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Hindustan Times
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Guerrilla-turned-filmmaker: Colombia's versatile envoy in Beijing
Colombia's ambassador to China first arrived in Beijing six decades ago and trained under Mao Zedong's revolutionary forces, before returning home to join a communist guerrilla group. Sergio Cabrera then made a name for himself as an acclaimed filmmaker, and now his storied career has brought him back to the Chinese capital where he is spearheading Colombia's landmark rapprochement with the Asian giant. The 75-year-old envoy was a young teenager when he came to China in 1963, accompanied by his communist parents who entered the country secretly in order to teach Spanish. His return to Beijing is "stimulating and very exciting", he told AFP, especially with the capital city now full of skyscrapers and modern electric cars on its streets. "Compared to Bogota, Beijing was a village," Cabrera said in an interview inside the stately Colombian embassy, with shelves lined with books and walls adorned with posters of his films. "It was a one-storey city. There were no avenues, no cars, people were dressed all the same. It was a poor country. I remember my sister saying to me: 'Why is dad bringing us here?' "You see this country now and it is a country full of abundance, of possibilities, where there is everything," he said. "At that time there was nothing." Those years followed shortly after Mao's ruthless reform to modernise China's agrarian economy, known as the Great Leap Forward, causing enormous shortages and millions of deaths from famine. The young man knuckled down to learn Mandarin, which he still uses today, and soaked up the revolutionary thinking of the times. He served as a Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution Mao's violent movement against capitalist and bourgeois influence and worked in agricultural communes and factories. After training with the People's Liberation Army he returned to the Colombian jungle to join the communist guerrilla movement. But after four years, he told AFP he left the armed struggle feeling "deeply disappointed". "I realised that there was a tendency of pathologically lying, to invent that we were very powerful and to believe it," he said. From Colombia he returned to China, where he studied at Peking University before turning to what had always been his dream filmmaking. Through movies with strong political undertones such as the acclaimed "La estrategia del caracol" , Cabrera found "ways to revolutionise a little" the public's mind on the silver screen. "Since I can't do it the hard way, or with bullets, I'm going to do it the good way," the director told AFP. And in contrast to that passion for "creating worlds" in cinema, his job as ambassador for more than two years has involved grappling with real-world issues on behalf of leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro. A former guerrilla like himself, Petro has entrusted him with the task of strengthening ties between Colombia historically aligned with the United States and China. "I can't make a revolution through diplomacy," he admitted. "But I can continue with the idea of transmitting, of somehow improving bilateral relations." As a result of the diplomatic pivot, Colombia this month signed up to Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, a project already involving two-thirds of Latin American countries. "We were like the black sheep of the flock," Cabrera said, branding the step as "very beneficial" for Colombia. However, the agreement has aroused the unease of US President Donald Trump's administration, which sees Latin America as a crucial player in its struggle with China, and Cabrera admitted the move comes at a "delicate moment" in relations with Washington. "There have been frictions and we know that President Trump is against any rapprochement with China," he said. But "the sovereignty of one country cannot depend on the need to be allied with another". Closer relations have been years in the making. Over the last decade, imports from China doubled to $14.7 billion in 2024. In the first quarter of 2025, they even surpassed those from the United States, which nevertheless remains the main destination for Colombian products, with almost 30 percent of the total. As Bogota draws closer to Beijing, Colombian business owners have grown concerned about the impact on the volume of US-bound foreign trade. But Cabrera urged them to overcome their "fear of the reactions of the United States". According to Cabrera, the agreement will generate investments in transport or clean energy and will help to open up the Chinese market to products such as beef or coffee, which is becoming increasingly popular in the traditionally tea-drinking country. The possibilities would be even better with a trade deal with China like those signed by Chile and Peru, he argued, while conceding that "in Colombia, there is not a good climate for a free trade agreement". bur-dbh/je/hmn/rsc
Spectator
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
How Mao haunts China
Imagine a time traveller from Mao Zedong's China – say a Red Guard – landing in a Chinese city today, nearly half a century since Mao's death in 1976 brought the Cultural Revolution to an end. Picture her in baggy unisex khaki and blunt bob, gaping at women her age prancing past in heels and short skirts. See her take in the soaring buildings, bustling shopping centres and pumping night clubs. She looks at a newspaper. Some things make sense: 'America's democracy is in decline,' one headline declares. There are familiar reports on model workers and the same sort of photos of leaders visiting factories and welcoming foreign presidents. But what's this about weight management clinics, plastic surgery and young people looking for romance? She cannot make sense of half of it. And what, China has officially expressed its condolences over the death of a…Pope? What is this brave new world? Mao's portrait still watches over Tiananmen Square.
