It Could Happen Here - Anarchism in Central America feat. Andrew
Episode Date: January 3, 2025Andrew talks with Gare about the spread of anarchist and labor movements in the smaller states of Central America and the Caribbean including Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, P...uerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Sources: Cappelletti, Angel. (2018). Anarchism in Latin America. AK Press.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Cool Zone Media.
Hello and welcome to Krapen here.
I'm Andru Siege.
I'm also Andruizism on YouTube. And I'm
here once again with Garrison Davis. Happy to be here. Happy to have you. And we're going
to continue our journey through Latin American anarchisms and their histories. We've already
discussed Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Cuba, the Mapuche struggle, Ecuador,
Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela. And so there are just a few territories left that are considered Latin America.
So just before we get to Mexico and Uruguay and possibly even Quebec, I want to round
up all the anarchist histories in the smaller states.
You're not wrong, but it still is funny.
Yeah, Quebec, I mean, honestly, you could say the same for like Haiti,
Guadeloupe, Martinique. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's even a lot of anarchists in Montreal today as a
booming anarchist movement, but it still is a little funny. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I actually wanted to include explorations of Haiti and in
Guadeloupe and Martinique in this episode since it's, you know, fairly small anarchist
movements there. But I mean, I suppose I could just summarize it one time, which is that Martinique
had a section of the International at one point in 1895. There was also a branch of the Internationale
in 1866 on the island of Guadalupe and it is very difficult to establish whether there
were any anarchist groups in Haiti ever from my research. There was an appearance of socialism
more broadly as part of the struggle against domination taking place in the country but the dictatorships of
Haiti have made those kinds of movements very difficult to spring out and thrive.
Yeah I can see that. But today we're going to be focusing on the anarchist
histories and the rest of the smaller states of Central America and the
Caribbean. So we'll be covering the sparks of anarchism in Costa Rica, Nicaragua,
Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Mexican Republic and Puerto Rico.
And as with previous episodes, this is all possible thanks to Angel Capuleti's exhaustive work
titled Anarchism in Latin America. But let me set the scene first and foremost, across the lush
rainforests and turquoise seas of Central America. Historically, there were several
indigenous peoples that have called it home, and that home was violated in the early 16th century
as Spanish conquistadors carved bloody paths to the region, replacing the once vibrant pre-colonial
societies with the feudal-like arrangements of the encomienda system, which forced indigenous
peoples into labour under Spanish landowners.
The colonial era saw the rise of vast plantations for cash crops like cocoa, indigo, and later
coffee, enriching a small elite while indigenous and Afro-descendant populations endured brutal
oppression over the centuries.
Fast forward to the early 19th century and the wave of independence sweeping across Latin
America reached Central America.
In 1821, the region officially threw off Spanish rule and in 1823, Central America gained its
independence from the Mexican Empire.
For a fleeting moment, from 1823 to 1839, Central America united as the Federal Republic
of Central America, modelled after the US Constitution and encompassing modern-day Guatemala,
Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
and Costa Rica.
By 1838, the cracks in the Federation were becoming too large to ignore.
For most of its existence, the capital of the country alternated between Guatemala City
and San Salvador, so they couldn't even decide on that.
Liberals and conservatives were also split on the economy, centralization vs. decentralization,
and the role of the Catholic Church.
And Guatemala was kinda resented by the other states because it had such disproportionate
influence.
So political infighting and regional rivalries eventually caused the union to splinter.
Each state went its own way.
But the collapse of the Federation wasn't the end of the story, as seeds of resistance
would sprout across the former territory of the Republic.
And among those seeds were the anarchists.
So let's start from Costa Rica and head north.
In the early 1900s in Costa Rica, you had libertarian newspapers popping up all over
the place, as usual.
And when you say libertarian, you don't necessarily mean the…
I mean anarchists.
Yes, yeah.
I refuse to let them appropriate that to me.
Yes.
So you had names like El Aurora Social, El Trabajo and La Lucha,
which were equating the struggles of local workers
and the cross continental knowledge of international discourses.
But even before these publications, we should believe there was enough
anarchist danger to stir up the establishment.
