Month: November 2009

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Electrical Workers of Mexico Take on Calderon Government

November 9, 2009 Tamara Pearson 0

Jose Hernandez

I met Jose Hernandez, a leader of the Mexican Union of Electricity workers (SME) at a metro station called Obrera (Worker), unsurprisingly located in a working class area of Mexico city, and from there we walked back to his house. “I’m very tired, I’m exhausted,” he said, smiling, as he made me tea. “I haven’t stopped for days.” What follows is his account of the recent events in his union and the electricity company Fuerzas y Luces, after 6000 federal police and soldiers occupied it on 10 October.

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‘Authorized’ Minga in Colombia? The Challenges of Popular Movements

November 4, 2009 Micheál Ó Tuathail and Manuel Rozental* 0

Last fall, Colombia’s social and popular movements captured the world’s attention. Emerging initially from the indigenous territories in Northern Cauca and expanding to unite diverse sectors, the Social and Community Minga burst onto the national and international scene with a popular agenda for radical change, a “country of the peoples without owners” A year later, the Minga appears to have arrived at a crossroads, where a once powerful popular agenda risks being manipulated in favour of a narrow and domesticating one. […]

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Hope and Disappointment in Uruguay’s Elections

November 2, 2009 Mike Fox 0

"Democracy doesn’t exist without truth and justice. We have the right to know where our dead are and we have the right to demand that these people, although they are old, pay for the crimes they committed," said Graciela Pintado Nuñez, as their bus reached the outskirts of Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo. On Friday, October 23rd, two days before Uruguay’s Presidential elections, Nuñez and a group of nearly fifty Uruguayans made the overnight trip from their homes in Southern Brazil to their native country of Uruguay.

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The Real Winner in Honduras: The United States?

November 1, 2009 Joseph Shansky 0

What the Guaymuras Accords actually do most is create a space for the United States to recognize the legitimacy of the upcoming presidential elections, scheduled for November 29. With National Party front-runner Pepe Lobo likely to win (thanks to a campaign season in which any independent voices were sharply silenced by media censorship), the US also likely secures another puppet in the region who will be opposed to the progressive social, economic and political reforms being articulated and demanded by the country’s social movements. […]

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