As the World Cup approaches, Rio's favelas experience new versions of neoliberal development, complete with gentrification, private security, and failed public transportation.
Credited with developing BRICs theory, Jim O'Neill is now onto a trendier acronym. According to his MINTs theory, Mexico’s competitive manufacturing edge and cheap and “flexible” labor will place the country among the ten most powerful economies.
In a move that appears to complete Mexico’s loss of national sovereignty to international capital, the senate has finally passed a sweeping and far-reaching reform of the country’s oil industry. The restructuring is treated with widespread skepticism—polls suggest that about 65-75 percent of the population oppose the initiative.
The neoliberal project in Mexico, as elsewhere, has achieved a totalizing dominance over almost every aspect of everyday subsistence, work, and even leisure time. And yet the apparent power of the current order also makes it increasingly vulnerable to popular activism, dissent, and political mobilization.
This August will mark the 50th anniversary of independence of Jamaica and Trinidad, but will also signal the 50th anniversary of the demise of the West Indian Federation. To mark the occasion, on June 2nd, 2012, The Economist published an unforgiving appraisal of the failure of the West Indian Federation and the region in general, but as to be expected, it lacks any serious context as to why the Caribbean finds itself in its current situation.
The fracturing of families and communities by economic restructuring has led to a dramatic increase in domestic violence throughout the Caribbean. What makes matters worse is that domestic violence is often trivialized and left out of context, therefore severely hindering efforts to implement meaningful and lasting reforms.
