Making a brief retrospective of the Bolivarian project in Venezuela, begun in 1998 with Hugo Chávez, and tracing its connections with Nicaragua and other Latin American countries, Baltodano reflects in this article about the current situation of democracy in the continent, after Venezuela’s recent elections.
The obviously fraudulent election results in Venezuela, along with the dire economic-political situation in the country, signal the impasse, if not dead end, that the decades-long call for “21st Century Socialism” has reached.
Takes up: The public outcry that restored a talk by a gay actor to middle school students in Pennsylvania; a bill signed by Great Britain to deport people to Rwanda, a country not safe for the LGBTQI+ community; LGBTQ+ curricula being included in Washington state’s public schools; and three extraordinary support groups for 2SLGBTQ+ in Latin America.
In the almost two years since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Haiti has reached unprecedented levels of violence and chaos. While violent criminal gangs are causing havoc, whether some of the “gangs” now active in the country are revolutionaries remains to be seen. What is clear is that only social revolution in the hands of Haiti’s masses can bring forth a fully human, free society.
Argentine President Javier Milei aims to privatize state institutions; eliminate regulations on businesses; prevent strikes; and seek full executive powers. Less than two months after taking office, he was confronted by a one-day mass general strike. What kind of society do Argentinians want to create?
The situation for migrants in Mexico is dire: the National Guard is used against newly arrived immigrants; gang members kidnap them and demand ransom from relatives in the U.S.; Mexican and U.S. authorities make the journey to the border excruciating.
Venezuela’s president rekindled a territorial dispute with its neighbor Guyana. Not to actually take the territory, but rather to create an issue of patriotism to use in his upcoming re-election campaign.
Argentina’s new President Javier Milei quickly imposed social welfare cuts, while threatening protests. Still, mass resistance from below is developing. Is that enough to break out of the political-economic-social straitjacket that Argentine masses have been living through for decades?
On Sept. 11, 1973, the Chilean army brutally overthrew the elected government headed by Salvador Allende. This coup should have destroyed, but evidently did not fully destroy, the illusion that bourgeois democracy will allow any authentic socialist transformation process to proceed peacefully.
Marxist, activist and defender of the Indigenous movement, Peruvian revolutionary Hugo Blanco (1934-2023) died in June. His history shines a light on the needed exploration of the conflictive, contradictory story of Marxism and the Indigenous movement in Latin America today.
No Birth Behind Bars “feed-in” in London; Cross-Border Network of Mexico and U.S. abortion rights groups formed; Montreal protest of the prostitution common at Grand Prix auto race; study finds women less likely to receive credit for their scientific work.
Catholicism, “traditional family life,” silencing of women, combine to make life a “living hell” for many and reveal how the normalizing of domestic violence wars against the Universal of Freedom.
The stunning electoral victory of Gustavo Petro as President and Francia Márquez as Vice President marks a new moment for Colombia.
A new series by the New York Times paints a picture of Haiti’s stark, painful, preventable history of more than 200 years. Slaves who freed themselves in revolution were subverted first by Napoleon’s France—supported by the U.S.—demanding outlandish sums of money as ransom.
Ecuador’s Indigenous people are in revolt over the rising cost of living. In addition to price controls they are demanding access to healthcare and education and challenging continued discrimination against Indigenous people.
Catholicism, “traditional family life,” silencing of women, combine to make life a “living hell” for many and reveal how the normalizing of domestic violence wars against the Universal of Freedom.
The first woman president elected in Honduras, Xiomara Castro, took office after a 12-year rule by the corrupt, conservative National Party. Will she focus her attention on the powerful grassroots movement which brought her to the presidency allowing its actions to be a determining new beginning for Honduras?
In October, right-wing Chilean President Sebastián Piñera twice decreed a 15-day state of emergency for several provinces which directs the armed forces to provide support for policing and surveillance of the Mapuche people. We include part of the Mapuche people’s declaration.
Once again a migrant caravan—primarily Central Americans and Haitians—is proceeding from southern Mexico towards Mexico City, with hopes of reaching the U.S. While Mexico has historically been a safe haven for exiles the Haitians are facing Mexican government hostility, including National Guard soldiers who have attacked caravans near Mexico’s southern border.
Adele reviews the book “They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties” by Lisa Levenstein.
Cubans revolt and students speak out amid food and medicine shortages and human rights violations; and Latin America suffers under climate change.
In-person report on the revolt in Colombia and the history of displacement, repression and revolt from which it flows.
Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico agreed with the Biden administration to put more military at their borders to stop immigrants.
March marks the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Berta Cáceres, Honduran defender of the rivers, the Lenca people and life.
Coal mines continue to kill in Mexico; the Mapuche nation is resisting Chile’s government and logging companies.
