Source: NACLA Over more than a decade, the rise of the left in Latin American governance has led to remarkable advances in poverty alleviation, regional integration, and a reassertion of sovereignty and independence. The United […]
Gladys Tzul claims to be a direct descendant of Atanasio Tzul. Together with hundreds of others, she belongs to the sixth generation of this lineage that lives in the Paquí canton, in Totonicapán. She experienced a different sense of politics, “a collective and community one, not a liberal one in which an individual citizen exists, represented and protected by the State.” She is one of the few Latin American academics to specialize in analyzing Indigenous governance systems in Guatemala, their power relations, and the struggle that occurs between local forms of government and State authority.
Salvador Campunar, a Purhépecha Indian comunero, Claudio Carrasco of the Guerrero Community Police Force, and Guillermo Hernandez, a member of the Tepoztlán community, explain that community justice systems, rooted in ancient traditions, essentially respond to the village councils. They also comment that they act as part of a more complex system of autonomy for the villages, whereas vigilante autodefensas, self-defense forces, act on behalf of private groups.
Source: NACLA Over the past several months, Bolivians have witnessed the crisis of CONAMAQ, a confederation of Aymará and Quechua communities in the Bolivian highlands. Since 1997, CONAMAQ has championed the rights of highland indigenous […]
In Costa Rica’s national election on Sunday, where for the first time a progressive party challenging the establishment neoliberal parties remained at the top of all polls until the last couple of weeks, the immediate end result is the need to go to a second round on April 6, as none of the three major parties gained the required 40 percent to win outright.
“They took us in trucks. We got in quite innocently and contentedly. But then we heard screams and I ran… The doors were padlocked. They carried me off in a stretcher, tied my feet and cut me,” said Micaela Flores, then a mother of seven from Anta province in the southern region of Cusco.
Source: Just the Facts Blog “It’s a relatively small place, near the Galerías shopping mall in western Bogotá. It now doesn’t have the sign outside that had idenfitied it, hanging over the two windows with […]
(Bozeman, Montana/Ottawa, Ontario) Mining concessions granted to Canadian and Chinese-owned companies in Ecuador are illegal and should be cancelled in compliance with the Mining Mandate, argues a legal brief submitted yesterday to the Ecuadorian Constitutional […]
The papers on every news kiosk in Mexico City in late August, 2013, blared denunciations: “Imagine – Mexico Without Soccer!” screamed one newspaper. Pictures of crying children stuck outside of a stadium clutching the colors of their favorite team were plastered on the front page of another paper.
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