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[Translation of an opinion piece from La Jornada of Mexico City for May 5, 2013. See original here.]

By Guillermo Almeyra

From the point of view of governments and institutions, the changes in Latin America brought about by the death of Hugo Chávez are important but not fundamental. The Venezuelan revolutionary process is weaker and its adversaries are therefore stronger, but if the leadership of the state and of the PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) are determined, with the support of their bases, to radicalize and deepen transformation of the country, if they reduce waste and improve somewhat the distribution of food and goods, social change could take a new leap forward, since the current moderate recovery in consumption and production in the United States, Venezuela’s principal market, gives certain stability to the price of oil.

This is the basis, on the other hand, of the security offered by the Maduro administration to Cuba, ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América — Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) and the Caribbean against the uproar of the Venezuelan Right about the “giveaway” of oil and financial support to Venezuela’s allies and against the same concessions of this kind that the right-wing Chavistas want to make to the anti-Chavista Right. At the same time, in Brazil, with next year’s elections impending, the Right does not seem to have either a clear candidate or the possibility of winning; the economy is somewhat better and the government enjoys the support of the transnationals, agribusiness and domestic large-scale capital, to which it has made considerable concessions, and it does not face strong social protests. (more…)

[Translation of an article from El Clarín of Santiago, Chile, for April 9, 2013. See original here.]

by Pedro Miguel

The first instance of Thatcherism took place six years before Margaret Thatcher arrived at the head of the British government; specifically, it began on September 11, 1973, when a group of military men — urged on by Richard Nixon, his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, then Vice President Gerald Ford and George Bush, senior, who was serving as Washington’s representative to the UN — destroyed Chilean democracy, assassinated thousands of citizens, kidnapped, jailed and tortured tens of thousands. Tens of thousands more were to leave in exile. Once installed, the dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet dissolved Congress, declared political parties illegal and, a couple of years later, handed economic management over to a small group of post-graduates from the University of Chicago, where Milton Friedman was teaching, hence the name Chicago Boys: Sergio de Castro, José Piñera, Jorge Cauas, Pablo Barahona… (more…)

Her views on the Latin American Left today

[Translation of an interview from Folha de São Paulo for August 28. See original here.]

by Eleonora de Lucena

She defines herself as a Marxist-Leninist “popular educator.” A Chilean, she was a student of philosopher Louis Althusser, a Catholic student leader and a member of the socialist government of Salvador Allende. She married one of the commanders of the Cuban revolution, Manuel Piñeiro or “Barba Roja,” and in the 2000s she became an adviser to Hugo Chávez.

Marta Harnecker says she has written more than 80 books. The best known, Conceptos Elementales del Materialismo Histórico (The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism), from the 1960s, has sold more than a million copies and is in its 67th edition. At 75, she travels throughout Latin America and says she is optimistic; the United States no longer does what it wants in the region and the concept of sovereignty has spread. (more…)

((El Mostrador photo))

“Two centuries of workers’ gains thrown into the garbage can”

[Translation of an interview by BBC World as published in El Mostrador of Santiago, Chile, for July 24. See original here.]

“This is a violent and deceitful world but we cannot lose hope and enthusiasm for changing it,” Eduardo Galeano declares.

The Uruguayan writer, his continent’s literary historian in works like The Open Veins of Latin America and the trilogy Memories of Fire, spoke with BBC World on the latest events in Latin America and the world economic crisis.

From his usual table in the centrally located Café Brasilero, leaving the cold of the southern hemisphere winter outside, he insists,“The greatness of humanity is in the small things that are done every day, day in, day out, that nameless people do without knowing they are doing them.” (more…)

[Translation of an article from El Clarín of Santiago, Chile, for July 5. See original here.]

By Ángel Guerra Cabrera

The coup d’état against the president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, calls for a revision of strategy and tactics by the progressive governments and popular forces of Latin America.

It should be remembered that the United States has at its disposal a large runway in Mariscal Estigarribia, in the Paraguayan Chaco, ready for Galaxy transport planes and B-52 bombers. It was constructed in agreement with the very oligarchical parties that staged the parliamentary coup against Lugo, who have also approved beforehand the incursion of United States troops into the country, recent signs indicating that their presence will be made permanent. (more…)

[Translation of an article by Agence France Presse as published in La Jornada of Mexico City on May 13.  See original here.]

A resurgent gold fever has put Latin America at risk: tropical forests devastated by illegal operations where the law of the jungle rules, local communities at war against investment projects by large international mining companies.

