International

In this year of growing popular protests worldwide, demands for political and economic equality have burst forth in the Middle East, Europe and even in the United States. Further south in the Americas, civil society organization over the past decade brought social movement leaders to state power and marginalized peoples’ rights to national agendas. In this interview, Uruguayan intellectual and journalist Raúl Zibechi gives us a South American perspective of the momentous changes taking place globally, through a focus on the inaugural mobilizations in the Middle East.

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This report from Liberty Plaza connects tactics and philosophies surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement with similar movements in Latin America, from the popular assemblies and occupation of factories during Argentina’s economic crisis in 2001-2002, to grassroots struggles for land in Brazil.

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Sergio and I were sitting in torn-out bus seats under a hot January sky in Nogales, Sonora, talking about crawling through thorn bushes. About thirty other recently deported men and women were sprawled on the concrete, or slouching in other deconstructed pairs of once colorfully-patterned bus seats. Most carried plastic Homeland Security bags. Inside the bags were their effects, their pertenencias, which they had with them when they were arrested on one or the other side of the border.

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Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America is a road map, a call to action to break the simplistic dualities imposed by society and place our destinies into our own hands.

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While the capability of Central American institutions to safeguard human rights is open to interpretation, activists in the region have raised serious concerns about the governments’ interest and will in doing so. They fear the hundreds of millions of dollars ear-marked for law enforcement and security will be used by the deeply corrupt–at times violent–governments of the Northern Triangle to support ongoing human rights abuses.

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Upside Down World began nearly eight years ago as a grassroots news outlet, and it continues to thrive thanks to the support of readers around the globe. If you want Upside Down World to continue operating, please contribute today.

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As tens of thousands of corpses continue to pile up as a result of the US-led “War on Drugs” in Latin America, private contractors are benefiting from lucrative federal counternarcotics contracts amounting to billions of dollars, without worry of oversight or accountability.

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“They’re kicking and they’re pressing their legs on my head: they’re abusing me,” the student told the cameraman as he was lying on his stomach, hands cuffed behind his back. “This only demonstrates the weakness of the government…It only demonstrates their fear of us. They know the public agrees with us, and that’s why they need to use violence.”

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US Latin Americanist Cold Warriors and their far-right allies in the region kicked off a propaganda campaign in May to influence Congress and US citizens against Venezuela and fellow ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas) countries. With declining attention being paid to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, neoconservatives and neoliberals want to turn our attention to rolling back social and economic advances in Latin America.

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