Category: Uncategorized

by SILVIA RUZZI

Persistent struggles and empowerment of women in post-war Italy and beyond through the lens of cinema and literature

Paola Cortelli’s directorial debut, the film “C’è ancora domani”(2023) [There is Still Tomorrow], has been met with high praise from both critics and audiences alike. The film addresses a number of pertinent issues pertaining to Italian society, as well as to other societies and countries where disparities between gender roles were and are still evident. These include the role of women in the post-war period, women’s right to vote, the discrepancy in educational opportunities between girls and boys, economic disparities across social classes, the transmission of gender roles across generations, the emancipation of women, and the impact of societal transformations.

The film’s narrative follows the protagonist, Delia, a mother of three who finds herself constrained by the limitations of a patriarchal society. The film delves into the protagonist’s challenges with domestic violence, her journey towards self-emancipation, and her aspirations for her daughter’s future. It portrays her participation in the historic election of June 2, 1946, where women were granted the right to vote, and her desire for her daughter to receive a better education, to occupy an equal role within the couple, and to achieve financial independence.

The film illuminates the oppressive nature of patriarchal society, both within the private sphere of the home and in the public domain. Delia’s experiences exemplify the challenges women face in asserting their rights, whether at home or in public. However, the film also portrays the struggles of other women from diverse societal backgrounds. It demonstrates that patriarchal oppression is not exclusive to the lower class but is also prevalent in upper echelons of society.

The following pages will examine how Cortellesi’s film illuminates the silenced figure of the woman, drawing parallels with the perspectives presented in Michela Murgia’s Ave Mary. E la chiesa inventò la donna (2011) [Hail Mary. And the Church Invented the Woman] and Stai zitta e altre nove frasi che non vogliamo più sentire (2021) [Keep quiet and nine other phrases that we do not want to hear anymore]. A close study of Delia’s character and her acts of defiance will reveal the film’s powerful commentary on the ongoing struggle for women’s voices to be heard and valued.

Language as a tool of oppression

Throughout the film, the repetitive phrase that women are subjected to from their husbands is either “Sta’ zitta” [Keep quiet] or “Taci” [Shut up], which suggests that they are not permitted to express their thoughts, that their thoughts are insignificant, that they have no voice either at home or outside the domain of the house, and that they are expected to behave like silent figures within society, following the rules of patriarchy. The final scene of the film, which depicts thousands of women voting, represents the antithesis of silence: it portrays women exercising their democratic right to express their political views, opinions, and voices.

The history of the silenced woman is long and complex, shaped by a sophisticated and persistent process that has been largely perpetuated by men, but partially accepted by women as well. This process has served to highlight the perceived lower role of women in society compared to men. It is therefore a pertinent question to ask how such a figure could have been so widely disseminated and, to some extent, even acknowledged and accepted.

Meer for more

by LUCAS BRICCA

Behind Argentina’s tide of university occupations, student groups spar over the movement’s trajectory.

As the morning sun shines through the windows of the University of Buenos Aires’ Faculty of Social Sciences (FSOC) on October 9, students sit up from makeshift cardboard mattresses. No lectures will be held in these classrooms; instead, they serve as the meeting rooms and sleeping quarters for students who are occupying the faculty in defense of public universities. Outside, others carry desks and benches into the street, where students have blocked traffic to hold open-air classes. It’s been six years since FSOC was last taken, but only a few students in today’s occupation are old enough to have been there.

“It’s my first occupation,” says Josue Vega, a communications student from Bolivia. Vega has been involved in assemblies and marches since the beginning of the year, but he says this is the first time the student response has been “appropriate for the attack that public education is suffering.”

On October 2, Argentine President Javier Milei vetoed a university financing bill that would have adjusted national university budgets every two months based on changes in the consumer price index, peso exchange rate, and the cost of public services. The goal of the law was to guarantee funding for public universities’ operating costs and dignified wages for employees, as the Argentine Federation of National University claims professors’ wages have lost roughly two-thirds of their purchasing power since the president took office. The stated rationale for Milei’s veto is his “zero deficit” plan, which seeks to restore Argentina’s fiscal balance by cutting public spending, eliminating taxes—which he claims are a “remnant of slavery,” and reducing the scope of the federal government.

