The mine, known locally by the name of its subsidiary Minera Cuzcatlán, went into production in late September 2011. Its opponents maintain that Fortuna Silver’s mine is the root of the social problems that plague the once peaceful region. In a press conference following the police shooting of Méndez Vásquez, mine opponents made it clear that they see a direct link between Fortuna Silver and the violence.
Chilean students question the education system as commercial and elitist because it reproduces existing social inequities and makes them worse. But they are not just asking questions: They are practicing the kind of education they have spent years dreaming about and struggling to obtain.
Indigenous communities in Peru have a long list of comments and objections to the proposed regulations for the law governing prior consultation on initiatives affecting their territories. This criticism was voiced in a series of workshops conducted across the country ahead of the national meeting on the issue scheduled for Feb. 13-15.
The official Guatemalan government records of the counterinsurgency operation Plan Sofia prove the criminal responsibility of senior government and military officials in the country’s genocide by detailing how the chain of command functioned during the war, says National Security Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle.
I have just finished my second World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 9 years after I attended my first. 2003 was a year marked by the inauguration of Lula, a union-leader turned politician who led the Workers´ Party to multiple electoral victories; this year’s social forum has been marked by Tunisa, Tahrir Square, the Spanish Indignant movement of unemployed youth (Indignados in Spanish), and the Occupy movement that took Wall Street and many US cities, like my home of New Orleans. My observation and summation of these processes focuses on the demise, and temporary survival, of liberal, democratic capitalism.
Elliott Abrams, a former high level State Department official during the 1980s, testified last week that the Reagan administration knew that Argentina’s military junta was systematically stealing babies from murdered and jailed democracy activists and giving them to right-wing families friendly to the regime. But this didn’t deter the State Department at the time from granting Argentina certification indicating that the country’s human rights record was improving.
At first sight, the small town of La Playa in the department of Santander in Colombia seems gripped by a minor boom. Its population has rocketed while new residential buildings, shops and small bars blaring out loud music have sprung up all over town. Yet the growth does nothing to mask the pervading atmosphere of desperation and frustration among its long-term residents, brought on by living with the uncertainty of whether there will even be a town in the future.
“There is a war here in the Aguán,” says Juan, surveying the distant fields of African palm from the vantage point of his recently planted field of beans and corn. A young Honduran farmer, Juan lives in an encampment of 60 families, dedicated to growing basic grains and reclaiming their food sovereignty. “But the war is not against the drug traffickers, other countries or even organized crime,” he says. “It is a war against the campesinos.”
For seventeen months more than 300 Triqui people from the region of Copala, as it is known, have been displaced due to intense paramilitary violence in their community. Unable to return under fear of harm, the displaced camped out in Oaxaca City, demanding a government response to their situation.
Violence and intimidation continue in El Salvador against environmental activists and human rights defenders who have publicly opposed metallic mining. The latest round of threats targetted a Salvadoran Catholic priest, Father Neftalí Ruiz, and a community radio station, Radio Victoria.
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