A sea of people from all across Colombia marched in Bogotá with a common desire for an end to the country’s armed conflict. They lined the streets in a lively procession, including dancing, music and performance. Countless people waving flags, holding banners, and wearing symbolic T-shirts marched to the city’s famous Plaza de Bolívar, united by a common desire for peace.
On April 28, 2012 journalist Regina Martínez was found strangled in the bathroom of her home in Xalapa, the capital of the southern Mexican state of Veracruz. Martínez was a renowned journalist with the Mexican weekly magazine Proceso, which for the past 36 years has been publishing articles about narco-trafficking, the war on drugs, and government corruption, among other topics.
The conversation on care in US social movements has had me thinking about how we draw lines around what is and is not considered “movement,” or “care,” or “practice.” My own perspective around this was expanded through interactions with Colombian activists who, in their struggles for fundamental rights – land, gender justice, environmental, and others – weave together strategies of resilience promotion to strengthen a community’s ability to withstand physical and psychological strain, together with base-building, advocacy, direct action, and other strategies.
The global economy reaches its fingers into the small campesino communities, as it has for centuries. History repeats itself: the campesinos resist regressive land grabs by the country’s elites who control the electoral process, the military and the other institutions of power, the judicial system is notoriously ineffective, and the long arms of the U.S. government reach down into Central America to advance its own geopolitical and economic interests.
South America’s newest president has a checkered past, and a huge personal fortune. School of the Americas Watch, which sent a delegation to observe the elections, expressed concern at Horacio Cartes’ sympathy for the dictatorship, his public disdain for queer people, and his seemingly totalitarian aspirations.
National and international media gathered in the Committee of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) office for the announcement of the exhumation of human remains found in the Paso Aguán plantation, in the jurisdiction of Trujillo, Colón. The initiative arose as a result of reports by the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguan (MUCA) on April 3, when the discovery of a body in what appears to be a clandestine cemetery in the Paso Aguán plantation, in the community of Panamá, was reported.
More than 100 environmental, social and indigenous organizations protested Monday in the Chilean capital to demand that the state regain control over the management of water, which was privatized by the dictatorship in 1981. “Our main demand is the repeal of the water code that is denying us the right to have water to live,” said Teresa Nahuelpán, an activist with the Movement for the Defense of the Sea in Mehuín.
While the world watches the historic case against the generals Efraín Ríos Montt and José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, indigenous peoples and human rights defenders are suffering persecution very similar to that perpetrated in the 1980s. As Guatemala begins to chip away at impunity for egregious human rights violations of the past, we must ensure that cycles of repression and violence do not repeat against current-day activists working to create a more just and inclusive society.
A small town in Patagonia is at the heart of the anti-mining struggle in Argentina. Ten years ago it voted against a proposed gold and silver project, and now – a decade later – it has mobilized to reaffirm it’s rejection of mega-mining projects.
María Suarez Toro is a Puerto Rican and Costa Rican journalist, feminist scholar, university professor, peace and women’s human rights activist with decades of experience working with liberation movements in Central America. María was one of 25 participants on a human rights delegation in Honduras from March 16-25. The delegation met with community members and social movement activists fighting against issues including mining, monoculture agriculture, mega-tourism, “model cities”, land theft, displacement, and labor exploitation. At the end of the delegation Upside Down World spoke with María and asked her to reflect on what she saw and heard, while giving additional historical and political context based on her past experiences fighting for social justice.
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