latam

This past week, federal authorities raided the home of Rio City Councilman Carlos Bolsonaro, son of former fascist President Jair Bolsonaro. (Interestingly, the Bolsonaros happened to have left to go fishing at 5 am shortly before the raid occurred).

As part of the investigation, the Brazilian federal police have revealed that the Brazilian intelligence agency ABIN worked with Israeli intelligence to spy on the electronic communications of over 30,000 Brazilian political dissidents, setting up a “parallel” agency to spy on political dissidents.

It has now been revealed that this group was used to spy on the ex-Rio state prosecutor Simone Sibolio, who was charged with leading the investigation into the assassination of Rio City Councilwoman Marielle Franco.

Sibolio left the prosecution in 2021, citing “federal interference” as making it impossible to investigate the case.

The gunman, who killed Marielle Franco, happened to have breakfast with Bolsonaro on the morning of the assassination in 2018 when Bolsonaro. At the time, Bolsonaro was a controversial Rio City Councilman with close ties to the paramilitary gangs that Marielle Franco was investigating as a Rio City Councilwoman.

Many questions linger in Brazil as to why the Bolsonaros just happened to take off on an early morning fishing trip right before federal police raided their home. Some suggest that they may have taken the fishing trip to destroy files.

read more: https://paydayreport.com/brazilian-intel-agency-spied-on-prosecutor-in-marielle-franco-case-teamsters-prez-settles-2-9-million-racial-discrimination-case-5000-minneapolis-teachers-walk-out/

Cuban revolutionary who founded the Rebel Army and one of its main leaders, together with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Raúl Castro and Juan Almeida, during the National Liberation War against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. He was also known as "El Comandante del Pueblo", "El Señor de la Vanguardia", "Héroe de Yaguajay" or "el héroe del sombrero alón" was an outstanding revolutionary of humble extraction and wide popular ascendancy due to his jovial character and natural detachment.

Camilo Cienfuegos was born in Lawton, Havana, on February 6, 1932. On September 21, 1949, at the age of 17, he entered the San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts. Later, on March 10, 1952, when the military coup d'état led by Batista took place, Cienfuegos and a group of students went to the University in search of weapons to resist the dictatorship. At that time he established friendships with other young people who would play an important role in later events, Carlos Leijás, Israel Tápanes, Reinaldo Benítez and the brothers Mario and José Fuentes.

However, economic problems were serious and he dropped out of school and later traveled to the United States. He participated in several demonstrations and wrote for the newspaper La Voz de Cuba a critical article against Batista entitled "Moral Identification". But in 1955 in San Francisco he was arrested and deported to Cuba, joining the student struggles and being wounded in a protest demonstration. Imprisoned, tortured and booked by the dictatorial regime's hired assassins, he had to return to the path of exile in New York, joining the revolutionary opposition in exile.

On December 14, 1955, he was wounded by a firearm during a demonstration in honor of the Cuban independence hero Antonio Maceo; however, that did not prevent him from participating in the event commemorating the 103rd anniversary of the birth of José Martí in the Central Park. Once again, he was beaten and taken to the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (BRAC) where he was registered as a communist by the dictatorial government. Due to these circumstances, he decided to go into exile and in March 1956 he traveled again to the United States.

In September he was in Mexico, where he managed to establish contact with Fidel Castro, who was organizing a revolutionary expedition that would return to Cuba to begin the struggle against the Batista regime. Cienfuegos was the last one chosen, because he had no practical military knowledge, so he was sent to the camp in Abasolo, Tamaulipas, where he received training in guerrilla warfare and shooting practice. He received his baptism of fire along with his comrades in Alegria de Pio, on December 5, 1956.

A year later, in 1957, column number 4 was created, daughter of the mother column "José Martí", under the command of commander Ernesto Che Guevara. In the group, Cienfuegos fulfilled his role as head of the vanguard. In March 1958 he became the first leader of the movement to take the combat beyond the Sierra Maestra, to the Cauto plains. After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Cienfuegos became part of the high command of the Revolutionary Army as its supreme chief. Commander Camilo Cienfuegos was much loved for his humility, simplicity and frank smile, and his popularity was even compared to that of the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

Thus, we can highlight Camilo Cienfuegos as one of the most important and beloved leaders during the revolutionary process that led Cuba to its definitive independence in 1959. On the other hand, he contributed to the political education of the members of the armed forces and the Cuban people. Likewise, in his speeches he made reference to the unity of the revolutionaries, to freedom, to the importance of the agrarian reform and other measures of the Revolution and he particularly dealt with the role and work of the members of the Armed Forces.

