“It’s really uncertain what’s going to happen with the elections,” said Karen Spring, a Canadian human rights activist living in Honduras. “It’s a lot less likely for [Canada] to have a government – and the political conditions and the economic conditions – in [Honduras] that would approve the free trade agreement or would allow it to be approved.”
“Queremos agua! Queremos maíz! Multinacionales fuera del país!” yelled the protesters on October 26th as they marched through the streets of El Carmen de Viboral in Eastern Antioquia, Colombia. Around 1,000 people representing 60 grassroots organizations from 17 municipalities of the region traveled to participate in the fourth annual Water Festival, “for the autonomy, defense of territory, life and peace.”
October 27th marked seven years of Brad Will living in the memory of Oaxacans, as well as those other fallen 26 from 2006. It marks seven years of demanding justice for them all. Every year hundreds of people mobilize and leave flowers and offerings at the Calicanto barricade. Some people bring food, coffee and bread to share with those participating in the activities and to the rhythm of son de la barricada [a popular protest song of the uprising].
“In this country, elections aren’t going to change anything,” said Francisco. “If Xiomara wins, but Libre doesn’t have enough votes (in Congress) to stop Juan Orlando (JOH) then what is to stop there being another coup, and even if Libre does have enough to stop that, who controls the military? All we can do is keep struggling to keep what little we have. We have no other options.”
In the months leading up to the first national elections since the 2009 coup in which members of the Resistance movement will participate, state-led terror and the criminalization of social protest have intensified.The terrorizing of activists like Edwin Espinal falls within the context of criminalization of social movement leaders like Berta Cáceres and Magdalena Morales. It is also part of a recent pattern of apparently politically-motivated military police-led home invasions.
As Guatemalan courts deliberate on whether or not to grant amnesty to former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt for crimes committed during his 1982-1983 “presidency” which he assumed after a military coup, Anselmo Roldán, a massacre survivor from La Libertad, Huehuetenango is traversing the U.S. in search of solidarity for the victims of Guatemala’s armed internal conflict. One of the organizations at the forefront of the struggle for peace and to end impunity has been the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), a community group of which Anselmo is the current President.
Are there alternatives to this re-embrace of state-led capitalism? Evo Morales gained international attention by staking a strong discursive claim that global climate change was the result of the sins of capitalism. He posed indigenous cosmovision as the alternative: he declared that by embracing indigenous notions of reciprocity and communality, societies could learn to “live well” and sustainably instead of trying to live “better” than others through increased consumption.
What is happening today with regards to the drug war in Mexico has important precedent elsewhere in the hemisphere, namely, in Colombia. There is a legitimate focus on how events in Colombia preceded what is taking place in the “drug war” in Mexico. Key to the importance of Colombia from 2000 onwards in understanding Mexico today is Plan Colombia and the multi-billion-dollar investment the US government made in the war on drugs there.
In the chilly town of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, perched in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication was held from October 7-13, 2013.
Throughout Latin America, people are opposing a model that destroys the environment and limits the possibilities for communities to continue cultivating the land and living the way they choose. Conflicts over mining, fumigations, and genetically modified organisms are among the most frequent.
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