“Our analysis is that mining companies have transnational strategies and we have to coordinate transnational struggles to confront transnational mining,” Gustavo Lozano, representative from the Mexican Anti-mining Network.
The original community of Nueva Esperanza was established in Guatemala’s Lacandón National Park, in the state of Peten, near the northern border with Mexico. The park was created in 1990, while civil war still raged in Guatemala. It is co-managed by “Defensores de la Naturaleza,” a private nongovernmental organization, and the National Commission of Protected Areas (CONAP). But instead of assisting a community whose environmental footprint is tiny — they live without cars, plumbing or electricity — the government of Guatemala threw them out.
The work analyzes the situation in Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay and Bolivia in detail. And it finds parallels: transgenic soy grew in all of these countries, it involved the takeover of new territories (by clearing them), it led to the fall of other crops, it raised notably the use of pesticides, and it saw all five countries putting vast swaths of their territory at the disposal Europe and Asia’s needs.
“Another world is possible to the extent that every society manages to find its own path towards greater democracy and stronger social rights, like free education and healthcare, decent housing, and a lifestyle that is in harmony with the environment.” – Camila Vallejo […]
The land conflict between the Guaraní-Kaiowá indigenous people and large landowners in the southwestern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul is a powder keg ready to explode, say observers. “We are going to organize and prepare for confrontation…They only want the land to be bothersome. We have weapons. If they want war, they’ll get war,” said Luis Carlos da Silva Vieira, a landowner known as Lenço Preto (“Black Kerchief”), in a filmed declaration posted on YouTube.
This personal narrative offers testimony from one of the four Mexican cities in which 55% of migrant kidnappings take place. That’s more than half of the United Nation’s estimated 18,000 migrants who are annually kidnapped in Mexico. Scarcity or security on train lines, a plethora of Western Unions used to process ransoms, and the overwhelming involvement of drug cartels make these cities a center for the human trafficking and the direct reaping of corporate profit from the migrant markets in Mexico and the United States.
The Brazilian Supreme Court has overturned the suspension of the Belo Monte Dam, caving to pressure from President Dilma Rousseff’s administration without giving appropriate consideration to indigenous rights implications of the case, human rights groups said today. The case illustrates the Brazilian judiciary’s alarming lack of independence, when powerful interests are at stake.
Forward from: Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements by Raúl Zibechi
Raúl Zibechi, a writer whose work on social movements is widely read in Spanish, suggests that La Victoria may have been the first mass organized land occupation in Latin America. “In this new kind of movement, self-construction and self-determination take the place of demands and representation,” writes Zibechi, reflecting on the occupation of La Victoria. “This pressure from below transformed the course of social struggles and the cities.”
The mesas técnicas del agua (Technical Water Forum, MTAs) are a unique experiment in radical urban planning, whereby beneficiary communities map their own water and sanitation needs and help to plan infrastructure development, which is financed by the state. In this interview, Victor Díaz, Community Coordinator of HIDROCAPITAL, talks about the accomplishments in the water and sanitation sector, including the meaning of socialism, the importance of popular power and political support, as well as the challenges that remain.
Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel said the Argnetine government has a limited view of human rights, and stressed that the extractive model is moving forward, which includes the use of repression. “The truth is that there is no progress because there is no political will in the government to respect native peoples,” said Pérez Esquivel.
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