On the evening of October 28th, 1959, Cienfuegos' Cessna 310 ('FAR-53') disappeared over the Straits of Florida during a night flight, returning from Camagüey to Havana. Despite several days of searching, his plane was not found. By mid-November, Cienfuegos was presumed lost at sea. In 1979, the Cuban government established the "Order of Cienfuegos" in his honor.

• Amistad entre Camilo Cienfuegos y Ernesto Guevara :che-smile:

• el Che habla de camilo :che-poggers:

• El último discurso de Camilo Cienfuegos :fidel-salute:

• Documental: Camilo, Érase una vez un Comandante (Revolución Cubana) :fidel-salute-big: este es muy bueno, lo recomiendo

• Camilo Cienfuegos :red-fist:

hello everyone - happy Black history month 🌌 here's a massive archive list of Black and Marxist writing and film (with downloads!) to check out xoxo

• @777

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Rural land concentration compounds inequality and threatens democracy. Through grassroots land reform, this movement offers hope.

This month marks the 40th anniversary of the largest social movement in the Americas: Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, or MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in Portuguese).

What began as a group of displaced farmers has evolved over decades into a mass movement — with as many as two million members and a presence in 24 of Brazil’s 26 states. Today, the movement is the largest producer of organic food in Brazil and the largest producer of organic rice in all Latin America.

While Brazil remains one of the world’s most unequal nations, the MST has made incredible progress during their 40 years of existence — achievements that can inspire efforts to reduce rural inequality in the United States and elsewhere.

read more: https://fpif.org/brazils-landless-workers-movement-turns-forty/

The GGT, the most powerful labor union in the country, hopes to mobilize at least 40,000 people in Buenos Aires to protest the executive’s plans to scale back the state

Javier Milei is facing his first big challenge on the streets. The general strike called by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) to protest the Argentine president’s economic policies has swelled into a mass anti-government protest. In addition to the CGT — the largest labor union in the country —, social movements and communities affected by Milei’s sweeping reform plans will march down the streets of Buenos Aires to the doors of Congress on Wednesday. Social organizations expect at least 40,000 people will attend the demonstration in the capital.

Under the Bolivarian revolution, militarization has permeated all facets of politics and society, capturing institutional power as the ambit of the Armed Forces repeatedly expands.

In a perfect example of civil–military union,” reads a tweet posted in 2017 on the official account of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB), “@VladimirPadrino supervises the distribution of [food baskets] in Valles del Tuy.” In one of three photos included with the tweet, Venezuelan defense minister General Vladimir Padrino López squats over a large map spread on the floor. Dressed in uniform and pointing to an area on the map, Padrino López’s pose suggests a similarity between food distribution to poor Venezuelans and the logistics of deploying troops across a conflict zone.

The imagery reminiscent of war is no coincidence. President Nicolás Maduro created the food distribution program through Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP) in April 2016 to counter the effects of what he called an “economic war,” which he blamed on the Venezuelan elites. Food shortages, speculation, and the hoarding of basic goods like flour and toiletries were commonplace at the time.

“It is a tremendous battle to stabilize the entire economy, identifying the evildoers who wage war against the people and taking away their power,” said Maduro during a state television broadcast announcing the program. In a separate address, he added: “An economic revolution has begun in the food distribution system of Venezuelans by means of socialism.”

To coordinate the “battle” for food distribution, Maduro put Padrino López in charge of an ambitious social program, the Gran Misión de Abastecimiento Soberano (Great Sovereign Supply Mission), one of dozens of similar social missions that became a signature of Hugo Chávez’s government beginning in 2003. With activities spanning the food supply chain—encompassing production, distribution, commercialization, regulation, and development for import substitution—Misión Abastecimiento aimed to shore up the supply of food, medicine, and hygiene products, with ripple effects in other areas like seed production and animal feed. During the initial announcement, Maduro described the program as “a major civil-military effort, the first civil-military Misión to be created.”

