Conflicts between multinational corporations and indigenous groups are not only confined to legal debates over property rights. For the Embera in Choco, a fight against a controversial mining project in the region isn’t just a conflict about their legal ownership of the land. This project threatens to completely wipe out their ancient culture. […]
Since Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998 and the traditional political parties Acción Democratica and COPEI lost power, the news media has become the greatest weapon of the opposition in a war against his administration and popular reforms. […]
Repression against the national movement opposing the military coup in Honduras has become a daily occurrence. All over the country, police and the army are using tactics of terror and violence to disperse protests and illegally detain demonstrators. […]
The workers at Argentina’s occupied ceramics factory FASINPAT won a major victory this week: the factory now definitively belongs to the people in legal terms. Since 2001, the workers at Zanon have fought for legal recognition of worker control at Latin America’s largest ceramics factory which has created jobs, spearheaded community projects, supported social movements world-wide and shown the world that workers don’t need bosses. […]
A leader in the movement opposed to re-opening the El Dorado goldmine in northeast El Salvador was in stable condition after being shot eight times in the back and legs. Doctors at San Salvador’s Rosales Hospital said it was “miraculous” that Ramiro Rivera survived the attack, which occurred in front of Rivera’s modest house. Rivera identified one of two assailants as Oscar Menjívar, who was detained by police in Cabañas, where both men reside. […]
That the Lavalas political movement opposed the neo-liberal economic model of development that is currently unfolding in Haiti today is without question. The insistence of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank on structural adjustments that included eliminating import and export tariffs, selling off State-owned industries and businesses, maintaining a low minimum wage and an obsessive reliance on the private sector as the motor for economic development was called the "death plan." […]
The coup d’etat in Honduras on June 28 shook the world, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean. A month has passed and the de facto regime is still in the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa, and the situation remains explosive. While the neighboring countries of Honduras—El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala—experienced bloody civil wars in the decade from 1970 to 1980, Honduras lived under the boot of a civil-military government, but without war. Now, history could be reversed. […]
On June 18 Gustavo Marcelo Rivera, a community leader and anti-mining activist, whose most recent work targeted a controversial and widely unpopular gold mine project proposed by Canada’s Pacific Rim, was disappeared. Less than two weeks later his corpse was found at the bottom of a 60-foot-well, while an autopsy later revealed he was strangled to death and tortured.
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A wave of violence targeted at anti-mining protesters has ripped through Cabañas in north-eastern El Salvador, and Pacific Rim Mining Corporation, the mid-size Canadian company which has spent millions in its effort to exploit the area’s ample gold deposits has remained curiously silent on the attacks. […]
The propaganda wheels are turning fast. The barrage of anti-Venezuela misinformation that began while Bush was in office has intensified in recent months. Not a week goes by without the U.S. mainstream media running at least one story about the "dictatorial" Venezuelan government. Historically, the U.S. government’s foreign policy "coincidentally" matches the opinion of the media and vice versa. […]
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