"The final hour of colonialism has struck" comes from the speech Che Guevara delivered to the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1964. Representing revolutionary Cuba, he addressed the assembled nations in his olive-green fatigues and declared that the millions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America were rising to meet a new life and to demand their unrestricted right to self-determination. During the speech, anti-Castro exiles fired a bazooka shell at the UN headquarters from across the East River. It fell short and exploded in the water.

The speech came at the height of the wave of decolonization that swept the Third World after the Second World War. In the years before, dozens of nations across Africa and Asia had won their independence, the Algerians had defeated France, and the Cuban Revolution had broken the grip of US domination ninety miles from Florida. Che used the platform to name the forces still fighting to hold back that tide. He condemned the US and Belgian intervention in the Congo and the murder of Patrice Lumumba, apartheid in South Africa, the US war in Vietnam, the colonial rule of Puerto Rico, and the blockade of Cuba. He insisted that independence meant nothing without the right of nations to control their own development and resources.

The hourglass in this print holds both meanings of that history. Time is running out for colonialism, as Che declared. The sand also draining from the Global South recalls the centuries of wealth, labor, and life carried away from the colonized world to enrich the empires of the North, a drain that neocolonialism has continued long after the flags of independence were raised. This print is a call to see that colonialism's final hour has not yet fully run its course, and that the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America are still rising to claim their future.