Obama Has Nothing to Gain by Propping Up Mexico’s Government
If Washington gives the Mexican president a pat on the back, it will be a stab in the back for the Mexican movement for justice and transparency.
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Climate Change Threatens Quechua and Their Crops in Peru’s Andes
In this town in Peru’s highlands over 3,000 metres above sea level, in the mountains surrounding the Sacred Valley of the Incas, the Quechua Indians who have lived here since time immemorial are worried about threats to their potato crops from alterations in rainfall patterns and temperatures.
Dissecting the Drug War: New Book Charts Ways Global Capitalism Profits From “War on People”
In her newly released book Drug War Capitalism, journalist Dawn Paley demonstrates how the so-called war on drugs is really a war on people. To understand this ongoing war against people, Paley argues that we must recognize how capitalist expansion of new markets is linked to the reorganization (or destabilization) of a country’s security state and political economy.
Torture Reports: Brazil and the United States Release Reports Documenting Systematic Human Rights Abuses
One day after the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its Executive Summary of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program exposing a policy of torture applied in the War on Terror, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff unveiled her country’s investigatory National Truth Commission Report, identifying human rights atrocities committed in Brazil between 1946 and 1988. […]
Peruvian Communities Reject COP 20 and Build the Movement of the People for El Buen Vivir
All eyes were on Peru as December began as this rising economic star hosted the United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP 20 (20th yearly session of the Conference of the Parties), the annual climate talks in which 195 states congregate to discuss our changing climate. The main mission in Lima was to advance in negotiations for a new climate treaty that is hoped to be agreed at the COP 21 next year in Paris. […]
Climate Justice: Uniting Struggles Across Latin America
The demand for climate justice has created a broad umbrella, a true movement of movements, in which those on the front-lines of the climate crisis are connecting their struggles, sharing strategies, naming their common enemies, and building solutions from the bottom-up.
Argentina: Mining Corporations vs. Democracy
The past November 26th the people of the Argentinean province of Chubut, in Patagonia, were witnesses to yet another example of the limits of democracy when it comes to affecting the interests of transnational corporations. […]
Beyond Ayotzinapa: How U.S. Intervention in Colombia Paved the Way for Mexico’s Human Rights Crisis
While the Mexican government has scrambled to present the Ayotzinapa student massacre as a case of low-level corruption that can be solved by shuffling police units and criminalizing the protests that brought international scrutiny, a new report emerged claiming that federal police also participated in the torture and disappearance of the students. U.S. intervention in Colombia shows why the state violence evident in Ayotzinapa is anything but an isolated incident.
CONAIE Indigenous Organization Evicted from Headquarters by Ecuadorian Government
The Ecuadorian government has announced that it is giving the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) two weeks to abandon the headquarters it has held for almost a quarter of a century. The CONAIE leadership says that they will refuse to leave.
An Open Letter from Boaventura de Sousa Santos to Ecuadorian President Correa on Kicking the CONAIE Indigenous Movement Out of its Headquarters
The government of President Rafael Correa in Ecuador has called for the CONAIE indigenous movement to leave its headquarters in Quito. CONAIE leader Jorge Herrera says this is a political move on the part of the government to repress the indigenous movement and marginalize critics. Here is an open letter to Correa from Boaventura de Sousa Santos on the topic.