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Environmental Defenders Join Forces Across Argentina To Stop Mining Boom

With the Argentine government recently investing in over 30 new mining projects in the next decade, environmentalists are mobilizing against the country’s expanding extractivist economic model. Environmental groups are coming together to share knowledge, experiences and forms of resistance against these projects, which they say are being driven from the global north. Ever since childhood, Freddy Carbonel, an Argentine environmental advocate, has held a deep connection to nature — from his fascination with trees to hiking in the mountainous province of Tucumán and using his video camera to document snowfall in his town. After the global anti-nuclear push in the 1980s, Carbonel founded an environmental association with a group of like-minded young colleagues called Pro Eco Ecologist Group.

China Pushes De-Dollarization With Gold, Currency Swap Deal

China’s central bank has taken a series of steps to accelerate the global drive toward de-dollarization, challenging the hegemony of the greenback. The People’s Bank of China is increasing the share of gold in its foreign-exchange holdings, bucking the US dollar, which has for decades been dominant in reserves. This January, China also signed an agreement with Argentina’s central bank for a currency swap deal, in which Beijing will provide 130 billion Chinese yuan (roughly $19 billion USD) to help Buenos Aires stabilize its currency and economy. The South American nation said it is “committed to deepen the use of the RMB [renminbi] in the Argentine market for bilateral exchange”. (Renminbi is the official name for the Chinese currency, also known as the yuan.)

Argentine Vice-President Hits Out Against Judicial ‘Parallel State’

Argentine Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, in her first public appearance after her conviction earlier this month, spoke at the inauguration of the Diego Armando Maradona multi-sport gymnasium in the municipality of Avellaneda, a suburb of Buenos Aires, on Tuesday, December 27. Speaking alongside her main allies within the ruling coalition, the Frente de Todos (Front of All, FdT), Kirchner criticized the press, the economic elite, and the Argentine judiciary for promoting a “parallel state.” Kirchner was sentenced to six years in prison and barred from contesting for life on December 6. The so-called ‘Causa Vialidad’ case against her and 12 others is considered to be another case of political-judicial persecution against progressive leaders in Latin America.

Prefigurative Societies In Movement

Something new is happening – something new in content, depth, breadth and global consistency. Societies around the world are in movement. Since the early 1990s millions of people have been organizing similarly, and in ways that defy definitions and former ways of understanding social movements, protest and resistance. There is a growing global movement of refusal – and simultaneously, in that refusal is a creative movement. Millions are shouting No!, as they manifest alternatives in its wake. What has been taking place in disparate places around the world is part of a new wave that is both revolutionary in the day-to-day sense of the word, as well as without precedent with regard to consistency of form, politics, scope and scale. The current frameworks provided by the social sciences and traditional left to understand these movements have yet to catch up with what is new and different about them.

How Argentina Has Been Trapped In Neocolonial Debt For 200 Years

The deuda (“debt” in Spanish) is one of the most persistent elements in the two centuries of Argentina’s history. It has conditioned the political life and the economy of the country like no other factor, for generations. But this should not be confused with just any debt. The word deuda normally refers to the external debt (both public and private), a debt owed to foreign creditors. Historically, the key aspect of the deuda is that it is based on a foreign currency, the world trade currency controlled by the ruling empire. It was once the British pound. Since 1944 it has largely been the US dollar. The United States can “print” dollars (and the Federal Reserve does so regularly), but Argentina cannot. The same is true of other countries in the Global South with large external debts denominated in foreign currencies.

Bolivarian Alliance Supports Peru’s President Castillo Against Coup

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), the left-wing economic and political bloc uniting countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, has forcefully opposed the coup d’etat in Peru and expressed its support for the country’s democratically elected President Pedro Castillo. ALBA member states released a joint declaration stating that they “reject the political trap created by the right-wing forces of that country against the Constitutional President Pedro Castillo, forcing him to take measures that were later used by his adversaries in parliament to oust him from office.” The alliance condemned the violent “repression by the law enforcement agencies against the Peruvian people who are defending a government democratically elected at the polls.”

Lawfare: Judicial And Legislative Coups In Argentina And Peru

On Tuesday, December 6, An Argentine court sentenced Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to six years in jail and disqualified her from holding public office in a high-profile corruption case on Tuesday. The vice president, who has temporary immunity due to her current role, will not face immediate prison time and is expected to appeal the sentence, with the case likely to spend years winding through higher courts. The crisis in Peru reached the streets, after Congress dismissed former President Pedro Castillo on December 7 for wanting to dissolve Parliament and establish an emergency government. The appointment of Vice President Dina Boluarte as President of the Republic, far from bringing calm, has led to a wave of protests in Lima and in the interior of the country.

Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia Back Peru’s President Castillo

The governments of Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Bolivia released a joint statement supporting Peru’s democratically elected President Pedro Castillo, saying he is the victim of “anti-democratic harassment.” Castillo was overthrown in a coup d’etat on December 7, led by the infamously corrupt right-wing opposition that controls Peru’s unicameral congress, which has an approval rating of between 7% and 11%. The US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) and State Department have openly supported the coup, backing unelected leader Dina Boluarte, who declared herself president in collaboration with the congress. Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia wrote that they “express their profound concern for the recent events that resulted in the removal and detention of José Pedro Castillo Terrones, president of the Republic of Peru.”

