International

Early in the morning of March 3, Berta Cáceres was assassinated as she slept. Berta is not alone, nor is her story unique to Honduras. Across the Global South, mega hydroelectric projects are expanding — driven by governments and multinationals as a source of cheap energy, they also displace communities, destroy the local social fabric and spiritual ties to land, lead to privatization of land and water, and generate food insecurity.

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The election results in Venezuela and Argentina, the Brazilian crisis, and the erosion of the “citizens’ revolution” in Ecuador are part of a change in political climate that puts the transformative processes underway on the defensive.

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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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A decade-long mining boom has left a string of complications–environmental liabilities, social polarization and loss of governmental legitimacy. Meanwhile it has not resolved a single underlying problem. […]

The gains of South America’s progressive period, won in the halls of power and in the streets, won’t likely be swept aside anytime soon.

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The end of the progressive cycle implies the dissolution of hegemonies and the beginning of a period of dominations, of greater repression against the organized popular sectors. Until now we have been commenting on the causes of the end of the cycle; now it’s necessary to start to comprehend the consequences, tremendous, unattractive, demolishing in many cases.

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Movements in Latin America, rather than looking towards the state, are looking across, horizontally, at how a new society can be built from the ground. Movements from below are continuing to envision and create alternatives to the structural systems of exploitation, dispersing power in the process.

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This month marks five years since the publication of the book Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America. The dance with dynamite between social movements and states in Latin America that the book followed in 2010 continues today, but in a transformed political landscape.

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Polinizaciones started simply in 2007, as an initiative of an autonomous pollinator of the Beehive Collective to distribute Plan Colombia posters to communities engaged in land defense and directly impacted by the USA´s military intervention in the region as part of the “War on Drugs.” Since then, Polinizaciones has evolved and metamorphosed into a grassroots network of cultural workers and communicators that use Beehive Collective graphics, street theater, photo & video, murals, social cartography and other arts-based strategies in the promoting a culture of resistance.

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The biggest problem facing a project like the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America (IIRSA) is that major investments in infrastructure without strategic definitions can lead to carrying out projects for the sake of carrying them out. This only benefits big business and the large central states of the region, not small countries or communities. […]