Listen to Sheehan’s interview with Golinger: Eva Golinger: Venezuela is a very wealthy country in oil and gas reserves. It’s actually one of the largest oil producers in the world. It has over 24% of oil reserves in the entire world. That’s a lot for a country of 27 million people. And of course […]
Geography Archives: Latin America
Wake Up, It’s Happening NOW!A New Immigrant Revolution Takes Shape
On January 1, five South Florida residents stopped eating in a protest action. They are demanding that the Obama administration take measures now to put an end to the deportations that are separating families — at least until Congress can provide more permanent relief by fixing our harsh immigration laws. The Fast for Our Families […]
Media Battles in Latin America Not about “Free Speech”
For at least a month now in Ecuador there has been a battle over regulation of the media. It has been in the front pages of the newspapers most of the time, and a leading daily, El Comercio, referred to the fight as one for “defense of human rights and the free practice of journalism.” […]
Venezuela Implements Measures to Curb Commercial Energy Use
Following months of regular blackouts in some regions of Venezuela, the government has implemented energy-saving measures, requiring companies to submit plans to save 20% of their electricity usage, regulating the usage of lighting for advertising, and creating schedules of electricity usage for shopping centers, casinos, and bingo halls. The Ministry for Electricity‘s measures went into […]
The American Elite
Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin […]
Québec solidaire: Building a Left to the North of the Behemoth
Unbeknownst to many progressives south of the 49th parallel, an interesting political experiment is unfolding to the north. Quebec solidaire (QS), a recently formed left-wing party based in the seven-million-strong French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec, is making significant inroads at the electoral level. Following the election of its first and only parliamentarian in December 2008, […]
Transitions between Economic Systems
The transition out of feudalism to capitalism in Europe, mostly from the 17th to the 19th centuries, took multiple forms. It was uneven as well, happening in different ways at different rates in different places. Marx studied that transition’s various dimensions because they offered valuable lessons for the different transition he was interested in: out […]
In Solidarity with the Real Anti-Racist Movement in Cuba
Within weeks of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, its leadership, with the enthusiastic support of black and mestizo Cubans, took steps to dismantle the most visible forms of racial discrimination on the island. Within a couple of years the Revolution dismantled the economic underpinnings of racial oppression that had its roots […]
History of US Rule in Latin America: Resistance to the Coup in Honduras
The United States has had four presidents who received the Nobel Peace Prize. I haven’t checked, but I presume that’s a record for heads of state. All four have left their imprint on Latin America, “our little region over here that has never bothered anybody.” That’s how Secretary of War Henry Stimson described the hemisphere […]
What Was Really Decided in Copenhagen?
Detailed accounts from participants in the recent Copenhagen climate summit are still coming in, but a few things are already quite clear, even as countries step up the blame game in response to the summit’s disappointing conclusion. First, the 2 1/2 pages of diplomatic blather that the participating countries ultimately consented to “take note” […]
Disturbing the Peace of the Graveyard
In Colombia there is an expression: la paz del cementerio — the peace of the graveyard. This is the kind of peace that powerful forces enjoy when everyone who resists them is dead and buried. Colombia’s government and its military and paramilitary forces have spent decades working diligently for this kind of peace. They’re so […]
Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side the United States Government Is on with Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras
At dawn on June 28, the Honduran military abducted President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint and flew him out of the country. Conflicting and ambiguous statements from the Obama administration left many confused about whether it opposed this coup or was really trying to help it succeed. Here are the top ten indicators (with apologies to […]
Crisis, Populist Neoliberalism, and the Limits to Democracy in Mexico
Forbes magazine recently placed two Mexicans, Carlos Slim and Joaquín Guzmán, high on their list of the most powerful people in the world. Carlos Slim is the world’s third-richest man and CEO of a telecommunications company and Joaquín Guzmán is the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel. While the purpose and the methodology of this […]
Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition
The historical geography of capitalist development is at a key inflexion point in which the geographical configurations of power are rapidly shifting at the very moment when the temporal dynamic is facing very serious constraints. Three-percent compound annual growth (generally considered the minimum satisfactory growth rate for a healthy capitalist economy) is becoming less and […]
The Contradictions of Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez
On November 7, 2009, the Western media devoted ample space to the Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez. The news from Havana about the dispute between the dissident and Cuban authorities circled the world and overshadowed the rest of the news.1 Sanchez recounted her mishap in detail on her blog and in the press. In doing so, […]
Christian Communists, Islamic Anarchists? Part 2
In Part 1 of this article we argued that Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou’s account of the foundation of Communist universalism in the event of Christianity signals a number of inconsistencies immanent to their respective ontologies (Coombs 2009). For Žižek it appears difficult to reconcile his touted open interpretation of Hegel with the ontological significance […]
Christian Communists, Islamic Anarchists? Part 1
The defeat of the Marxist emancipatory project has brought an end to radical secular universalism. The result has been twofold: identity politics and their post-modern ideologies of difference have become the legitimating motifs of Western democracies, whilst radical political Islam has taken the anti-systemic baton of secular Marxism, but subverted it with a brand of […]
End Monopoly Capitalism to Arrest Climate Change
Human societies have created the bases of our survival, sustenance and advancement through the use of our natural resources in production with rudimentary tools and rising levels of science and technology. Yet in no time in history has environmental destruction been systematically brought about in most parts of the world. The people of the […]
Bolivia under Evo Morales: The Pace and Depth of Social and Political Change
General elections were held in Bolivia on Sunday, December 6, 2009. A few weeks before these elections I had the opportunity to discuss the contours of Evo Morales’ first term in office with the Bolivian Ambassador to Canada, Edgar Tórrez Mosqueira. The following interview provides a backdrop to the elections that were held yesterday, […]
Brazil’s Differences with Washington Are Unavoidable, and Positive
Over the last decade an epoch-making political change has taken place in the Western Hemisphere: Latin America, a region that was once considered the United States’ “back yard,” is now more independent of Washington than Europe is. But while Latin America has changed, U.S. foreign policy has not — even now, with the election of […]