A very little anarchist danger is enough anarchist danger to stir up the establishment.
No, but to tell you how unsettled the establishment was.
So, you know, we're recording this a couple of weeks before Christmas, right?
Yes, this is going to come out, I think, right after New Year's.
Okay, and I don't know if you've gone to church for Christmas before, if that's a thing that you've done.
I have, I have.
Okay. I have as well.
And imagine 1892.
You go, it's Christmas time.
You go into church, you sit down to get your little…
You know, you're supposed to keep the sermon short and sweet,
let people get home to do what they have to do, right?
But in 1892, Bishop Thiel decided to use his Christmas sermon to warn against anarchists.
Ha ha ha! That's pretty funny.
Like, imagine you're just trying to go home and eat your Christmas lunch,
and you have to listen to this guy preach against, radical anarchists who are coming to mess up the country.
They're giving out food, they're healing the sick, they're doing…
I mean, to be fair, the anarchists at the time were generally a threat to the clerical establishment.
Sure, of course. As was our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Jesus H. Christ. Jesus and his affinity group of 12
traveling around the countryside,
stirring up all kinds of trouble.
Indeed, indeed.
Seeding revolt against the Roman Empire.
We gotta stop them.
Yeah, I mean, gosh, that's a whole kind of rooms
I could get into right there.
It sure is, It sure is.
I mean, seriously, Christianity went from being a response to the Roman Empire to being
the Roman Empire. And that is like one of the biggest downgrades of the millennia.
Yeah, no, it's a super successful recuperation. And that's why I do find as much as it has
some problems, liberation theology, especially the version in the South,
to be kind of compelling. I wouldn't consider myself a Christian necessarily, but as a religious
sect goes, I am interested in what liberation theology kind of does and how it tries to
re-radicalize forms of Christianity.
For sure, for sure. I have some concerns about it and other strands of
Christian anarchism. Same. As somebody who grew up Christian. Yeah, same. But of course, this is not
the place to digress about that topic, as we do have quite a few countries to cover.
So the Costa Rican anarchists were not just being called out by the bishops, you know.
They were also struggling, you know, print eight hour workday, such as with the Baker
strike in 1905.
And they would also demonstrate against the assassination of anarchist educator Francisco
Ferrer.
Nice.
They would also found the center of their studio,ios Sociares Reminal, which was a collective
of intellectuals and workers who focused on studying and expanding upon anarchism.
And in 1911, they would launch the journal Renovación, which lasted an impressive 70 plus
issues. They helped to organize Costa Rica's first May Day celebration in 1913. And even as late as
the 1920s, groups explicitly formed for
libertarian action.
But unfortunately the anarchist influence wouldn't be as impactful in the country heading
into the mid-20th century, as the country faced two dictatorships.
However, the defeat of the latter in 1949 actually ushered in the most peaceful and
stable political situation in all of Latin America.
I suppose that might be because the democratic government that followed didn't transgress
US interests.
They do have a US military base in the country after all, but let me not speculate too much.
Look, who doesn't have a US military base these days?
Come on.
Cut them some slack.
That's right. That's right.
Yeah.
Andrew, I thought you were pro internationalism, but here we go.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Look at this. Look at this.
This parochial backwards regressive.
You tell them you don't want them in boots on the ground in your.
Globe emoji in bio version of internationalism.
Oh.
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Yeah, really. No, really. Go to ReallyNoReally.com. And register to winicaragua, the spark of labour organisation began to flicker in
the early 1900s, but there's little evidence of any anarchist-specific influence.
In 1918, the Federacion Obrera Nicaragüenes, or the FON, emerged and pulled together various
mutual societies from across the country, from shoemakers
to bakers to tailors, from Leon to Managua. But this federation wasn't anarchist in
character. Both conservative and liberal elites actually tried to use these workers groups
for their own ends. Within the FON, the Grupo Socialista ended up emerging as a rebel force
to challenge these elites and their influence in the workers movement but even that rebel group was reformist in nature.
Now it is possible that libertarians from Spain and Mexico played roles in the stevedore
strikes of 1919 in Corinto which was Nicaragua's major port city but I can't say for sure
from my research.
