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Latin America
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18th April 2008 | Issue 629 - MAYAN THE FORCE BE WITH YOU - As isolated Mayan communities in Guatemala fight against an enormous hydro-electric dam on their land...

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16th November 2007 | Issue 611 - BOLIVIAN MARCHING POWER - as the Latin American country kicks back against elite rule...
Yesterday (15th), thousands of Bolivian farmers declared themselves in a state of emergency to save the rights granted to them under the new constitution. They have surrounded the Constituent Assembly in Sucre, to protect it from organised opposition gangs working for Bolivia's elites.

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18th August 2006 | Issue 556 - ON THE FIDEL -
Battle for the future of Cuba after Castro - Fidel Castro’s laid up in bed, with possibly weeks to live. He’s had to hand the reins of power to his brother Raul, only five years younger and not terribly popular. Cuba’s status as an alternative model of development for Latin America is clearly under threat. Over the water in Miami thousands of exiled Cubans were disappointed that Old Fifi made his 80th birthday earlier this week (13th August) but it’s the end of an era and what happens next is the hot topic on the streets of Havana.

12th May 2006 | Issue 543 - FLOWER POWER - Resistance to police repression grows in Mexico - In Texcoco, (just east of Mexico city) a flower market was the flashpoint for a bloody showdown between the state and a local community hell-bent on self-rule and autonomy. All this took place against the backdrop of the Mexican elections and the Zapatista inspired 'Alternative Campaign' which is touring the country attempting to build an anti-capitalist coalition.

22nd July 2005 | Issue 505 - TERRA-ISTS STRIKE BACK - It was the largest march in Brazilian history, but was much more than a march. For a start it lasted 17 days. The landless farmers’ movement, the Movimento Sem Terra, or MST, is maybe the most dynamic direct action movement in the world. Embarking on their most ambitious action to date they brought 12,000 marchers from 23 states to walk 238 kilometres to the Brazilian capital Brasilia to demand land reform. From a frail 97-year-old man to an 18-year-old seven months pregnant, the marchers took on not just the government but Brazil’s big landowners in the decades-old fight for land.

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9th February 2001 | Issue 292 - FISTFUL OF DOLLARS - Ecuador is currently under a state of emergency after thousands of protestors took to the streets to demand the government withdraw sweeping price rises across the country. Thanks to yet another one of those structural adjustment programmes so beloved by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the price of cooking fuel has doubled, petrol prices have risen sharply and bus fares have increased by 75%. However, the government has stated that their economic policy was not negotiatable “as it constitutes the fundamental backbone of the stabilisation plan for dollarisation and the predictions of growth”, as agreed with the IMF.

8th December 2000 | Issue 286 - TRICKLE DOWN - Imagine getting a water bill that cost you one third of your wages. Or needing a permit to collect rainwater in rooftop tanks. This was a reality for some of Bolivia’s poorest families when the Government sold the public water system with Bechtel taking a major share. The charges that the company imposed on peasant families were so crippling that they sparked mass protest. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Cochabamba City in April. Soldiers sent in to quell the protests killed six and injured hundreds others. The Governor of the State resigned saying he did not want to be responsible for the ‘bloodbath’ that would follow the Bolivian Government’s refusal to reverse the privatisation. But in the end, the protestors won – Bechtel were kicked out of Bolivia and the Government accepted the protestors’ demands to put control of water in local hands.