In many ways, the first decade of the 21st Century was the flip side of the last decade of the twentieth century in South America. There have been numerous and significant changes. We still don’t know if it’s a glitch in time or a new beginning. In any case, the region will never be the same.
In San Luis Acatlán, Guerrero, Mexico, La Policía Comunitaria, an autonomous police force and justice system, has become something of a legend in Mexico. The idea is simple: local people are elected to act as temporary police officers, and justice is administered by a council of community members, not the local state system. This form of community justice is both an experiment, and a centuries old practice.
When Americans spend $100 on health care, is it possible that only $4 goes to keeping them well and $96 goes somewhere else? Single payer health care advocates compare American health care to that in Western Europe or Canada and come up with figures of 20–30% waste in the US.
Fernando Luna was six years old playing in a mountain side cave with his brother in the beautiful indigenous village of Acteal, Chiapas when they heard the thunderous footsteps and shouts of paramilitaries running by on the land above their heads.
Five years after the alleged demobilization of army-backed paramilitaries in Colombia, violence and human rights abuses remain widespread in the countryside, displaced Afro-Colombian farmers and community leaders Juan Sanchez and Roberto Guzman say.
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As the one-year anniversary of Haiti’s earthquake approaches, a brutally frank account of the plight of its people has been delivered by a highly placed diplomat. Ricardo Seitenfus, the representative to Haiti of the Organization of American States, delivered a hard-hitting assessment of the foreign role in that country in an interview published in the December 20 edition of the Swiss daily Le Temps.
Cuba’s substantive dedication of humanitarian medical emergency aid to Haiti upon the disastrous 12 January 2010 magnitude 7 Port-Au-Prince earthquake followed 50 years of planned Cuban healthcare and first-response commitment internationally and across the global south. […]
The past ten years in Latin America have witnessed a major shift to the left in both the halls of government power and society. This transformation resulted in a flurry of newspaper articles and books seeking to explain George W. Bush’s imperial designs, the leftist trend in the region and the dynamics of US-Latin American relations. […]
Patricio Manns, Chilean poet, author, singer and songwriter is one of the few whose work is a testimony to history. Despite current trends and contemporary politics, which contribute a difference to ideology and culture, Manns remains committed to the universality of the Nueva Canción, and continues to be a revolutionary voice, recognizing the necessity of it and promoting the movement through his numerous works.
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