Month: January 2012
A Cycle of Death: Inside Nicaragua’s Sugar Cane Fields
La Isla is a small community located on the outskirts of Chichigalpa, Nicaragua in the Central America lowlands. Its sole economy is the sugar cane industry which relies on young men desperate to provide for their families ensuring an endless supply of labor.
Honduras: Return to Rigores
Exactly one week before our July 1 visit, police entered Rigores and at gunpoint burned the homes of 135 families, killed their animals, bulldozed their orchards, the school, and two churches. Six months later all but four families remain on their land. They have rebuilt their houses, although now from branches and mud wattle where before stood larger block or poured cement homes.
Action Alert! Urgent Need for Solidarity After Another Attack on Q’eqchi’ Communities in Guatemala
The Guatemala Solidarity Project strongly condemns Guatemalan government and corporate biofuel attacks against the q’eqchi’ communities of Inup Agua Caliente and El Sauce on January 5, 2012. Government police and soldiers joined private security forces […]
Peru: Elected by the Left, Ruling with the Right
Ollanta Humala’s first hundred and fifty days in office as President of Peru have produced a “political massacre,” leaving those who built him as a candidate, wrote his speeches, and paid for his electoral campaign in the streets. His refusal to live up to his campaign promises, and dismissal of environmental complaints of citizens living in communities attacked by mining, leave the population who elected him with little option but to take to the streets again.
The Michoacán Debacle: Fault Lines Ahead of the Mexican Presidential Election
Surrounding the November 13 elections in Michoacán, one mayor was shot dead, fifty candidates from several parties stepped down due to threats, an indigenous community boycotted the election and instituted their own electoral processes, and an entire city’s police force resigned. In the last five years, Michoacán has seen some of the worst gang violence in the country outside of the border region and has been heavily militarized. Both institutionalized political pressure and “narco-influence” have continue to call in to question the possibility of free and fair elections in Mexico.
The Global Revolt and Latin America
Source: NACLA Report on the Americas Two thousand and eleven was a year of global protest and revolt. The Arab Spring, the indignados movement of Spain and southern Europe, and the Occupy Wall Street movement […]
Proyecto Mesoamérica: El mensaje de Obama a los gobiernos latinoamericanos
El 5 de diciembre de 2011 en Mérida (México) se concluyó la 13° cumbre del Mecanismo de Concertación de Tuxtla, que ha visto la participación de los representantes de México, Colombia y de los países […]