Lazo Magazine

09/05/2025

A young politician on how the European Union can fight corruption.

I'm speaking with a 37-year-old Green Party member of the European Parliament, Daniel Freund. He came on my radar after arguing that the European Union's infringement proceedings against Poland don't go far enough. We talked about everything from democratic backsliding in Europe to corruption. Here'

08/05/2025

A new project is reaching indigenous families in rural Vietnam.

08/05/2025

Meet Central Asia's coolest new designer

I sat down to speak with Nissa Kinzhalina, a 31-year-old Kazakh furniture designer based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Nissa got married last month (congratulations!) and decided to create her own wedding dress and saukele, the traditional headdress of Kazakh brides.

07/05/2025

An exclusive guide to Austria's capital:

I recently visited Austria's capital, Vienna, for the first time and liked it much more than I expected. I always imagined the Austrian capital as a posh, polished city full of buttery cakes and glittering opera houses. While there are certainly elements of those stereotypes, it’s also diverse an

07/05/2025

On a popular tourist destination with a dark history:

Zanzibar is a tropical oasis shaped by migration and multiculturalism. A group of islands off mainland Tanzania, with two large islands called Pemba and Unguja, Zanzibar has a 20,000-year-old history that brought both progress and oppression to the archipelago. For centuries, Africans, Arabs, Eu

06/05/2025

You can find K-pop everywhere

On the weekends, the streets of the financial district in Santiago de Chile typically lie deserted, and the towering office skyscrapers adorned with tall glass windows dim their lights until the humdrum of Monday morning resumes. But since the COVID-19 lockdowns ended, the area has unexpectedly

06/05/2025

The coolest new neighborhood in Greece's capital:

The neighborhood of Kypseli is experiencing a resurgence in popularity. That's partly thanks to rising housing costs in central Athens, which led residents from other parts of the city to rediscover this once-popular Athenian enclave. The main pedestrian thoroughfare of Fokionos Negri is teeming wit

05/05/2025

A deep dive into an unknown art

In the Afro-descendant town of Puerto Tejada, in the southern Colombian department of Cauca, a handful of master swordsmen represent one of the last bastions of the traditional martial art called grima, or machete fencing. From its origins in the colonial era to the threats facing this ancestral art

05/05/2025

Georgia's diaspora is fighting for their democratic future.

In the center of the German capital, the 18th-century landmark, the Brandenburg Gate, is more than just a tourist attraction. Standing amid German government institutions, it’s also a popular spot for protests. Over the last few months, Georgian flags flapped around the monument’s pillars. Peopl...

04/05/2025

Meet the people of Colombia's Sibundoy Valley:

https://lazomagazine.com/cultural-pluralism-and-the-indigenous-people-of-the-sibundoy-valley

I spent three months conducting anthropological research in the Sibundoy Valley, a verdant basin nestled between the Andes and the Amazon in southwest Colombia. There, the Indigenous cultures of the Kamëntšá and Inga peoples coexist alongside the majority mestizo population and an influx of forei...

04/05/2025

On a royal family and a dying language in a hidden corner of Kashmir.

Wearing a white pheran — a long woolen cloak — and holding behind it a hot coal earthen pot known as a Kangri, 74-year-old Raja Jahangir Ali looks like any other Kashmiri. But when he asks his daughter to bring a cup of tea for the guests, he speaks in a foreign language, giving a hint of his un

03/05/2025

A photo journey through one of the world's most vibrant cities.

A group of friends went to Berlin for a long weekend in November. There are some trips that are just short reprieves that quickly fade from memory. And then others should feel short because they are, yet are somehow so meaningful that they completely alter your state of mind. They pull you out o