Maaza: Hi, everyone. Welcome to EQUALS, a podcast about inequality. This is Maaza, and I am here with Annie today. Hey, Annie. I am so excited about our episode. Today we get to speak to Crismar Lujano, who’s a Venezuelan journalist, researcher, and political analyst based in Mexico City. She’s also one of the amazing Blueprints for New Economy fellows for this year. In her day job, she’s editor at Diario Red America Latina and presenter at Canal Red America Latina. And I know that she’s somebody who speaks so eloquently about who owns the narrative and how we can think more deeply about where we get our news and who tells our stories.

Annie: I’m excited, too. I’m really glad we have a journalist with us for this episode. Let’s dive right in.

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Maaza: Crismar thank you so much for joining us for this episode of EQUALS. I am lucky enough to know you a little bit already, but could you start by introducing yourself to our listeners.

Crismar: Annie, Maaza thank you so much for having me, this is a real honor and pleasure to be with you here at EQUALS. Thank you. Well, you did a great introduction of me already, but I’m Crismar Lujano, I’m a Venezuelan journalist and I believe one of the easiest ways to explain why I became interested in politics and inequality. It probably starts with my own story, right? I was born and raised in Venezuela. This is a country that probably everyone knows for having the largest oil reserves in the world than for the damage done by neoliberal policies over decades. I would like to say I grew up, in a working class and low-income family. My mom was single mother who had to deal with economic hardship from a very early age. So even before I have the words to talk about all this, I was already experiencing it. When you grow up understanding that the circumstances you’re born into can determine how much of your life is going to be, why so many people have better opportunities and others are just there trying to survive, these shapes for sure your path in the world. The first time I became interested in Latin American politics, I can recall two specific moments. and the first one is one when I was nine years old, I was just a child, but Hugo Chavez came to power. And that was a very interesting moment, not only for Venezuela, but for the global South, I would say for Latin America specifically. Because Chavez, regardless of what everyone can think about, he led this social process that not only vindicates his own anti colonial tradition by renewing the thought of Simon Bolivar, the struggle for independence, for the unity of the Latin American nation, and the struggle as well for social justice, but also recover the people’s historical struggle during the 20th century against the US imperialism or any kind of imperialism. Under the leadership of these man, Hugo Chavez, a Latin American grassroots process challenged that neoliberal thought. And I think this is important because a small country whose people had already risen against, risen against neoliberalism during the Caracazo in 1989, began experimenting with a different political and economic path. Because we started talking about sovereignty, about regional integration, about redistribution of wealth and eventually what it was named, socialism of the 21st century. So of course, at nine years old, you don’t understand fully, you cannot grasp the whole thing. But I understood something, that it was more tangible, right? Like whether there was food at home or if we could pay the bills, or if my family felt that things were getting slightly better. So that was for me, probably the first political education. Because I started to see politics not as an abstract thing that is just played in parliament or in government offices, but politics as everyday life is whether you can eat properly or if you can go to school or study, if you can have access to healthcare, whether if you have a future, basically. And there was this other experience that really changed the way I saw Latin America. And it was when I lived in Canada. I was there for two years, and being outside the region obviously made me see and understand, not for the first time, what it meant to be Latin American as a whole. I started noticing, for example, that the stories told about Venezuela were often repeated about the entire region. Different countries, different political processes, different cultures, but often the same stereotypes and generalizations about, our problems and our future. So, I realized that we don’t only have to struggle over our, resources or political power, we also have to struggle over who gets to tell our story. And that became very important in my journalism. So, I would say that through all those experiences, one question keeps coming back to me, right? Like, how much of what happens inside our countries is actually decided inside our countries and, by our people.

Annie: Thanks, Crismar. That was really interesting. You’re practicing journalism at a time that’s, you know, complicated, at a time when truth is being heavily contested and media, agendas are being shaped by corporate and financial power. So, you’re passionate, and I think that comes out, you know, very vividly when you talk about who owns narratives, who owns knowledge. Can you share an example of a Latin American story that looks entirely different when it’s told from within the region rather than it’s told from outside the region, say from, I don’t know, Washington, from London or elsewhere.

