Written by Beverly Bell
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Wednesday, 09 March 2016 19:38 |
I began writing a eulogy for Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores years ago, though she died only last week. Berta was assassinated by Honduran government-backed death squads on March 3. Like many who knew and worked with her, I was aware that this fighter for indigenous peoples’ power; for control over their own territories; for women’s and LGBTQ rights; for authentic democracy; for the well-being of Pachamama; for an end to tyranny by transnational capital; and for an end to US empire was not destined to die of old age. She spoke too much truth to too much power.
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Written by Jeff Abbott
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Friday, 04 March 2016 22:06 |
In recent years, the popular tourist attraction of Semuc Champey in the Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz has become a point of social conflict for the indigenous Q’eqchi’ Mayan communities surrounding the site. On February 8, tensions erupted and led to the occupation of the municipality building of Lanquín by over 200 members of the communities near the tourist attraction. Community members demanded the recuperation of the site. Since that day, residents have maintained management of the park. As the indigenous-led recuperation of this park continues, the conflict has shed light on a longstanding dilemma in Guatemala around indigenous communities’ access to sacred sites.
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Written by Benjamin Dangl
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Wednesday, 24 February 2016 13:22 |
Bolivian President Evo Morales lost the referendum last Sunday that could have given him the ability to run for re-election in 2019. The margin was small, but the implications are huge: Bolivia’s longest standing and most popular president finally has an end date for his time in power, on January 22, 2020. The Bolivian left and its vibrant social and indigenous movements were always bigger than Morales, and Sunday’s referendum results underline this.
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Written by Nidia Bautista
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Thursday, 18 February 2016 13:21 |
In 2013, Francisco Javier Cisneros Torres was forcibly taken from his home in Tala, Jalisco. Since then, his sister Nansi Cisneros of Los Angeles, California, has built new initiatives to bring together other families who are also searching for loved ones. For her, this is an important step to building cross-border momentum to demand an end to human rights abuses in Mexico.
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Written by Raúl Zibechi
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Monday, 15 February 2016 16:52 |
The election results in Venezuela and Argentina, the Brazilian crisis, and the erosion of the “citizens’ revolution” in Ecuador are part of a change in political climate that puts the transformative processes underway on the defensive.
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Written by Eduardo Gudynas
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Friday, 12 February 2016 12:10 |
The enormous mining corporation tried every which way they could to evict Máxima Acuña de Chaupe and her family of subsistence farmers. They used the police, guards, journalists, judgements, and many other weapons. But this is a steadfast family, with a woman deeply rooted in her land in Peru’s northern Andes, who resisted with all her strength and would not give up.
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Written by Lisa Taylor
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Thursday, 04 February 2016 12:24 |
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This February 4, celebrating the “historic collaboration” between the United States and Colombia, current Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos visited the White House to meet with President Barack Obama as they commemorate the fifteen-year anniversary of Plan Colombia. Signed in 2000 under U.S. President Bill Clinton and Colombian President Andrés Pastrana, Plan Colombia was a $1.3 billion initiative to support the Colombian government’s counterinsurgency and counternarcotics efforts.
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Written by George Ygarza
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Friday, 29 January 2016 22:13 |
Keiko Fujimori will likely win the 2016 Peruvian presidential elections scheduled for this April. She is the daughter of deposed president Alberto Fujimori, who became one of the first heads of state to be convicted of human rights violations in Latin America. Keiko Fujimori is polling at over thirty percent in an early crowded field of around 12 candidates. The election of a far-right candidate who has pledged to pardon her imprisoned father when she assumes the presidency seems incomprehensible.
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Written by Sarah Blaskey
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Friday, 04 March 2016 22:20 |
Yesterday the world woke to the terrible news that Berta Cáceres, world-renowned Honduran indigenous activist and mother of four, was murdered in her home in La Esperanza, Intibuca, Honduras. It was a shock to many who knew and worked with her. Cáceres was a founder of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), a powerful coalition active in various struggles around Honduras. The violence and impunity against indigenous activists like Cáceres cannot be fully understood outside of the context of the 2009 military coup, which paved the way for multinational interests and free market policies to be implemented at any cost in Honduras.
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Written by Nidia Bautista
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Monday, 29 February 2016 18:09 |
![](/web/20160314135553im_/http://upsidedownworld.org/main/images/stories/ayotzinapastill matterssmall copy.png)
In a country where political crises are ignored by the government until they fade into oblivion, the families of the missing students of Ayotzinapa have kept their search alive for seventeen months.
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Written by William Wroblewski
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Sunday, 21 February 2016 10:43 |
Bolivians head to the polls today in a referendum to decide whether or not President Evo Morales can run for a fourth term. In October of 2014 Morales was elected to his third term, and the constitutional amendment up for a vote today would allow him, if re-elected, to remain in office until 2025. Here is a collection of photos from the Yes campaign, in support of the amendment to allow Morales to run again, and the No campaign, against the constitutional change.
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Written by Santiago Navarro F., Renata Bessi
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Thursday, 18 February 2016 12:06 |
![](/web/20160314135553im_/http://upsidedownworld.org/main/images/stories/eolica1 small.jpg)
Farmers and residents in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca have repeatedly stated that the construction of electricity-generating wind parks is focused more on profits, greenwashing and generating cheap electricity for the US, rather than serving their own communities or Mexico’s energy needs.
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Written by Jhonathan F. Gómez
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Saturday, 13 February 2016 11:53 |
Maya Q’eqchi’ women survivors recently entered the Supreme Court in Guatemala as part of the Sepur Zarco case to demand justice for sexual violence, sexual and domestic slavery, forced disappearances and murder, crimes committed during the internal armed conflict of 1960-1996.
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Written by Emily Achtenberg
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Wednesday, 10 February 2016 14:10 |
Will Bolivians approve a constitutional amendment that would allow President Evo Morales to run for a fourth term?
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Written by Jeff Abbott
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Friday, 29 January 2016 22:50 |
Family, friends and supporters of Saúl Méndez and Rogelio Velásquez, two political prisoners who had been falsely accused of femicide, kidnapping, and murder, received some joyous news on January 14, 2016; after three years in prison, they were released. However, six other prominent activists from northern Huehuetenango still face prosecution for their resistance to hydroelectric projects imposed in their territory by transnational corporations.
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Written by John Ocampo
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Friday, 29 January 2016 14:29 |
The campaign to shut down Colombia’s infamous La Tramacua prison, located in the country’s sweltering Caribbean region and often referred to as the “Guantanamo of Colombia,” could be on the verge of a major breakthrough. Built in the year 2000, with U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons and USAID funding, as part of the penitentiary restructuring component of Plan Colombia, La Tramacua is a veritable house of horrors.
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