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June 20, 2008
The Portuguese thinker says several events in Latin America have put the brakes on Washington's hemispheric agenda. At the root of this process, he says, is the unprecedented strength of social movements that led to the election of left-leaning Latin American governments at a time in which the U.S. was using the discourse of democracy to justify interventions around the planet.
June 16, 2008
El Salvador’s FMLN shares revolutionary roots with Nicaragua’s FSLN; now the former Salvadoran guerrillas hope to also share the FSLN’s success in the voting booth next year.
June 16, 2008
Students from a U.S. university recently visited the town of Cajolá in the highlands of Quetzaltenango in Guatemala. Almost half of the town's population has emigrated to the United States. The students visited Cajolá to help and learn from those who stayed behind.
June 13, 2008
What began as a war on terrorists has become a war on immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security says that it prioritizes its immigration enforcement actions by "targeting the greatest national security and public safety threats"—an approach not taken prior to 9/11.
June 11, 2008
While it’s still unclear what kinds of policies Obama might pursue towards South America if he's elected president, his mere presence in the White House would have enormous emotional and symbolic value, particularly in Brazil, a country whose African roots are strong but where many blacks still struggle against racism and discrimination.
June 9, 2008
Touted as the first step in a major regional integration project, the 225 kilometer TransCaribe pipeline travels underground across Colombia's Guajira Peninsula to the gas refineries of Maracaibo, Venezuela. Protesting the mega project's impacts on the peninsula's indigenous communities, the Wayúu community of Mashiis-Manaa is leading the struggle against oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
June 6, 2008
With the U.S. military's lease on its base in Manta, Ecuador set to expire in 2009, a new report suggests U.S. military operations in South America might have found a perfect new home in central Colombia's Palanquero air base, one of the region's most state-of-the-art military installations.
June 4, 2008
On May 12, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carried out its largest ever mass arrest at a single worksite, seizing 389 of the 970 employees at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa.
June 3, 2008
In a civil conflict such as the one in Colombia, propaganda is an important weapon. It is difficult for journalists and analysts to independently investigate the reality on the ground and so statistics and information are obtained from a variety of sources in order to draw conclusions. However, the mainstream media in the United States is often over-reliant on two sources: Colombian and US government officials. Not surprisingly then, it is the perspectives of the Colombian and US governments that inevitably dominate most news reports. By comparing conflict trends and human rights statistics with media coverage of Colombia's violence, it is possible to understand why and how the public's perception of the conflict has been distorted.
June 2, 2008
In the highlands of Jujuy province, the Warmi women created their own economic model. These perseverant women in northwestern Argentina received a call from Harvard—the academics wanted to know how they did it.