Latin America: Solidarity and Accompaniment
Source: TeleSUR English I dropped out of my first year of college to work in a garment factory. I did this because I believed that workers were the agent of change in society, so the […]
Year: 2015
How Did Argentina’s Alberto Nisman Really Die?
Source: The Nation In Buenos Aires, on January 18, Alberto Nisman, a government prosecutor, was found dead in his apartment, shot with a 22. The death, either a suicide or a murder, has rocked Argentine […]
In Peru, Scientist Documents the Impacts of Continent’s Largest Gold Mine
The Yanacocha gold mine did not exist when Reinhard Seifert first moved to Cajamarca, Peru in the 1970s. Everything changed in 1993, when Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp. opened Yanacocha and spurred a modern gold rush of sorts. In 2011, the company proposed expanding its operations with a megaproject known as the Conga mine, a project instantly met with relentless, sometimes violent, anti-mining demonstrations. Four years later, the Conga mine expansion remains on hold under environmental review. Throughout this period, Seifert played a pivotal role in the anti-mining movement as former president of the Environmental Defense Front of Cajamarca.
Raúl Castro demands that US return Guantánamo base to Cuba
Source: Associated Press Cuba’s President Raúl Castro has demanded that the United States return the US base at Guantánamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the […]
In Memoriam: Pedro Lemebel’s Chronicles of the Pinochet Dictatorship
By the time of his death on January 23, 2015, Chilean writer, performance artist, radio personality and activist Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015) had become an icon of Chilean counter-culture. His art chronicled the history of the city of Santiago as experienced by members of the Chilean Left during the dictatorship and afterward, poor city residents, gay men, HIV positive people, and transvestites, among others. In 2013, he was awarded the José Donoso Ibero-american Literature Prize. These “urban neo-chronicles” about the human costs of the Pinochet Dictatorship are from his 1998 collection, Of Pearls and Scars [De perlas y cicatrices].
How Israeli High-Tech Firms Are Up-Armoring the U.S.-Mexico Border
Source: NACLA Report on the Americas It was October 2012. Roei Elkabetz, a brigadier general for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), was explaining his country’s border policing strategies. In his PowerPoint presentation, a photo of […]
Argentina: Societies in Movement or Politics as Usual?
Source: TeleSUR English We arrived in Argentina and everything in Buenos Aires looked about the same as two years ago, and the year prior, and the ones before that for that matter; a city somewhere […]
Roads are encroaching deeper into the Amazon rainforest, study says
Source: The Guardian Unlimited Oil and gas access roads in western Amazon could open up ‘Pandora’s box’ of environmental impacts Oil and gas roads are encroaching deeper into the western Amazon, one of the world’s […]
The Power of the Spectacle: Evo Morales’ Inauguration in Tiwanaku, Bolivia
There is a long history in Bolivia of couching politics of liberation within the deeper story of colonialism and indigenous resistance. The MAS party of Evo Morales doesn’t have a monopoly on the uses of Bolivia’s rebel past, but it’s incredibly savvy in its deployment of historical consciousness as an ideological and political tool.