Couched in a logic of security, defense of national sovereignty, and development, Misión Abastecimiento offers one example of how Venezuela’s Armed Forces under Maduro are involved in every activity deemed strategic by the Venezuelan state. This builds on a gradual shift beginning under Chávez in the early 2000s that has transformed the Venezuelan Armed Forces materially, symbolically, and ideologically. The government’s strong control over the Armed Forces became clear aft er the opposition tried and failed to encourage mass desertions to boost self-declared interim president Juan Guaidó in 2019. Today, given the limitations of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) to serve as vanguard of the revolution, the FANB has embraced that role.

This is best illustrated in the rising proportion of military officials occupying key ministries. In 2014, a quarter of the cabinet was made up of military officers. By September 2023, according to the civil society organization Control Ciudadano, 13 of 33 ministers in Maduro’s cabinet—roughly 40 percent—were military officers, and 9 of those 13 were on active duty. Generals and former generals now run ministries overseeing food, agriculture, oil, mining, water resources, transport, energy, housing, and public works, in addition to defense and security, justice, and prisons.

Meanwhile, in June 2022, the Maduro government launched the Community–Military Brigades for Health and Education (BRICOMILES), deploying the Armed Forces into schools and health centers to repair decaying infrastructure. When community-based organizations, such as communes and communal councils, request services like rebuilding, repainting, and facility upgrading, the Armed Forces send troops to carry out the works locally.

Maduro has described BRICOMILES as “a solution that brings together the people and the FANB even more.” He added: “We have to be united—popular power, military power, social power, political power. We must continue working together with the people.”

As with social programs, the influence of the Armed Forces over strategic sectors of the economy has also grown, particularly under Maduro. Transparencia Venezuela, a chapter of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International, describes the Armed Forces as “a corporation with increasing economic power in several areas of business.” The FANB owns at least 24 companies in areas including banking, construction, agroindustry, oil and gas, mining, and transport, according to a November 2021 report by Transparencia Venezuela. Crucially, all but six of all military-owned enterprises came into existence under Maduro. In addition, military officers sit on the boards of more than one in 10—a total of 103—of the 925 companies that are completely or partially publicly owned.

A March 2022 report by Control Ciudadano notes that military-owned companies often “perform unconstitutional activities, incompatible with those attributed to the FANB.” According to the report, Compañía Anónima Militar de Industrias Mineras, Petrolíferas y de Gas (CAMIMPEG), a military limited company created in 2016 to carry out extractive activities in the mining, oil, and gas sectors, and Empresa Militar para el Aprovechamiento Sustentable de Productos Forestales y Recursos Naturales SA (EMASPROFORN), established in 2020 to make sustainable use of natural and forest resources, are among the most controversial of the lot. These two companies’ “environmental exploitation activities,” the report notes, “are irreconcilable with the role of environmental guardian assigned to the military institution.”

The government justified the creation of CAMIMPEG in 2016 citing the need to secure national resources in the context of a global energy race, but the opposition expressed concerns that it could weaken oversight in the oil sector—Venezuela’s main source of income and a provider of endless opportunities for corruption.

read more: https://nacla.org/venezuela-war-of-all-people

As corporate boosters push to shift supply chains from China to northern Mexico, military expansion in the borderlands secures manufacturing zones for transnational capital.

In 2021, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, industry promoter Jon Barela testified at a joint hearing of the Texas House. CEO of the Borderplex Alliance—an El Paso, Texas-based economic development organization representing the leading voices of the maquiladora, construction, and fossil fuel industries on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border—Barela spoke at length about “an incredible, maybe once in a generation opportunity.” He was referring to the benefits of nearshoring—a term used by pundits, journalists, and government actors to refer to the relocation, or return, of manufacturing from China to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

Barela and his associates hope that these relocation efforts will target the “Paso del Norte region,” a historical moniker local elites use to refer to the binational region encompassing the cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. He predicted a coming wave of nearshoring—“at least 100,000 jobs to the border region if we play our cards right”—due to the borderlands’ longstanding importance as a major manufacturing hub.

