sheinbaum’s principal opponent was also a woman, Xóchitl Gálvez.  While Claudia Sheinbaum is a distinguished climate scientist, Xóchitl Gálvez comes from the world of technology entrepreneurship. Their campaign debates and public exchanges were notably civil, substantive and mature, marked by dignity and mutual respect.

This is in sharp contrast to Trump’s lies, fake news, insults, vulgar language and hate speeches. Mexicans, who are the objects of ridicule and abuse by Trump note that he has shown respect to their President Sheinbaum, which is unusual and rare in Trump theater. He has even expressed admiration for her. On her part, Sheinbaum has handled Trump diplomatically, pragmatically and quietly without getting provoked by his shouting and screaming. She has shown discrete flexibility giving in to some of the demands of Trump but has refused to budge on fundamental sovereign issues of concern to Mexico.

In 2009, over 93 % of Mexico’s governors were men, as were 72.4% of federal deputies and 80.5% of senators.

Women are also strongly represented in the judiciary, with five women serving on Mexico’s nine-member Supreme Court.

This remarkable transformation has been driven largely by a landmark constitutional reform passed in 2019 known as “Paridad en Todo” (“Parity in Everything”). The reform amended several articles of the Mexican Constitution to establish gender parity as a constitutional principle across the state apparatus.

The law mandated equal representation of women in:

• the federal executive branch,
• the national Congress,
• state legislatures,
• the judiciary,
• autonomous constitutional bodies,
• municipal governments,
• and political party candidate lists.

The reform went far beyond conventional quota systems by embedding parity into the constitutional structure of governance itself. One striking aspect of Mexico’s reform was the broad political consensus behind it. The measure received support across ideological and party lines, transforming gender parity from a partisan demand into a question of democratic legitimacy.

Mexico’s electoral authorities and courts actively enforce parity provisions. Political parties can have their candidate lists rejected if they fail to comply with gender requirements.

Under the reform:

• political parties must nominate equal numbers of women and men for legislative elections,
• cabinets and senior executive appointments are expected to reflect parity,
• judicial and administrative appointments are required to move toward balanced representation,
• and the reform applies at both federal and state levels.

All the political parties of Mexico follow these constitutional guidelines. In the House of Deputies, Morena, the ruling party, has the highest female representation (57.7%) with 146 deputies out of 253 total in the House.

Mexico’s reforms emerged within a broader Latin American movement toward what is often called “parity democracy.” Countries such as Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Costa Rica have also adopted significant gender quota or parity laws during the past two decades. Argentina was the first country in Latin America — and one of the first in the world — to institutionalise a national legislative gender quota in 1991, a year before India introduced one-third reservations for women in local governments. 

What makes Mexico distinctive is the comprehensive nature of its 2019 constitutional reform. Unlike many quota systems that focus mainly on legislatures, Mexico extended parity requirements to executive and judicial institutions as well. Mexico’s reforms emerged through a combination of feminist mobilization, judicial activism, electoral reform and inter-party negotiations. This is remarkable given the fact that Mexico had been considered as a macho society.

Compared with weaker quota frameworks elsewhere, Mexico’s constitutional approach is considered more durable and structurally embedded. In many countries, quota systems stagnate or weaken when political conditions change; Mexico’s model enjoys greater resilience because parity has been elevated to a constitutional principle.

Mexico today ranks among the countries with the highest levels of female parliamentary representation in the world. The reform is frequently cited internationally as one of the most ambitious constitutional gender-parity measures enacted anywhere in the world. 

Mexico’s example could be studied by India which has recently tried and failed to pass a law for greater representation of women in the parliament. Female representation in Indian parliament is less than 15 percent. Of course, India’s socio political conditions, history, electoral system and political structure are different and more complex. Mexico’s proportional representation system and party-list model make parity easier to implement because parties can be legally compelled to alternate male and female candidates on electoral lists.

Mexico has also become the first country in the Global South- and in Latin America- to officially adopt a Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) in January 2020. The policy seeks to place gender equality, and women’s rights at the center of Mexico’s diplomacy, international cooperation, trade and multilateral engagement. At the COP25 climate negotiations, Mexico helped push for a Gender Action Plan related to climate policy.

On Earth As It Is Beneath - Brazilian Novel

 On Earth As It Is Beneath - Brazilian Novel 

It is a novel written by Brazilian writer Ana Paula Maia, considered as one of the distinctive voices in contemporary Brazilian fiction. The book has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026. 

One of the reasons why I was tempted to read it is the name of the translator, Padma Viswanathan. I had earlier read her translation of another Brazilian novel "São Bernardo" by Graciliano Ramos. Padma herself is a writer besides being a translator. 

 The story of “On earth as it is beneath” is about a prison in a remote part of Brazil. The prisoners, condemned to this hell hole have no hope for release or life-after. The warden of the prison Melquiades follows a macabre ritual during full moon nights. He lets a prisoner escape and then chases and hunts him with his gun, killing without fail. He justifies this action to himself on the logic that the convicts who themselves had killed and committed horrible crimes deserving the deadly punishment. He had inherited this sadistic nature from his father who was a policeman and later turned into a free-lance killer.

It is a short novel but leaves a powerful impact on the reader. It is deeply unsettling with its raw description of violence, cruelty, and mental decay. I was relieved that it ended quickly in 106 pages.