Remembering the victims of Colombia’s conflict. Photo: Anna Vogt
Adding Up Latin America’s Anti-Corruption Protests
Corruption scandals are being prosecuted more quickly than the abuses of the past, in part because the region built institutions to investigate those past abuses and in part because the culture of the region as a whole has shifted. If the current corruption scandal you care about most hasn’t been prosecuted yet, my guess is that it will take less than ten years after a leader leaves power instead of the 20-30 it took to investigate the abuses of South America’s dirty wars and Central America’s conflicts.
Google satellite imagery could stop Amazon deforestation
Brian Sullivan, leading the Google initiative, has worked with numerous tribes in the Brazilian Amazon using satellite imagery to ensure that their territories are safe. “The idea is to give them the tools to control economic activities,” he comments, adding that the initiative could be widened to monitor fishing levels in the Pacific. Countries in the region, such as Brazil and Argentina, have already started using the technology to monitor environmental change.
Mexican President’s Ties to Contractor Raise Questions
While the two cases have important differences, they have caused widespread frustration, tapping into a broad sentiment that despite Mr. Peña Nieto’s claims that Mexico and his Institutional Revolutionary Party have changed, some of the country’s most fundamental problems have not. “It’s evident that this issue with El Chapo and the issue of the contracts is the same: corruption,” said Manuel Huerta, an opposition congressman who wrote a book detailing the contracts. “It shows the incompetence, impunity and corruption of this government.”
Mexico: Growing old in poverty
In December, the OECD secretary-general, José Ángel Gurría, urged governments throughout Latin America to create more formal work opportunities so that all workers can receive proper pensions. Women in particular are at risk, he said. “Too many people are excluded. We need reforms to increase pension coverage and ensure some kind of income from the moment of retirement,” Gurría said.
Communities struggling against mining win major victory in Guatemala
On July 15, Judge Angelica Noemi Tellez Hernandez, an appeals court judge, ruled in favor of the nonviolent community resistance. The judge ordered Kappes, Cassiday & Associates, or KCA, to suspend the construction of all infrastructure projects at their El Tambor mine outside San Jose del Golfo. She found that the company was operating illegally, because it had failed to perform a proper consultation of the communities affected by the project, and that they had failed to obtain any permits for the projects.
Gang killings of bus workers freezes San Salvador’s transportation system
Random slayings in El Salvador are nothing new, as the country vies with neighboring Honduras for the highest homicide rate in the hemisphere. But attacks on public transportation workers, which began last weekend and grew to nine fatalities by Wednesday, speak to an escalation of the violent showdown between the gangs and Salvadoran authorities trying to rein in their power.
A murder an hour: El Salvador’s gang violence soars
He said, “It’s not part of our strategy. We’re not going to … negotiate, communicate or make any pact with these criminal groups. This is terrorism and sabotage against the public transport system”. As journalists, we aim not to have too strong of an opinion about policy. We aim to be independent and subjective. But it was hard to see how a people, who have lived with so much killing – through 12 years of war and now decades of gang violence would reject outright a strategy, that seemed to have success in making them safer.
One hundred years of American Occupation in Haiti
For many of the organizers of these events, the purpose is not simply to remember a chapter of Haiti’s history. Rather, it is to highlight the legacy of the Occupation and those consequences which still linger today. The Mouvman Patriyotik Demokratik Popilè (Popular Patriotic Democratic Movement), which has been promoting several of the events as part of a ‘Mobilization Week’ to mark the 100th anniversary of the Occupation, is using the slogan “1915-2015: With or without boots, the Occupation is still here.”…If the US remains as entrenched in the management of Haiti’s affairs as it did during the Occupation, it is because that same missionary capitalism – borne of a sense of untapped opportunity, and a White Man’s Burden to develop a people still seen as culturally backward – that was so ebulliently expressed by Senator McCormick in 1920 continues to captivate so many Americans today.
Haitians march to commemorate and protest foreign occupation
The placards and chants left little doubt that the American Occupation of 1915-1934 is, for many Haitians, historically and politically linked to the current occupation by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (known by its French acronym MINUSTAH). One banner called forreparations for the victims of the cholera outbreak spawned by MINUSTAH. In one of the troop’s performances several dates were read aloud, followed by the event that happened on that day: the arrival of Napoleon’s troops to suppress the Haitian Revolution, the arrival of the American occupying forces, and the arrival of MINUSTAH troops.
Colombia’s Peace Talks: Back from the Brink
A renewed sense of urgency among negotiators appears to be emerging. Both sides have agreed to put all of the pending issues – disarmament and demobilization, compensation for victims, and transitional justice – on the table, rather than deal with them one at a time. This comes after several positive steps during the hiatus in talks.
This outlook demands not that fossil fuels are left in the ground, but the opposite: that they are extracted and used for the benefit of the Bolivian people. Such utilization is placed in opposition to the exploitation of natural resources by colonial powers, powers that have grown fat ever since Francisco Pizarro’s Spanish Conquistadors began extorting gold from Emperor Atahualpa’s Inca Empire in 1532. Today, the government employs a similar argument to justify expanding oil and gas exploration into Bolivia’s national parks.
Bolivian miners protest and demand progress
(Video) Protesters have cut off access to the city of Potosi in a dispute with the government over infrastructure investments.
We need to better regulate Canadian companies abroad
Where Canadian corporate citizens act abroad through wholly owned subsidiaries, foreign partners or contractors, it’s often the Canadian parent corporation, headquartered in Canada, making the decisions in Canada that are then executed abroad. Nothing prevents the government from regulating made-in-Canada management and operational decisions about actions to be taken (or not taken) in a foreign country. Moreover, Canada has jurisdiction to regulate Canadian citizens abroad – including corporate citizens – on the basis of nationality.