CBC
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
8 books to read if you loved Dandelion by Jamie Chai Yun Liew
Pastry chef Saïd M'Dahoma championed Dandelion on Canada Reads 2025. Dandelion is a novel about family secrets, migration, isolation, motherhood and mental illness. When Lily was a child, her mother, Swee Hua, walked away from the family and was never heard from again. After becoming a new mother herself, Lily becomes obsessed with discovering what happened to Swee Hua. She recalls growing up in a British Columbia mining town where there were only a handful of Asian families and how Swee Hua longed to return to Brunei. Eventually, a clue leads Lily to southeast Asia to find out the truth about her mother. Here are eight Canadian books to read if you loved Dandelion. In the novel The Immortal Woman, Lemei's daughter, Lin, struggles with distancing herself from her Chinese heritage while studying in America. At the same time, she is taken aback by her mother's increasing nationalism toward China — this shift is especially surprising considering her mother had once been a student Red Guard leader who had witnessed the atrocities of the Tiananmen Square protests. Su Chang is a Chinese Canadian writer born and raised in Shanghai. The Immortal Woman is her debut novel. Her writing has been recognized in numerous contests, including Prairie Fire's Short Fiction Contest, the Master Review's Novel Excerpt Contest and the Canadian Authors Association Toronto National Writing Contest. Set in Toronto's Chinatown and Kensington Market, Denison Avenue is a moving portrait of a city undergoing mass gentrification and a Chinese Canadian elder experiencing the existential challenges of getting old and being Asian in North America. Recently widowed, Wong Cho Sum takes long walks through the city, collecting bottles and cans and meeting people on her journeys in a bid to ease her grief. Christina Wong is a Toronto writer, playwright and multidisciplinary artist who also works in sound installation, audio documentaries and photography. Daniel Innes is a multidisciplinary artist from Toronto. He works in painting, installation, graphic and textile design, illustration, sign painting and tattooing. Mãn is a young woman living in Vietnam. Her mother is a spy, and to protect her and give her a better life, her mother arranges a marriage between Mãn and a man who lives in Montreal and runs a restaurant. There, Mãn discovers her love of cooking, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities — and challenges. Written with stunning poetic prose and filled with powerful imagery, Mãn is an unforgettable book about love, passion and sacrifice. Kim Thúy is a Montreal-based novelist and short story writer. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, she and her family were among thousands who fled the country on boat after the fall of Saigon. They later settled in Quebec. Thúy's first novel, Ru, won the Governor General's Literary Award for French-language fiction and was a finalist for the Giller Prize in 2002. It also won Canada Reads 2015, when it was championed by Cameron Bailey. Sheila Fischman is the translator of over 150 novels from French to English. She won the Molson Prize for the Arts. She lives in Montreal. All Our Ordinary Stories by Teresa Wong In the graphic memoir All Our Ordinary Stories, Teresa Wong uses spare black-and-white illustrations and thought-provoking prose to unpack how intergenerational trauma and resilience can shape our identities. Starting with her mother's stroke a decade ago, Wong takes a journey through time and place to find the origin of her feelings of disconnection from her parents. The series of stories carefully examine the cultural, language, historical and personality issues that have been barriers to intimacy in her family. Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung Ghost Forest explores an unnamed woman's grief after her father dies. She revisits her memories of him, an "astronaut father" who stayed in Hong Kong to work when his family immigrated to Canada, and is left with unresolved questions that only her mother and grandmother can help answer. Pik-Shuen Fung is a Canadian novelist raised in Vancouver and currently based in New York City. Ghost Forest won the 2022 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and the Amazon First Novel Award. Butter Honey Pig Bread by francesca ekwuyasi Butter Honey Pig Bread is a novel about twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. Kambirinachi believes she is a spirit who was supposed to die as a small child. By staying alive, she is cursing her family — a fear that appears to come true when Kehinde experiences something that tears the family apart and divides the twins for years. But when the three women connect years later, they must confront their past and find forgiveness. francesca ekwuyasi is a writer, filmmaker and visual artist. Her writing has appeared in the Malahat Review, Guts and Brittle Paper, and she was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize. Her most recent book is a collaborative dialogue with Roger Mooking called Curious Sounds. She spits her time between Halifax and Montreal. When five-year-old Monolith arrives from the Philippines to join his mother in Canada he lashes out, attacking her and destroying his new home in the linked short story collection. The characters in Reuniting with Strangers are all dealing with feelings of displacement and estrangement caused as a result of migrating to Canada seeking opportunity. Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio is a Filipina-Canadian author, speaker and school board consultant who builds bridges between educators and Filipino families. She was the runner-up in the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award recognizing Asian authors in the Canadian Diaspora. Austria-Bonifacio was on the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize longlist. The Boat People by Sharon Bala In The Boat People, a ship carrying 500 Tamil refugees reaches the shores of British Columbia. Mahindan and his six-year-old son have survived a harrowing journey and hope to start a new life in Canada. But Mahindan is immediately taken into detention and left to wait there as politicians, journalists and the public debate the fate of the "boat people."
