“Our analysis is that mining companies have transnational strategies and we have to coordinate transnational struggles to confront transnational mining,” Gustavo Lozano, representative from the Mexican Anti-mining Network.
The work analyzes the situation in Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay and Bolivia in detail. And it finds parallels: transgenic soy grew in all of these countries, it involved the takeover of new territories (by clearing them), it led to the fall of other crops, it raised notably the use of pesticides, and it saw all five countries putting vast swaths of their territory at the disposal Europe and Asia’s needs.
Forward from: Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements by Raúl Zibechi
Raúl Zibechi, a writer whose work on social movements is widely read in Spanish, suggests that La Victoria may have been the first mass organized land occupation in Latin America. “In this new kind of movement, self-construction and self-determination take the place of demands and representation,” writes Zibechi, reflecting on the occupation of La Victoria. “This pressure from below transformed the course of social struggles and the cities.”
Whether or not they are upfront about their connections to mining companies, Canadians with labyrinthine corporate, consulting and Indigenous affiliations have been paying unexpected visits to Indigenous communities throughout the Americas. A closer look at an example of this intervention reveals how their promotion of the Canadian mining industry in impoverished communities undermines local struggles to protect territory and exacerbates conflict.
A community has an emancipatory approach to health care when it recovers its own healing powers, which have been expropriated by the medical industry and the state, and liberates itself from the control that capital exercises over health care through multinational pharmaceuticals. Zapatista health care practices, as well as those of many indigenous peoples and piqueteros groups, share many commonalities despite their enormous cultural differences.
From Canada to Argentina, preparations are well underway for the Continental Day of Action Against Canadian Mega Resource Extraction on August 1. Participating organizations’ demands range from divestment to putting people before profit. Communities and organizers resisting extractive industry projects in Latin America continue to face displacement, harassment, threats, and death, often dismissed as part of unrelated violence and conflicts.
The recent visit by US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to three South American countries, and the installation of a Southern Command base in Concón, Chile, show the deepening of the military presence of the Pentagon in the region. In Colombia he reaffirmed the mission of Plan Colombia, to export security to the countries of the region, in particular to Central America and Mexico; in Brazil he attempted to lure the country with promises, to bring the world’s sixth-largest economy closer to Washington’s orbit; and finally, in Chile his visit coincided with the opening of the first military base of the Southern Command in that country, specializing in urban warfare.
Every year, Latin America climbs in global geopolitical rankings because of the steady increase in its declared reserves of strategic resources. This is a true disaster, since it reinforces the dependence of the region on the exploitation and exportation of its natural resources.
“Young people today are more critical than they were in the seventies,” Adolfo Pérez Esquivel observes, much to the contrary of what the majority of his generation thinks. In the conference he gave in Montevideo on the 13th of March, he explained that human rights are violated when people don’t have access to a healthy environment and secure food sources because a “speculative economy” of monoculture farming and mining is privileged over an “economy of production.”
The media tells us that 8 million people die every year from illnesses related to water; that more than a billion people lack access to potable water; and that more than 2.4 billion do not have access to sanitation.
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