Judicial Coup In Argentina

Argentina’s notoriously corrupt and deeply politicized judicial system set off an international scandal on December 6, sentencing left-wing former President and current Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to six years in prison and banning her from future office based on highly dubious charges. Prominent leaders across Latin America denounced the ruling as a “judicial coup.” It is eerily similar to the fraudulent case that led to the imprisonment of Brazil’s left-wing former President Lula da Silva in the lead-up to the 2018 elections, which the United Nations Human Rights Committee later denounced as an illegal show trial that lacked due process and violated his rights. Leaked messages, photos, and videos show that corrupt Argentine prosecutors involved in the case conspired with right-wing opposition politicians, conservative media corporations, and former intelligence officers to wage lawfare (judicial warfare) against Kirchner and her progressive movement.

Lawfare in Argentina: Cristina Fernández Sentenced To Prison

On Tuesday, December 6, Argentina’s Federal Oral Court 2 sentenced Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to six years in prison and disqualified her for life from holding public office on corruption and fraud charges. A three-judge panel found Fernández de Kirchner –who was Argentina’s president for two terms between 2007 and 2015– guilty of “fraudulent administration” and diverting nearly 1 billion USD in government funds through public works contracts during her presidency, but rejected another charge of running a criminal organization. The verdict corresponds to the trial known as the Road Management Case, in which VP Kirchner was accused of having formed an “illicit association” with 13 others to irregularly award 51 overpriced public works contacts in the province of Santa Cruz between 2003-2015 to a company belonging to businessman Lázaro Báez and share that surplus. Báez was a friend and business associate of Fernández’s late husband and former president, Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007).

Regional Leaders Express Solidarity With Argentina’s Cristina Fernández

This Wednesday, December 7, Latin American leaders rejected the judicial and media persecution against the vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, that prevent her from participating in the elections and prevent Peronism from remaining in power. The expressions of support Fernández de Kirchner received, after her conviction for the alleged crime of corruption, were joined by expressions of solidarity sent by the president-elect of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as well as the presidents of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador; Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro; Bolivia, Luis Arce; and Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in addition to the former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales. “My solidarity with the vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández,” Lula, a victim of legal persecution himself, wrote on his social media account.

Argentina’s Vice President Survives Assassination Attempt

Argentinian Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner survived an assassination attempt this Thursday, September 1, when a man pointed a gun in her face and made the gesture of pulling the trigger before a crowd of her supporters and security agents surrounded him. The incident occurred late on Thursday evening when Fernández was getting down from her car in front of her home in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Recoleta and greeting supporters who have been on vigil there for almost two weeks, showing their support against the political-judicial persecution that is trying to disqualify her from the 2023 presidential race.

Argentina: The Attack Against Cristina Is Backfiring

The prosecutors and judges who intend to politically destroy the current Vice President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have had their shot backfire. Those who, after years of unsuccessful judicial and media set-ups, sometimes forged in the very same office of the former right-wing president Mauricio Macri, are now asking for 12 years in prison and to perpetually disqualify her from holding public office. Charges that venal judges and Macri’s cronies would be happy to impose on her as a sentence. They already have it written, thundered Cristina, who made a memorable plea via digital networks from her office as president of the Senate, when the judge denied her the right to speak to refute elements recently introduced by the prosecutors and never previously aired in the process.

Argentinian Unions Mobilize Against Runaway Inflation

August 18 - Argentinian unions and social movements are marching today towards the National Congress to protest against runaway inflation and ‘speculators’. The march has been organized by the two largest union confederations; CGT and CTA. Their joint statement said; “Our country demands firm commitments to mitigate the social injustice that is suffocating us today (..) political actors must abandon petty electoral confrontation for the benefit of individual interests. Inflation has reached intolerable levels and is pulverizing the purchasing power of workers.” Sergio Palazzo, lawmaker for the ruling Frente de Todos (Front for All’) has backed the march and stated that “the intolerable action of the financial corporations have threatened the food rights of millions of Argentinians as well as the process of reactivating the productive economy”.

Mapping The Police: Citizen Control Of The Security Forces In Buenos Aires

Last week, Ofelia Fernández, a member of the Buenos Aires legislature, announced on her social media the launch of a Map of the City’s Police, a collaborative webpage whose objective is to highlight, identify, and denounce situations of police violence within the territory of Buenos Aires; consequently allowing citizens to hold local security forces to account. This tool of citizen participation was designed in conjunction with a network of individuals and organizations. Those behind the initiative include Fernández, the representative from Frente Patria Grande alliance of the ruling Frente de Todos coalition, the Center for Legal and Social Studies, the Association Against Institutional Violence, The Shout from the South, and the magazine Crisis, who are all looking to construct novel strategies in the fight for human rights.

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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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