Ciudad Juárez, the birthplace of the maquiladora in the 1960s, is densely packed with (mostly) foreign-owned factories where goods are manually assembled for export, mainly to U.S. markets. In his testimony, Barela linked nearshoring to transnational corporations’ efforts to reduce transportation and labor costs and to combat supply chain disruption. This, he argued, was particularly important in the context of the Covid-19 crisis, which saw companies scrambling to fulfill orders as factories shut their doors during the pandemic’s onset.

In his remarks, Barela also highlighted geopolitical tensions between the United States and China as a driver of the coming “return” of manufacturing to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. He argued that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s revival of the “common prosperity” concept in 2021 has amounted to “a return to Maoism.” “For that reason,” he said, “businesses are getting scared, and they are looking at very much returning to North America for manufacturing and other investments.”

Barela’s invocation of Maoism is representative of a wave of anti-China rhetoric leveraged by pundits and politicians in the United States, where transpacific economic competition has become increasingly wedded to a haphazard reignition of Cold War lingo. In this context, the movement of manufacturing from China to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands is depicted as a national security concern or political imperative, de-linked from the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains by transnational corporations seeking to lower production costs.

read more: https://nacla.org/nearshoring-and-militarization-us-mexico-border

Following the abolition of the Army, narratives celebrating Central America’s most peaceful nation have masked a militarized policing model shaped by U.S.-sponsored counterinsurgency.

Costa Rica is regularly depicted as Central America’s Switzerland to the extent that it has become a cliché. This image is the result of a decades-long self-fashioning effort through which the Costa Rican state has sought to make itself known as a place of stability, safety, and peace. And indeed, the country’s record is outstanding, especially when compared to its Central American neighbors.

Yet since the abolition of the Army 75 years ago, the longstanding military pedigree of local law enforcement reveals the idea of “demilitarized” Costa Rica is more of a myth than reality.

Once its 44-day-long civil war concluded in April 1948, Costa Rica outperformed other Central American countries on the economic front and built a welfare state that is second to none in the region. Not unrelated, Costa Rica, together with Colombia, exhibits the longest democratic track record in Latin America. Maybe even more remarkably, the country has been an enclave of peace. This makes Costa Rica an outlier in a region whose recent past was tainted by violent internal strife and military dictatorships, infamous for their unaccountable state repression, severe human rights violations, and terrorizing of entire societies, at times with genocidal proportions.

read more: https://nacla.org/myth-demilitarization-costa-rica

A Puerto Rican demilitarization activist reflects on the decades-long struggle to urge U.S. forces to withdraw from the island and the ongoing challenges Viequenses face today.

In 2003, the Puerto Rican island of Vieques won an important victory. After years of citizen-led struggle, the United States Navy ceased using the territory as a testing range for military activities, a practice it employed for more than six decades. Twenty years after the end of the bombings, many debts to the residents of Vieques remain regarding outstanding needs to restore the environment, end lasting violence, and ensure respect for the human rights of the community.

Myrna Pagán is an octogenarian leader who participated in the movement for demilitarization and has lived for decades in the Esperanza neighborhood, on the south side of Vieques. Today, she has children and grandchildren on the island.

Pagán is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents from Juncos and Rio Grande. They met in New York, and her life revolved around visits to Puerto Rico and returns to New York. “I was born in Puerto Rico, in San Juan,” she says. “Before I was two years old, my parents had returned to New York, where I grew up and where I studied until college. I left the city of New York to go to a couple of women’s universities.”

Pagán had an interest in literature and theater. “I studied fine arts, that’s when I started to grow, I think … and I entered a very interesting time in my life when I started to travel to South America, and part of that was always singing or in theater,” she recalls. “Then I visited Vieques for the first time.” A friend “who had trained for the Korean War here in Vieques fell in love with the island,” she remembers. “He quit the Marines and returned to Puerto Rico, and he settled in Vieques.” She then decided to live on the island.

read more: https://nacla.org/how-people-of-vieques-evicted-us-navy

Sounds like a cool place to hang with some comrades.

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) welcomes the decision of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) in Brazil to cancel the “Innovation Challenge Brazil – Israel” over Israel’s military assault that has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

In a statement, UFC clarified that it stands “firmly against the war and is outraged by all the loss of human life and the destruction that have occurred.”