Crismar: I think one of the things that interested me the most is who gets to define economic success in the global South. We often hear the words of developing country, failed state, debt crisis. And these are no innocent terms. And I think the task has to ask who created these categories, right? Like, or what are we measuring and whose experiences are we leaving out? As you, ah, as you said, in Argentina right now in the present moment is a very good example of this because under Javier Milei we have seen a very radical program of fiscal adjustment, deregulation and massive cuts, to the role of the state and internationally, especially among financial institutions and markets, there has been a very positive narrative around it, right, like fiscal discipline, lower inflation, reforms, etc. And then you look at people’s lives and poverty initially went above 50% in the first half of the 2024. It later came down as inflation fell. But unemployment and economic insecurity remain as important issues nowadays. So, I think one of the main questions is not simply did Milei succeed or fail, but the question is successful for whom? When you look at inflation, you might tell one story, but when you look at the wages, at the jobs, at the public services, and at ah, whether families can afford the basics you might tell another. Obviously as a Venezuelan, I would say that that’s another important example because often the story begins with Hugo Chavez, ah, like in the last 20 years. But you cannot really understand Venezuela about understanding what came before him. And it starts with the neoliberal policies and economic restructuring back in the decades of the 80s and the 90s and with the social consequences they produce. Venezuela has always been an oil rich country, but back in that time that didn’t mean that Venezuelans were living well. there was an extremely high inequality. So, his government made a political decision to use a much larger share of the oil revenues for health care, for education, for food, for housing, for social programs. So poverty and inequality fell significantly, during the Chavez years. But we will see in the media how Venezuela was treated, right, like through a completely different vocabulary like dictatorship, failed state, irresponsible government, economic disaster. And then there is this question of the sanctions which added well, enormous pressure to an economy that was already suffering from a severe crisis. So, and this is where the media framing becomes really important. When Argentina for instance, implement policies that are welcomed by investors or by the centers of power, the IMF or international financial markets, you will hear all over the media this vocabulary of stabilization, of fiscal responsibility, restoring investor confidence. But when a government like Chavez, or like the Cuban back in the time that challenged the economic consensus and nationalizes resources, expands social expending and tries to redistribute health, you will then learn the vocabulary that sounds more like populism, instability, irresponsibility. And when that country is subsequently subjected to sanctions, those external constraints can become almost invisible in the explanation of its own economic crisis. This happened to Venezuela. You will hear about the economy failures without talking about what actually made them possible in the first place.

Maaza: Super interesting, Crismar I feel like we could have a whole podcast series just, just on that topic, and hopefully we will get to do that, someday. But Crismar, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the, you know, the pull towards the far right. So, across Latin America, like in many other parts of the world, we’ve been seeing these dramatic political swings and this rising pull towards the far right. So, I’m curious, with all of your experience, you know, not only across Latin America, but elsewhere, how do you explain this shift and what are like, its drivers, in the way you see it?

Crismar: Well, Maaza that’s, a very tough question because I like to be careful, right, like when explaining the rise of the far right simply as a sudden ideological shift to the right. Because I think that what we’re seeing across Latin America, but not only also in Europe, for instance, is this crisis of the social, the political conditions that make democracy meaningful to people. Many young people are also entering adulthood in conditions of extraordinary economic insecurity. They are working multiple jobs. Often, they are precarious. They do it through platforms without stable contracts or social, protections. Housing is increasingly unaffordable. So, people are economically precarious, but culturally they are constantly told that they should become the next millionaire or the next influencer or the next tech entrepreneur. And when that doesn’t happen, because it cannot happen in the state of the current economy, the frustration can easily be redirected towards other vulnerable groups rather than towards the structures that are producing that insecurity in the first place. And I believe that this is where the rise of the far right cannot be understood only as a shift in ideology. it is also a crisis of meaning, a crisis of political education, a crisis of collective imagination. The far right here has been particularly effective because they take, very real frustrations and gives them very simple enemies and meanings. And because if you can convince people that politics are meaningless, that institutions are useless and the collective action doesn’t work, and that, the only thing that matter is individual success, then democracy obviously itself become very fragile. And that’s what I think that the Brazilian election, for example, is interesting beyond whoever wins or loses, because it tells something about the political environment in which Latin Americans are making decisions, right? Like how this economic insecurity, social media, and the search for simple answers are reshaping also the concept of democracy. Because democracy, we know, is not only just voting for someone every four years. Or it should be the idea that, ordinary people have a legitimate role in deciding how society is organized and how wealth and power should be distributed. I don’t think this all is inevitable. I think young people are also at the forefront of struggles for climate justice, for labor rights, for feminism, for racial justice and democratic rights. So, the question for the progressive left is not only how to defeat the far right electorally. I think it’s important, obviously, but it’s not the only thing. It is whether we can build a political project that gives people something that the far right is very good at, offering a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, and a sense of believable future.