We do know that at least one influential person was perhaps inspired by anarchism, and that
was Augusto Sandino, the leader of the Sandinista rebellion against the US occupation of Nicaragua.
Sandino worked alongside anarchists during his time in exile in Mexico during its revolution,
and the red and black of the Sandinistas actually came from that anarchist influence.
By the 1930s, after the
US withdrawal, the labour movement had to navigate a Somoza family dictatorship, which was marked by
the severe repression of anything that even smelled red. Yet even in the face of state violence,
unions and workers' groups continued to organise, laying the groundwork for future resistance,
including the eventual Sandinista revolution that overthrew the Somozas in the late 70s.
Some social progress was then possible in the country, but it was still marred by corruption
and authoritarianism, made worse by the re-election of Daniel Ortega in 2006.
He still holds the presidency in Nicaragua to this day, managing to stave off the swell
of protests against him between 2018 and 2020, of which anarchists, however small in number, did indeed take part.
If we turn to Honduras now, there's not too much to say about anarchists, again, but Honduras
did have a vibrant labour movement.
In 1890, La Democracia, one of the country's first mutual aid societies, emerged, with
a cooperative spirit that laid the foundation for what was to come.
By the early 20th century, the workers' movement in Honduras had begun to heat up even more,
particularly among miners and banana plantation laborers, two groups that were central to
the country's economy.
In March 1909, miners struck against brutal conditions and poverty wages.
The response?
Garrison, maybe you can guess.
Bad things. Violent brutal repression.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Yeah, that is that is, you know, what I was assuming,
but I didn't want to, you know, make a fool out of myself.
1916 Banana Plantation.
Workers at the Cuyamac Fruit Company.
What was their response?
Oh, violence, murder, I assume.
Ding ding ding ding ding.
400 strikers were arrested and imprisoned
in the infamous Castillo de Amor.
I didn't see any evidence of mass deaths
in this particular case.
Which is honestly progressive considering the time.
I don't know, mass incarceration, not really that much better.
I mean, they literally got imprisoned in this castle, dungeon, jail.
Not, not, not, not somewhere I would want to be.
Rats nibbling at your toes and stuff like that, you know?
No, no.
So following these early 20th century strikes, workers gradually began to build some momentum
in their fight for rights, particularly during the 1954 general strike against the US banana
companies.
This strike led to significant gains, including the legal right to organize and the emergence
of a more unified labor movement.
Now were anarchists involved in these movements?
It's possible, as the movements do bear much of the language and hallmarks of the anarchist-in-eclatist thought at the time, but to identify specific names
is difficult and there doesn't seem to be any evidence of specifically anarchist groups
in the early labour history of the country. As in other parts of Central America, it appears that
Marxists had a bit more influence in their struggles. In response to the workers' gains,
the US-backed military coups arose to counter that progress.
The 1963 coup against President Ramon Vieda Morales ushered in decades of military rule,
which stifled labour movements and peasant movements, often violently.
During the 1970s, the Campesino or peasant land struggles intensified as the people demanded
redistribution and reforms.
They did get some reform under General Oswaldo López Arellano, but these reforms were limited
and met with the usual repression.
In transitioning to a civilian government in the 1980s, Honduras remained under heavy
US influence, serving as a base for anti-communist activities in Central America. Then neoliberal policies in the 1990s eroded many of the hard-won social and labor rights,
as privatization and austerity measures deepened the inequality in the country.
The 2009 coup against President Manuel Zelaya marked another turning point in modern Honduran
resistance.
Zelaya's progressive policies, including raising the minimum wage and considering agrarian
reform.
Imagine you considered progressive even considering agrarian reform.
But for that thought crime of considering agrarian reform, he was alienated by the business
elite and the US-aligned military and thus couped.
And this triggered of course a wave of militarization and repression, and protests were met with
violence and human rights abuses, the usual.
In the years following the coup, movements like La Resistencia unified a broad coalition
of workers, indigenous groups, feminists, students who were all demanding systemic change.
But the issues persist.
Honduras continues to face crises of poverty, violence, and migration.
But grassroots organizing continues. The ground there is indeed fertile for anarchist resurgence.
