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July 14, 2008

The Peruvian capital, faced with rapidly rising cost of living, was the epicentre of protests calling for fulfilment of social and wage agreements signed by the government. Although only one violent incident occurred, some 200 demonstrators were arrested.

July 14, 2008

In northern Ecuador, a pine tree plantation was planted to absorb enough carbon to "offset" the emissions of coal-fired power plants on the other side of the globe. Despite the questionable scientific reasoning behind such "carbon offsetting" projects, the local indigenous community expected the plantation would help improve local economic conditions. Instead, everything went terribly wrong.

July 10, 2008

U.S. taxpayer-funded groups linked to past U.S. interventions in democratic processes throughout the Americas are gearing up for El Salvador's 2009 elections. In the past, these groups have played an active role in obstructing and/or sabotaging left-leaning, democratic political movements. A fact-finding delegation sponsored by the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) reports back as the local campaign season gets underway.

July 8, 2008

According to the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, a growth of only 15% in food prices in 2008 is likely to drive some 15.7 million Latin Americans into a position of desperate food insecurity (“indigence”), and another 15 million into moderate insecurity (“poverty”).

July 8, 2008

The Republican nominee's campaign team is packed with lobbyists of the oil industry and the Arizona Senator himself has been a reliable friend to the oil industry, leading him to support bloody U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Colombia to keep his friends at several oil companies happy. Under a potential McCain administration, the United States would remain the belligerent policeman of the world's oil fields.

July 7, 2008

Fourteen years after implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a majority of the population in all three countries believe the agreement has had a net negative effect on their nation, and it turns out that the North American Free Trade Agreement is a misnomer in every one of its terms—it wasn't an agreement, it isn't free trade, and North America doesn't exist. So now what? First, stop extending it. Second, stop copying it.

July 1, 2008

Despite the fact that public sentiment in Latin America has been strongly against the Iraq war since it began, thousands of Latin Americans have the joined the occupation, many of them as private contractors hired by U.S. companies like Blackwater and Triple Canopy.

July 1, 2008

Landed elites in eastern Bolivia have allied themselves with multinational agribusiness corporations to consolidate their wealth and power, which they are using to destabilize the government of president Evo Morales. The rising food prices and shortages driven by those same corporations have only made their radical right-wing project stronger.

June 30, 2008

There are two salient trends in the US reporting about Bolivia: (1) the personalization of Morales as the representative of Bolivia's transformation backed by social movements and (2) the misrepresentation of both the new Bolivian Constitution and the so-called Autonomy Statutes of the business and regionalist elite.

June 26, 2008

The Kelwo Association of Chiloé, an organization of Mapuche residents of Chile’s island-province, was formed in 2001 to bring to public attention one of the great social debts of Chilean democracy: the right to health and life of people in indigenous communities affected by HIV/AIDS.

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