I’ve been slow to update my website since other things have intervened and I’ve also debated how much I want to occupy my mind with the “world’s most successful narcissist” as one friend called our new president-dictator. But I did write this piece for Caracas Chronicles and republished it in Spanish at Trópico Absoluto on…
I was among those who, in the early weeks and months of 2017 refused to call Trump and his followers “fascist.” I was (and still am) so sick of the tired, now only slightly combustible, rhetoric of my ultra-Left comrades that I winced at the term. When everyone out of the Leftist Circle of Light…
I love this photo of my friend and co-director, Arturo Albarrán that I took at the Berkeley Marina two months after his arrival in the US on the “Parole Program” our government is offering Haitians and Venezuelans. I’m especially grateful to have Arturo living with us today as we commemorate the UN Day of…
It’s hard for me to pull my head out of a big project for anything, especially if it’s a writing project. As I have recently come to understand how “neurologically weird” I am, I’ve come to accept that trait in my personality. All of the world can be collapsing around me and I’m trying to…
I haven’t written about Venezuela for a while, mainly because after the Juan Guaidó fiascos the Maduro dictatorship just went on pillaging the country as he and Chávez had been doing for the previous two decades. The situation appeared hopeless and, frankly, I lost heart. I became more preoccupied with my own country and its…
It took my wife Marcy Rein and me two independent searches to find out what happened to Victor Hugo Tinoco. We came at the search independently because neither of us knew the other had such a deep interest in understanding what happened to this remarkable person, especially after he’d been imprisoned in 2021 along with…
What? Donald Trump trying to “defraud the United States”? (Canned laughter, please). Yes, but of course. This malignant narcissist, unsurprisingly a compulsive liar, scamming cheater, and conman supreme, clearly did his best to steal the Presidential election of 2020. The evidence has been laid out by none other than the US Congress. There is no…
It’s difficult to write about Ukraine and I wonder what I could possibly add to the commentary. On the other hand, I can’t remain silent before such an affront to the dignity, honor, and life of the Ukrainian people that is the illegal, and outrageous invasion by Vladimir Putin’s military. I hope and pray the…
Note: You need to read Rafael Osío Cabrices and Raúl Stolk’s piece on the state of Venezuela today, posted at Caracas Chronicles. This is what twenty years of wreck and ruin by a “socialist” elite operating with impunity hath wrought. Do we need more lessons on why a dysfunctional, inefficient, hypocritical, half- and weak-hearted liberal…
I highly recommend anything by Javier Corrales, but this recent piece is really exceptional. He goes into detail on “why Cuban President Diaz-Canel” is still facing rebellion at home, and it’s exactly the sort of information people on the left, and progressive or liberal left need to hear about Cuba. Corrales teamed up with Scott…
Clifton Ross is the author, translator and/or editor of a dozen or so books of fiction, poetry, interviews, and political thought, particularly from Latin America, where he has traveled extensively. He has written and directed one feature-length film and a number of shorts. In 2005 Ross represented the U.S. in the World Poetry Festival of Venezuela. Four years later he publishedTranslations from Silence, which won the 2010 Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence from Oakland PEN. His most recent book is Home from the Dark Side of Utopia, a political memoir released in July 2016 by AK Press.
