Article

Daniel Hellinger
With the collapse of oil prices between 1981 and 1983, Venezuela's revenue crisis could not be resolved by demanding a higher share of profits from the oil companies, as in the past. At first, the crisis was called "Ia noche post-petrolera," the post-petroleum night.
Steve Ellner
Movement Toward Sociahsm (MAS) has been Venezuela's third party, and the largest party on the Left, since the 1 970s. Now MAS is a part of the gov- erning coalition of President Rafael Caldera, and the party has won greater congressional representation than ever before.
Karen Robert & Rodrigo Gutérrez Hermello
In a society that denies their existence, the children of the disappeared must face the challenges of adolescence and the legacy of the cruel repression of the "dirty war." paula Logares was a month away from her second birthday when she and her parents, Clau- dio Logares and Monica Grinspon, were snatched off the street by security agents in Montevideo.
Federico Alvarez
Caldera's victory and the high rate of abstention point to a dissatisfaction that has taken two different routes: support for opposition political players, and deliberate marginalization from the political system. On December 5 of last year, 78-year-old Rafael Calderaon his sixth run for the presidency was elected president of Venezuela for the sec- ond time.
Daniel Hellinger
Unless Venezuela can transform its oil industry from a rent-generating enclave into a productive industry, it will be left "like those sites over which wealth flows without soaking in, leaving more poverty and sadness than before." The twentieth century began for Venezuela in December 1935, when dictator Juan Vicente Gomez died in his bed after a quarter century in power.
Cuban Women I've held off writing in the hopes that you would publish a second issue about women in Latin Amer- ica. You left out so much in your first issue [July/August, 1993].
Karen Robert & Rodrigo Gutérrez Hermello
Human rights organizations in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala have been working togeth- er to understand the effects of state terror in second and third generations like Paula's. In Buenos Aires, the Mental Health Solidarity Movement (Movimiento Soil- dario de Salud Mental) has spent more than ten years conducting therapy and research with the children of the disappeared.
Luis Hernández
The Zapatista National Liberation Army emerged from the New Year's uprising as a national political force. Chiapas' recent history explains how an oppressed and impoverished peasantry came to view armed struggle as their best optionand were able to pull off an insurrection.
Zapatista Rebels Raise National Issues MExico CITY, FEBRUARY, 1994 Since the start of the armed conflict in the southern Mexi- can state of Chiapas, when the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) led an Indian uprising and seized several towns on New Year's Day, the rebels have used communication through the media as an effec- tive tool to air their grievances. Faced with an armed force that is vastly superior in numbers and weaponry, the insurgents occu- pied San Cristobal de las Casas, Las Margaritas, Ocosingo, Altamirano and six smaller towns on January 1 to draw attention to the injustices and abject poverty endured by the indigenous population of Chia- pas.
State of the Peoples: A Global Human Rights Report on Societies in Danger by Cultural Survival, Beacon Press, 1993, 272 PP., $18.
Margarita López Maya
The rise of Causa R was greatly facilitated by the process of state reform initiated in 1984 with the for- mation of the Presidential Commission for the Reform of the State (COPRE). The COPRE-generated reforms were an institutional response to the country's critical economic conditions and consequent political turmoil.
DM
Two Faces of Oppression in Haiti The stretch of land was gray and pock-marked like a des- olate moonscape. A swath of 1,000 shanties in Cite Soleil, Port- au-Prince's largest slum, had been burnt down on December 27th in retaliation for the death of Issa Paul, a militant of the right-wing FRAPH, the day before.
Accion Democratica (AD) AD is Venezuela's traditional ruling party. Officially founded in 1941, it is a social democratic party closely associated with the struggles against dictatorships from the 1930s through the 1950s, and with the founding of the modern democracy ri 1958.
Margarita López Maya
Causa R-with the R, for radical, always drawn in reverse was not long ago one of the tiny grupusculos on the Left. Today it is a major player in national politics.
Fred Rosen
Two reform movements are playing themselves out: decentralization of the political system, and privatization and deregulation of the economy. The one empowers politically, just as the other impoverishes economically.
From 1990 through 1992 Venezuela had the highest rate of eco- nomic growth in the Americas. A product of the country's neolib- eral free-market reforms, this growth was accompanied by sharply increasing inequality, and record levels of poverty and malnutrition.