Geography Archives: Americas

  HAVANA, 26 March (IPS) — While the work of women filmmakers in Latin America and the Caribbean has made its presence undeniable, their work still suffers from certain invisibility in a medium where men have traditionally had hegemony. The “Women in the Contemporary Audiovisual Media” Web site, created by the New Latin American Cinema […]

The government estimates the growth rate will be 2% at the maximum this year.

“The strategy is to create a public instrument in which the banks place certain percentages of their targeted portfolios.”

Yesterday Reuters headed the list of the international news agencies that mention Pedro Miret and Osmany Cienfuegos as two historical figures who have been dismissed from their posts by Raul Castro.

  The Venezuelan minimum wage, including the value of food vouchers, will reach $636 in September this year, when the process of raising it by 20% gets completed; the second highest minimum wage in South America is Argentina’s $310 per month. The anti-crisis measures announced by the Bolivarian government last Saturday, although affecting Venezuelans negatively […]

Patrick Cockburn is the Baghdad correspondent of the Independent and the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. How do you interpret the latest election results in Iraq? Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has obviously done well and so has his […]

A legal battle being waged by Palestinian families to stop the takeover of their neighborhood in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers has received a major fillip from the recent souring of relations between Israel and Turkey. After the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip in January, lawyers for the families were given access to […]

A visit to Western Europe in early March provided some slightly different — if unsettling — insights into global economic arrangements and their socio-cultural co-ordinates.  As the crisis unfolds, people everywhere are questioning current economic institutions and processes, and naturally enough their fears, insecurities and concerns also affect their visions for the future.  The fundamental […]

Iran’s response to a supposedly conciliatory address March 20 by U.S. President Barack Obama has been met with a torrent of “we-told-you-sos” by the U.S. media. The Los Angeles Times reported that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had simply “dismissed President Obama’s extraordinary Persian New Year greeting. . . .” The Christian Science Monitor […]

  2009 started off badly.  The international economic crisis is the top priority of governments, companies, international organizations, and individuals preoccupied with having a roof to sleep under and food on the table. The situation has surprised almost everybody, albeit Cuba to a lesser degree.  Almost a decade ago, Comandante Fidel Castro warned that the […]

No neoliberal package, to the disappointment of the Right! President Chávez announced a series of “anti-crisis measures” to protect the country from the capitalist crisis, which are devoid of the typical neoliberal ingredients that the Right predicted.  The 2009 budget is revised based on $40 a barrel (previously it was based on $60).  Sumptuary expenses […]

On Tuesday March 17th I wrote: “The Classic was organized by those who administer the exploitation of sports in the United States…” I immediately added: “The three best teams in the Classic and the Olympics, Japan, Korea and Cuba, were placed in the same group so that they might eliminate each other. Last time, they placed us in the Latin American group; this time in the Asian group.

  اعتراض دانشجویان پلی‌تکنیک به پروژه دفن شهید Beating their chests and wearing black, a procession of young men and women filed toward the gates of Tehran’s Amir Kabir Polytechnic University on February 23.  The mourners — drawn primarily from the ranks of the Basij militia and unaffiliated hardline Islamist vigilantes — were carrying the […]

Martinique General Strike Ends in Victory A 38-day general strike in the Caribbean colony of Martinique ended March 14 with the signing of a protocol between the government and the February 5 Collective, a coalition of unions and other social movements named after the day the strike began.  The agreement grants the coalition’s key demands.  […]

  It is a story that could make The Return of the Living Dead 6.  A group of good people huddle on a roof, with a limited supply of raw meat.  A crowd of zombies surrounds the house: hungry, mad, aggressive.  Fear spreads and bodies collapse; the odour is terrible.  The zombies smell blood and […]

  Capitalism is going through its greatest crisis since the 1930s or before.  The banking system has been saved from meltdown (at least for the time being) only by extensive government intervention in the USA, Britain, and a number of other countries.  Stock markets all over the world have plummeted.  A long and deep recession […]

In the game between the Japanese and Cuban teams that concluded today at close to 3:00 a.m., we were unquestionably defeated.

  The Merideño Institute for Women and the Family is part of a national network of such institutions called into being by the 1998 law on violence against women and the family.  They are tasked with helping protect women and children from abuse, challenging sexist gender stereotypes, and, in effect breaking the “Machista” elements of […]

  Heading out from San Salvador to Chalatenango, the roads are covered with political propaganda from the ruling right-wing ARENA party.  In the lead up to the March 15 presidential elections in this small Central American country, all of the utility posts have been painted in the party’s colors of red, white, and blue.  Presidential […]

At the beginning of the Revolution the Olympics were an event for amateurs. When the concepts of developed capitalism managed to penetrate the Olympic Games, athletic activity ceased being an issue of health and education, its objectives throughout history. The only country in the world where that character was preserved was Cuba which, over many […]

The essence of Keynes’s contribution was the demolition of Say’s law of markets. Say’s Law argued that supply created its own demand, so that there could never be an actual glut of production. Marx had rejected Say’s Law from the beginning, calling it “the childish babbling of a Say, but unworthy of Ricardo.” But neoclassical economics was built on it.