Like so many other peripheral populations, La Legua, a Santiago neighborhood, is subjected to military-police intervention under the pretext of drug trafficking. However, in the midst of poverty and repression, they resist by creating life and community with women and youth as the leading actors.
Guadalupe, a Salvadoran young woman who has already spent more than 7 years in prison on charges of aggravated homicide for miscarriage of her fetus, was pardoned. However, Cinthia, who gave birth alone to an infant she says had its cord wrapped around its neck, was denied pardon, ostensibly because she smoked and drank beer on a daily basis. Cinthia, like Guadalupe, was also 18 when she miscarried, and was likewise found guilty of aggravated homicide and has been serving the same 30 year sentence.
Ayotzinapa is the end result of a bundle of interconnected events. These, with greater or lesser density and visibility, are part of the essence of Twenty-First Century capitalism, not limited to Mexico but spreading, whether surreptitiously or scandalously, throughout the whole world.
The death of a special prosecutor investigating one of the biggest unresolved mysteries in the history of Argentina, the bombing of a Jewish community center over 20 years ago, has put to the test an immature democracy that is caught up in a web of conspiracy theories and promiscuity between the secret services and those in power. […]
In this way, thousands of indigenous communities, and tens of thousands of civic organizations, are under the control of the State. The arrival of Rafael Correa’s government and his Alianza País was made possible thanks to the fight of the movements, who are now criminalized and under control … The new power devours those who made it possible.
Brazil’s National Truth Commission (Commissão Nacional da Verdade, CNV) presented its final report on the history of the human rights violations committed by the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985. Through its working group “The Dictatorship and Gender,” the CNV took testimony and detailed the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon against those the dictatorship considered to be political and social activists or otherwise subversive.
Since the forced disappearance in Iguala, Guerrero, of 43 Normalista students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College on September 26, 2014, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand that the students be returned alive and also to denounce political corruption and the “Narco-Government.” The Southern state of Guerrero has been the epicenter of these protests and a wide range of actions including citizen searches, takeovers of tollbooths, a statewide caravan and the burning of government buildings.
The government of President Rafael Correa achieved what seemed impossible since the late 1990s: it reunited Ecuador’s Indigenous movements. Yet, this was not likely the intended goal of evicting the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) from its headquarters.
Some things never change. In Haiti, no matter the century or decade in question, one can be certain that: the state and elite are trouncing the rights and needs of the majority, the population is protesting to demand land and justice, and the international community is taking the wrong side. […]
While the Honduran government continues its promotion of mining investment, communities around the country are voting against mining in open town hall assemblies. At least 10 municipalities in Honduras have now been declared territories free of mining.
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