Over the past decade, Special Operations Forces (SOF) ranks have more than doubled to about 65,000, and their commander, Adm. William McRaven, has been particularly aggressive in seeking new missions for his troops in new theaters, including Latin America and the Caribbean where they are training thousands of local counterparts.
At various stages, affected groups realized the extent of what had been planned for Celendin. Teachers, students, workers in the municipality, left-leaning political groups, and the Rondas Campesinas (7) united to form a platform of civil society organizations (known as the Plataforma Interinstitucional Celendina) from which they would organize a campaign against the project. Resistance also formed in Bambamarca/Hualgayoc – a province affected by 200 years of mining and whose only remaining source of uncontaminated water is threatened by Minas Conga.
The Teachers Union of Oaxaca has been camping out in the main square of Mexico City, the Zócalo, in protest of the new education reform implemented by President Peña-Nieto. The teachers, who have been protesting for almost a month, have denounced the reform saying it chips away their labor rights, fails to recognize the diverse needs of students in rural indigenous communities, and paves the way for school privatization. Teachers from Chiapas, Michoacán, and Veracruz have joined them in the capital.
On August 23, Paraguayans woke up to news that resembled more the days of Stroessner’s dictatorship than those of a developing democracy. On August 22, Paraguay’s Congress had granted the newly inaugurated President Cartes power to unilaterally order military interventions inside the country. […]
The fundamental discursive success of Chavismo was to challenge the differences between the traditional parties and erect a new border ordering the loyalties of Venezuelan society, transforming a privileged minority into a political minority and the dispossessed majorities into a project for the construction of a “people” demanding representation for the entire community.
Sept. 11, 1973 marked the start in Chile of a dictatorship that was synonymous with cruelty. But above and beyond the human rights violations, the reforms ushered in by the regime of General Augusto Pinochet continue to mark today’s Chile – a country of dynamic economic growth but a fragmented society. Two of these reforms, in the spheres of politics and education, are among the targets of the massive student movement and sectors of the left, which are seeking to dismantle them and consider them key campaign issues for the November general elections.
Indigenous communities throughout Mexico are once again tightening the weave on their distinct, yet interrelated struggles to challenge and undermine the ever-deepening threats and realities of territorial and cultural dispossession.
As the media stopped paying attention, many believe that the Zapatista rebellion no longer exists. Quietly, away from the spotlight and cameras, they have deepened their autonomous construction to the point that one can now speak of a different society, governed by rules, codes, and laws distinct from those of the mainstream world.
“The Yaqui River is a structural part of our life and with this theft of our water, they are condemning us to death as a people,” said Mario Luna, secretary of the traditional authorities of the Yaqui tribe, warning that his people are facing the greatest ever threat to their existence: the dispossession of the waters that give them economic and cultural sustenance.
On September 12, Berta Caceres, Tomás Gomez, and Aureliano Molina, leaders of the indigenous Lenca organization Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) must appear in court. Their charges? Usurpation of land, coercion, and causing more than $3 million in damages to DESA, a hydroelectric dam company. […]
Copyright 2003-2018 Upside Down World