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Latin America

‘Silent Coup’: How Capitalism Defeated Decolonization

The 20th Century saw a great global uprising against European imperialism as the former colonial countries shook off their shackles and rose up for independence. More than a half century later, global inequality is sharper than ever before. To understand the current predicament of the vast majority of the world’s people, we must understand the intervening decades. Matt Kennard and Claire Provost‘s book, Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy, looks inside the international architecture of global corporate governance that exists to flout and crush any attempts by the former colonial world to enact development on their own terms. Matt Kennard joins The Chris Hedges Report for a look at this intriguing and essential history.

Latin America’s Progressive Bloc Lines Up Against Washington Sanctions

The shift to the left that is currently taking place in Latin American governments could be felt in the presidential speeches at the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UN), which is being held this week. These governments were particularly unified in their disagreement with the application of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba. There was also a consensus among them to protest the inclusion of Cuba in the “list of countries sponsoring terrorism” maintained by the U.S. Government. Since the inauguration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, criticism of these policies has become common in this type of forum.

Imperialism Has Nothing To Offer Us, Only Threats

The event, which has brought together over 230 representatives of social movements, trade unions, and left parties from 23 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, takes place amid tectonic geopolitical shifts. In the last year, tensions between imperialist powers of the Global North and emerging Global South economies have intensified significantly. This was evident in the context of the recent BRICS Summit, which was met with significant skepticism and alarm from Washington and the European Union, which continue their campaign of aggression and encirclement against Russia and China, and all those that work with them.

Poorer Nations Break The Cycle Of Dependency That Has Inflicted Grief

In late July, I visited two settlements of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) on the outskirts of São Paulo (Brazil). Both settlements are named for brave women, the Brazilian lawmaker Marielle Franco – who was assassinated in 2018 – and Irmã Alberta – an Italian Catholic nun who died in 2018. The lands where the MST has built the Marielle Vive camp and the Irmã Alberta Land Commune were slated for a gated community with a golf course, and a garbage dump, respectively. Based on the social obligations for land use in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, the MST mobilised landless workers to occupy these areas, build their own homes, schoolhouses and community kitchens, and grow organic food.

Latin America And West Africa – Patterns Of Neocolonialism

The patterns of neocolonial intervention in the majority world by the United States and its allies since their victories over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945 are very clear. Almost immediately the Western countries started a cycle of bloody aggression against peoples resisting colonialism, followed later by the dependence of most African and Asian countries on the ruthless Western economic system. In all this time, the United States and Europe demonstrated the most crude and brutal determination to guarantee at all costs control of the natural resources required by their capitalist system.

Social And Solidarity Economy: Views From US, Spain And Latin America

The Latin American and Iberian Institute was pleased to host this virtual panel, The Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) Movement: Perspectives from the U.S., Spain and Latin America. Topics covered include: The Barcelona Experience with Local Economic Democracy by Dr. Santiago Eizaguirre Anglada; Latin American Solidarity Economic Circuits and SSE Networks by Euclides Mance and the Social and Solidarity Economy in the United States: Progress and Challenges by Yvonne Yen Liu.

People’s Summit Calls For Respect Of Democracy And Self-Determination

Without sovereignty and mutual respect, dialogue between regions is impossible. Throughout the days of debate and work at the People’s Summit held parallel to the III CELAC-EU Summit, trade union activists, community leaders, left political leaders, artists, and students from across Latin America and the Caribbean and Europe ratified the importance of spaces for democratic and plural debate between equal partners. The summits occurred simultaneously in the Belgian capital of Brussels from July 17-18 after a eight-year pause. The People’s Summit, held at the Free University of Brussels, was organized by a broad coalition of over 100 organizations, collectives, unions, political parties, and movements.

Latin America Again Refuses To Fall In Line With The Collective West

Volodymyr Zelensky is accustomed to being the star guest, whether in person or on-screen, at just about every Western international summit, though his shine does appear to be fading. But at the summit that took place in Brussels early this week between the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the president of Ukraine was nowhere to be seen. This was despite the best efforts of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who is current holder of the EU Council’s rotating president, to get his name on the guest list. At a bare minimum, Zelensky’s participation would have required the endorsement of the governments of Latin America’s three largest economies, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, all of which have taken a largely neutral stance on the war in Ukraine.

