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March 15, 2012
On a visit to Mexico last month Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she greatly admired President Felipe Calderón for the offensive he had unleashed against organized crime, and was proud of its results. On the other hand, the consulting firm Strategic Forecast, Inc. (Stratfor) issued an alert last week, warning that spring-breaking U.S. college kids faced risks in virtually all the Mexican hotspots typically visited over their spring vacations. 
March 14, 2012

With shouts of “Presente por la patria” (“Committed to the homeland”), spirits were high on Sunday night amongst right-wing supporters at the Feria Nacional polling center in San Salvador, where international observers watched the vote count in El Salvador’s first election since the historic victory of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in 2009. 

 

Border Wars
March 14, 2012
After more than four years of asking the supermarket chain Publix to sit at the table and negotiate a Fair Food Agreement, from March 5-10 Coalition of Immokalee Workers did a five-day fast to put the pressure on Florida's richest corporation. This video captures the fifth day of this fast.
March 9, 2012

Over the weekend of February 18 and 19, in Tocoa, Honduras, more than 1,400 campesinos, indigenous people and their allies met to continue their fight against repression. Activists organized the international gathering in solidarity with Honduras to expose the rampant violations of human rights and the systematic killing of campesinos.

The Other Side of Paradise
March 8, 2012
The killing of 21 people—including a 13-year-old girl and an elderly man—by the Jamaican police in the past six days has highlighted the systemic problem the country is having with controlling the inappropriate use of deadly force.
Cuadernos Colombianos
March 8, 2012
The FARC is taking the political initiative and increasing the pressure on the government of Juan Manuel Santos to initiate peace talks. It remains unclear, however, if Santos will engage the FARC and seek a peaceful end to hostilities before the 2014 presidential election.
Border Wars
March 7, 2012
On February 26, I was driving with a friend in an isolated region of the U.S.-Mexico border in New Mexico when we saw a military tank positioned to be pointed toward the south. A lot has been said, written, and documented about the  degree and ongoing process of border militarization, but I had never seen anything like this. This wasn't any old tank, it was a Stryker—used extensively in both Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. military.
Mexico, Bewildered and Contested
March 6, 2012
It is a sad truth that the structure of the Mexican economy in the early twenty-first century requires that poor citizens who seek work north of the border do so in sectors of the U.S. economy that provide sub-minimum wages, horrendous working conditions and unscrupulous employer practices. 
Rebel Currents
March 2, 2012
The general assembly of the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) has declared its support for the upcoming march to defend the Isiboro-Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS), contradicting the executive committee's position announced just last week. The dispute highlights how growing internal divisions within the COB have been intensified by the TIPNIS conflict.
The Other Side of Paradise
March 1, 2012
The prosecutors in the trial of Christopher "Dudus" Coke have asked for a 23-year sentence, to stop the Jamaican criminal kingpin from resuming his criminal activities upon his release from prison. What this saga has shown is that in many ways Coke was indeed more powerful than Jamaican prime minister Bruce Golding.

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