Month: December 2011
What This Company Did to Us: Rape and Displacement in Guatemala
Source: Latin America Working Group “It was like out of a movie. Planes, helicopters, flying in over our houses. No one knew they were coming.” Irma Yolanda told us. “The women were in our houses […]
Haiti: Open for Business – Part 2
(IPS/Haiti Grassroots Watch) – Ever since being elected earlier this year, Haitian President Michel Martelly and his team have been betting Haiti’s reconstruction on foreign investors. “We are ready for new ideas and new businesses, […]
Haiti: Open for Business – Part 1
(IPS/Haiti Grassroots Watch) – “Haiti is open for business.” That’s what President Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly said at a recent ceremony as he and former U.S. president Bill Clinton laid a cornerstone for a giant […]
Trials and Tenacity in Honduran Women’s Struggle for Land Rights
Source: Grassroots International Despite being denied, again, title to the land on which they have labored, there is no quit in this group of women from El Estribo. Hurricanes, coups, fire and political manipulation are not […]
“Godfather” of Colombian Army Intelligence Acquitted in Palace of Justice Case
Gen. Iván Ramírez Led Unit that “Tortured and Killed” Palace of Justice Detainees in 1985 “Infamous” Commander “was “Passing Military Intelligence to the Paramilitaries,” according to U.S. Ambassador Source: National Security Archive A Colombian army […]
Argentina Shows World How to Beat the Economic Crisis
What is happening in the European Union and the United States today happened a decade ago in Argentina, when it was a hotbed of protest and the streets of major cities were seething with people telling their leaders they had had enough. And then a new story began to be written.
Militarized Mining in Mexico
The war in Mexico, often called a “war on drugs,” launched in late 2006, resulted in increased violence and militarization that has spread to municipalities and rural areas all over the country. Since 2008, more than 9,000 people have been murdered in the city of Juarez alone, and massacres against unarmed civilians have taken place across the state. But in some areas, like Madera, it appears the militarization that’s taken place on the pretext of the drug war has worked in favour of the extractive industries.
Embassy Cables Reveal Brazil Supported Chile’s Pinochet Regime
Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo published a report on Dec. 12 revealing a series of 266 telegrams from the Brazilian embassy in Santiago that unveiled strong economic and diplomatic ties between the nations’ military regimes in the early 1970s. Both Chile and Brazil were involved in the top-secret initiative Operation Condor, which sought to create regional intelligence networks in order to locate and oppress political opponents of the military regimes across the Southern Cone.
Colombia Asked to Shelve Proposed Expansion of Military Jurisdiction
Letter to President Santos Dear Mr. President, I am writing to express my deep concern with the “justice system reform” bill your administration is currently promoting that would expand the scope of military jurisdiction over […]