In recent months, Bolivia has witnessed dramatic rebellions by rank-and-file military and police officers. Are these mobilizations a threat to the goverment of President Evo Morales, or an example of pragmatic protest politics at work during an election year?
The media casts coca growers in the Chapare region as 'nouveau riche' drug trafficking peasants, but most drug workers are young men without land or hope of decent jobs, not unionized coca growers.
Anti-extractivism protests in South America are sometimes oversimplified to "rural communities vs. big government." This framing overlooks movements' internal complexities and alternative proposals.
The conflict over Bolivia's new mining law offers a window into the complexity and contradictions of the country's mining sector, as they play out during the run-up to October’s presidential election.
Bolivia's Amazonian region is experiencing the most disastrous flooding of the past 100 years. Two Brazilian mega-dams on the Bolivian border may be contributing significantly to this tragedy.
Even as they continue to shape the domestic political agenda, Chile's resurgent social movements are mobilizing to build cross-border solidarity, pressuring newly-elected President Michelle Bachelet to ally with other leftist governments in the region.
Bolivia's highest court has rejected a constitutional challenge to the country's restrictive abortion law, while ruling that legal abortions no longer require a judge's consent. Both opponents and advocates of abortion rights have found reasons to celebrate.
A proposed children’s rights law being considered by the Bolivian Congress is facing opposition from an unlikely source: a union representing the child workers themselves.
CONAMAQ, a federation of Bolivian highland indigenous peoples, has split into two parallel organizations after a bitter struggle. Is this the result of internal political conflict, or a government strategy to undermine opposition?
