On the last masters of Afro-Colombian machete fencing.
I am a huge nerd who fenced throughout high school. My 16-year-old self loved lunging and whipping my opponent with a flexible foil. During the tail end of the pandemic, when group activities were slowly reentering society, I took up fencing again, this time in the form of Historical European Martial Arts. That required a more hefty sword replica, often made of wood. I spent every Wednesday night sweaty and sparring with a group of men (because where were all the women?) in a church basement in Baltimore. I didn’t give it up until the return of in-person work made my schedule somewhat less manageable.
So when Colombia-based anthropologist, writer, and filmmaker Rowan Glass asked if I wanted to publish a story for Lazo Magazine on Colombian machete fencing, I said absolutely yes.
Rowan writes: “In the Afro-descendant town of Puerto Tejada, in the southern Colombian department of Cauca, a handful of master swordsmen represent one of the last bastions of the traditional martial art called grima, or machete fencing. From its origins in the colonial era to the threats facing this ancestral art form in the present, grima is an integral part of Afro-Colombian cultural heritage.”
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What I’m reading:
• New Lines Magazine has a report on a mother-daughter duo running a school in the Indian capital, Delhi, that teaches the Dari language to displaced children from Afghanistan.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that an interim government under United Nations support could be put in place in Ukraine to hold elections before negotiating a peace treaty, Politico reports. The head of the Ukrainian government’s Center for Countering Disinformation described the proposal as part of Moscow’s efforts to stall peace negotiations.
• The head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, visited Washington D.C. to discuss strengthening the U.S.-Russia relations with U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, CNN reports.
• Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev said that some security guarantees for Ukraine “may be acceptable” following high-level talks at the White House in an attempt to revive stalled peace negotiations, Politico Europe reports.
• Russia will not accept U.S. proposals to end the war in Ukraine in their current form because they do not address problems Moscow claims caused the conflict, said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, suggesting U.S.-Russia talks had stalled. Reuters has the story.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to conscript 160,000 men aged 18-30 in the spring call-up for a year’s military service, EuroNews reports.
• Moldova expelled three Russian diplomats after it accused Russia's embassy of engineering the escape of a pro-Kremlin lawmaker, Alexander Nesterovschii, to prevent him from being jailed over illegal political funding, Reuters reports.
• Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik is in Moscow, according to a video message he posted on social media. Sarajevo authorities last week requested an international arrest warrant for Dodik following his conviction for defying the country’s Constitutional Court and advancing a separatist agenda, Politico Europe reports.
• Poland’s government issued an order suspending the right to claim asylum by people who cross the border from Belarus, Notes from Poland reports.
• Hard-right opposition leader George Simion led an opinion poll published five weeks before the first round of a repeat presidential election, Reuters reports.
• Hungary announced it would begin the procedure for withdrawing from the International Criminal Court as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Budapest in defiance of the ICC's international arrest warrant against him over his conduct in the war in Gaza, the Associated Press reports.
• Germany’s incoming government, led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives and the Social Democrats, plans to push the European Union to take more decisive action against member countries that violate democratic principles — a clear signal to Hungary, Politico Europe reports.
• Berlin’s immigration authorities are moving to deport four young foreign residents on allegations related to participation in protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, an unprecedented move that raises serious concerns over civil liberties in Germany, the Intercept reports.
• Unherd looks at whether Germany is heading for a reset with Russia.
• A French court barred France’s far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen from political office for five years after finding her and other senior party figures guilty of misappropriating European funds to finance the far-right National Rally party, Euronews reports.
• U.S. President Trump extended his support to France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen, calling her recent conviction over embezzling European Union funds the product of a “witch hunt,” CNN reports.
• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced his government will launch a €14.1 billion aid package to reduce the domestic impact of United States President Donald Trump’s 20 percent tariff on all imports from the European Union, Politico Europe reports.
• New Lines Magazine has a piece on the untold history of Polish refugees in Uganda.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s two aides were arrested amid mounting allegations of financial ties between Netanyahu’s office and Qatar, the Washington Post reports.
• The bodies of fifteen emergency and aid workers from the Red Crescent, Palestinian Civil Defense, and the United Nations have been recovered from a mass grave in south Gaza’s Rafah, the BBC reports.
• Some of the 15 humanitarian workers whose bodies were recovered from a mass grave in Gaza were shot multiple times, with one of the dead paramedics found with his hands and feet tied, the New York Times reports.
• Pakistan plans to expel 3 million Afghans this year, the Associated Press reports. Many of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan were approved for resettlement in the United States through a program for people at risk due to their work with the U.S. government or other entities paused by the Trump administration.
• The Myanmar junta’s soldiers opened fire on a convoy of vehicles carrying aid supplies from the Chinese Red Cross for the victims of last Friday’s earthquake, the New York Times reports.
• Myanmar’s ruling military junta announced a temporary ceasefire in its operations against armed opposition groups to aid recovery efforts in the wake of last Friday’s earthquake, CNN reports.
• A report by the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua named 54 Nicaraguan officials the group says are responsible for serious human rights violations and “systematic repression.”
• Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said it has begun furloughing staff because the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) has not sent it the funding for April despite rescinding its termination of the news outlet’s grant agreement.
• The Trump administration is in conversations to have countries in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe take in migrants deported from the United States, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• The Trump administration is in talks with Congo on developing the conflict-plagued nation’s mineral resources, the Associated Press reports.
• The White House is preparing estimates of the cost of controlling Greenland as a territory, according to the Washington Post. The move is the most concrete effort yet to turn Trump’s wish to acquire the island into government policy.
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