Yes, the Bowman expeditions are back, rebooted by a Department of Defense Minerva grant, and soon to arrive in all seven Central American countries. To study which indigenous peoples, exactly? Usually in academia such things are not secret, but this project involves the US military.
Indigenous representatives gathered from across the country on August 9 in a local school in the municipality of Totonicapán demanding that the state honor their rights to self determination. This event, convened by the 48 Cantones of Totonicapán, was one of 25 acts of protest nationwide, including road blockades at strategic points throughout the country marking International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.
From August 12-16 the zapatistas opened the doors to their caracoles, communities and hearts to 1630 students enrolled in the first grade of “the escuelita (the little school): freedom according to the zapatistas.” The escuelita didn’t have formal classrooms with a rigid schedule and teachers imparting their knowledge. Instead it featured immersion based learning, grounded in the daily tasks of constructing autonomy. This included grinding corn, weeding onion crops, collecting firewood, and washing your clothes in the river.
There will be a before and after the Little Zapatista School; of the recent one and those that will come. It will be a slow, diffuse impact, which will be felt in some years but will frame the life of those below for decades. What we experienced was a non-institutional education, where the community is the educational subject. Face-to-face self-education; learning with the spirit and with the body, as the poet would say.
Compañeros and compañeras, receive our combative greetings to all the peoples and communities who struggle and resist with dignity, in Mexico and the world, against the capitalist exploitation of indigenous territories which seeks to own […]
Source: The Americas Blog A newly declassified intelligence estimate [large PDF] from the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) reveals that the U.S. military considers International Monetary Fund (IMF) policy constraints on Honduras to be a factor […]
A proposal to increase private investment in Mexico’s hydrocarbons sector has been presented by President Enrique Peña Nieto. The links between former bureaucrats and energy reform are explored in this piece, originally published by Mexican […]
The Ecuadorean government’s decision to allow oil drilling in the Yasuní National Park, one of the most biodiverse areas of the planet, has caused alarm among environmentalists and indigenous people, who are calling for a referendum on the issue. President Rafael Correa ordered the shelving of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, a plan to leave oil reserves underground in the Amazon rainforest park in return for international compensation.
Source: Labor is Not a Commodity Long-time Honduran union leader José María Martínez of FESTAGRO is facing serious and repeated death threats for speaking out for banana workers’ rights. For the past 20 years, Martínez has […]
Source: Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador The Salvadoran right-wing private sector, with the support of U.S. Ambassador Mari Carmen Aponte, has unveiled a series of reforms to the recently-approved Public-Private Partnership […]
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