Geography Archives: Mexico

The following is a conversation with Heinz Dieterich about his friendship with Hugo Chávez, irregular war, the new Venezuelan military doctrine, and an account of the Bolivarian revolution in Latin America. Heinz Dieterich is a sociologist and economist.  He has been a professor at Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City since 1977.  Since the 1990s, […]

Last Sunday, my fifteen year old daughter and I went to Querétaro, Mexico.  We were trying to visit Cristina Rosas Illescas at the state penitentiary of San José El Alto, five miles northeast of the state capital.  At the entrance, my daughter refused the guards’ orders to take her clothes off and let them conduct […]

What has been left out of reports and analysis in both the mainstream press and among anti-imperialists and leftists about the triumph of Evo Morales’ election as President of Bolivia is the role played by the three-decade international indigenous movement that preceded it.  Few are even aware of that powerful and remarkable historic movement, which […]

Click on the image for a larger view. Photo by Richard D. Vogel The NAFTA corridors system currently under construction will irreversibly divide the U.S. geographically, economically, and socially for the sake of profit.  The cumulative consequences of this “biggest engineering and construction project in the history of the U.S.” promise to be more damaging […]

While George Bush, the man who controls the trigger of the world’s greatest nuclear arsenal, expresses his fear that a “non-transparent” and nuclear Iran might use its non-existent nuclear weapons to blackmail the world, and his Secretary of State tells the media that the time for talking with the regime in Tehran is over, a […]

El futuro de la Revolución Bolivariana en América Latina se ve más brillante desde que Evo Morales participa en la construcción del Bloque Regional de Poder (BRP) de América Latina, en lo que será probablemente el año más peligroso para la humanidad desde el fin de la “Guerra Fría”: el año del ataque de la […]

Andre Vltchek Andre Vltchek is a Czech-born American writer who has written for Der Spiegel, Asahi Shimbun, the Guardian, and many other international papers.  He has reported on the violence of the neo-liberal order from all over the globe,  but especially from Indonesia, about which he has made a ground-breaking documentary: Terlena: Breaking of a […]

Paul Krell, UAW spokesperson, is not a person.  Paul is an answering machine.  Which explains why he can’t return calls and always says the same thing, i.e., “The UAW has no comment.”  Since the UAW does not have a spokesperson per se, I don’t have to be concerned about stepping on anyone’s toes.  Thus, I […]

Click on the image for a larger view. Chicago, 2005 In the middle of a blizzard in Chicago on December 8, 2005, I stood with about 250-300 union members and supporters at the Haymarket Memorial, chanting, “Workers’ Rights Are Human Rights.”  This was one of a number of rallies around the country that the AFL-CIO […]

Guatemala City, Guatemala Carlos, my driver, was a former federal policeman.  He weighed a good two hundred pounds and was well over six feet.  He was assigned to me by a local businessman whom I knew in Guatemala City after I explained that I wanted to visit some areas where I could see gang activity.  […]

Capitalism always stays focused on the bottom line — profit — but occasionally finds more than it is looking for.  Such is the case with Standard and Poor’s recent research report, “Credit FAQ: The Impact of the Rise of the Left on Latin American Sovereign Ratings” (17 January 2006).  While doing research to update the […]

There was a subtle difference in both groups this year — many said they noticed it. As in every year, tens of thousands of Germans visited the Memorial Site of the Socialists in an eastern section of Berlin and placed red carnations at the tall memorial stone honoring Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, or the […]

  [The Los Angeles Times recently ran a series of investigative articles by Miriam Pawel on the problems of the United Farm Workers:  “Farmworkers Reap Little as Union Strays From Its Roots” (8 January 2006); “Linked Charities Bank on the Chavez Name” (9 January 2006); “Decisions of Long Ago Shape the Union Today” (10 January […]

  José Martí and Simón Bolívar, two of Latin America’s most respected independence fighters, recognized nearly a century ago that their homelands would never be free of imperial domination, until Latin America came together in solidarity as a united force. Martí and Bolívar’s insights remain relevant in the age of neo-liberal globalization.  The colonizers of […]

1. Evo Morales y el socialismo “Evo, ¿que entienden tú y el MAS por socialismo?”, le pregunté durante aquellos horribles días de matanza de Sánchez de Losada, en La Paz, en febrero del 2003, donde estaba invitado por el Comité Ejecutivo de la Central Obrera Boliviana (COB). “Vivir en comunidad y en igualdad”, me contestó. […]

  In October 2005, I ran into several Guatemalan guest workers in a village laundromat.  My first guess was that they worked on a large dairy farm, but in my poor Spanish and their almost non-existent English, we managed to communicate, and they made me understand that their jobs were in new home construction!  I […]

On January 1,  2006, thirty-two private oil companies in Venezuela lost their contracts to operate independently.  The replaced contracts were given to the oil companies by the pre-Chavez government in Caracas during the 1990s, the latest in a series of oil agreements that were much more beneficial to the oil companies than they were to […]

Harry Magdoff — coeditor of Monthly Review since 1969, socialist, and one of the world’s leading economic analysts of capitalism and imperialism — died at his home in Burlington, Vermont on January 1, 2006. Harry Magdoff was born on August 21, 1913 in the Bronx, the son of working-class Russian Jewish immigrants.  His father worked […]

American Civil Liberties Union Washington Office 410 First Street, S.E.Washington, D.C. 20003 INDEX Letter to Fellow Citizens Resolution on Impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon Annotations to the Resolution Impeachment: Its History Impeachment: Its Procedures I. Constitutional Provisions Relating to Impeachment II. Excerpts from Jefferson’s Manual III. The Rules of Procedure and Practice in the […]

Clinton Jencks, from Salt of the Earth Legendary labor organizer Clinton Jencks, who led mineworkers in New Mexico in a strike depicted in the classic movie Salt of the Earth, died Dec. 15 in San Diego of natural causes.  He was 87. An international representative of the Amalgamated Bayard District Union of Mine, Mill, and […]