The Amazon is entering a decisive phase. Not only because of its environmental, economic, or political crises, but because it raises a much deeper question about the kind of humanity we want to build. The elections to be held in Colombia on May 31, Peru on June 7, and Brazil on October 4, 2026, call for much more than a change in government. They call on the people to ask themselves what kind of coexistence, what model of society, and what value we place today on human and non-human life.
There is a dominant narrative that attempts to reduce everything to opposing poles: right or left; one party or another; love or hate; defend or destroy. This binary logic profoundly impoverishes our societies. It accustoms us to living by reacting emotionally, without deeper processes of discernment. Little by little, we stop thinking communally and come to exist almost solely through individual inclinations: “I want it this way,” “I don’t like this one,” “I hate that party,” “this model represents me,” “that other one threatens me.” And in the meantime, the great powers continue to organize the world.
The problem is not merely political. It is spiritual, cultural, and human. Because when a society loses the ability to recognize itself as a collective subject of its own history, it becomes more vulnerable to every form of narrative manipulation. The major media conglomerates, economic powers, digital platforms, and historical structures of privilege know very well how to produce fear, rejection, and polarization. They know how to keep people weary, divided, and emotionally captive.
But there is also another narrative. Quieter. More difficult. Slower. A narrative that integrates, that seeks dignity and rights for all, and not just for some. A narrative that recognizes that no society can sustain itself through the permanent exclusion of the poor, of indigenous peoples, of women, of young people, of territories, and of nature. That is where ecclesial communities need to be.
This shift in mindset comes at an enormous cost. It demands personal, communal, and institutional humility. It demands acknowledging that no one is saved alone and that no democracy can survive by merely managing social resentments. It demands abandoning certain ideological comforts and accepting that human coexistence will always be complex, conflict-ridden, and deeply relational.
For this reason, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s thinking helps us understand that Latin America was never a homogeneous or reconciled reality. We live amid tensions, colonial wounds, and overlapping worlds. And precisely for this reason, simplifying our countries into binary electoral narratives ends up obscuring the historical roots of inequality, racism, and exclusion.
In conversation with Catherine Walsh, we also come to understand that true transformation does not occur solely through laws or governments. It occurs when people come to recognize themselves once again as historical subjects capable of creating community, memory, justice, and a future. Elections are important, yes. They are a legitimate expression of democratic sovereignty. But a democracy without a conscious people, without a community fabric, and without an ethical horizon can easily become nothing more than a sophisticated management of inequalities.
The Amazon starkly reveals these contradictions. There, the poor want to live today. They want work today. They want food, security, and dignity today. And often the only concrete projects that reach their territories are extractive economies, illegal violence, or development models that slowly destroy the conditions for future life.
States appear weakened, while major economic and geopolitical interests vie for territories, minerals, water, biodiversity, and strategic routes.
Then a harsh question emerges: who decides today who can live and who can die? Because contemporary powers do not always kill directly. Often they let people die. They abandon. They discard. They render invisible. They normalize suffering. And perhaps one of the most tragic signs of our time is precisely this: the death of the poor no longer shocks the world enough.
What a twist of fate this is, where so many die not because they want to die, but because there are powers that consider it normal for the poor to be expendable.
That is why the 2026 elections must also be viewed from an ethical and spiritual perspective. Not so that the Church becomes a political party, but so that ecclesial communities help sustain critical awareness, shared humanity, and historical hope. The Church’s mission is not to fuel polarization, but to constantly remind us that all politics loses legitimacy when it ceases to care for life.
Perhaps when the end of 2026 arrives, we can return to this text and better understand which paths our continent chose to reinforce. Whether we choose to deepen models that produce exclusion and sacrifice, or whether we slowly begin to build projects capable of generating shared dignity.
Because resisting does not simply mean opposing. Resisting is also refusing to accept that the death of the poor is considered normal. Resisting is defending the possibility that our peoples can still reimagine a future where the lives of all human and non-human beings are worth more than any project of power.
By: Marcelo Lemos, Executive Secretary of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA). PhD candidate in Development, Society, and International Cooperation at the University of Brasília and in Sociology and Anthropology at the Complutense University of Madrid.