El Salvador: Blood and Roses on Mother’s Day

May 12, 2014 Upside Down World 0

“The best thing about Mother’s Day is the appreciation and love the mothers get – and give,” says Sagrario Tejada de González, who is handing out roses on Mother’s Day, celebrated on the 10th of May in El Salvador. “The worst thing for a mother is the fear that her son might get involved in a street gang.”

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Colombian Poor Occupy Lands Slated for Military Base

May 11, 2014 Upside Down World 0

Holding down an occupation for five months isn’t easy. Doing so in Colombia, even less so. But members of the community of Héctor Alirio Martínez in the municipality of Fortul, near the border with Venezuela, have raised the stakes even higher: they’re occupying land owned by the Ministry of Defense. The 100 hectare terrain now spotted with wood and plastic homes was slated to become a large military base.

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Ecuador: Intag Under Siege

May 11, 2014 Upside Down World 0

According to several Intag residents, on Thursday, May 8 almost 400 people, including 200-300 police, entered Intag. Part of this group violated a community checkpoint into the Chalguyacu Alto region, where 75 women and men […]

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Ecuador – The Yasuní and the Current State of Affairs: Economics, Regulation, and Opposition

May 8, 2014 Upside Down World 0

Denying the referendum means that a progressive government, when forced to seriously discuss its appetite for petroleum or mining, must shed its clothes and reveal its most intimate mercantile thoughts. Public debates on oil exploration in the Amazon promoted through public referendum could raise discussion about issues much more far-reaching than the government’s petroleum strategy. There would rapidly also be discussion about development, government practices, etc., revealing their contradictions.

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Hands Off Venezuela! What Has Been Happening Since February and Why It Matters

May 7, 2014 Upside Down World 0

Not only does Venezuela give us much to learn from this creative experiment with “twenty-first century socialism,” but it also continues to play a crucial role in Latin America and the rest of the world—opening spaces for the election of left governments and inspiring extra-parliamentary movements that demand radical social change. However, it is important to recognize that as with any socialist experiment, it has been riddled with contradictions and tensions. Nonetheless, the Bolivarian revolution is worth defending because of its importance to the region and its worth in its own right.

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A Reading on Ecuador’s Return to the World Bank

May 6, 2014 Upside Down World 0

In 2008, the government of President Correa suspended servicing part of the foreign commercial debt, but not the entire debt. This suspension of payments, or moratorium, was marked by a clear and preconceived programmatic position to seek out better conditions for renegotiating the debt, not because it was impossible to service. However, there are backward steps now being taken, a long way off from the transformative alternatives that were proposed in the beginning.

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Venezuela: Petro-‘Socialism’ in its Labyrinth

May 5, 2014 Upside Down World 0

Economic crisis, product shortages, and polarization paint a scenario in which the continuity of the Bolivarian movement is at stake. So is the sovereignty of a country that dared to challenge its dependence on a superpower that considers the Caribbean a “closed sea to which the United States holds the key.”

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Ecuador: A new political map

May 5, 2014 Upside Down World 0

Source: Latin America Press Following ruling party’s defeat at the polls, Correa looks to control land use and local governments. For seven years, Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa seemed unbeatable in elections. He won with margins […]

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