“From the beginning, [Milei] decided to put university students, and especially the social sciences, as enemy number one,” said Lucas Grimson, a senator in the FSOC governing council and a member of the faculty’s recently elected Student Center, a union organization in charge of advocating for the student body’s interests. “And that woke the sleeping giant that is the student movement.”

In response to the veto, which crystallized months of attacks on constitutional right to education in Argentina, students at over 30 universities across the country voted in open assemblies to occupy their campuses, some indefinitely. Such actions meant that students took over duties related to campus security, cleaning, and, most importantly, upper management. Decisions about the university were taken by the students themselves in assemblies.

The FSOC Student Center unilaterally lifted the faculty’s occupation on October 28, though occupations in other universities across the country continue. Nearly one year into Milei’s far-right libertarian government, the occupations embodied a symbolic and strategic escalation of resistance against not only Milei, but also Congress and university administrators, who many students say are complicit in putting universities on the chopping block in the country’s orthodox economic makeover.

The Movement in Context

Milei’s administration is not the first to defund higher education. In the 1990s, the Higher Education Law became a flashpoint for student struggles, part of a World Bank-backed reform that opened the door to tuition hikes and greater restrictions on enrollment.

“Many of us who are professors today were formed under the student struggles of the ‘90s,” says Juan Wahren, who began his undergraduate degree at the University of Buenos Aires in 1995. Today, he’s a professor of rural social movements and popular education in the FSOC.

A few months ago, Wahren and his fellow professors saw today’s student movement as a shadow of its former self. Recently, however, the perception has flipped. “I see lots of activity,” he says over the noise of students crowding around for the assembly where, two hours later, students unanimously voted to occupy the faculty. “Something got reactivated.”

NACLA for more

by NADEEM F. PARACHA

‘Donald Trump and the Rise of Christian Nationalists’ was the title of an essay published in August this year on the academic website The Conversation. The term ‘Christian nationalism’ is not as frequently used in media (outside of the US) as are terms such as Islamic nationalism or Hindu nationalism. 

Till the mid-20th century, political scientists viewed nationalism as a secular idea that undermined the moral and political authority of religious forces by replacing religious symbols, myths, mindsets and practices with secular ones. Nationalism was expected to function as a substitute for religion, fulfilling individual needs and consolidating group identities.

In part, nationalism was the product of brutal wars between Christian sects in Europe. This triggered the need to organise what were clubbed as ‘nations’ in a more rational manner, by furnishing a new understanding of relations between a nation and the state. Thus was born the idea of the nation-state. 

But nation-states borrowed heavily from organised religions to add a sacred dimension to secular nationalism (a process called ‘sacralisation’, which frames nationalism as a ‘civic religion’). Consequently, by the mid-20th century, in many regions, religion increasingly became an important component of nationalism. The result was the eventual emergence of religious nationalism, which looks to overcome nationalism’s inherent secular disposition by placing politicised religion at its core. 

From the 1970s onwards, religious nationalism in the shape of Islamic nationalism began to replace the more secular/sacralised manifestations of nationalism in many Muslim-majority countries. By the latter half of the 20th century and in the early 2000s, Hindu nationalism in India, Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, Jewish nationalism in Israel, and Christian nationalism in Hungary, Poland, Russia and the US, began to attract mainstream approval and support.

Religious nationalism agrees that nations exist (in a nation-state) but posits that they can only be kept together through a ‘divine’ purpose, which should inform all of their economic, political and social actions. Therefore, the nation becomes one which was ‘chosen by God’, or is in the best position to serve Him. To religious nationalism, the latter can only be achieved by basing the nation-state’s policies and national purpose on the doctrines of the majority religion. 

So why has religious nationalism witnessed a surge in the last 50 years or so? From the 18th century onwards, advancements in science, and political and economic modernity, succeeded in propelling societies forward, improving the quality of life. But these advancements also produced larger populations and complex political, social and economic issues. These created unprecedented tensions that seemed tough to resolve by nation-states, thus instilling a sense of insecurity and dread in people. 

As a response, nation-states began to sacralise their nationalisms to offer some ‘spiritual’ solace, because conventional religion was viewed as existing outside the nationalist paradigm and thus a threat to the idea of the nation-state. Then, nation-states/nationalism decided to co-exist with conventional religion, before co-opting it so it could be regulated and controlled according to nationalist needs. Religious nationalism was the result. 