The appetite for gold and other metals has generated a boom for informal mining, especially in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia, and put the formal industry at a peak, with projected investments of 300 billion dollars by 2020, according to the Sociedad Interamericana de Minería.

Regardless, 162 conflicts over mining have broken out all over the region because of the opposition of local communities to projects they see as threats, especially because of their great consumption of water, according to the Observatorio de Conflictos Mineros de América Latina. (more…)

[Translations of two articles from May 8, one by the Spanish news agency Efe as published in Crítica of Panama, the other by Agence France Presse as it appeared in La Prensa of Panama. See originals here and here.]

Persecution of prostitutes denounced

After the scandal involving United States Secret Service agents and sex workers, Colombian authorities have unleashed a witch hunt against sex workers, a regional organization defending their rights charged today in Panama.

On the eve of the Summit of the Americas held in Cartagena de Indias in April, Secret Service agents hired prostitutes but then refused to pay what they had agreed to for their services, Elena Reinaga, president of the Red de Trabajadoras Sexuales de Latinoamérica y el Caribe (Redtrasex – Network of Sex Workers of Latin America and the Caribbean) declared on Tuesday.

“The girls did nothing more than denounce the abuse and a witch hunt started… not only against them (those directly involved) but the police came out persecuting many others,” Reinaga stated in a press conference. (more…)

[Translation of an essay from La Jornada of Mexico City for January 13. See original here and the article by Immanuel Wallerstein referred to here.]

by Raúl Zibechi

The current world crisis is breaking the planet up into regions in such a way that the world system is approaching an accelerating disarticulation. One of the effects of this growing regionalization of the planet is that political, social and economic processes do not manifest themselves in the same way in all parts of the world and divergences are produced – bifurcations perhaps, in the future – between the center and the periphery.

For anti-system forces this global disarticulation renders the design of a single and unique planetary strategy impossible and makes attempts to establish universal tactics useless. Although there are inspirations in common and shared general objectives, the different paces shown in the transition toward post-capitalism and the notable differences between anti-systemic subjects work against generalizations. (more…)

[Translation of an article from El País of Madrid, Spain, for May 19. See original here. Ricardo Lagos was president of Chile from 2000 to 2006.]

By Ricardo Lagos

Since the second world war, growth of the gross national product has become practically universal as a standard economic measure, which has in turn become the final object of development policies. There is a history here; since the industrial revolution it has been thought that an increase in production of goods would bring with it greater well-being and better living conditions for the members of a society. Nevertheless, today for the first time we can verify that in the 30 richest countries of the world, growth of the economy does not account for the realities of a society. It does not necessarity imply an improvement in the social indicators of health and education.

Great advances have been made in the reduction of poverty in Mexico, Brazil and Chile. (more…)

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for February 24. See original article here and the Página/12 article quoted below, in English translation, here.  See US embassy cables on Argentina as released by Wikileaks here.]

by John Saxe-Fernández

An enormous C17 (Globemaster III) belonging to the United States air force, with equipment for police “training,” tried to bring into Buenos Aires an undeclared cargo of powerful long weapons, equipment for encrypted communications, secret information programs and narcotic and stupefacient drugs, “with no satisfactory explanation of what it would be used for” (Página 12, 13-II-2011). In view of the regime change operations against Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador and the Honduran putsch, the resumption of this type of operation with United States personnel, halted by Néstor Kirchner, is surprising; the secret cargo on the C-17 demonstrates the serious risk of these schemes in view of a diplomacy of power that is growing more intense: were they going to teach a course or stage a coup? (more…)

Commission meeting in Geneva proposes decriminalizing drug use

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for January 26, based on Notimex and Agence France Presse dispatches. See original here.]

Geneva, January 25 – The former presidents of Colombia and Brazil, César Gaviria and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, agreed today that the United States should curb its great demand for drugs in order to end the escalating violence it produces.

Within the framework of the Global Commision on Drug Policy, in which former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo also participated, Gaviria and Cardoso said separately that it is essential to ask the United States to demonstrate that it is reducing its consumption and that it is struggling to curtail the dimensions of the trade.
(more…)

[Translations of articles from the Bolivian government news agency Agencia Boliviana de Información for November 25 and Opinión of Cochabamba for November 23 . See original articles here and here.]

America concludes forum on cooperation, defense and security

by Adalid Cabrera Lemuz and Daniel Espinoza

Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia – After four days of deliberation in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, the defense ministers of the Americas reached agreements to strengthen regional security, devise programs to respond to natural disasters and increase transparency in weapons expenditures.

The Ninth Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas was held from November 22 to 25 with the participation of ministers and high officials of the defense departments of 30 American countries… (more…)