Friday, March 06, 2026

QVLN to Headline Mask Alive Festival!

 

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ANNOUNCING QVLN AT MASK ALIVE

Get ready everyone! Cultural Coalition is beyond thrilled to announce QVLN as the headliner for our 9th Annual Mask Alive Festival on Sunday, March 22, at Pioneer Park! Prepare yourselves for an unforgettable day filled with vibrant mask parades and an epic dance party that'll have you moving to the global beats of Quetzal Guerrero's electric violin!


This event is a celebration of the art of the mask, the cultures that honor this storytelling tradition, and the gathering of community where families and friends can come together to unleash their creativity.


Thanks to our amazing presenting sponsor, SRP, who believes in making cultural experiences accessible to everyone, the festival is FREE to all! So grab your familia, mark your calendars, and get ready to explore a world of colorful masks, lively rhythms, and pure joy!


Stay Tuned: Full Line-Up Coming Soon!

RSVP TO ADD TO YOU CALENDAR

VOLUNTEERS STILL NEEDED

We are just a few weeks away from our Mask Alive Festival and getting more excited every day!


If you are excited to celebrate the cultural arts and looking to get more involved, how about volunteering your time and talents for a couple of hours?


There are plenty of slots still available for the afternoon shifts at the Festival to help with:

  • Children's Art Activities
  • Collecting Surveys
  • Information Booth
  • Event Clean-up



SIGN UP TO VOLUNTEER TODAY!

SHARING THE ART OF HEALTHY LIVING

As some of you may know, the planting season in Arizona is a little earlier than other areas in the country.


The students in our After School Arts Program know its time to plant their seeds, moving some of their saplings from our classroom growbox to the garden beds.


Getting their hands dirty, learning about how to grow and cook their own food, and of course finding worms is all part of the fun! Help us keep these important activities going throughout the summer by making a gift today!


DONATE TO SUPPORT THE CLASSROOM GARDEN

THANK YOU MASK ALIVE SPONSORS

PRESENTING SPONSOR

SALT RIVER PROJECT

ANNUAL PARTNER

RDF

ANNUAL PARTNER

ARIZONA COMMISSION ON THE ARTS

EVENT SPONSOR

CITY OF MESA

**TICKET GIVEAWAY**


Who is ready to get funky?!

Enter Cultural Coalition's ticket giveaway for a chance to win a pair of tickets to the Funky Latina Music Festival happening on March 21 at Walter Studios!


How to win:

•Follow @funkylatinafest

•”Like” our post on Instagram

•Tag your bestie!

•Repost!


Winner will be announced on Friday, March 13!

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Cultural Coalition is a 501c3 nonprofit charitable organization.

Your donations are 100% tax deductible.


DONATE TODAY!

Our Mission is to connect communities and generations to ancestral knowledge and practices through artistic cultural preservation and programs that celebrate Chicano, Latiné, and Indigenous heritages.

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FROM THE MESAZONA ARCHIVES: "Operation Ajax"

 Monday, August 21, 2023

"OPERATION AJAX" . . .NO STATE SECRET NOW: Kermit Roosevelt was The CIA's Man in Iran August 1953

Operation Ajax has long been a bogeyman for conservatives in Iran — but also for liberals. The coup fanned the flames of anti-Western sentiment, which reached a crescendo in 1979 with the U.S. hostage crisis, the final overthrow of the shah, and the creation of the Islamic Republic to counter the “Great Satan.” 


The coup alienated liberals in Iran as well. 
  • Mossadegh is widely considered to be the closest thing Iran has ever had to a democratic leader. 
  • He openly championed democratic values and hoped to establish a democracy in Iran. 
  • The elected parliament selected him as prime minister, a position he used to reduce the power of the shah, thus bringing Iran closer in line with the political traditions that had developed in Europe. 
  • But any further democratic development was stymied on Aug. 19.

64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup

New documents reveal how the CIA attempted to call off the failing coup — only to be salvaged at the last minute by an insubordinate spy.

Persian soldiers chase rioters during civil unrest in Tehran, August 1953. On August 19, 1953, democratically-elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA and British intelligence, after having nationalized the oil industry. The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was re-installed in the primary position of power. Massive protests broke out across the nation, leaving almost 300 dead in firefights in the streets of Tehran. 

        (Photo credit should read /AFP/Getty Images)
Persian soldiers chase rioters during civil unrest in Tehran, August 1953. On August 19, 1953, democratically-elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA and British intelligence, after having nationalized the oil industry. The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was re-installed in the primary position of power. Massive protests broke out across the nation, leaving almost 300 dead in firefights in the streets of Tehran. (Photo credit should read /AFP/Getty Images)
Persian soldiers chase rioters during civil unrest in Tehran, August 1953. 
On August 19, 1953, democratically-elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA and British intelligence, after having nationalized the oil industry. The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was re-installed in the primary position of power. Massive protests broke out across the nation, leaving almost 300 dead in firefights in the streets of Tehran. 
(Photo credit should read /AFP/Getty Images)

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Declassified documents released last week shed light on the Central Intelligence Agency’s central role in the 1953 coup that brought down Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh, fueling a surge of nationalism which culminated in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and poisoning U.S.-Iran relations into the 21st century.
The approximately 1,000 pages of documents also reveal for the first time the details of how the CIA attempted to call off the failing coup — only to be salvaged at the last minute by an insubordinate spy on the ground.
Known as Operation Ajax, the CIA plot was ultimately about oil. Western firms had for decades controlled the region’s oil wealth, whether Arabian-American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia, or the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Iran. When the U.S. firm in Saudi Arabia bowed to pressure in late 1950 and agreed to share oil revenues evenly with Riyadh, the British concession in Iran came under intense pressure to follow suit. But London adamantly refused.
  • So in early 1951, amid great popular acclaim, Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry. A fuming United Kingdom began conspiring with U.S. intelligence services to overthrow Mossadegh and restore the monarchy under the shah. (Though some in the U.S. State Department, the newly released cables show, blamed British intransigence for the tensions and sought to work with Mossadegh.)
The coup attempt began on August 15 but was swiftly thwarted. Mossadegh made dozens of arrests. Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, a top conspirator, went into hiding, and the shah fled the country.
The CIA, believing the coup to have failed, called it off...
“Operation has been tried and failed and we should not participate in any operation against Mossadegh which could be traced back to US,” CIA headquarters wrote to its station chief in Iran in a newly declassified cable sent on Aug. 18, 1953. “Operations against Mossadegh should be discontinued.”
“Operations against Mossadegh should be discontinued.”

That is the cable which Kermit Roosevelt, top CIA officer in Iran, purportedly and famously ignored, according to Malcolm Byrne, who directs the U.S.-Iran Relations Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

At least “one guy was in the room with Kermit Roosevelt when he got this cable,” Byrne told Foreign Policy
“[Roosevelt] said no — we’re not done here.” 
It was already known that Roosevelt had not carried out an order from Langley to cease and desist. 
But the cable itself and its contents were not previously published.

The consequences of his decision were momentous. The next day, on August 19, 1953, with the aid of “rented” crowds widely believed to have been arranged with CIA assistance, the coup succeeded. Iran’s nationalist hero was jailed, the monarchy restored under the Western-friendly shah, and Anglo-Iranian oil — renamed British Petroleum — tried to get its fields back.

. . .The U.S government long denied involvement in the coup. . . . . . . . . . .

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