Geography Archives: Latin America

Americas Quarterly and AS/COA’s media arm ran a de-facto PR campaign for discredited Operation Lava Jato, which helped impeach Dilma Rousseff, jail Lula, and bring a neofascist (who it called an “arch-conservative”) Jair Bolsonaro to power.

ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies (newly merged in 1998), signed an agreement with the government of Guyana in 1999 to develop the Stabroek block, which is off the coast of the disputed Essequibo region.

Ecuador is just weeks away from becoming the latest Latin American nation to move away from the IMF and United States and elect a strongly progressive, anti-imperialist government.

The head of SOUTHCOM, Admiral Craig Faller, told Pentagon reporters Wednesday that U.S. imperialism’s “competitive edge [in the region]…is eroding, particularly when it comes to the Chinese influence.”

An interview with Jorge Arreaza, foreign minister of Venezuela.

In mid-January 2020, 800 people gathered at Mexico’s Ministry of Economy to celebrate “China Day” with a seminar on Chinese-Mexican relations.

The tragedy being the suffering Latin America has borne, the optimism being in the recognition that this is not the region’s natural or inevitable destiny, but has been imposed on it through its subjugation to the capitalist system, and is therefore capable of being changed.

Regional governments from both right and left see the BRI as lucrative and free of political interference.

Alicia Castro does not shy away from her views. She came to diplomacy from the trade union movement, where she was a leader when she was a flight attendant with Aerolíneas Argentinas.

Across the spectrum, corporate media has endorsed last year’s rightwing takeover of Bolivia, refusing to label it as a coup. Coverage of Sunday’s historical elections hasn’t been much better.

A major U.S. PR firm located just a few blocks from the White House has been caught running an industrial grade propaganda operation on social media.

The World Social Forum will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2021. A group of participants of the first WSFs launched a call for the revival of the WSF, now with a new character: to change the WSF to change the world. From an open space to a space of action. The call is open to new signatures.

Lear Corporation—one of the world’s largest auto parts manufacturers—rose to position 148 on Fortune magazine’s famous list of the 500 largest firms in 2018. It operates with roughly 148,000 workers spread across 261 locations.

The first cases of COVID-19 were detected in December 2019 in Wuhan (China). In early March, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the rapidly expanding illness a pandemic.

The crisis that COVID-19 has provoked globally presents a crossroads to the peoples of Abya Yala – Latin America. The popular organizations are the first line of resistance against the worst expressions of the decomposing system.

Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, wants to build an electric car factory in Brazil. He was supposed to meet Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, in Miami in early March, but he was too busy; instead, Musk will go to Brazil sometime this year.

Hardly anyone in Australia has heard of José Carlos Mariátegui. Yet in South America he holds an important place in revolutionary history.

It deliberately affects defenseless civilians, such as children, the elderly and the sick. The US blockade against Cuba is the most severe and prolonged applied against any country, but it is estimated that one third of the world’s population suffers its effects: there are more than eight thousand sanctions in 39 countries.

It was a curious exchange. Frustrated by the attacks on his party—the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—former president of Bolivia Evo Morales made an audio recording in which he called upon his supporters to form militias. Maximilian Heath of Reuters went to Argentina to speak with Morales about this leaked recording.

For popular movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, achieving high levels of political awareness and organisation is not enough whilst the ruling classes, in one way or another, maintain control of the armed forces.