Columns
November 6, 2013
How did the US-Mexican border become the place where the American past chokes on itself?
November 5, 2013
Efforts to overhaul the nation’s border security and immigration policies are revving up again in Washington. That means a renewed push for enhanced border policing, such as the $46 billion in the reform bill the Senate passed in June. That kind of spending would bring the Border Patrol’s creeping militarized mission further into the interior of the United States. The United States currently has 60,000 border guards, more than double the size of Ecuador's army.
November 1, 2013
The specter of the increasing public debt in Colombia is expected to generate a deep economic crisis if not addressed.
October 30, 2013
For over 50 years the island of Cuba has defiantly stood its ground in the Caribbean, rejecting a capitalist economic model in favor of a system that has served the needs of its people, first, and those of the international economy, a distant second. It is primarily for this reason that Cuba’s decision to establish an export processing zone at the port of Mariel has been met with a great deal of concern.
October 24, 2013
A photo essay from the week of September 11, 2013 in Chile, marking the 40th anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government by a U.S.-backed military coup (Part 2).
October 23, 2013
It has been almost four years since Haiti was hit by the 7.0 earthquake which left over 100,000 dead and an estimated 1.5 million people homeless. For the 278,000 internally displaced people who currently remain in the tent camps, they have been living an extremely precarious existence without access to the most basic services, and they are constantly under the threats of exposure to cholera and forced evictions.
October 16, 2013
While it is still early in the process, it appears that Grenada is embarking on a hopeful quest to restructure its debt without undertaking the traditional demands of significant cuts to public sector budgets and widespread privatization programs. What makes Grenada’s position important is that the government has not been negotiating with the IMF in the traditional antidemocratic manner. Instead, the people are playing a crucial role in this consulation.
October 15, 2013
On October 10, a binational march took place along the U.S.-Mexico boundary in Ambos Nogales to commemorate the murder of José Antonio Elena Rodríguez by the U.S. Border Patrol one year ago.
October 10, 2013
A photo essay from the week of September 11, 2013 in Chile, marking the 40th anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende's Popular Unity government by a US-backed military coup (Part 1 of 2).
October 9, 2013
U.S. imperialist policy is shifting toward surgical military operations, a shift that tends to perpetuate violence without addressing its root causes. This has become apparent in Colombia, a country that is attempting to negotiate a peaceful end to its almost 50 years of civil war.
October 3, 2013
The recent decision by the Dominican Republic to retroactively revoke the citizenship of an estimated 300,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent raises numerous legal, moral, and humanitarian concerns. This reactionary decision is founded on the combination of a troubling culture of anti-Haitian racism and a downplay of the Dominican Republic's continued demand of migrant labour in its agricultural, construction, and tourist industries.
September 30, 2013
Reflections on events in Chile marking the 40th anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende's Popular Unity government, from an eyewitness to the commemoration.
September 27, 2013
This October will mark the 25th anniversary of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale – what Isaac Saney has called “Africa’s Stalingrad” due to its central role in striking a fatal blow against the occupation of South West Africa (now Namibia) and kick-starting negotiations with the African National Congress which would soon put an end to the rule of the racist apartheid system in South Africa.
September 25, 2013
FARC negotiators Iván Marquez and Pablo Catatumbo have both been unsatisfied with the adamant refusal of the Santos government to tackle tough points in the peace negotiations. This is especially the case with disagreements having to do with the agrarian question.
September 19, 2013
Earlier this week it was announced that the first contingent of Haitian soldiers had returned from Ecuador after completing their training. This announcement has understandably been met with concern, as Haiti’s relationship with its armed forces has been a tortured history of internal repression, consisting of human rights abuses and coup d’états.
September 17, 2013
An encounter with a U.S. Border Patrol agent near El Paso reveals much about the agency's institutional culture, and the dehumanizing nature of the larger apparatus of immigrant exclusion and boundary policing.
September 11, 2013
To contain Colombia´s spreading rural crisis, the government of Juan Manuel Santos, facing peasant strikers who have blocked several crucial highways, has followed a three-pronged strategy of co-optation, coercion (some of it violent) and a surface re-shuffling of government officials. Up to this point, nothing has worked as the strike enters its fourth week.
September 10, 2013
The coup d'etat by General Augusto Pinochet in Chile on September 11, 1973 transformed the history of socialism. Almost a thousand days before, Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity coalition had taken office promising a “Chilean Road to Socialism” based on democratic principles. The Chilean path towards socialism has been an important example and a warning to left leaning political and social movements for the past 40 years in Latin America.
September 8, 2013
Since the death of Hugo Chávez in March of 2013, new Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his government have received critiques from its traditional opposition and from new critics as well.
September 5, 2013
Against the wishes of the prevailing drug control regime, last month the government of Uruguay took the first steps to legalize marijuana. Against the backdrop of the failed War on Drugs, it is about time that the countries of the Caribbean come forward with their own individual policies on marijuana which reflects their own national security and development interests—instead of those of the United States.
September 4, 2013
On August 25, 2013 a cargo train derailed in southern Mexico killing 11 Central American migrants who were hitching a ride on top of the freight cars. At least 250 Central Americans were estimated to have been riding on the train before it derailed, injuring another 18 migrants.
August 28, 2013
Last week it was announced that the U.S. State Department had suspended aid to St. Lucia’s police department due to allegations of serious human rights abuses. It has also had the unintended result of exposing the double standard of the U.S. when it comes to problems of police engaging in extrajudicial killings throughout the region.
August 28, 2013
Happily ever after is not always so simple for foreigners in the United States with complicated immigration histories who marry U.S. citizens. The details like how they arrived in the United States or how long they've been there can mean the difference between starting a life with their new family and immigration laws not allowing them to stay.
August 27, 2013
Recent events in Bolivia have reignited continuing tensions over the proposed TIPNIS highway, as indigenous leaders face serious criminal charges and the Morales government has confirmed that undercover police agents infiltrated the landmark 2011 anti-highway mobilization.
August 27, 2013
The government of Colombia has been forced to negotiate with peasants' organizations in the wake of the peasants' strong show of force. The rural workers who have mounted Colombia's national agrarian strike are staying the course after four peasants and one policeman were killed and scores more detained. Hundred of thousands of peasants and small farmers are participating in this historic mobilization whose scope and magnitude have not been seen for decades.