Critics of religious nationalism warn that, instead of safeguarding nationalism from completely falling in the hands of those operating from outside the nationalist paradigm, it actually strengthens theocratic forces whose ultimate goal is to establish a totalitarian theocracy. In other words, religious nationalism is a launching pad for theocrats. 

Dawn for more

by SARAH DEHM & JESSIA WHYTE

Last month, US Republican lawmakers renewed calls to sanction officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in retaliation for the arrest warrants it issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

In contrast, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong reiterated the need to respect the “independence of the ICC and its important role in upholding international law”.

These divergent responses highlight a core problem with Australia’s current approach to sanctions, which is the topic of an ongoing Senate inquiry.

Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Birmingham initiated the review to seek ways to better align Australia’s sanctions with those of allies like the US.

Instead, the review should be an opportunity to reset this flawed principle of alignment in favour of an approach grounded in core principles of international law.

Australia’s history of sanctions

Sanctions are official measures that prohibit trade and economic relations with particular states or individuals for a range of reasons. These can include to pressure a state to change its behaviour, enforce international norms or isolate individuals for unlawful behaviour.

Australia’s sanctions regime is made up of two categories:

• sanctions that implement decisions of the UN Security Council
• “autonomous” sanctions that Australia applies unilaterally.

Historically, Australian sanctions have at times preceded Security Council action. In the mid-1960s, Australia followed the United Kingdom in sanctioning the white supremacist rule in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) before the council adopted sanctions.

Australia also sanctioned apartheid-era South Africa in the mid-1980s in the absence of Security Council action – and in the face of initial opposition from the UK and US.

Since 2011, Australian legislation grants the foreign minister broad discretionary powers to impose unilateral sanctions on other countries. This system has recently been expanded to include sanctions of individuals engaged in corruption and serious abuses of human rights.

Australia now imposes a range of sanctions autonomously, including travel bans and freezing of financial assets. This includes sanctions on the political and military leaders of Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Russia.

In practice, Australia has a policy of aligning its nominally “autonomous” sanctions decision-making with its so-called like-minded partners, such as the US.

For example, Australia has so far decided not to unilaterally impose sanctions on Israel’s political and military leadership. This is despite sustained civil society pressure and a historic ruling of the International Court of Justice.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong defended the decision on the basis that “going it alone gets us nowhere”.

When Australia applies sanctions, we coordinate with partners. That’s what makes them effective.

Dangers of a ‘like-minded partners’ approach

Yet, this rhetorical appeal to alignment with “like-minded partners” fails to recognise the dangers of such an approach.

The Conversation for more

BLACK AGENDA REPORT

November 18, 1803, represents a glorious day in the history of Haiti, the history of Africans in the Americas, and the history of oppressed peoples worldwide in the battle against colonial repression. On that day an army of Africans, led by Jean Jacques Dessalines, trounced Napoleon Bonaparte’s expeditionary forces (prompting the sale of the Louisiana Territory to the United States ) during what has become known as the Battle of Vertières. After more than a decade of revolt and counter-revolution the French hold on their once-lucrative colony of Saint-Domingue was severed, the cruel plantation economy destroyed, and the system of white supremacy on which rested obliterated. The French commander Donatien de Rochambeau surrendered to African revolutionary forces, and the French retreated from Saint-Domingue. Two months later, on January 1, 1804, Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Haiti.

For Haitians, memory of the Battle of Vertières is a source of national pride, signifying not only a profound desire for sovereignty and freedom, but also the ability, through intelligence, strategy, and commitment, to defeat a larger, better resourced opponent. One could also suggest that the Vertières signifies both persistence and patience. The Haitian Revolution began on August 21, 1791; it took thirteen years of hard struggle before victory was achieved and independence won. It is a lesson to be remembered today in Haiti, when the country is again under a seemingly endless and intractable occupation, but also in the Congo, Sudan, Palestine and other places that the world seems to have abandoned as the savage crush of imperialist terror gets worse. Vertières reminds us that resistance is not futile, that victory will come.