Annie: Crismar you’ve been interested about the relationship between Latin America and the rest of the global South. How Latin America connects to the rest of the global South. What fundamentally changes when journalists, like you, researchers, social movements, etc., in Latin America build direct ties with their counterparts in Asia, in Africa and the Caribbean, and they do so by bypassing traditional Western gatekeepers?

Crismar: I think something fundamental changes and is that we stop seeing ourselves as isolated regions and start seeing ourselves as part of a political and historical whole. Because for a very long time the relationships between, let’s say, Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean has been mediated through the same centres of powers. So even when the story is about us, us, the interpretation of our stories comes from somewhere else. And this has clear consequences because it means that we don’t only have an economic dependency, we also have a dependency in the production of knowledge. We depend on institutions, on, media organizations or an academic centre, in the global north to tell us what is important, what is credible, who and what counts as an expertise and, and sometimes even that what our own problems mean and what the solutions should be, right? So, when journalists such as me, researchers or social movements from the global south establish this direct relationship with each other, this changes the equation because it allows us to compare experiences that often are treated as completely separate. So, we can see, for example, and this is a very concrete one, like how countries that were subjected to colonialism have dealt with similar questions around our same problems like depth and natural resources, extractivism, the economic dependency sanctions, the corporate power, and overall, obviously the struggle for sovereignty. So, we also discovered that we have knowledge that the dominant system has taught us to underestimate. Because there is this tendency to think that knowledge travels from, you know, north to South. So, the north produces the theory and then the south provides the cases. And we need to reverse that relationship. Because the south doesn’t only have experiences to be studied. It has theory, concept, political traditions and cultural traditions and solutions of its own. For journalism, I believe is very important this direct south, south connections that can change not only who tells the story, but what stories become possible as well in the first place. And obviously this doesn’t mean rejecting knowledge from the centres of powers of Europe or the United States. For me, it means to break the hierarchy, right? Like it means moving from a system in which some countries are considered producers or producers of universal knowledge and other ones are treated as objects of study. Overall, I believe it is the colonizing knowledge. That’s what it really means. It’s not about replacing one century with another. It’s about creating a world with many centres. Building direct connections across the global south is not only about networking as well. It’s about actually building political capacity, intellectual autonomy and a different balance of power.

Maaza: Crismar, I’m sure that many of our listeners, and actually me myself, I would really love your thoughts on this as a journalist and somebody who thinks about these questions deeply. How do you think those of us who are consuming media, can try and consume it more critically? It’s not only about being aware, but I, I’m so curious to hear from you what the alternatives are. Are you seeing any like, good practices of powerful authentic storytelling and journalism that you can share with us and our listeners?

