The new documentary Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas proves that democracy can and should be more than casting a ballot every four years. This empowering film gives hopeful and concrete examples from around the Americas of people taking back the reigns of power and governing their own communities. […]
This week five hundred people representing over a hundred social movement groups from across the Americas gathered in Medellín for a People’s Development Alternatives Assembly coinciding with the 50th anniversary meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank. […]
Now and then there emerges somewhere in the world a social movement that is really exceptional for its integrity, astuteness and mass appeal. For me one of those rare movements is Brazil’s Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST, the Landless Workers’ Movement). Ever since it was founded in the early 1980s it has confounded predictions of its imminent demise. […]
The mining bubble in Perú has popped. With world demand at it’s lowest, international metal prices have cascaded and as of November 2008 more than 8 thousand mining workers have joined the ranks of the unemployed. […]
Indigenous leaders delivered a lawsuit in Quito last Tuesday before Ecuador’s Constitutional Court asking that the country’s new mining law be declared unconstitutional. The case is the next step that the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) is taking to try to put the brakes on large scale metal mining which has achieved unwavering support from President Rafael Correa’s administration. […]
Following a stunning breakthrough in a 25-year-old case of political terror in Guatemala, the National Security Archive today [March 17,2008] is posting declassified U.S. documents about the disappearance of Edgar Fernando García, a student leader and trade union activist captured by Guatemalan security forces in 1984. The documents show that García’s capture was an organized political abduction orchestrated at the highest levels of the Guatemalan government. […]
In spite of proclaiming himself socialist and a defender of the general "well being," President Rafael Correa has been promoting the open-pit mining industry, which has provoked serious environmental and social damage throughout the region. […]
Morning always comes early in the country side, but on Sunday, March 15, it comes even earlier to Arcatao. Poll workers are to show up at to begin their work, but by FMLN militants are already present at the municipal building on the square. Polls are not supposed to open until , but local activists are so eager for the outcome of these historic elections that voting begins 15 minutes early. […]
The president-elect of El Salvador Mauricio Funes, together with his supporters, celebrated the victory in the elections held this Sunday in this Central American country, giving a speech in which he said that with their vote the people had signed "a new accord on peace and reconciliation." […]
After the nationalist confetti of the January 25th constitutional referendum blew away, and the busted water balloons and foam of Carnival washed down the streets with the rain, political scandals filled the Bolivian airwaves. Recent cases of corruption, shaky relations with Washington and political unrest show that the road to the December general elections is likely to be a rocky one. […]
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