To mark the history of the Battle of Vertières we reprint a 1939 essay by CLR James, written under the pseudonym J.R. Johnson, titled “Revolution and the Negro .” James is writing against the myth, as he calls it, of the “docile negro” — a figure who, according to imperialist historians, was passive, acquiescent, and content. He also writes against the backdrop of global fascism in Europe, and also of the fascism of Europeans in their colonies in Africa and Asia. The revolutionary history of Haiti is at the center of James’ essay, but he approaches it in a global, pan-African perspective, seeing a continuity between the revolt in Haiti and the Black revolts in the greater Caribbean, the United States, and in Africa. James concludes with a prognosis for the future: “In Africa, in America, in the West Indies, on a national and international scale, the millions of Negroes will raise their heads, rise up from their knees, and write some of the most massive and brilliant chapters in the history of revolutionary socialism.” That was in 1939. New chapters are writing themselves now.

CLR James’ “Revolution and the Negro” is reproduced below.

Revolution and the Negro

by J.R. Johnson [CLR JAMES]

The Negro’s revolutionary history is rich, inspiring, and unknown. Negroes revolted against the slave raiders in Africa; they revolted against the slave traders on the Atlantic passage. They revolted on the plantations.

The docile Negro is a myth. Slaves on slave ships jumped overboard, went on vast hunger strikes, attacked the crews. There are records of slaves overcoming the crew and taking the ship into harbor, a feat of tremendous revolutionary daring. In British Guiana during the eighteenth century the Negro slaves revolted, seized the Dutch colony, and held it for years. They withdrew to the interior, forced the whites to sign a treaty of peace, and have remained free to this day. Every West Indian colony, particularly Jamaica and San Domingo and Cuba, the largest islands, had its settlements of maroons, bold Negroes who had fled into the wilds and organized themselves to defend their freedom. In Jamaica the British government, after vainly trying to suppress them, accepted their existence by treaties of peace, scrupulously observed by both sides over many years, and then broken by British treachery. In America the Negroes made nearly 150 distinct revolts against slavery. The only place where Negroes did not revolt is in the pages of capitalist historians. All this revolutionary history can come as a surprise only to those who, whatever International they belong to, whether Second, Third, or Fourth, have not yet ejected from their systems the pertinacious lies of Anglo-Saxon capitalism. It is not strange that the Negroes revolted. It would have been strange if they had not.

But the Fourth International, whose business is revolution, has not to prove that Negroes were or are as revolutionary as any group of oppressed people. That has its place in agitation. What we as Marxists have to see is the tremendous role played by Negroes in the transformation of Western civilization from feudalism to capitalism. It is only from this vantage-ground that we shall be able to appreciate (and prepare for) the still greater role they must of necessity play in the transition from capitalism to socialism.

What are the decisive dates in the modern history of Great Britain, France, and America? 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution; 1832, the passing of the Reform Bill in Britain; and 1865, the crushing of the slave-power in America by the Northern states. Each of these dates marks a definitive stage in the transition from feudal to capitalist society. The exploitation of millions of Negroes had been a basic factor in the economic development of each of these three nations. It was reasonable, therefore, to expect the Negro question to play no less an important role in the resolution of the problems that faced each society. No one in the pre-revolutionary days, however, even faintly foresaw the magnitude of the contributions the Negroes were to make. Today Marxists have far less excuse for falling into the same mistake.

Black Agenda Report for more

by ANIS SHIVANI

There comes a time to quit something one has long been pursuing and even something one is good at. I feel like it’s time to quit political writing, at least of a particular kind that deals with the daily ups and downs in America, because it’s filling up headspace that takes away from crucial other tasks. I more or less quit writing literary criticism in 2017—along with writing poetry at the same time—after penning hundreds of thousands of words of literary criticism since the start of my career. It helped to abide by the new discipline because I announced my decision at a South Asian literary festival in Austin to a big audience and then stuck to it, except for the rare occasion when a friend or someone I respected asked me to write a review essay. And it was the right decision, my only regret being that I ever engaged in the pursuit, wasting precious years when I should have been dedicated entirely to my own fiction writing. Ultimately, I quit literary criticism because I didn’t feel that there was any real audience for the kind of criticism I was writing. I saw no value for it in the culture, and why pursue something valueless?

