Last week, the Guatemalan government of Álvaro Colom formally apologized to the family of former president Jacobo Árbenz who was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup in 1954 and later died in exile in Mexico.

On July 7, 2010, Diodora Hernandez, a staunch anti-mining activist, was shot point-blank on the right eye outside her home in the small community of San José Nueva Esperanza – only a few meters from a fence that delimits Goldcorp’s Marlin Mine. One year after her miraculous recuperation, Diodora’s anti-mining stance and activism remains as steadfast as ever.

There Mexican Army has conducted 20,000 raids in the last five years. Arturo Rodríguez García, writing for Proceso, reports that, “in the past two years . . . the number of captured citizens, raids without warrants, disappearances, instances of torture and executions have multiplied." One defender of human rights affirms that the Marines “have the implicit right to violate the constitution. They rob, kidnap, disappear and kill and nothing happens.”

A production model in Paraguay based on soy monoculture results in economic growth, but also causes social instability that can lead to political crises. The temptation is to use armed force to resolve them.

The culture of Mapuche poetry has evolved into three distinctive forms: traditional, intellectual and urban. David Aniñir Guilitraro, an urban Mapuche poet from Santiago, has created a literary realm which connects the history of the Mapuche struggle to the social problems which the people face today. Guilitraro describes his book, Mapurbe, as ‘a poetic concept of identity’ which harbors ‘revenge against everything’. 

This report from Liberty Plaza connects tactics and philosophies surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement with similar movements in Latin America, from the popular assemblies and occupation of factories during Argentina’s economic crisis in 2001-2002, to grassroots struggles for land in Brazil.

In this interview Salvadoran activist Carolina Amaya says that the challenge of social movements is to deconstruct the false paradigm of development that triggered the economic and environmental crisis that puts the life of our civilization at risk.

The following is a letter to Bolivian President Evo Morales from Pablo Solon on the TIPNIS march. Solon is the former ambassador for Bolivia at the UN and the coordinator of the World Peoples' Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.