Geography Archives: Mexico

“Green-minded activists failed to move the broader public not because they were wrong about the problems, but because the solutions they offered were unappealing to most people.” — Alex Steffen, “The Next Green Revolution,” Wired Magazine, May 2006 — It’s about time you woke up to the good news, Jimmy!  If we can just unleash the […]

So Bush and company want to put thousands of armed troops on the border between the United States and Mexico.  The supposed reason for this move is to stem the flow of immigrants coming into the US from the south.  I have a feeling that this move will be probably popular in Congress and amongst […]

“The Senate fence measure was embodied in an amendment offered by Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, who borrowed from the poet Robert Frost.  ‘Good fences make good neighbors,’ he said.  ‘Fences don’t make bad neighbors.’” —  New York Times, 17 May 2006 What Senator Sessions knows is of no interest to me.  It must […]

The aim of this paper is to try to understand the Israeli industrialists’ strategy in the globalization process in the course of the recent years.  The new strategy was implemented in the days of the first Intifada (the Palestinian uprising) in the late 80s.  At that time voices were heard in the Association of Israeli […]

Robert Ellsberg is a well-known activist and author of numerous books, but most importantly, a tireless advocate for social justice and a witness to the lives of others whose integrity and purpose provide useful models.  His most recent book is Blessed Among All Women: Women Saints, Prophets and Witnesses for Our Times.  One of my […]

When a gun-touting cowboy, who calls for 6,000 National Guard troops to be stationed along the US-Mexico border, is presented as having taken the “middle ground” in the immigration debate, you know how far to the right mainstream politics are in the US.  Bush’s address on May 15 calls not only for strict border control […]

En ce Premier Mai 2006,  des milliers et des milliers de Latinos se sont absentés du travail et de l’école, ont manifesté dans les rues des principales villes américaines et ont fait grève de consommation pour protester contre le projet de loi HR 4437 sur le contrôle de l’immigration illégale et faire reconnaître leur apport […]

[This essay is the second installment of “Stolen Birthright: The U. S. Conquest and Exploitation of the Mexican People” by Richard D. Vogel. Read the first installment here.] La guerra de Estados Unidos en México La guerra de Estados Unidos en México de 1846-1848 fue la primera guerra estadounidense de agresión en contra de una […]

Un espíritu del pasado está penando en América.  Pero ese espíritu no es un fantasma — es la emergencia de millones de mexicanos y méxicoamericanos, descendientes de los desterrados, a quienes se les negaron sus patrimonio en el suroeste de los Estados Unidos, y quienes están creciendo en poder y tienen hambre de justicia. La […]

The opening of the 39th Parliament of Canada on 3 April 2006 quickly revealed what should now be plain to all.  Under the Conservative Party leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canadians are faced with a government with an unambiguous right-wing agenda.  The outlines of the “Harperism” project can readily be discerned: there is a […]

  The view south-east across the bay from the hills of Las Hadas, the hotel zone in Manzanillo is especially beautiful in the evening as the sun sets and the white painted hotels and restaurants stretching for several miles sparkle in the sun, behind the curving beach.  It’s a major Pacific port for Mexico and […]

“Filipino writers in the Philippines [and the United States] have a great task ahead of them, but also a great future.  The field is wide open.  They should rewrite everything written about the Philippines and the Filipino people from the materialist, dialectical point of view — this being, the only [way] to understand and interpret […]

Richard D. Vogel, “NAFTA Corridors: Dividing the Nation to Multiply Profits” (MRZine, 4 February 2006) As required by law, the State of Texas has finally posted the long anticipated 4,000-page draft environmental impact statement for the Texas leg of the I-35 NAFTA corridor on the Internet.  Access to the document is limited by the digital […]

Si el pueblo trabajador en Estados Unidos ha de alcanzar unidad, autoconfianza colectiva e independencia política en el futuro próximo (¡y cuanto nos hacen falta!), la demanda del movimiento de los trabajadores inmigrantes de derechos plenos debe ser el primer punto en su agenda.  El pueblo trabajador en este país necesita darse cuenta de lo […]

Michael Lerner, The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006). Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). Dearly beloved leftists and friends.  It’s 2006 and we’re gathered here together uncomfortably discussing why so few of us are […]

  Yiwen Cheng lives in Kansas City, and Stephen Philion lives in Minneapolis.

The April issue of Monthly Review contains a biographical profile of Vito Marcantonio.  Marcantonio, or Marc as he was known, was the product of one of the worst slums in early twentieth-century New York.  Through seven Congressional terms in the 1930s and 40s, he was an indefatigable voice for his poor and oppressed constituents and […]

  Click on an image to watch a slide show of the immigrant rights march in Milwaukee on 23 March 2006. SOURCE: Kristyna Wentz-Graff, “A Day without Latinos,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 23 March 2006 March 23, 2006 was a historic day for Milwaukee.  It was a day of Latinos in a city that still thinks […]

No wonder capitalist societies are coming apart at the seams.  Trust is supposed to be the bond that holds a society together, and trust is based on truth.  But so often have government leaders asserted their “right” to lie, to manage the news, and to contrive to deceive the public that large numbers of people […]

Thanks to Michael Moore, the growth of a moderately-aroused left-liberal public since the invasion of Iraq, and the low manufacturing costs of DVDs, the politically-conscious documentary film has reemerged in the United States.  A central figure in this movement has been the seasoned producer-director Robert Greenwald.  Formerly known for TV epics like Flatbed Annie and […]