And then we come to El Salvador. Anarchists, both local and international, played a key role
in shaping the early labour movement. Spanish, Mexican, and Panamanian anarcho-syndicalists worked with them ideas of collective resistance
and workers' autonomy.
One of the earliest milestones in the country was the Union Obrera Salvadoraine, founded
in 1922, which united workers under the principles of mutual aid and direct action.
By 1924, the Federación Regional de Trabajadores de El Salvador, or FRTS, emerged and was initially
steeped in anarchist-syndicalist ideas before shifting towards Marxism in the late 1920s.
In the 1930s, the anarchist Centro Sindical Libertario was founded and operated in San
Salvador.
Unfortunately for pretty much everybody in El Salvador, 1932 happened.
The devastating La Mantaza of 1932 to be specific. This was a
massacre that was orchestrated by the dictatorship of General... Oh I shouldn't
have told you. I should have asked you what you think the La Matanza means.
I don't know if you've brushed up on your Spanish. Unfortunately no. My Spanish is
actually quite famously bad. I really should work on it.
I'm sure you're envying my stumbling through all these Spanish names throughout the series.
See, that's usually me.
I'm just happy to have it be someone else.
So James doesn't laugh at me for reading too many books,
but not practicing saying things out loud as a kid.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel you.
I mean, for me, I think one of the difficulties, I have been
learning Spanish like all my life.
Yeah.
The difficulty is when you're speaking at a momentum in one
language, at least in my experience, it's really difficult
to switch the patterns of pronunciation to the other
language.
You know, the way that Spanish, like, reads vowels
is different from how English reads vowels.
So it's hard to, like, quickly switch in and switch out.
Yeah, that's always been my struggle,
is reading their vowels like my vowels,
and it produces some sometimes quite comical pronunciations,
which is really, really my bad.
I can imagine.
But yeah, the La Matanza of 1932 was a massacre orchestrated by the dictatorship
of General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez that aimed to crush the peasant
uprising that was sparked by systemic poverty and land dispossession.
Tens of thousands were slaughtered, many of them indigenous people, and the anarchists
and labour movements in the country suffered immense losses, as activists were either killed
or forced underground.
This marked the beginning of decades of military rule, designed to protect the interests of
the land-owning oligarchy, the 14 families that practically own everything in El Salvador. But despite this repression,
radical organizations have persisted. The mid-to-late 20th century saw the rise of
armed revolutionary groups culminating in the Salvadoran Civil War from 1980 to 1992.
The war pitted the primarily Marxist-Lendist and Socialist factions against the US-backed
Salvadoran military dictatorship.
The Marxists transitioned into a political party after the 1992 Peace Accords, which
ended the war but left many systemic inequalities unresolved.
In the 21st century, labor struggles have continued amid neoliberal economic reforms
and international financial pressures.
While the left-wing FMLN won the presidency in 2009 and held power until 2019, its tenure
was criticised for failing to sufficiently address the issues plaguing the country.
Recent years under President Naib Ukele have seen the construction of a proper mass carceral
police state, while workers struggle against privatisation and austerity
measures.
By the way, the rise of Achilles is just really fascinating to me, particularly from a Trinidadian
context because we have a pretty severe murder rate situation going on.
Our murder rate has been rising steadily in the past two decades and there's just been
in general a lot of crime issues lately and the's just been in general a lot of crime
has series lately and the response a lot I've seen a lot of Trinidadians have toward the rise
of a killing in Salvador is literally like we should do that too we need to do that too like we
need to you know institute like a mass car show state as well and I feel like I'm fighting a wave
I'm like talking to a wall.
I'm like really, it's really difficult for me, I think, to challenge that because I
understand people's frustrations.
But to me, my mind is just boggled at it.
You know, like you really think we'd be complaining about corruption all the time, right?
Like it's very openly nepotistic and corrupt in this place.
People who are like either political party
that is presented to us as the options and yet people are so thinking about the crime situation that they will end up putting that much power in the hands of the government to make that judgment.
