Geography Archives: El Salvador

On March 11, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans headed to the polls in the first major contest between parties of the right and left since the leader of the latter, Mauricio Funes, was elected president three years ago. Like mid-term congressional elections in the U.S., voting for municipal officials and national legislators in El Salvador […]

In January the government of the United States of America saw fit to seize $4.207 million in funds allocated to Cuba by the United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the first quarter of 2011, Cuba has charged.  The UN Fund is a $22 billion a year program that works to […]

On the morning of Friday, May 6th, President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador’s left-wing FMLN party arrived at the La Maroma agricultural cooperative in the department of Usulután for a potentially historic meeting with hundreds of small family farmers.  Usulután has often been referred to as the country’s breadbasket for its fertile soil and capacity […]

In Wisconsin, tens of thousands of public sector workers were going to work every day, helping the people in the DMV, hospitals, health care centers, public transportation, teachers, fire fighters, and clerical workers.  Then, on February 11, 2011 Republican Governor Scott Walker introduced a bill, with a Republican majority in the legislature, that would virtually […]

The United States is planning to open a new military base in the Islas de la Bahía (Bay Islands) in Honduras, according to a report in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo this Wednesday. The news emerged after the meeting between Honduran Defense Minister Marlon Pascual and the head of the US Sothern Command Douglas Fraser. […]

  Nik Theodore is Director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a leading theorist of the urban dimensions of neoliberal restructuring.  He has collaborated closely with the Right to the City Alliance, the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, and other groups that have been at the […]

Latin Americans are not born-criminals nor did they invent drugs. The Aztecs, Maya and other pre-Columbian human groups in Mexico and Central America, for example, were excellent farmers and didn’t even know about growing coca. The Quechua and Aymara were capable of producing nutritious foods on perfect terraces that followed the mountain level curves. On […]

Much like Mubarak, the former democratic reformer turned long-serving US dictator for the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, demonstrates what can happen to even stalwart defenders of capitalism when they are opposed by their citizens en masse.  Like Mubarak, Marcos previously provided a ray of hope for Western elites intent on quelling popular resistance within their own […]

  Anyone who thinks that social and political instability in Honduras ended with the election of Porfirio Lobo as the president of the republic is mistaken, according to the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH). Human rights violations, political persecution, and selective political murders continue to be the order of […]

As we stated at the outset of Part 1,1 there is no better test of the independence and integrity of the establishment U.S. media than in their comparative treatment of Iran and Honduras in 2009 and 2010. Iran held its most recent presidential election on June 12, 2009.  This followed a typically short three-week campaign […]

The opening section of this note dealing with the most important issue in the current political situation—’the Maoist’ or the Naxal issue—sets the context for the argument that follows, which deals with issues involved in understanding and acting in this situation. I reproduce some key passages, marginally modified and compressed in one case, from my 2008 T. Nagi Reddy Memorial Lecture—now available as Indian Politics Today published by Aakar Books, New Delhi—touching upon these issues; a little reason and ability to interconnect is all that is needed to recognise the issue involved. I conclude with a brief summing up of the argument.

In one of his regular “Reflections” essays, Fidel Castro recently discussed United States hostility towards Venezuela.  “What they really want is Venezuela’s oil,” wrote the Cuban leader.  This is a commonly-held viewpoint within the international left.  The point is put forth, for example, in Oliver Stone’s recent film South of the Border.  I must, however, […]

The stereotypical union battles of the past were fought by burly working-class heroes, on the picket line and the proverbial “shop floor.”  Think of tough-looking guys, wearing scally caps (and wielding baseball bats, when necessary), while marching through the streets of the San Francisco in 1934.  Their enemies were many — the long-shore bosses and […]

What is José Serra trying to do?  In his campaign for president of Brazil he has accused Bolivia of complicity in drug trafficking and criticized Lula for trying to mediate in Washington’s fight with Iran and for refusing (along with the most of the rest of South America) to recognize the government of Honduras, which […]

In his June 17 “review” of our book The Politics of Genocide, for Pambazuka News,1 Gerald Caplan, a Canadian writer who Kigali’s New Times described as a “leading authority on Genocide and its prevention,”2 focuses almost exclusively on the section we devote to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.3  Caplan says virtually nothing about […]

Four years ago, when the government of Evo Morales re-nationalized its hydrocarbon industry, the Brazilian media was spoiling for a fight.  After all, Petrobras, the Brazilian oil and gas company, had major interests there.  But President Lula Da Silva was calm.  “I haven’t had a fight with George W. Bush,” he told the press.  “Why […]

The Rachel Corrie Foundation andBreak the Silence Mural Project co‐presentThe Mural Speaks Come celebrate the completion of this dynamic, interactive mural at a free event at 6:00 p.m., Saturday, May 8 at the Labor Temple building, corner of State and Capitol, downtown Olympia.  The Mural Speaks event is more than a mural commemoration; it’s a […]

  Speech by Salvador Valdés Mesa, General Secretary of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC) and member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba General Raúl Castro Ruz, President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Compañeros of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, […]

  Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 while at the same time sending more troops to the Afghanistan War.  What has become of the promise of “change”? I am one of the few who are not disillusioned, because I had no expectations.  I had written about Obama’s positions and prospects even before […]

Here, amid the glittering ruins of globalized gentrification’s gilded age, a kind of glocal tenants’ movement is taking shape, at once locally rooted and globally connected. On April 6, 2008, a gathering of global dimensions was afoot on the steps of New York’s City Hall.  You may have missed it at the time.  You may […]