A Guatemalan court ruled in favor of the indigenous people of the municipality of Sipacapa over transnational mining in the area. The court says the Guatemalan government must respect the right to information and consultation with the local population before granting any kind of mining permits. […]
Current migration trends are inextricably linked to the legacy of Guatemala’s internal armed conflict. The long-term legacy of state-sponsored violence has contributed to family and community disintegration, high rates of generalized violence, out-migration, and a myriad of related social problems.
When states act to facilitate the business of multinationals and leave communities unprotected, as with mining, those communities have no choice but to defend themselves by their own means–through self-defense organizations, mobilization of affected communities, or the creation of new ways to prevent dispossession. […]
The Peruvian Congress approved a packet of laws on July 3 which critics say subjects the country to neoliberal reforms that threaten to undermine environmental and labor protections and is a gift to the extractive industry. Despite the outcries and protests, the packet was approved with surprising ease.
Ecuador’s constitution is the only one in the world to declare water as a human right. Yet the government of this South American nation may not fully agree with its own constitutional rights.
The San Rafael Las Flores mine conflict created something more than a State of Siege in response to residents’ opposition to the exploitation of their lands. It was the starting point for the Government’s trial of a new, secretly launched security strategy that terms movements opposing extraction as threats to national security.
Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes is seen by many as a stalwart neoliberal and his failure to reach an agreement with opposition parties led to the March general strike. The strike was the country’s first general strike in 20 years, and only the third in Paraguay’s history.
Salvadoran feminist and women’s organizations are waging an international campaign demanding a pardon for the 17 women currently incarcerated in El Salvador for abortion, in hopes of challenging the country’s harsh anti-abortion laws and beginning to change the anti-choice views held by the vast majority of Salvadoran society.
When I made my first trip to Nicaragua in 1987 with a Nicaragua Network coffee picking brigade, I learned a number of things. I learned that it was possible not just to oppose my country’s wars, but to support an alternative to war and capitalist exploitation.
With the new book Evo’s Bolivia: Continuity and Change, authors Linda Farthing and Benjamin Kohl achieve an admirable balance of providing an excellent entry point for those with little background in Bolivia as well as key insights for scholars and activists with a long history in the country.
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