Yearly Archives: 2020

From one of LAP's editors, Paul Almeida, a recent book on global struggles and social change co-authored with Christopher Chase-Dunn.  Good for updating material for those remote classes. GLOBAL STRUGGLES AND SOCIAL CHANGE From Prehistory to World Revolution in the Twenty-First Century Now available from JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS Christopher Chase-Dunn is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside, where he is the director of the Institute for Research on World-Systems. He is the coauthor of Social Change: Globalization from the Stone Age to the Present. Paul Almeida is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced. He is the author of Social Movements: The Structure of Collective Mobilization. In the early decades of the twenty-first century, an international movement to slow the pace of climate change mushroomed across the globe. The self-proclaimed Climate Justice movement urges immediate action to reduce carbon emissions and calls for the adoption of bold new policies to address global warming before irreversible and catastrophic damage threatens the habitability of the planet. On another front, since the 1980s, multiple waves of resistance have occurred around the world against the uneven transition from state-led development to the neoliberal [...]

Political Report # 1451   Letter from Friar Neto to his friends from abroad Carta do Frei Neto Aos Amigos E Amigas Do Exterior   Carta de Fray Neto a sus amigos del exterior Frei Betto   Frei Betto's Letter - The Brazilian drama encourages us to carry the Frei Betto Letter, addressed to citizens of other countries. We count on your participation in this journey. Carta de Frei Betto - O drama brasileiro nos incita a sermos portadores da Carta de Frei Betto, dirigida a cidadãos de outros paises.  Contamos com sua participação nesta jornada. Carta de Frei Betto - El drama brasileño nos anima a llevar la Carta de Frei Betto, dirigida a ciudadanos de otros países. Contamos con tu participación en este camino. In English: CONTINUE READING HERE > > > Posted by Latin American Perspectives at 12:25 PM 

Political Report # 1450   Walking the Tightrope: Latin America's Pink Tide by Frederick B. Mills, New Politics   Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings Steve Ellner, ed. Foreword by Boaventura de Sousa Santos Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. 355 pp. Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings, edited by economic historian and prominent Latin Americanist Steve Ellner, offers a critical ethical theoretical framework for assessing the performance of left and left-of-center governments in Latin America during the Pink Tide. The “Pink Tide” refers to the wave of progressive governments beginning with the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. These progressive governments provided alternatives to the neoliberal economic model that had brought growing economic and social inequality, austerity, privatization of public resources, and political subordination to Washington to most of the region during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Pink Tide governments were brought to power by widespread disillusion with traditional political parties and were buoyed by social movements that sought economic and social justice and more democratic participation in the political life of their nations. The Pink Tide brought a period of economic nationalism, progress toward regional integration, and the inclusion, [...]

Political Report # 1449   What is Next for Washington After Its Failed Venezuela Strategy? by Steve Ellner, Consortium News   It’s come out in the open now in Washington that the Trump administration’s Venezuela policy is an embarrassing failure but will the next administration wise up, or double down?, asks Steve Ellner. Senator Chris Murphy’s recent characterization of U.S. policy toward Venezuela as an “unmitigated disaster” makes it conspicuously clear that many in the political establishment recognize the need for a change in course. The statement by such an influential Democrat may signal a policy revision toward Venezuela, though not particularly comprehensive, on the part of a Joe Biden administration. Murphy (CT-D), who made his remarks to Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams at an Aug. 4 Foreign Relations Committee hearing, pointed out that dissension within the Venezuelan opposition threatens the leadership of self-proclaimed “president” Juan Guaidó. Murphy asked Abrams: “Is Juan Guaidó [for the Trump administration] going to be the recognized leader of Venezuela permanently, no matter how conditions change on the ground?” The question was a good one because the success of Trump’s Venezuela strategy is predicated on Guaidó’s continued undisputed leadership. There’s no fall-back strategy. Since [...]