The Crimes And Dangers Of Elliott Abrams

It was a bright sunny March morning in 1980. Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was saying mass at a church hospital in San Salvador when a bullet from a sniper rifle ripped through his heart. He stumbled and fell to the ground, dead. Romero started life and ministry as a conservative. But, after his friend Rev. Rutilio Grande was assassinated to discourage other faith leaders from supporting Salvadorian peasants, Romero underwent a political and theological conversion. Picking up where Grande left off, Romero embraced a “theology of liberation,” a perspective that espouses G-d’s preference for the poor and oppressed.

Ahead Of CELAC-EU Summit, Movements Build People’s Summit

On July 17 and 18, leaders from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the European Union (EU) will converge in Brussels, Belgium, the seat of the EU, for the III CELAC-EU Summit. The two-day summit will be chaired by Ralph Gonsalves, the pro tempore president of CELAC and prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Charles Michel, the president of the European Council. The last summit of this nature took place in 2015, and the parties will meet again in a moment of great regional and global transformation and with the political composition in each region looking vastly different.

More Than Meets The Silk Press: Kamala Harris And US Imperialism

Kamala Harris wants to be your aunty. The Biden Administration’s controversial Vice President is often presented as either an incompetent sidekick, or a lovable big sister figure who “stays with her hair done”. Usually when she is presented to the general public it’s a roast— right wing media highlighting her latest string of incoherent thoughts or social media unloading a fresh set of cop memes. In February, The New York Times published the headline, “Kamala Harris Is Trying to Define Her Vice Presidency. Even Her Allies Are Tired of Waiting.” In the piece, John Morgan, a prominent fund-raiser for the Democratic Party, says, “I can’t think of one thing she’s done except stay out of the way and stand beside him at certain ceremonies.”

Africa Sets The Course For Latin America And Multipolarity

Since the end of the 19th century, European development has been based much more on the plundering of African lands and the buying and selling of its people. In addition, many African men enlisted to fight in the wars of their colonizers: thousands of soldiers from that continent participated in both “world” wars. After this confrontation in the Global North the effect was imminent. An anti-colonial wave swept across Africa, to which France, Britain, Belgium and Portugal, as well as other imperial powers, responded according to their political and economic circumstances.

Belt And Road Initiative Introduces Key Tenets Of Chinese Philosophy To World

When the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was first proposed 10 years ago, along with much anticipation, there was considerable puzzlement. “What is it?” was a widely asked question. And quite reasonably so, because it was like nothing we had seen before. This was no plan with fixed dates. There was nothing concrete. There were no boundaries. There was no end date. In every sense it was open-ended. It was an idea, a concept. It was a totally new and original way of thinking about a project. Furthermore, it was on the hugest of scales, encompassing the great majority of the world’s population.

Biden Nominates Elliott Abrams To Public Diplomacy Commission

President Biden announced Monday that he will nominate Elliott Abrams to the bipartisan United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, CNN has reported. Abrams is a neoconservative hawk who led the Trump administration’s failed Venezuela regime change effort, which involved crushing economic sanctions that are still in effect today, besides Biden giving Chevron a limited license to pump oil in the country. Toward the end of Trump’s presidency, Abrams was also assigned as the US’s top Iran envoy, where he oversaw a sanctions policy designed to prevent President Biden from re-entering the Iran nuclear deal.

50 Years Later, Families Demand Justice For The Disappeared In Uruguay

Excavations by forensic anthropologists at a notorious military base in Toledo, Uruguay have unearthed human remains. It is likely that the remains are those of one the many victims of the campaign of forced disappearance carried out by the state during the military dictatorship that began five decades ago. The remains are the first to be discovered in over a decade, and a painful reminder of the lengths the military went to permanently disappear dissidents and leftists in a campaign that lasted 12 years. For families of the missing, the news has brought a mix of emotions. This is only the seventh person recovered of the 204 victims who were forcibly disappeared from that brutal period during the Cold War.
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