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September 9, 2011
With the recent revelation that President Hugo Chávez underwent emergency surgery to remove a cancerous tumor during a visit to Cuba in mid June, an explosion in political speculation has been swirling through the streets of Venezuela and catching fire around the world.
Traffick Jam
September 8, 2011
In the 1940s U.S. Public Health medical researchers conducted appalling experiments on vulnerable populations in Guatemala. After last week's convening of President Obama's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, the revelations are back in the news.
Border Wars
September 7, 2011
A former U.S. Border Patrol and ICE agent offers a perpective on immigration and boundary enforcement almost never heard of in the halls of power in the United States.
Cuadernos Colombianos
September 6, 2011
The government of Juan Manuel Santos is adjusting its military strategy to concentrate on special operations rather than on sustained large scale operations such as Plan Patriota. The move is another step in the shifting dynamics of the Colombian conflict in recent years.
Mexico, Bewildered and Contested
September 6, 2011
When the bodies of two female reporters were found dead in Mexico City last Thursday, public opinion questioned whether their murder should be investigated as a crime against free expression or a crime against women. Before any evidence was gathered, it was assumed that they were killed because they were reporters on the trail of information that somebody didn’t want uncovered. The second supposition was that they were killed simply because they were women.
September 4, 2011
Guatemalans are appalled over new revelations that from 1946 to 1948 U.S. medical researchers infected more than a thousand non-consenting Guatemalans with venereal diseases. The doctors who administered similar experiments on African-American sharecroppers in 1932 had told their research subjects simply that they were being treated for “bad blood.” And bad blood is what has been generated—or simply augmented—by this grim episode in the history of U.S.-Guatemala relations.
Rebel Currents
September 2, 2011
Negotiations between the Bolivian government and indigenous groups protesting the proposed TIPNIS highway broke down before getting off the ground this week, while a visit from Brazil’s ex-president Lula served as a reminder of the larger geopolitical interests involved. Brazil has a major stake in the road's construction, but it also needs a stable political environment in Bolivia to advance its overall economic agenda.
August 31, 2011
Rather than a “free trade” agreement between the United States and Colombia, the plan that will be sent to Congress should be understood as a corporate and financial liberalization agreement. Workers, in Colombia and the United States, have little to gain, and everything to lose. This article was originally published in the May/June 2011 issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas.
Border Wars
August 31, 2011
On August 30, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that deportations would continue to be "very robust." Why? Because of a recent federal decision to impose the controversial Secure Communities program on the entire country by 2013—a program, opponents say, that is tearing families apart.
Mexico, Bewildered and Contested
August 30, 2011
Last Thursday, five or six armed men walked into the Casino Royale, a gambling house in Monterrey, Mexico, ordered patrons and employees to leave, and then quickly set fire to the place. At least 52 people died in the blaze. President Calderón called the attack an act of "terrorism," though the crime does not appear to have much to do with conventional terrorism, but rather with a fight for economic profits and market share.