Geography Archives: Nicaragua

  • US debates sanctions on Nicaragua or backing Venezuela

    US debates sanctions on Nicaragua for backing Venezuela

    The United States Committee on Foreign Relations is due to discuss the bill known as the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act of 2017, or Nica Act on Thursday. It seeks to add conditions to the provision of aid from international financial institutions to the country.

  • Interview with Steve Ellner: Is the Bolivarian Revolution a Populist Failure?

    In part II of our interview with Steve Ellner, the Universidad de Oriente professor discusses a range of contentious issues in Venezuela, including the efficacy of state social programs such as the CLAPs, rentierism, and the Maduro government’s controversial Mining Arc, as well as the role of international solidarity.  Part I of the conversation can […]

  • Failing to Connect the Dots on Immigration: The Democratic Debate in Miami

    The March 9 debate in Miami between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was the first chance the two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination had to discuss immigration and its connections to trade and U.S. policy in Latin America.  Unfortunately, neither candidate took advantage of the opportunity. The mainstream “immigration debate” generally avoids mentioning the […]

  • Marta Harnecker on New Paths Toward 21st Century Socialism

    Introduction by Richard Fidler Among the many panels and plenaries at the Conference of the Society for Socialist Studies, which met in Ottawa June 2-5, was a Book Launch for Marta Harnecker’s latest English-language book, A World to Build: New Paths toward Twenty-First Century Socialism (translated by Federico Fuentes), Monthly Review Press. The featured speaker […]

  • Remembering Robert Weil: Intellectual and Political Activist

      Robert Weil, author of the powerful critique of Deng Xiaoping’s “reforms” entitled Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of Market Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1996, republished in India by Cornerstone Publications, Kharagpur), quietly passed away in California on 12 March 2014.  Almost a year after, on 15 February 2015 a […]

  • A History of a Counter-Revolution

    Gerald Horne.  The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America.  NYU Press, 2014. In the conventional, celebratory liberal historical narrative about the Founding Fathers, the post-revolutionary persistence of slavery in the United States, along with women’s lack of essential political and legal rights, has long been regarded as […]

  • The Fight Against ICE Holds

      On March 12 this year, the Public Safety Committee of the Philadelphia City Council held a public hearing to review the practice of detaining undocumented immigrants in what are known as “ICE Holds.”  An ICE Hold, or civil immigration detainer, is a request from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to local police […]

  • The Complexities of Putting Ideals into Practice: Interview with Margaret Randall

      Introduction Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer, and social activist.  Born in New York City in 1936 and currently residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she has also spent a number of years outside the United States.  Randall participated in the 1968 student movement while living in Mexico City, from where she was […]

  • Letter to Daniel Ortega

    Dear Daniel: With great satisfaction I just listened to your excellent speeches at the 8th Petrocaribe Summit. It was very just that the venue of the meeting is Nicaragua, a country that was capable of overcoming the artful blow of the empire under the government of one of the most uneducated and cynical frauds selected by the U.S. oligarchy.

  • “The Economy Is Doing Fine, But the People Aren’t”: Some Facts on the Economic Background of the Protests in Turkey

    Speaking about the then dictator of Nicaragua, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reportedly said: “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”  Whether or not Roosevelt actually said it in so many words is disputable, but there is no doubt that it — i.e., dictatorship is licensed in […]

  • International Initiative to Stop the War in Syria: Yes to Democracy, No to Foreign Intervention!

    We, the undersigned, who are part of an international civil society increasingly worried about the awful bloodshed of the Syrian people, are supporting a political initiative based on the results of a fact-finding mission which some of our colleagues undertook to Beirut and Damascus in September 2012.  This initiative consists in calling for a delegation […]

  • New Nicaraguan Law Challenges Violence Against Women

    Nicaragua’s adoption this year of a sweeping law for prevention and punishment of violence against women marks an important gain for women’s rights in this Central American country, says Sandra Ramos, founder and director of the “Maria Elena Cuadra” Movement for Working and Unemployed Women (MEC). Addressing a meeting at Casa Maíz in Toronto on […]

  • The Sargasso Manuscript: Some Observations on Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

    Susan Sontag.  As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980.  Edited by David Rieff.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. I. David Rieff has played the last of Susan Sontag’s jokes upon the reader: to remain austerely cool, distant, and unsympathetic toward us even in “journals and notebooks.”  The barbed wire of […]

  • Annals of Imperialism: U.S. Military Takes on Honduras

    On May 11 in Honduras’ Mosquito region, helicopter gunfire killed two women, two men, and seriously wounded four more, including children.  They were targeted as drug traffickers.  The helicopters belonged to the U.S. State Department.  On board were agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in military uniforms, plus Honduran soldiers.  Many Hondurans say agents […]

  • Turkey: The Honduras of the Middle East for a New Contra War

      We all know it from the movies of Costa-Gavras: once “the leaders of the free world” start visiting your country frequently, carnage won’t be far behind. Nowadays, the capital city of Turkey, Ankara, looks very much like the set of a Costa-Gavras movie (except, of course, what we really want to see happens off-camera). […]

  • The overwhelming victory of Daniel and the FSLN

    ON Sunday, November 6, 72 hours ago, there was a general election in which Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and the FSLN won an overwhelming victory. Perhaps by chance, the following day was the 94th anniversary of the glorious Soviet Socialist Revolution. Indelible pages of history were written by Russian workers, peasants and soldiers, and the name […]

  • I Woke Up One Morning and the War Was Over

    America’s war in Iraq is over.  The last U.S. troops will leave by year’s end, “with their heads held high, proud of their success and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops.”  So sayeth President Obama. A “sham of a mockery of a sham” is what Groucho would call […]

  • Martial Law in Haiti

      The methods of the United States in colonized Latin America have not changed.  They cannot change.  Violence is not used in countries under Yankee administration just by accident.  Three events during the past five years underscore the increasing martial tendency of U.S. policy in these countries: the intervention in Panama against a strike, the […]

  • The Rise and Fall of Libya

    Upon the US capturing Saddam Hussein out of a “spider hole” and parading his abject person on TV, Tariq Ali wrote: “My first reaction to the capture of Saddam Hussein was both anger and disgust.  Anger with the old dictator who could not even die honourably.  He preferred to be captured by his old friends […]

  • London’s Most Wanted

    “Wanted for Terrorism” Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela.  His cartoons frequently appear in Aporrea and Rebelión among other sites.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. “David Cameron Back Councils Planning to Evict Rioters” (BBC, 12 August 2011); “[F]or the press and the western governments, those demonstrating in British, Greek, […]