History has not been kind to the indigenous Raramuri people of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Pushed to remote mountains of a harsh land by Spanish and mestizo colonists, the Raramuri managed to hang on to their culture while eking out an existence based on rain-fed farming and small herd grazing. In recent decades their lands have been invaded again, this time by cattlemen, loggers, miners, dope growers, tourism developers, and soldiers.
Despite the serious harm caused by agrochemical fumigation across South America’s Southern Cone, there is a surprising lack of debate and little media coverage on the issue. It has been an uphill battle to build grassroots movements to regulate– and eventually eliminate– certain practices that are prohibited in other countries, like aerial fumigations.
There are many kinds of war. The classic image of a uniformed soldier kissing mom good-bye to risk his life on the battlefield has changed dramatically. In today’s wars, it’s more likely that mom will be the one killed. UNIFEM states that by the mid-1990s, 90% of war casualties were civilians– mostly women and children.
The Americas Program has signed the pronouncement against death threats to social and human rights organizations in Barrancabermeja, Colombia. We fully support the pronouncement and encourage others to do the same.
The Obama administration’s defense strategy review, unveiled at the Pentagon on January 6th, is already under attack. Republican front-runner Mitt Romney has argued that the plan is naïve and dangerous. Independent experts such as Russell Rumbaugh of the Washington, DC-based Stimson Center have criticized the plan for being too timid in its pursuit of Pentagon spending reductions. A point that has not received adequate attention is the fact that the modest reductions contained in the Obama plan would still leave the United States military with unparalleled global reach at time when traditional military threats are rapidly receding.
Over the 27 years since IRCA, a general division has marked the U.S. immigrant rights movement. On one side are well-financed advocacy organizations in Washington DC, with links to the Democratic Party and large corporations. They formulate and negotiate over immigration reform proposals that combine labor supply programs and increased enforcement against the undocumented. On the other side are organizations based in immigrant communities, and among labor and political activists, who defend undocumented migrants, and who resist proposals for greater enforcement and labor programs with diminished rights.
The November vigil to close the School of the Americas (SOA), that U.S. Army training school at Ft. Benning that instructs soldiers and military personnel from Latin American countries,, brought together hundreds of anti-militarization activists from around the hemisphere.
