Today marks the 2-year anniversary of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. For a year and a half, the International Organization for Migration has coordinated several communications projects aimed at empowering Haitian tent camp residents. There is nothing wrong with encouraging people to take charge of their lives, but these projects are placing the responsibility for aid failures on the Haitian people while promoting a neoliberal “do it yourself” ideology.
Along with the Arab Spring, the indignados movement of Spain, and Occupy Wall Street, Latin America also played a role in the global tumult in 2011. Over the last year diverse grassroots movements in Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, and Peru have been raising questions and challenging the existent order.
The U.S. government has denounced the recent legitimate presidential election in Nicaragua, while supporing flawed elections in Haiti and Honduras over the last two years. While this U.S. policy may appear baffling, it begins to make sense when you consider the long-standing U.S. political agenda in the region.
NACLA’s latest Report on the Americas is now available. This issue, "Latino Student Movements: Defending Education," gives voice to Latino student movements across the Americas that are standing up to the crises, cutbacks, and repression.
Today is the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the popular rebellion in Argentina. An uprising that with popular power forced out four governments in two weeks. But that was only the beginning. This year, 2011, is also a beginning. Not at all dissimilar from Argentina, this has been a year of popular uprisings, popular power, and new ways of organizing and doing politics.
Fifty years ago, in 1961, the Cuban literacy campaign mobilized more than 1 million Cubans as teachers or students. In that same year, 707,000 Cubans learned how to read or write. The new documentary Maestra tells the story of that inspiring campaign through the memories of the women who served as literacy teachers—the maestras themselves.
During Felipe Calderón’s War on Drugs systematic human rights violations have been documented. Now testimonies confirm the suspicions that clandestine detention centers are operating in Mexico. We don't know how many, but we can determine who is operating them—organized crime and the Mexican Army and Marines.
In recent years, media coverage of Mexico has painted a picture of widespread fear. It is a picture that bears little resemblance to what I experience living in central Mexico. Could this picture have been deliberately invented or exaggerated? Might the government of Felipe Calderón want to justify its policies of militarization to attract further U.S. support?
In November, Chilean mayor Cristián Labbé announced a tribute to a former member of Augusto Pinochet’s secret police, who is serving time on 23 counts of human rights violations. The event, which was held on November 21, sparked outrage, protests, and a debate over public accountability and reconciliation.
Just legalize it, already—that was the message heard at the Cato Institute's “Ending the War on Drugs” conference on November 15. From the heavy death toll in Mexico to the high financial cost to U.S. taxpayers, the only winners in the drug war have been the drug cartels and security companies. Yet the war goes on with no end in sight