Cultural action for freedom

Here is a voice from that Third World which is so often spoken of but itself seldom speaks. What is more, this voice speaks neither to the Third World alone nor to the powers that be in the 'mother countries'. It is not a voice of representation, petition or remonstrance. Its message, which began to spread in Latin America some years ago, is today being heard and finds an echo among those sectors of the First World which, for one reason or another, feel attuned to the Third.

the early Something has happened since Frantz Fanon wrote The Wretched of the Earth. When that book appeared, sixties, Jean-Paul Sartre noted with some alarm: he is not talking to us. In Fanon, said Sartre, the Third World had found itself and was speaking to itself; it was not concerned with the master world. Nevertheless, Sartre went on, the master world, the Europeans, would do well to take heed of what the man was saying, if they cared for their own survival.