After President Ollanta Humala’s state visit to Venezuela Jan 7, and despite some adverse reactions to the visit in Peru, Humala announced that the two countries have “succeeded in turning away from the bilateral politics of the past in which nothing major had been accomplished in diplomatic, commercial and cultural relations.”
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.
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.
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.
One of the last century’s most notorious despots, Jean-Claude Duvalier, has returned to Haiti after 25 years in exile. The most effective way for the United States and the MINUSTAH-contributing countries of Latin America to help Haiti would be to provide the support it needs to hold accountable those who flagrantly and violently abuse power at the great expense of the Haitian population.
By Alfredo Acedo When Solón attended the COP16 last year in Cancun, Mexico, he still served as Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN and led his country’s delegation at the talks on global warming with a strong position based on the Peoples’ Agreement of Cochabamba. The Cochabamba Agreement firmly identified the underlying cause of the climate [...]
