Brazil: "Controlled Decomposition"
UnpublishedMay/June
1979
Volume:
13
Number:
3
Article
Early this spring, almost 1,000 representatives of popular organi- zations gathered in Guatemala City to found the Democratic Front Against Repression (FDCR) whose single objective is to build a unified resistance against the campaign of terror raging in Guatemala. Fifteen people have been mur- dered each day since the begin- ning of the year; in the capital city, few people venture out after dark and visitors report almost nightly gunfire.
Jim Green
The owners of Brazil's automobile and other metal-related industries were caught off guard May 12, 1978, when 3,000 workers at the Swedish Saab-Scania plant returned from lunch and refused to start up their machines. One worker, asked by a supervisor why he wasn't working, replied: "I am working, I marked my time card.
Julia Preston
The Mexican oil bonanza began in 1976 when the new President, Jose L6pez Portillo, went exploring with nothing more than his foun- tain pen. Mexico was laboring under a huge $28 billion public foreign debt, and facing three years of austerity under the stern eye of the International Monetary Fund.
Alejandro Bendaña
Since the publication of our issue "Crisis in Nicaragua" (Nov-Dec 1978), events in that Central American country contin- ue to unfold at an uneven pace. Nicaragua was in the news earlier this year only to fade away and then momentarily reappear with the FSLN Holy Week offensive.
Changes- Pro and Con This is my fifth year as a sub- scriber, and I would like to take this opportunity to comment on some of the changes which I have noted over the years. I am delighted that you have been able to adopt a magazine for- mat, as my old newspaper-style copies are certainly becoming old and yellowed, and yet I want to keep them as excellent reference tools on various topics.
IMPERIALISM James Petras, Critical Perspectives on Imperialism and Social Class in the Third World (Monthly Review Press, 1978), $15.00, cloth, 314 pages.
Harry Maurer
In the course of the 1970's-which, historically speaking, means almost overnight--the Brazilian Amazon has become a full-fledged frontier. Across an enormous crescent of country, reaching from the Bolivian border to the Atlantic Ocean, the southern rim of the Amazon Basin is being occupied by peasants fleeing the overcrowded northeast and south of Brazil, by land speculators out to make a quick killing, by foreign investors eager to exploit its vast resources, and by government officials in charge of easing the region's transition into modern-day capitalism.