Increasingly unpopular Chilean President Sebastián Piñera approved an initiative seeking to clamp down on student ‘occupations’ by enacting harsher punishments toward those who destroy public property and take over educational institutions.
Last week, the Guatemalan government of Álvaro Colom formally apologized to the family of former president Jacobo Árbenz who was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup in 1954 and later died in exile in Mexico. […]
In their 2010 annual report, Conservation International calls the results of their partnership with Starbucks in Chiapas “one of the first and most notable corporate engagements to address climate change.” But outside the feel good gloss of annual reports and promotional videos, the relationship between CI and Starbucks isn’t quite so transparent.
On July 7, 2010, Diodora Hernandez, a staunch anti-mining activist, was shot point-blank on the right eye outside her home in the small community of San José Nueva Esperanza – only a few meters from a fence that delimits Goldcorp’s Marlin Mine. One year after her miraculous recuperation, Diodora’s anti-mining stance and activism remains as steadfast as ever.
There Mexican Army has conducted 20,000 raids in the last five years. Arturo Rodríguez García, writing for Proceso, reports that, “in the past two years . . . the number of captured citizens, raids without warrants, disappearances, instances of torture and executions have multiplied.” One defender of human rights affirms that the Marines “have the implicit right to violate the constitution. They rob, kidnap, disappear and kill and nothing happens.”
Seringal Sao Bernardo, in the state of Acre in Brazil’s Western Amazon, is a settlement of seringuieros – rubber tappers – who have lived on their piece of forested land since before they were freed from plantation serfdom in the 1970’s.
A production model in Paraguay based on soy monoculture results in economic growth, but also causes social instability that can lead to political crises. The temptation is to use armed force to resolve them.
Canadian mining company Iamgold’s Quimsacocha gold mining project, high in the Andes of southern Ecuador is going nowhere fast. On October 2, the mining project was the latest one to fall victim to the community referendums that have defeated mining projects in Peru, Guatemala and Argentina.
The culture of Mapuche poetry has evolved into three distinctive forms: traditional, intellectual and urban. David Aniñir Guilitraro, an urban Mapuche poet from Santiago, has created a literary realm which connects the history of the Mapuche struggle to the social problems which the people face today. Guilitraro describes his book, Mapurbe, as ‘a poetic concept of identity’ which harbors ‘revenge against everything’.
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