I feel the same way about writing about American politics now, that there is no audience for it. I can write for my own satisfaction, but if in my head I have the image of an iconoclast of the past such as Alexander Cockburn or Gore Vidal as my ideal audience, such readers have more or less ceased to exist. The feeling of speaking into a vacuum is further intensified by the manifest censorship among political outlets that took place in rising waves in 2016, 2020, and now 2024, preventing skeptical voices from gaining a foothold because that would supposedly have helped the fascists; democracy has had to be spurned in order to preserve democracy. Political writing strongly correlated with literary writing in this period, as the censors, in the name of a peculiar form of bland establishment wokeness, destroyed whatever remained vital in American writing, and have now reduced it to a cipher in terms of pure literary value. After a mere handful of interesting novels published in America in the 2000s (Hemon, O’Neill, Hamid), in the succeeding fifteen years I have found almost no American literary fiction to be of interest, and have pretty much stopped reading it. It’s no surprise that eventually political writing should succumb to the same pressures. Many of the iconoclastic journalists of the 2000s, such as Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi, have become Trump-adjacent, unintelligently selling populist myths that make me yearn for good old-fashioned liberalism. It wouldn’t be the first time in my life I have come to see plain vanilla liberalism as a healthy mental refuge from abstractions that can’t even be captured adequately under the rubric of conspiracy theory, so I’m used to personal course correction. It happened to me in the 1990s, when I confronted the actually existing ills of poverty and corruption in the developing world, as opposed to the fantasies spouted in Western academia, and it has happened a couple of other times, so I feel like I am prepared to exit from the cult of unhinged populism that has overcome my own confreres of the recent past.

Counterpunch for more

by ABIGAIL TULENKO

Charles Darwin was as fascinated by extravagant ornament in nature as Jane Austen was in culture. Did their explanations agree?

In 1833, two years into his five-year voyage on the HMS Beagle, a 24-year-old Charles Darwin wrote a letter home to his sister Catherine, entreating her for supplies. He didn’t ask for food or funds (which were running thin, given his unpaid position as the ship’s naturalist) but for something he thought more essential: ‘When you read this I am afraid you will think that I am like the Midshipman in Persuasion who never wrote home, excepting when he wanted to beg: it is chiefly for more books; those most valuable of all valuable things.’

Both Darwin and the ship’s Captain, Robert FitzRoy, were deeply concerned with which books to take on board and how to fit as many as possible. FitzRoy writes that ‘considering the limited disposable space in so very small a ship, we contrived to carry more instruments and books than one would readily suppose could be stowed away in dry and secure places’. Darwin lived for five years in a cabin that also functioned as the ship’s library; perhaps some 400 volumes were crammed into a roughly 10 ft by 11 ft space. He slept and worked surrounded by teeming bookcases, bindings eroded by damp sea air and swaying slightly with the tide.

His favourites are clear from his papers, and his 1833 reference to Jane Austen’s Persuasion is one among many. Two years earlier, when he first began the journey as a fresh university graduate, he told his sister Caroline: ‘I will not take Persuasion, as the Captain says he will not read it, & there is no danger of my forgetting it.’ His correspondence is dotted with Austen references in a way that conveys a genuine fluency with her work. ‘Lydiaish’ means flirtatious, ‘like Mrs Bates’ code for overly doting, ‘like Lady Cath. de Burgh’ stands in for stern, and ‘a Captain Wentworth’ was his cousin’s term of endearment for Captain FitzRoy. His private notebooks likewise reference numerous Austen characters, and three of Austen’s novels figure on his 1838-40 reading list.

Though she would never encounter Darwin’s research – Austen died in 1817 – her own work was steeped in the same scientific and philosophical tradition that paved the way for his theory of evolution. She wrote in an era obsessed with explaining the natural world; the word ‘biology’ burst into usage in England around 1800. Austen’s acute, almostclinical, attention to detail resembles the style of early British naturalists. In Jane Austen and Charles Darwin (2008), the literature scholar Peter Graham explores parallels between Austen’s sensibility and Darwin’s, arguing that both ‘were keen observers of the world before them, observers who excelled both in noticing microcosmic particulars and … discerning the cosmic significance of those small details.’

The two also share a concern with the philosophically rich relationship between the natural world and aesthetic beauty. Darwin was fascinated by capricious ornamentation – natural features such as the peacock’s plumes, which seemed to serve no other purpose but beauty, even to the detriment of other sorts of biologic fitness. He saw a paradox: the naturalist posits that all that exists can be explained in natural terms. And, yet, there is a sense in which ornament, in its superfluity, goes beyond what nature dictates. How can the naturalist make sense of ‘excessive’ beauty, of nature’s ‘wonderful extreme’, which may appear to defy or transcend the closed logic of the naturalistic worldview?

