2016 – Page 10 – Upside Down World

A Labyrinth of Injustice in Guatemala: Indigenous Activists Struggle Against Dispossession of Land and Rights

January 30, 2016 Jeff Abbott 0

Family, friends and supporters of Saúl Méndez and Rogelio Velásquez, two political prisoners who had been falsely accused of femicide, kidnapping, and murder, received some joyous news on January 14, 2016; after three years in prison, they were released. However, six other prominent activists from northern Huehuetenango still face prosecution for their resistance to hydroelectric projects imposed in their territory by transnational corporations.

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Peruvian Paradoxes: The Presidential Elections and Power

January 30, 2016 George Ygarza 0

Keiko Fujimori will likely win the 2016 Peruvian presidential elections scheduled for this April. She is the daughter of deposed president Alberto Fujimori, who became one of the first heads of state to be convicted of human rights violations in Latin America. Keiko Fujimori is polling at over thirty percent in an early crowded field of around 12 candidates. The election of a far-right candidate who has pledged to pardon her imprisoned father when she assumes the presidency seems incomprehensible. […]

The Guantanamo of Colombia: Pressure Mounts to Shut Down Notorious US-Funded Prison

January 29, 2016 John Ocampo 0

The campaign to shut down Colombia’s infamous La Tramacua prison, located in the country’s sweltering Caribbean region and often referred to as the “Guantanamo of Colombia,” could be on the verge of a major breakthrough. Built in the year 2000, with U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons and USAID funding, as part of the penitentiary restructuring component of Plan Colombia, La Tramacua is a veritable house of horrors.

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For US in Haiti, Black Votes Don’t Matter

January 29, 2016 Mark Weisbrot 0

Source: Al Jazeera Journalists are taught in school to avoid euphemisms. When someone dies, they write that she “died” instead of “passed away.” But one euphemism that has become a fixture in U.S. news reporting […]

Why Haitians Are Chanting ‘Down with Obama’

January 29, 2016 James North 0

Source: The Nation They’re enraged at American complicity in the Haitian government’s blatant effort to rig the presidential election. In 2008, Haitians were ecstatic over Barack Obama’s victory. I remember a group of mature, normally […]

Belo Monte: Burning Legal Timber Stokes the Fires of Brazil’s Illegal Lumber Market

January 27, 2016 Ana Aranha; Translated by Holly Holmes 0

While it wastes its own felled trees, the Belo Monte plant buys irregular wood, heating up a criminal market that invades indigenous territories. Part two of a report on the human and environmental costs of government-sanctioned illegal logging in Brazil’s Pará state.

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Argentina’s President Macri: A Rather Authoritarian Beginning

January 22, 2016 Ezequiel Adamovsky 0

Source: TeleSUR English Argentina’s new president decided to bypass the Congress and rule by decree – even if it takes making illegal decisions. In my previous Telesur column I explained that, despite his public image, […]

Haiti’s Fraudulent Presidential Frontrunner Seizes Land for His Own Banana Republic

January 21, 2016 Joshua Steckley and Beverly Bell 0

Two years ago, the only man running in Haiti’s fraudulent presidential election run-offs on January 24, 2016, Jovenel Moïse, dispossessed as many as 800 peasants and destroyed houses and crops. The land grabbed by the company Moïse founded now hosts a private banana plantation.

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Argentine Social Movements Strike Back Against Monsanto

January 21, 2016 Darío Aranda, Translated by Nancy Piñeiro 0

The world’s largest GMO corporation never imagined that it would suffer one of its major setbacks in a small, rural town in central Argentina. Popular opposition, irregularities in the company’s environmental impact assessment, a protest blockade at the entry gate, and a court ruling stalled the construction of its seeds plant three years ago.

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The “Natural” Presence of US Armed Forces in Latin America

January 18, 2016 Silvina M. Romano 0

The “standardization of the armed forces” in Latin America according to the needs of the US has been a constant since the beginnings of the Cold War and continues at the present time.

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