Letters

September 25, 2007

Haiti Just when I had totally given up on NACLA as a reliable alter- native media source, your Haiti issue [January/February 1994] did much to restore your credibility with me. The articles actually con- tained extensive information about the U.S. role in that country. I can't think of any information that is more important for you to pub- lish than what the U.S. govern- ment and U.S. businesses are doing in Latin America and the Caribbean. NACLA has failed miserably in this respect in the issues it has published in the 1980s and 1990s. I still go to the university library here in Seattle and dig up old NACLA issues from the 1960s and 1970s. They are an absolute gold mine of infor- mation on the evil deeds of the U.S. government and big business in Latin America. In your recent Haiti Report, Kim Ives' "The Unmaking of a Presi- dent" and Barbara Briggs and Charles Kernaghan's "The U.S. Economic Agenda: A Sweatshop Model of Development" were especially informative. Although the latter provided good analysis of the selfish motives of the U.S. Agency for International Develop- ment (U.S.AID), it should have given more specifics about U.S. business activities, such as the names of the companies involved (remember how you did it in the 1960s and 1970s)? But overall, you have done an excellent job showing how U.S. foreign policy through the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and U.S.AID undermine, rather than support democracy in Haiti. Judy Tullis Seattle, WA Warren Dean L ong-time NACLA friend, con- tributor and editorial board member, historian Warren Dean died at age 61 on May 21 in Santi- ago, Chile. Gas from a defective fuel line asphyxiated Warren in the small apartment he had rented on his arrival in Santiago. A radical thinker and activist without a paradigm, Warren was one of the world's foremost schol- ars of Brazil's economic, social and environmental history. A man of deep convictions who always cut his own path, Warren chal- lenged dependency theory in The Industrialization of Sdo Paulo (1969) by detailing the national genesis of Sdo Paulo's industrial growth. His subsequent Rio Claro, A Brazilian Plantation System 1820-1920 (1976) documented the role that slaves played in the abo- lition of Brazilian slavery. In his late 40s, Warren trained himself as an environmental historian. He immersed himself in the study of plant life, and journeyed through- out Latin America's varied wood- lands and plains to produce Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber (1987) and the forthcoming With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Coast Forest. He was a professor of history at New York University for 24 years, and was doing research on his fifth book when this unnatural disaster ended his life. A memorial service will be held on September 16. Errata Due to an editing error, the city where representatives of the indigenous popu- lation of the Ecuadorean Amazon and executive officers of ARCO International met was misidentified in the newsbrief section of the May/June issue. The meet- ing took place at ARCO headquarters in Dallas, Texas. The photographs in the May/June issue of a young boy smoking (p. 22) and a funeral for two street children (p. 23) were taken by Nair Benedicto/N Imagens.

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