That's the thing is we know that they're innocent people in Pukili's prisons. You know we know
that journalists have been locked up for criticizing the government. We know that
You know, we know that journalists have been locked up for criticizing the government. We know that all people are locked up without charges, without rights, without anything.
And what's crazy to me is that like, people are like cheering it on until it's them,
until you happen to be unlucky enough to have a tattoo.
I mean, yeah, as long as it's someone else, then it's not them.
Yeah, exactly. So like, that's fine as long as it's somebody else.
But like, let's say you have a tattoo or I mean, the thing is the police,
I'm sure it's the case in El Salvador as well, because the police are themselves
a gang pretty much anywhere in the world.
But the police in Trinidad are literally connected in some cases with with gangs.
In fact, there's some gang members who end up like joining the
police force later on in their lives and so to just give that kind of power to them,
you know, let's say you criticize an officer, you say something they were like
and then before you know it, you're the one behind bars as well. I understand the
frustration, I don't understand the response and it remains to be seen how
Burkitt's policies continue to play out in the country. And it remains to be seen how Burkitt's policies
continue to play out in the country.
I feel like it's a disaster, a recent happen.
In many ways it is already a disaster,
but you know, there are people pointing to,
oh look, I'll see if things have gotten no,
but I don't know how long that will last.
Especially when the families that are responsible
for so much of the disparity
in the country are still in their position of power. But I digress. The spirit of mutual
aid, direct action, and anti-authoritarian resistance still has the potential to persist I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden.
And together on the Really No Lily podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to
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way night about jurassic park way night. Welcome to really really sir bless you all
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It's called really no really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast At last we've reached Guatemala.
In 1926, the publication Orientacion Sindicale started circulating in Guatemala, calling
for the kind of direct grassroots union action that went around or even opposed political parties as obstacles to liberation.
Meanwhile, the Marxists in the country had a different vision.
They pushed for the formation of the Federacion Regional Obrera del Guatemala, and with that,
the launch of la Vanguardia Proletaria, a communist-led paper that aimed to rally the
working class behind Marxist ideas.
At the same time, Spanish and Peruvian workers alongside Guatemalan students
and workers came together to form the Comité Proacción Sindical, which was the space where
anarchist-syndicalism truly found its voice in Guatemala. But as you can probably guess,
the powers at be weren't going to let this kind of radical action stand.
In 1930, a military dictatorship swept into the country, ending the comite, effectively silencing anarchist
cynicalism in Guatemala, and setting the stage for years of political repression, as the
state worked tirelessly to suppress any form of workers' self-organization, often with
the backing of the one and only…
U.S.A.
U.S.A.
U.S.A.
The mid-20th century marked a period of extreme violence against workers' movements, peasant
movements, and leftist movements, especially after the 1954 CIA-backed coup.
Despite these setbacks, workers and political movements never stopped fighting.
In the 1960s and 70s, guerrilla movements gained momentum, inspired by Marxist and anti-imperialist
ideologies,
and although these movements were frequently crushed with state violence in the form of
massacres and disappearances, they persisted until the end of the Civil War 1996.
Still, social inequality and economic exploitation persisted.
Their movements, especially in this sweatshop industry, have continued to fight for workers'
rights.
Guatemala today is still fighting to breathe free. Its people are still fighting against the continued dominance of neoliberal economic
policies, fighting against corrupt political elites, and most importantly fighting for
autonomy for its indigenous and working peoples.
And now it's time to hit the islands. Our first stop is the Dominican Republic. Through
the efforts of Spanish immigrant workers, the ideas of mutual aid and syndicalism found
very fertile ground, particularly in the mid-1880s, where we see the emergence of the first mutualist
associations, such as La Alianza Chibaena in 1884 and Sociedad Artesanal Hijos del Pueblo
in 1890.
The railroad workers' strike in 1896 struck in protest against their conditions while
working on the Puerto Plata-Santiago Line, among the first direct actions in the Dominican Republic outside
of its historical maroonages and slave revolts.
In 1897, the first labor union was formed, the Union de Panaderos de Santo Domingo.
Not long after, strikes erupted across the country.
Bakers, cobblers, brigliers all marched in protest, often in the heart of Colon Park,
fighting for better working conditions and respect from their employers.
