The Lawrence World-Journal recently reported the Defense Department’s decision to fund the latest Bowman Expedition led by the American Geographical Society and the University of Kansas Geography Department. Like the first – and controversial – Bowman expedition to Mexico, this latest venture will be led by KU Geographers Jerome Dobson and Peter Herlihy and will target indigenous communities.
US imperialism spreads across Latin America through military bases and trade deals, corporate exploitation and debt. It also relies on a vast communications surveillance network, the recent uncovering of which laid bare Washington’s reach into the region’s streets and halls of power. Yet more than McDonald’s and bullets, an empire depends on fear, and fear of the empire is lacking these days in Latin America.
Though Jeremy Scahill’s latest book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, is firmly rooted in the Arab world, it is a valuable volume for those wishing to better understand how current and past events in Mexico and Central and South America connect to the so-called war on terror.
As usual, the one thing the media aren’t covering is what the immigrants themselves think about immigration reform. This was a central issue at a meeting that some 40 to 45 activists–some of them visiting New York from Mexico and Central America–held in the basement of a mid-Manhattan church on the evening of May 23.
Two projects of regional association are facing off in South America: the Pacific Alliance and UNASUR. Both are incompatible, based on opposed geopolitical interests that present each of the countries of the region with a dilemma. There is no longer room for ingenuity or distractions.
Society is in movement, creating autonomously, and yet the State moves in and appropriates society for its own ends. This is one of the main ideas coming out of the talk that we had with Raúl Zibechi.
Wednesday, May 29, marks 32 years since Puerto Rican activist Oscar López Rivera was arrested and later convicted of “seditious conspiracy,” a questionable charge that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has interpreted to mean “conspiring to free his people from the shackles of imperial injustice.” Today, 70-year-old Oscar López Rivera, never accused of hurting anyone, remains in a cell at FCI Terre Haute, in Indiana. Supporters around the world continue to seek his release, most recently by asking US President Barack Obama for a commutation of his sentence.
María Suarez Toro is a Puerto Rican and Costa Rican journalist, feminist scholar, university professor, peace and women’s human rights activist with decades of experience working with liberation movements in Central America. María was one of 25 participants on a human rights delegation in Honduras from March 16-25. The delegation met with community members and social movement activists fighting against issues including mining, monoculture agriculture, mega-tourism, “model cities”, land theft, displacement, and labor exploitation. At the end of the delegation Upside Down World spoke with María and asked her to reflect on what she saw and heard, while giving additional historical and political context based on her past experiences fighting for social justice.
Researchers have unveiled new data warning that governments in Latin America are infringing on the rights of their indigenous populations in a bid to fuel development through the extraction of natural resources. The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a Washington-based organization, says it has documented a “natural resources giveaway” in Latin America, which highlights how an outdated development model is trampling on human rights and the environment throughout much of the region.
Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis, an anthology of articles by a mix of some 40 activists and academics published in December 2012, is a serious effort to take the discussion on immigration outside its prescribed limits. Unlike most treatments of the topic, the book questions the basic concepts and considers immigration policy historically and in relation to incarceration policies and neoliberal economics. Most importantly, the contributors discuss ways to talk about these issues with a broader public.
Copyright 2003-2018 Upside Down World