The territory was named La Louisiane in 1682 by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, in honor of King Louis XIV, who claimed for France the vast Mississippi River basin. When French settlers later founded New Orleans in 1718, the region quickly became a center of French culture in North America.
The Cuban Revolution was more successful at exporting its epic narrative than any other tangible commodity. Not even sugarcane, tobacco or rum can compare. The face of Che Guevara transformed into left-wing merchandise, the stoic image of Fidel Castro with a cigar in his mouth defying the 600 assassination attempts orchestrated against him by the CIA, and the slogan that Cuban education and healthcare are the best in the world have been an important part of the global progressive ideation from 1959 to the present.
History is full of Black Francophone figures who have shaped politics, culture, science, and resistance across continents. Yet too often, they remain invisible in school textbooks. These individuals challenged colonial power, redefined identity, confronted racial hierarchies, and transformed intellectual and political life in the Francophone world and beyond. From West Africa to the Caribbean, in scientific research and political activism, they forged new paths in the face of oppression and erasure, leaving legacies that continue to inspire freedom, dignity, and solidarity.
On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland the annual Alpine gathering of the global elite to declare that now is not a time for new imperialism or new colonialism. This, of course, was a reference to the current ambitions of Macron's counterpart in the United States, Donald Trump, who, in addition to recently kidnapping the president of Venezuela and repeatedly threatening to seize the Panama Canal,
In the coastal city of Trujillo, he'd observed how the US-owned United Fruit Company dominated the city's railways and docks and wielded significant political influence. This inspired his novel "Cabbages and Kings" (1904), in which he wrote about the fictional republic of Anchuria — a 'small, maritime banana republic' whose government bent to the interests of a powerful foreign corporation.
Today is Saturday, Feb. 7, the 38th day of 2026. There are 327 days left in the year. Today in history: On Feb. 7, 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was inaugurated as the first democratically elected president of Haiti. (He was overthrown by the military the following September.) Also on this date: In 1904, the Great Baltimore Fire began; one of the worst city fires in American history, it destroyed over 1,500 buildings in central Baltimore.