Fast forward a bit and in 1920, we saw the first premier Congreso de Ravajadores Dominicanos
convene in Santo Domingo, where the Confederación Dominicana del Trabajo was born.
The demands were basic but crucial, things like the 8-hour
workday, the right to strike, a salary schedule, and profit sharing. But it wasn't just about
improving their daily lives, they also sought to fight a foreign intervention. Specifically,
they called for the end of the North American occupation, which had had a heavy presence in
the region for decades. The 1920s also saw the rise of another powerful union, the Federación Local de Trabajo de
Santo Domingo, which was founded by 31 different unions.
But despite the strength of these movements, the Dominican Republic remained under the
heavy influence of foreign powers and corrupt local elites.
In 1946, the Dominican Republic saw a major strike in the sugar plantations of La Romana
and San Pedro de Macorís, and this time, the influence of Spanish anarchists who had fled the Spanish Civil War was
undeniable. Today, the anarchist presence in the Dominican Republic is not pronounced,
but the conditions are, as with the others, ripe for such a transformation.
Finally, let's jump across to Puerto Rico for our final historical review.
Puerto Rico, as we know, was a Spanish colony until 1898, but after that it fell under the
control of the United States.
Anarchism in Puerto Rico didn't have quite the same impact as it did in nearby Cuba,
but that doesn't mean it wasn't there, pushing back against the powers it be.
Anarchist militants, particularly from Spain, made their way to Puerto Rico in the 1880s,
bringing with them the fire of direct action and the commitment to the idea that workers should control their
own lives.
In the liberal period between 1868 and 1873, the first autism-based organizations started
popping up.
These were mutual aid societies and cooperatives.
They weren't exactly radical in orientation, a far cry from the anarchist uprising that's
happening elsewhere in Latin America, but there were spaces where workers could find solidarity and support.
In 1894, things began to change.
A monetary crisis hit, followed by a devaluation that sent prices skyrocketing, and the population
started to push back.
This triggered a wave of strikes and mass protests, and this is where we start to see
the direct influence of anarchists.
We know for sure that Spanish anarchists who had settled in Puerto Rico were active in
these early struggles, pushing for emancipation and denouncing exportation.
In 1998, when Puerto Rico was already under US control, anarchists and socialists came
together to form the Federación Regional de los Trabajadores, a group clearly inspired
by the Spanish Federación Regional de Española.
Their program was a simple yet radical one.
Abolish the exploitation of workers and build a society without borders or masters.
But as with all movements, there were contradictions and splits.
In 1899, a major rift occurred within the federation when it became clear that some
of its leaders were more willing than others to accept the support of political parties, something the anarchists traditionally
rejected.
This caused those that were true to syndicalist autonomy to form the Federacion Libre, a group
that split from that original federation and stuck to the principles of the First Internationale.
Yet just a few years later, 1901, this same group ended up affiliating with the conservative American Federation of Labor, which is a
very strange bedfellow considering their earlier anarchist commitments. But the
anarchists didn't fade away just after these splits. They didn't achieve the
dominant position in Puerto Rico's worker movement, but they kept pushing forward
anyway. One of the ways they did this was through the press, as they spread ideas, shared literature,
and built networks.
Boz Sumana, a publication based in Caracas, was one such example.
The energy anarchists in Puerto Rico also translated into action, especially in the
labor front, where they were there and part of strikes and meetings and ongoing battles.
So as we look to Puerto Rico today, whether with the fight for sovereignty, for labour
rights, against colonialism or whatever else, we can remember the potential of anarchism
on the island.
There were Puerto Ricans in history who understood that freedom wasn't solely about political
independence but about the liberation of all people from all forms of exploitation.
So let's take a step back and look at the broader picture of labour and anarchist struggle
across the region.
Though the anarchist movements were not as vibrant as elsewhere, but are indeed dormant
or dead in many cases, we still see a very powerful thread of resistance and a very fertile
ground for anarchist development which our comrades in these places can can hopefully flourish within. That's all for me today. You can find me on YouTube
at Andrew'sZone and Patreon at St. Drew. This is Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check
us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions.
Thanks for listening.
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