Ecuador: Protests Mount over Mining, Oil

April 10, 2013 WW4 Report 0

Some 30 protesters crashed the opening of the sixth Expominas trade fair at the Quito Exhibition Center April 3, where Ecuador’s government sought to win new investors for the mineral and oil sectors. The protesters, mostly women, interrupted the event’s inaugural speech with an alternative rendition of the song “Latinoamérica” by the Puerto Rican hip-hop outfit Calle 13, with lyrics referencing places in the country threatened by mining: “You cannot buy Intag, you cannot buy Mirador, you can’t buy Kimsacocha, you can’t buy my Ecuador.”

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“We’re Witnessing a Reactivation of the Death Squads of the ‘80s” in Honduras: An Interview with Bertha Oliva of COFADEH

April 9, 2013 Alex Main, CEPR 0

“It’s certain that death squads are a product of the impunity that we’ve seen in Honduras. The death squads of the past were never really dismantled.  What we’re witnessing is a reactivation of these death squads.  And we’re seeing it quite clearly. We’ve seen videos of incidents in the street where masked men with military training and unmarked vehicles assassinate young people,” said Bertha Oliva, the General Coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained in Honduras (COFADEH).

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Brazil: Incomplete Justice for Murders of Amazon Activists

April 9, 2013 Fabiola Ortiz 0

Peasants and human rights defenders in Brazil are indignant over the acquittal of the man accused of ordering the May 2011 murders of two prominent Amazon activists, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo. When the sentences were read out, activists and rural workers burned crosses and threw stones at the courthouse windows.

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Teaching Peace: The University of Resistance in Colombia’s San Jose de Apartado Community

April 4, 2013 James Bargent 0

The community of San Josecito in northern Colombia is an idyllic collection of wooden houses linked by dirt streets where the only traffic is the free-roaming livestock. Yet it is a community where every man, woman and child has a tragedy to tell. It is also a community that, since its inception, has lived with the ever-present threat of violence and the knowledge that to leave its wire-fenced perimeter is to put your life at risk.

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Maduro y Capriles

Campaign for Presidency Kicks-off in Venezuela: An Interview with Carmen Hidalgo

April 4, 2013 Jody McIntyre 0

It is Tuesday, April 2nd; music and people fill the streets of Caracas.  This is the official opening day of the campaign for Presidential elections in Venezuela, due to take place on April 14th after the death of Hugo Chavez.  The candidates,  Nicolas Maduro, former bus driver, ex-Vice-President and the man Chavez personally named as his successor, and Henrique Capriles, the main opposition candidate who lost to Chavez last November, are both kicking off their tours of the country. But, as journalist Reinaldo Iturriza once told me, these are not “normal elections” that take place here in Venezuela.  From the beginning, the political campaigns are vibrant, colorful and visible everywhere you turn.

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