Honduran migrants from the first caravan since Joseph Biden’s election speak about why they are leaving their homeland; and São Paulo, Brazil residents, thrown out of work by the pandemic, are occupying buildings in order to have a place to live.
Capitalism is exacerbating the havoc being wreaked by COVID-19 in Latin America. In the projected largest recession in its history, 12 million more people will lose their jobs, leaving 29 million more in poverty.
Report by two women who attended the Zapatista Second International Gathering of Women Who Fight in Chiapas, Mexico.
Raya Dunayevskaya explores the concept of the “Changed World’ of the 1980s, which followed the economic crisis and the restructuring that capitalist rulers imposed, with political retrogression, intensified militaristic imperialism, and ideological pollution.
An overview of the 11 days of massive resistance in Ecuador.
Haitians took to the streets Feb. 7 against a long-simmering background of anger at government corruption.
We share the Statement on Venezuela by the Anti-War Committees in Solidarity with The Struggles for Self-Determination, which looks at the situation today, its history, and takes the measure of today’s Left.
Jair Bolsonaro, elected President of Brazil, is a racist, misogynist, homophobic admirer of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship. The coming months will tell whether the masses will mount a crucial resistance.
Argentina has been bouncing this year from one crisis to the next. Today it needs a movement that refuses to separate the slogan “They all must go!” from building an authentically new kind of society.
Nicaragua is in deep crisis. Almost 150 have been killed by government forces, and thousands injured. The Nicaraguan masses will need to create an emancipatory alternative.
As Venezuela’s social crisis deepens, the contradictions always present in Chavismo are coming to a head. A look at the Bolivarian Constitution, Chavismo’s relationship to the Arab Spring, and its dependence on high oil prices and a top leader illuminate the crisis.
Readers’ Views on Philosophy and Revolt vs. Trumpism; Trump and the Left; Injustice to Immigrants; Anti-Woman, Anti-Labor Uber; ACT UP; From Iran; To Mexico; Why Read News & Letters?
Despite difficulties, there are tendencies within the Left in Venezuela and Latin American who are critical of Maduro and trying to work out support of the Venezuelan masses, along with opposition to neoliberalism and U.S. imperialism.
Movement du Nid’s fake escort service raises awareness of violence against women; Argentinian feminist collective Ni Una Menos organized the first regionwide Latin American march against femicide; Russia’s new law reduces first-time domestic violence assaults to civil offenses; huge outcry of Arab-Israeli women against fundamentalist Muslims’ claims that 19-year-old Arab-Israeli Lian Zaher Nasser deserved to be murdered for celebrating a Christian holiday with men where alcohol was served.
The essay takes a critical look at the “Latin American Pink Tide” (a decade of progressive governments in South America), its limits and contradictions, and poses the question: Is there a way forward that does not substitute statism for the action and thought of the masses?
Participant report of a cross-border protest at Nogales, Mexico, and Nogales, Arizona.
Venezuela is in ever-deepening crisis–including electricity shortages, outrageous inflation, food shortages–because of neoliberal politics. Colombia sees a cease-fire agreement signed between the government and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia/FARC while agricultural injustice, a major cause of increasing poverty, remains. Peru elects Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a right-wing neoliberal, as their new president, defeating Keiko Fujimori, daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, who committed many human rights abuses while in office.
Brazil is in a meltdown. President Dilma Rousseff has been impeached and will possibly face trial in May. The upheaval has less to do with stamping out corruption than with an effort to shift power by lawmakers with questionable records themselves.
Over 1,300 activists from more than 20 countries attended a gathering in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, celebrating the life of murdered Indigenous rights and ecological-social activist Berta Caceres.
At the crux of the world refugee crisis is a demand for new human relations. The will to deny any responsibility for centuries of exploitation of Latin America and Africa is at the root of inhuman attitudes toward refugees, and it becomes an opening for the most reactionary politicians.
People’s suffering, no matter the price of oil, demonstrates capitalism’s inherent deep ties with climate change and economic destruction.
It was a stunning defeat. Where to now for the Venezuelan masses who supported Chavez in power, but many of whom feel disappointed in the post-Chavez period?
Workers in four maquiladoras in Ciudad Juarez began organizing to form an independent union and for higher wages, better working conditions and against sexual harassment.
Mexico takes millions of dollars from the U.S. to stop Central American immigrants from crossing Mexico’s southern border. Gangs prey on those who make it into Mexico.
Governments which could never have come to power without the social movements’ mobilizations are using vague expressions of anti-capitalism, socialism, resource nationalism, anti-imperialism, etc., to impose developmentalism on their populations, often in collaboration with neoliberalism.
