According to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Mexico’s considerable income gap is widening while the National Council of the Evaluation of Social Development Policy reports that 3.2 million more Mexicans have been plunged into poverty in the last three years; a striking commentary on the economic policies of right-wing, pro-US President Felipe Calderón. […]
With two years to go before the World Cup in Brazil, already people are questioning the massive evictions caused by the Cup’s enormous infrastructure projects and the legal privileges that must be conceded to the all-powerful FIFA, which has set itself up as a kind of super-state capable of imposing its own laws and special tribunals. […]
The pressure is very great, the press is on the side of the soy farmers, and there is real risk that they will act with violence against the landless campesinos. The landlords have already organized armed groups and have threatened to act on their own. Meanwhile, a political problem is emerging because the soy farmers have threatened to influence the 2013 elections.
The U.S. is about to get a whole lot more involved in extracting Mexican oil, according to an agreement which promises to open up offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf Coast, signed Monday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa.
Over the new year, Chilean students; migrants from the Movement for Justice in El Barrio (New York); representatives of the Mexican National Indigenous Congress; and members of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) met at the CIDECI Unitierra in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, to recount their experiences of struggle and to analyze current economic systems and social movements.
The decision to remove the term ‘military dictatorship’ from Chilean primary school textbooks has been revoked. However, this remains a superficial change. Historian Alberto Harambour from Diego Portales University explains the dynamics of Chilean politics and relics of Pinochet’s dictatorship which threaten to separate a new generation of Chileans from historical memory.
Ask any local resident in Amecameca de Juárez, Mexico and they will tell you about La Voladora, the radio station that won a major legal battle for freedom of expression when it challenged the government in a case in which the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in its favor in 2011.
Anti-mining sentiments flared up again in Guatemala after the new right-wing president signed a “voluntary agreement” on Jan. 27 with the extractive industries business association to increase royalties paid by the companies. However, environmentalists, universities and local communities opposed the agreement, arguing that the debate must take into account questions such as natural resources, the environment, the development of local communities, and what real benefits the industry brings to the country.
Around two thousand indigenous Zapotec people live in the community of Santiago Xanica in the mountain range ‘Madre del Sur’ in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. It takes two hours to travel here via a dusty dirt track that cuts through fresh tropical vegetation on the dry mountain sides. The tranquillity that resonates in Xanica and the warm welcome from the habitants hides a violent and tense past.
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