Securing the “rule of law” and purging corrupt politicians will not suffice—only structural transformation (i.e. redistribution) will address the roots of Guatemala’s democratic malaise.
Anti-government protests in Brazil on Sunday attracted smaller crowds than their March 15 predecessors, and demonstrators were united only by their racial composition and class biases.
Don’t believe the right-wing media’s emphasis on corruption—the recent demonstrations are motivated by entrenched elite discontent over expanding economic and political inclusion for the nation’s majority.
Police violently evicted a community resistance group in San José del Golfo, Guatemala. For two years the group peacefully protested the use of a local mine in La Puya by a U.S.-based mining firm.
For Maduro, while strengthened momentarily, the challenge will come from confronting not these protests, but the ones that may yet to come when opposition hardliners leave the streets.
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.
In a mining conflict country, police brutality under the pay of mining corporations is the ugliest side of community relations. With financial and logistical support from the corporations, the police find incentives to use force. What would Servando Huanca, Vallejo's anti-miner in El tungsteno (1931), have done about it?
