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by LAP Editor, William I. RobinsonPosted by NACLAWith seven opposition presidential candidates imprisoned and held incommunicado in the months leading up to the vote and all the remaining contenders but one from miniscule parties closely allied with President Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the results of Nicaragua’s November 7 presidential elections were a foregone conclusion. The government declared after polls closed that Ortega won 75 percent of the vote and that 65 percent of voters cast ballots. The independent voting rights organization Urnas Abiertas, meanwhile, reported an abstention rate of approximately 80 percent and widespread irregularities at polling stations around the country.The vote was carried out in a climate of fear and intimidation, with a total absence of safeguards against fraud.The vote was carried out in a climate of fear and intimidation, with a total absence of safeguards against fraud. In a complete breakdown of the rule of law, Ortega carried out a wave of repression from May to October, leading the opposition to issue a joint statement on October 7 calling for a boycott of the election. Several dozen opposition figures—among them, presidential candidates, peasant, labor, and student leaders, journalists, and environmentalists—were arrested and detained without trial, while [...]

by Steve EllnerPosted by Venezuelanalysis.com It seems just yesterday that Eliot Abrams declared the Trump administration was "working hard" to oust President Nicolas Maduro from office. Now Abrams (currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations), along with the Biden administration, is urging the Venezuelan opposition to participate in the state and local elections slated for November 21. Washington’s change of tack, however, is a far cry from renouncing the right to intervene in Venezuela’s internal affairs. Not surprisingly, Washington has prevailed on the rightist opposition led by self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López to abandon their three-year policy of boycotting elections, which they claimed totally lacks legitimacy. Electoral participation is a hard pill for both politicians to swallow because it shatters the illusion nurtured by Washington that Guaidó is the rightful and existing president and that he is just days or weeks from occupying the presidential palace. In the way of damage control López announced that he opposed participation in the November contests but that the rank and file of his and Guaidó’s Voluntad Popular party pressured him into accepting the new line. López, who represents an extreme position even within his party, was for the U.S. “our [...]

Edited by Steve Ellner A review by Angelo Rivero Santos | NACLAfrom our LAP Classroom Series On September 26, 2000, during the inauguration of the second summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEP), President Hugo Chávez urged its members to recognize that the “worst environmental catastrophe facing the world is human poverty.” He called for unity through the promotion of a “social and egalitarian model of economic development to eradicate poverty” in member countries. Until his untimely death on March 5, 2013, petroleum, and the profits it produced during the commodities boom (2000-2014), would be at the heart of Venezuela’s extractive development model and foreign policy. The election of Chávez as president of Venezuela in 1998 marked the beginning of the Pink Tide, a period when several progressive governments came to power in Latin America. Left-leaning leaders were elected in Brazil (2002), Argentina (2003), Bolivia (2005), Uruguay (2005), and Ecuador (2006). Citizens chose these Pink Tide governments in reaction to the disastrous social consequences of the Washington Consensus’s neoliberal policies. Although they emerged in different socio-cultural, political, geo-political and economic contexts, Pink Tide governments in Latin America shared the goal of restoring the role of the [...]

edited by William I. Robison https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/48/6 Debate is heating up among scholars over the ongoing crisis in Nicaragua. For some, the Ortega-Murillo government is a continuation of the 1980s Sandinista revolution while for others it is a corrupt and nepotistic regime that has promoted capitalist expansion while carrying out harsh repression against its opponents. This symposium brings together 10 scholars who debate the crisis at a time when it is generating deep fissures among the left and progressives in and out of the academy. This issue also includes two commentaries on the July 11, 2021 protests in Cuba as well as nine additional articles on a variety of topics including indigenous movements, agriculture, precarious work, religion, and film as well as a number of book reviews.

by Steve Ellner LAP’s Political Report 1459 titled “The Washington Consensus Arrives in Brazil,” takes an uncritical look at Jair Bolsonaro and his policies. At first glance, the article appears to be neutral and the authors, Marc Castillo and Sírio Sapper, impartial analysts. Neither of these initial impressions are the case and indeed elsewhere both authors have defended the policies of the Bolsonaro government. A careful reading of Political Report 1459 reveals that the article, albeit for the most part subtly, justifies Bolsonaro’s policies and his presidency. At the same time, there is absolutely nothing in it that is at all critical of the Brazilian president. Below I provide quotes from the article which demonstrate the point I am making.Latin American Perspectives correctly does not adhere to a specific political line or ideology, but we are nevertheless on the left. I also believe it is acceptable that we publish articles that fall outside of the left side of the political spectrum or ones that are politically neutral (if such a thing exists). At the same time, we have not over the years published articles that even remotely support the positions of the political right. “Political neutrality” may or may not exist [...]

