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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 [...]

Political Report #1447 How will Venezuela's High Court Affect the Election? comments by Steve Ellner and Marc Becker, LAP Editors  featured Q&A | July 10, 2020 published at Latin America Advisor Venezuela's Supreme Court earlier this month seated a new electoral commission after ruling that the opposition-controlled National Assembly did not appoint rectors to the country's electoral authority in time. How will the Supreme Court's actions affect the scheduling of the election and its outcome? Is Juan Guaidó, who has international recognition as Venezuela's legitimate president, likely to lose his position this year as National Assembly president? How would such a loss for Guaidó affect his standing within Venezuela's opposition and on the world stage? Venezuela Supreme Tribunal of Justice Delivers Juan Guaidó Another Blow Latin America Advisor published by the Inter-American Dialogue June 23, 2020 by Steve Ellner   The decision of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice to name all five members of the National Electoral Commission opens the door for the holding of elections for the National Assembly (AN) in December. Juan Guaidó will undoubtedly be replaced as the AN's president, thus undermining the legitimacy of Washington's strategy to achieve regime change in Venezuela. In one sense, the [...]

Political Report # 1446 Trump’s Second Thoughts on Juan Guaido are Not Enough Consortium News — by 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, that strong [...]

Neoliberal Urbanization and Synergistic Violence in Postearthquake Concepción | July 3, 2020 by Christian Paulo Matus Madrid, Rodrigo Ganter, Juan Antonio Carrasco, and Camila Barraza Huaiquimilla The Chilean neoliberal state’s institutional strategy for displacing a historical population from Aurora de Chile, a centrally located area with real estate value in the city of Concepción, combined three types of violence: shock urbanization, which used the 2010 earthquake as an opportunity to impose the construction of major infrastructure, the construction of public opinion aimed at naturalizing displacement, and the strategic use of participation as a disciplinary socio-technical device to legitimize a solution to the conflict that guaranteed the building of the Bicentennial Bridge. The deployment of this synergistic, multifaceted violence was a sophisticated management technique associated with a neoliberal urban rationality that contributed to the process of urban renewal.   CONTINUE READING FULL ARTICLE HERE CONTINUE READING HERE > > > Posted by Latin American Perspectives at 1:27 PM No comments:   Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Labels: Chile, May 2020 issue, Neoliberalism, Urbanization, Violence

Remittances, the Rescaling of Social Conflicts, and the Stasis of Elite Rule in El Salvador  by Hannes Warnecke-Berger | July 1, 2020 Remittances are the dominant factor in the contemporary economy of El Salvador, which is enjoying a new comparative advantage in the international economic system—the export of cheap labor to the Global North and particularly the United States. The Salvadoran economy is part of a transnational economic space, but this space is perverse: Although the poor are nominally receiving more money, remittances cause them to be caught in a vicious cycle of economic instability. At the same time, the elites are able to access remittances indirectly by becoming a Keynesian oligarchy—an oligarchy that extracts wealth by controlling the demand structure of the economy instead of production. Remittances represent bread and butter for the poor and a vehicle for transnationalization for the rich, and this leads to a new stasis of elite rule: remittances provoke the rescaling of social conflicts in favor of elites. Transnationalism in this regard must be interpreted as an elite strategy for suppressing the bargaining power of the subaltern class. In this transnational remittances economy, opportunities for the subaltern class and migrants to participate directly [...]

by Hannes Warnecke-Berger  | July 1, 2020 Remittances are the dominant factor in the contemporary economy of El Salvador, which is enjoying a new comparative advantage in the international economic system—the export of cheap labor to the Global North and particularly the United States. The Salvadoran economy is part of a transnational economic space, but this space is perverse: Although the poor are nominally receiving more money, remittances cause them to be caught in a vicious cycle of economic instability. At the same time, the elites are able to access remittances indirectly by becoming a Keynesian oligarchy—an oligarchy that extracts wealth by controlling the demand structure of the economy instead of production. Remittances represent bread and butter for the poor and a vehicle for transnationalization for the rich, and this leads to a new stasis of elite rule: remittances provoke the rescaling of social conflicts in favor of elites. Transnationalism in this regard must be interpreted as an elite strategy for suppressing the bargaining power of the subaltern class. In this transnational remittances economy, opportunities for the subaltern class and migrants to participate directly in reshaping this economic space are limited or nonexistent. As a consequence, they must rely [...]