Geography Archives: Latin America

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.

What are the real interests of the U.S. and corporations in the region? Freedom, democracy, human rights? No. Their goal is to preserve imperialist domination of our natural resources.

Critical thought in our current political conjuncture faces a debate about the characteristics of the neoliberal and neofascist offensive and the challenges that these offensives raise. This debate engages three important dimensions: the character of contemporary capitalism, the new monsters that drive it, and the possibility of necessary alternative futures.

The slogan is pithy—Neoliberalismo nunca más (Neoliberalism Never Again). It was chanted in the streets of Santiago, Chile; it was drawn on the walls in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and in a more sober register, it is mentioned in a seminar in Mexico City, Mexico.

After nearly half a century of pillage, outrage and crimes of all kinds against society and the environment, we witness the downfall of the ruling model promoted enthusiastically by the governments of advanced capitalist countries; institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank; and self-righteous intellectuals and establishment politicians.

The Network in Defense of Humanity joins the worldwide mobilization in protest against the ecological disaster caused by the fires in the Amazon and against the transnational corporations and politicians directly responsible for the catastrophe.

More than 27 years have passed since Fidel’s warning, during the Earth Summit in Brazil, that an important species was endangered: human beings.

Extractivist governments are stoking destruction in the Amazon and beyond. International alliances and Indigenous technologies can help protect the biome and support its 30 million inhabitants.

On the Front Lines of Bolsonaro’s War on the Amazon, Brazil’s Forest Communities Fight Against Climate Catastrophe

The international left has lost one of its most lucid intellectual, pedagogical educators and determined activists with the passing of Marta Harnecker on June 14, aged 82.

Dossier no. 17 reflects on the hybrid war unleashed against Venezuela. We document the repertoire of tactics, but also the motives behind them. We are interested not only in the recent attack on Venezuela, but in the similarities between this attack and others in Latin America over the past decades.

The state is a disputed territory, and [entering into it] is necessary if we want to promote popular interests, but state power is not in any way the goal. In any effort to build popular power, there must be synergy between the bottom and the top. The key issue here is that what is done “from above” must strengthen popular power from below.

The history of empires amply demonstrates that in their phase of decline they become more violent and bloodthirsty, and that their leaders tend to be coarser and more brutal. Not only their leaders, as Donald Trump clearly demonstrates. Also its environment of advisors reflects similar devolution, becoming something similar to what Harold Laski, referring to the leaders of European fascism, called “outlaw elites”.

Steve Ellner and Alan Freeman talk about the Pink Tide and what came after in Venezuela and in the Latin American region.

An important Latin American political theorist argues that right-wing “internationalism” requires a leftist response that also reaches beyond national boundaries.