Por Rodrigo Yáñez[1] and Daniela García Grandón[2] | Aug. 10, 2020 Por Rodrigo Yáñez[1] and Daniela García Grandón[2] With the expansion of the COVID-19 the society has experienced a return to history. Although we have never escaped it, it seemed as if the levels of hyper-connection and technological advances had put us in another dimension, that of the end of history, different from all time before. To a certain extent, the contemporary view was more open to the idea of colonizing Mars than to remembering past events such as the epidemics that struck Egypt, Rome or Tenochtitlan. This distancing from history can be associated with a growing appreciation in recent decades for the narratives of memory. In Latin America, memory has gained particular relevance since the 1980s and 1990s with the imperative to confront the historical traumas of death and horror that many societies did not always want to remember. Memory became a moral value according to which the past had to be made present so that it would never happen again. In this way, the dispute over memory opened up as a space for redefining societies themselves, a narrative effort by individuals to give meaning to the facts [3]. Revisiting the recent [...]

Political Report #1448 Long Overdue For Latin America: A New “Good Neighbor Policy” | July 28, 2020 by Medea Benjamin and Steve Ellner posted by Counterpounch U.S. policy towards Venezuela has been a fiasco. Try as it might, the Trump regime-change team has been unable to depose President Maduro and finds itself stuck with a self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaidó, who President Trump was reported to have called "a kid" who "doesn't have what it takes." The Venezuelan people have paid a heavy price for Trump's debacle, which has included crippling economic sanctions and coup attempts. So has U.S. prestige internationally, as both the UN and the EU have urged lifting sanctions during the pandemic but the U.S. has refused.   This is only one example of a string of disastrous policies toward Latin America. The Trump administration has dusted off the 19th century Monroe Doctrine that subjugates the nations of the region to U.S. interests. But as in past centuries, U.S. attempts at domination are confronted at every turn by popular resistance. Instead of continuing down this imperial path of endless confrontation, U.S. policymakers need to stop, recalibrate, and design an entirely new approach to inter-American relations. This is [...]

Political Report # 1446 | June 25, 2020 Consortium News, Steve Ellner After nearly a year and a half of all-out efforts at regime change in Venezuela which took a major toll on the Venezuelan people, Trump now tells the world he was never big on the strategy in the first place. On Friday, Trump appeared to shove the blame onto advisors, and added “I think that I wasn’t necessarily in favor” of the policy of recognizing Juan Guaidó as president, but “I was OK with it.”Trump’s statements made it seem as if Guaidó's only sin was that he did not manage to seize power. This might-makes-right mindset belies what is happening on the ground in Venezuela which is much more complicated than just one leader’s approval rating. It also ignores the horrendous suffering of the Venezuelan people due to crippling sanctions imposed in August 2019, the result of a foreign policy decision that Trump now brushes off as a simple mistake. A price is being paid even by those in Washington who are singularly concerned with U.S. prestige. The real story is that Washington placed all its faith in an untested leader of a radical, somewhat fringe, party, [...]

Por: Mauricio F. López Barreto, Posdoctorante en el Centro Peninsular en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Cephcis-UNAM) Traspatio Maya en una comunidad del municipio de Yaxcabá, Yucatán. Fuente: el autor. | July 13, 2020 El advenimiento de la pandemia Covid-19 a principios del año en curso, vino a reforzar la tesis de prestigiosos intelectuales y académicos que el modelo neoliberal ha fracasado. En general, en el ámbito mundial se ensanchó la brecha de la desigualdad, aumentó el número de pobres, se normalizó la concentración de la riqueza en unos pocos, se hizo patente la falta de atención de los gobiernos por los sistemas de salud pública, se impulsó la privatización de empresas públicas, el mercado reguló las transacciones comerciales y se instaló un espíritu perverso de competitividad. En México, la llamada Cuarta Transformación (4T), que preside el Lic. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, surge como la ruptura con el sistema prevaleciente en las últimas cuatro décadas, con vistas a instaurar un nuevo régimen socio-económico sentado sobre bases éticas y humanistas, cuyas directrices para el desmantelamiento del actual modelo neoliberal serían: la atención a los grupos más vulnerables, restaurar la enseñanza de humanidades y [...]