Aeon for more

by JEREMY KUZMAROV

They embody a party that crossed over to the dark side years ago

In March 2018, Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site published a political pamphlet entitled “The CIA Democrats.”

In it, he wrote that “an extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department” were “seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections.”

This is a departure from the 1960s and 1970s when Democrats like George McGovern, Leo Ryan and Frank Church were against wars like Vietnam and sought to reign in the CIA.

Some of the Class of 2018 CIA Democrats, like Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, were recruited as part of a “red-to-blue” program targeting vulnerable Republican-held seats.

In the 2018 race, there were far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party than for the Republicans. Martin wrote that there were so many “spooks” that with a “nod to Mad Magazine,” one might call the primaries “spy vs. spy.”

CovertAction Magazine has kept tabs on the “spook-soldiers” who were elected as part of the Class of 2018 and followed their careers in Congress. (According to Martin, 30 spook-soldiers won primaries and 11 were elected to Congress.)

Below is a summary of how some of them fared in the 2024 election:

1. Elissa Slotkin:

Slotkin narrowly defeated Republican challenger Mike Rogers in Michigan on November 5 for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Slotkin is the one-time assistant to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Prior to her election to Congress, Slotkin put her stamp on the U.S.’s disastrous Ukraine policy as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense following the U.S.-backed Maidan coup in 2014.

Over the past six years as a Member of Congress, Slotkin has continued to fervently support the Ukraine war, telling an NPR reporter: “I think we’ve got to give them [Ukraine] what they need….This is a black and white issue. Our weapons have made a huge difference.”

In reality, the only difference those weapons made is in killing more people while prolonging Ukraine’s inevitable defeat.

overt Action Magazine for more

by MARK VIALES

Dzan, Mexico – Surrounded by dense jungle and beneath intertwining canopies of towering trees, Luis May Ku, 49, trudges ahead through shoulder-height bushes searching for a rare plant. The oppressive 40-degree Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) heat dulls the senses, and the air, thick with humidity, clings to our skin, causing beads of sweat to form and trickle down.

After scouring the thickets, May, an Indigenous Maya ceramicist, stumbles upon a shrub similar in shape and texture to others around him, but insists this one is special. He touches the soft, sprawling leaves and tells me it is wild ch’oj (“indigo plant” in Mayan, anil in Spanish) – or Indigofera suffruticosa – which is a key ingredient to create the revered Maya blue pigment.

“It took years before I found it – indigo – and most people from Yucatan believed it to be extinct on the peninsula,” May says with a pensive look, lifting his sombrero made from interwoven huano palm leaves to wipe his brow with the back of his hand.

“Chokoj (hot)!” I say to him in my limited command of Mayan as we crouch behind the metre and a half (5-foot) high ch’oj bush to escape the relentless, blistering sun. He turns to me with kind eyes and offers me water from his bottle. Advertisement

“The Yucatan Peninsula is going through its worst drought in decades,” he says. “Let’s rest, and I’ll tell you how I recreated Maya blue.”

Maya blue: the colour of ritual

The colour of the iconic dye is akin to a clear blue sky or the turquoise of the nearby Caribbean Sea.

It was used to paint pottery, sculptures, murals, jewellery, clothing, altars and, chillingly, the human beings the ancient Maya offered to their gods, to garner favour. According to Spanish Franciscan friar Diego de Landa Calderon – most famous for his zeal in destroying Maya codices – the Maya painted human beings before forcing them onto an altar and cutting out their beating hearts.

Other victims, cast into the Cenote Chenku or Sacred Well (cenotes are interconnected, submerged limestone caves) at Chichen Itza, were similarly covered in blue. A clear sky during a drought was a sign for priests to pick their next victim and paint them in the same colour to sacrifice to the rain deity, Chaak, believed to live in Xibalba – the Maya underworld – beneath the cenotes. The priests hoped this would bring rain to provide a bountiful harvest for their crops.

When American archaeologist Edward Herbert Thompson dredged the Sacred Well in the early 20th century, 127 skeletons were recovered, among other objects. He also found several metres of blue silt, which later studies suggest was Maya blue that had washed off sacrificed victims and ornaments.

Al Jazeera for more