By: Tony Wood | 30 August 2021Nearly two months after Pedro Castillo’s narrow victory in Peru’s second-round runoff, the new president has only just managed to get his first cabinet appointed. The 73 to 50 vote through which the Peruvian Congress approved the ministers on 27 August came at the end of several weeks of obstruction and outcry from the opposition. This included a prolonged refusal by Keiko Fujimori, the defeated candidate, to acknowledge the result, as well as yet more of the hysterical redbaiting that had marked the presidential campaign. The turbulent weeks since the 6 June election provide a depressingly clear indication of what Castillo can expect in the months (and indeed years) ahead; yet at the same time, they also amply demonstrate the profound dysfunction that brought him to power in the first place.The Peruvian political establishment has in many ways still not recovered from the initial shock of the first round of voting on 11 April. Though the field was crowded, few expected Castillo, the former leader of the teachers’ union and a native of the northern province of Cajamarca, to emerge as the front-runner with 18% of the vote. Still more surprising was that [...]

by Esteban Morales DomínguezAlthough it still causes many prejudices, misunderstandings and challenges, there is no choice but to pay attention to skin color. Above all, in its consideration within the media and national statistics.Cuban society is a multiracial society, or rather, multicolored, mestizo. And that reality has to be registered statistically. Not by handling the Census as a simply numerical matter, but as a cultural demographic one.It is about the fact that color is a legacy of slavery. It is not possible to avoid it, since it has marked Cuban society since its origins.When the Spaniards arrived in Cuba, in 1492, they did it with white credentials and that is how they stayed. Those who came of their own free will did so in search of a fortune, which they often found.But Spain is not White. Colonized by the Arabs for 800 years, it is impossible to consider it as such. Even when the Spanish do not assume that identity.So, the colonizers of our Archipelago were not white. Their power did not consist in being white, but in having arrived with the cross and the sword.They arrived in a territory of indigenous people, of low culture and they only [...]

by Marc Castillo and Sírio SapperAbstractJohn Williamson´s renown paper "The Washington Consensus" while causing controversy is nothing more than basic capitalist tenants.  Brazil has been undergoing a "Washington Consensus" transformation for decades now.  During the last several years this evolution has progressed at a more ambitious pace.  This paper examines the actions and mechanisms that the Bolsonaro administration has undertaken to make free market principles more concrete in Brazil.Keywords:  Free Market Principles, Brazil Economy, Bolsonaro Administration, Brazil, Brazilian PoliticsTHE WASHINGTON CONSENSUS AND BRAZIL: CONTEXTUALIZATIONThe ‘Washington Consensus’ has arrived in Brazil and it is there to stay.  In 1989, US Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady came out with a solution to the immediate debt crisis faced by countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Panama, and Peru among others at the time.  Shaped as a debt refinancing agreement, the initiative proposed extended terms between creditors and debtors under specific requirements to be fulfilled.  Though it is not thought of, several of the economic initiatives used by various Brazilian governments throughout the last several decades have heralded from the famous work of John Williamson called "A Short History Of The Washington Consensus, " these reforms haven given way to privatization and in a [...]

LAP Blog Exclusive"To reach the unreachable star. This is my quest, To follow that star No matter how hopeless, No matter how far." Don Quixote’s elusive quest is a fitting metaphor for Puerto Rico’s statehood movement. For over 120 years Puerto Rican annexationists have campaigned to convert the archipelago into a state of the Union. In 1899, one year after Spain was forced to cede Puerto Rico to the United States, the island’s Republican Party and the Federal Party called for the archipelago’s “definitive and sincere annexation.” Consistent with their understanding of U.S. territorial policy, the annexationists expected that Puerto Rico would automatically become an incorporated organized territory, and eventually be granted statehood. This clearly did not happen. The Supreme Court ruled in 1901 (Bidwell v Downes) that since Puerto Rico was “inhabited by alien races differing from us in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation, and modes of thought” it would be barred from admission into the Union until that time when “our own theories may be carried out and the blessings of free government under the Constitution extended to them.”  Puerto Rico long ago acquired these attributes, which are central to the creed of American exceptionalism, but it still languishes as the [...]