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May 3, 2011
Three simmering scandals in Mexico, involving U.S. arms shipments to drug cartels, the presence of Guatemalan paramilitaries who had been trained under U.S. auspices, and money laundering by a prominent U.S. bank, have led many Mexicans to believe that that the guns, the assassins, and the laundered money that are at the heart of the drug violence, that has taken almost 35,000 lives since 2007, all carry U.S. fingerprints.
April 22, 2011
On April 24, the New York based Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB) will launch several days of global action calling for the release of five indigenous Zapatista supporters, who are being held by the Mexican police in the state of Chiapas. The “Bachajón 5,” as they are called, were arrested on February 3 when approximately 300 state police raided a meeting of indigenous Zapatista supporters in San Sebastian Bachajón, Chiapas, arresting 117 people. All were released except for the five who remain in prison as part of what human rights organizations call a fabricated conflict to strip the community, particularly the Zapatistas, of their territorial rights.
April 21, 2011
Threatened by new forms of indigenous and populist power, Bolivian agrarian and political elites have regrouped after a series of setbacks since President Evo Morales was first elected in 2005. They are now working within the realm of “popular citizenship,” joining forces across regional bounds to demand territorial “autonomy” and decentralized governance to maintain control over the resource wealth in their departments (states). The new legalistic, human rights frame provides a powerful and distinctive platform for rightists, which once again places them center stage in Bolivian politics.
This article first appeared in the January/February 2011 edition of NACLA Report on the Americas.
April 21, 2011
Among the villains in the crosshairs of the Department of Homeland Security’s $57 billion 2012 Fiscal Year budget are coyotes, the smugglers migrants often hire to help them enter the United States without authorization. The border enforcement part of this budget, which supports an all-time high number of agents and officers, will in part focus on taking down these "criminals." However the book, Clandestine Crossings, by David Spener, directly challenges this "discursive" and costly fable about coyotes, and in doing so reveals that coyotes play an essential role for migrants trying to resist a blatantly unjust system.
April 17, 2011
On April 17, 1996, close to 1500 rural landless workers began a march to the Pará state capital of Belém, Brazil with the goal of presenting their demands to resolve their land situation. When they arrived to the city of Eldorado do Carajás, the march stopped so that people could rest, but they were attacked by more than 100 military police officers who fired live ammunition into the crowd of demonstrators, killing 19. In 2002 then Brazilian president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, declared April 17 to be the "National Day of Struggle for Agrarian Reform."
April 6, 2011
For years developing countries have complained that rich countries undermine their agricultural development by “dumping” surplus commodities on them—that is, by exporting their grains and other products at prices below what it cost to produce them. But how much does such dumping cost farmers in developing countries? According to my new study of U.S. dumping on Mexico after NAFTA, Mexican farmers on average lost more than $1 billion per year during the nine-year period of 1997–2005, with more than half the losses suffered by the country’s embattled corn farmers.
This article first appeared in the January/February 2011 edition of NACLA Report on the Americas.
March 30, 2011
During President Barack Obama's five-day trip to Latin America from March 19-23, many throughout the hemisphere waited to hear whether Obama would demonstrate the new era of “mutual interest and mutual respect” with the region that he had promised during his campaign. What they heard was mostly “más de lo mismo” (more of the same), dressed up in a language of “partnership” and cooperation.
March 11, 2011
The United States is courting Brazil’s new president, Dilma Rousseff, about U.S. business interests in the country. President Obama will meet with Rousseff in Brazil on March 19-20 to lobby for Boeing to get a multibillion-dollar contract to make 36 fighter jets for the Brazilian Armed Forces, and to broker other economic opportunities for U.S companies around offshore oil reserve exploration, improving its tourism and transportation infrastructure, and strengthening its security operations before and during the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Rio Olympics.
March 4, 2011
This edited transcript is of a talk given by Colombian journalist Hollman Morris at Georgetown University in Washington. Morris spoke in protest of the appointment of former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe as a "distinguished scholar" at Georgetown. As the host and editorial director of Contravía, a weekly investigative news show, Morris has regularly taken on the Colombian government for the myriad human rights abuses committed in the last decade by the country’s military and its paramilitary allies. This work has earned him many awards internationally, but he also was targeted by Uribe's intelligence service as a part of a surveillance program and smear campaign.
This originally appeared in the January/February 2011 edition of NACLA Report on the Americas.