Grand Gestures
Timeless stories from our 174-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
¿Democracia?
[ J U N E • 1 9 87 ]
“If we want democracy to take hold in our countries, our most urgent task is to broaden it, give it substance and truth.”
Read Mario Vargas Llosa’s speech “To Nuture Latin Democracy”
[F E B R U A R Y • 1 9 9 0 ]
“It will be a truer democracy to the extent that it unleashes the participatory will and creative energy of the people, which is an energy for the transformation of reality. Because that which copies best is not best; best is that which best creates, even when mistakes are made in creating.”
Read Eduardo Galeano’s essay “Language, Lies, and Latin Democracy”
[ A P R I L • 1 9 8 8 ]
Edward Said on Joseph Conrad’s imperialist perspective of Latin America in his novel Nostromo.
[ D E C E M B E R • 1 9 5 0 ]
An American visits Venezuela in the 1950s, witnessing her nation’s involvement in Venezuela’s economy.
Read “Venezuela Booms” by Tharon Perkins
Manifest Desert
[ A P R I L • 2 0 1 4 ]
On the Colorado River and droughts.
Read “Razing Arizona” by Christopher Ketcham
[ A U G U S T • 1 9 6 5 ]
An open letter to the Secretary of the Interior arguing for the construction of the Grand Canyon Dam.
Read “Think Big” by Bruce Stewart
[ M A R C H • 1 9 3 5 ]
“Those who have not seen it will not believe any possible description. Those who have seen it know that it cannot be described. It passes for a show place and, unlike nearly all other show places in this world, it is far more imposing in reality than in imagination and anticipation.”
Read “Grand Canyon: Notes on an American Journey (Part II)” by J. B. (John Boynton) Priestley
Going South
[ J U L Y • 2 0 1 8 ]
“My grandmother asked me if it was Election Day on her deathbed, and that tells you something about how precious the vote is.”
Read “As Goes the South, So Goes the North” by Imani Perry
[ M A R C H • 2 0 1 7 ]
“The Reverend William Barber II, the head of the North Carolina NAACP, wrote on ThinkProgress in December: ‘If you just register thirty percent of the unregistered black voters in the South and you get them to vote along with progressive whites and Latinos, the South is no longer solid.’ Republicans know this, and are afraid. At this point, they are maintaining control by sheer force and chicanery.”
Read “Tyranny of the Minority” by Rebecca Solnit
[ N O V E M B E R • 2 0 1 2 ]
The American practice of vote rigging.
Read “How to Rig an Election” by Victoria Collier
All That Glitters
[ D E C E M B E R • 2 0 2 3 ]
“You can encounter a celebrity but you cannot know one, because the very status of celebrity is born of image and of distance—of unknowability … 'A true star never arrives,' observes the fictional screen idol who narrates Yukio Mishima’s novella Star.
Read “Famous Strangers” by Rachel Kushner
[ A U G U S T • 1 9 7 3 ]
“The first Cannes Film Festival, in 1939, was conceived as a democratic response to the older festival in Venice, then thought to be controlled by Mussolini. It was to be a glittering affair, charged with glamour.”
Read “Porn in the Sun” by Moredcai Richler
[ J U L Y • 2 0 0 7 ]
Art house film meets Nollywood at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou.
Read “Ouagadougou Nights” by Christopher Vourlias
[ J U N E • 2 0 1 6]
Lucy Sante’s movie-going memories: “I remember once sneaking into the Strand theater in Summit, New Jersey, through the back door, propped open by some other kids.