Crismar: Absolutely Maaza, I think in the, the first step is to, to stop thinking of media as a simpler window of, onto reality because media, there are also filters. So, someone behind the information decides what becomes news and whose voice is included, what context is provided and obviously what is ah, left outside that frame. So, when I consume a piece of journalism or when I write one myself, I try to ask these simple questions, right? Like who is telling me this story? And more importantly who owns the institution producing it, right? Who is being quoted? who is not being quoted? What historical context as well is missing here? And whose interests are served by presenting the story in this particular way? There is a question we need to still ask is who owns the infrastructure through which we receive information? So, Oxfam January’s 2026 reports actually makes this very clear because seven of the world’s, 10 largest media and press companies have billionaire owners and billionaires also control the major social media platforms on which billions of people now consume information every day. So that means that the concentration of power isn’t only happening in traditional corporate media, is also happening or simultaneously, in newspapers and television, but also in the digital platforms that decide, well, what becomes, becomes visible and what gets amplified and what disappears from our attentions. So, that’s a very important distinction because obviously we often talk about media, bias, and if it were only, you know, simple as a journalist choosing one political position over another. But there is a deeper structural thing. Who owns the newsroom and the platform and who designs this algorithm. I believe that if a handful of extremely wealthy people have the capacity to influence both the production of news and the distribution of information, then we are not simply dealing with a problem of media bias. We’re dealing with a concentration of political and informational power. For me, authentic journalism is not a journalism without perspective. It’s a journalism that is transparent about its perspective, its aim, but with rigorous, with facts. We are very often told that journalism has to be neutral. But neutrality can also mean reproducing the perspective of the most powerful actor and presenting it as the objective view, right. So, for people trying to consume media more critically, I would say don’t look for one perfect source. First of all, you have to build a plural information diet. Let’s say it that way. If you’re reading about Latin America, read Latin American journalists. If you’re reading about Africa, look for African journalists and, researchers. No, compare, reports with international media. I would say read beyond the headline, look at primary sources and obviously pay attention not only to who grow the story, but who owns the institution and who control the platform through which you encounter this. So, I think we should support alternatives too, like independent media, community media, investigative journalism, transnational collaborators in the media ecosystems that allow journalists from the Global south to tell their own stories and reach, ah, well, these audiences directly. Because ultimately, well, media literacy is not only just about learning how to identify misinformation, it’s about learning how to recognize power. And once you start asking who gets to tell this story, who owns the infrastructure and who doesn’t get to speak, you start to consume, media very differently. One of the most important alternatives we can build is not simply better consumers of information, but citizens who also understands that they also have a role in shaping the information ecosystem around them. And hopefully, and eventually we can create in the Global south, our own, infrastructures in which we have the power to tell our own stories and talk about our own problems and solutions.

Maaza: Wonderful. Crismar And I know that’s, that’s all part of what you’re working on, and it’s so great to hear you and going in depth about this here. I’m happy to note that we are almost right at the, at the end of time. But Crismar is there anything that you were wishing that you could add today that you weren’t able to talk about in this conversation?

Crismar: Yeah, Maaza, I think to add as a, as the last thing, right? Like for me creating networks of journalist, researchers and social movements that can work together on a regular basis, right? Like sharing information, developing joint investigations, translating even like each other, each other’s work and producing content across languages. Creating these mechanisms for journalists in the Global south to reach audiences directly in other parts of the south is so crucial. We must take or put our hands on this task because it might define the next decade of what stories we share and we, what world we want to live in. Because this also make us think about technology itself, right? Like if our communication networks especially depend entirely on platforms and infrastructures controlled by a handful of corporations, especially located in the global north, then we don’t have political or intellectual outcome, autonomy or this one remains limited. So, we not only need networks of people but networks of infrastructure. And I think for this I’m very grateful to EQUALS for this opportunity to try to reach to a wider audience about what it means to work for an independent media ecosystems to try to have open knowledge, platform share resources, researchers as well and technological cooperation in this important task of ah, funding models that are sustainable and then don’t make every south project dependent on institutions in the global North.

Maaza: Wonderful. Thank you so much Crismar

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Annie: That was such an interesting discussion. Maaza, is there anything that, stood out for you?

Maaza: Oh! I loved it all. I thought she was great. But what stood out the most to me was this conversation about getting news directly from other Global south regions and building collaborations across the Global South. That’s something that always comes to mind for me that often Africans are getting news about Latin America filtered through the Global north. And that’s something that I hope we can stop going forward. And I love that Crismar is focused on that.

Annie: Yes, definitely. Definitely. And especially now, knowing that, you know, billionaires are buying up all the mainstream news platforms. I think she inspires us and pushes us to look for alternative, independent media outlets that we can rely on, listen to people’s voices who aren’t normally heard and whose interests won’t be served by, you know, the mainstream news. So, I really encourage everyone, and I will do it myself, to support alternative, independent and community journalism.

Maaza: Absolutely.

Annie: Thanks for joining us today and I hope you join us for the next interview. Don’t forget to share with your friends, your family, and to follow us on social media. EQUALS podcast is available anywhere you download your podcasts.

Maaza: Bye, everyone.

Annie: Bye. See you next time.

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