Israel is currently carrying out what legal experts have defined as an unfolding genocide, using starvation and thirst as weapons.

Holding an “innovation challenge” with complicit Israeli institutions on topics such as food security and water and sanitation, would have been a grave affront to the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza struggling for their lives under Israel’s brutal bombing campaign and siege.

Initiatives such as these aimed at strengthening ties with complicit Israeli institutions are part of the close-an-eye culture of impunity that has allowed Israel to carry out the world’s first livestreamed genocide and maintain its apartheid rule oppressing Palestinians.

“Innovation Challenge” partner Ben Gurion University partners with Israel’s Ministry of Defense and Israeli weapons companies currently carrying out the genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza, including Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries.

In addition, the Israeli military is building a technology campus next to Ben Gurion University, aimed at furthering the ties between the military and BGU. A brigadier general at the ribbon cutting ceremony said it will “reinforce the army's operational capabilities.”

We thank UFC community members for campaigning to raise awareness, refusing business-as-usual with Israel’s genocidal regime, and successfully working to cancel this partnership.

We urge all universities, academic associations, faculty unions and student groups to work to cancel all ties with complicit Israeli institutions as a contribution to stopping Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza and to dismantling its apartheid regime.

link: https://bdsmovement.net/news/brazilian-university-cancels-innovation-challenge-with-complicit-israeli-university

On Friday, Indigenous organizations called for a massive march in response to the threats of a coup d'état through which Attorney General Consuelo Porras intends to prevent the inauguration of Bernardo Arevalo as Guatemala's president on Sunday.

Previously, on Thursday, the Guatemalan Supreme Court ruled against the arrest of Vice President-elect Karin Herrera and four judges of the Electoral Court.

This happened amid rumors that Attorney General Consuelo Porras intends to make these arrests, which would hinder the inauguration of the new president.

Since Arevalo came second in the first round of the elections in June 2023 and won the runoff by a landslide two months later, the Prosecutor's Office has sought to establish court cases to prevent the new authorities from taking office.

The Seed Movement and other progressive political and social organizations have described this “lawfare” as an "attempted coup d'état." This week, the Vice President-elect Herrera requested legal protection to avoid her arrest.

read more: https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Guatemalan-Indigenous-Peoples-to-Defend-Arevalos-Inauguration-20240112-0009.html

Good stuff.

• On Dec. 17, 55% of Chilean voters rejected a proposal to reform the country’s Constitution, which dates back to the Augusto Pinochet regime; it was the second attempt, after a different proposal failed to get approval in September 2022.
• The latest proposed text, drafted mainly by conservatives, did not make significant progress on environmental and climate change topics, experts say.
• The 2022 draft included an entire chapter on the environment and made provisions on nature’s rights, while expanding protections against extractive industries. But concerns regarding the nationalization of water resources contributed to the “no” vote.

On Dec. 17, Chile said no to a proposal to change the country’s Constitution, with 55% of voters rejecting a second try at reforming the country’s fundamental law. The first attempt was rejected in September 2022 by a 62% majority.

The drive to rewrite the Constitution arose in 2019, as a political response to civil society protests that shook Chile for months, as people demanded an end to inequality, expensive health care and education, low pensions and a neoliberal system that seemed to benefit only the wealthy. The protests even led to Chile withdrawing last minute from hosting COP25.

Chile’s current fundamental law dates back to 1980 and the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and has been blamed for paving the way for privatizations, a booming business sector, and an economy focused on extraction and exploitation of Chile’s numerous minerals, while minimizing social rights and the role of the state.

full article

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has insisted his government must not lose the “war” against the environmental criminals devastating Indigenous lands in the Amazon after claims that thousands of illegal miners were resisting eviction from the country’s biggest such territory.

After taking power last January, Lula made expelling an estimated 20,000 gold and tin ore prospectors from the Yanomami Indigenous territory a top priority after four years of Amazon destruction under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. Environmental special forces and federal police teams were sent deep into the region’s remote jungles as part of a supposedly historic crackdown.

At first those high-risk airborne operations bore fruit but in recent months they have been dramatically scaled back. Speaking last month, the veteran Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa claimed thousands of miners were again causing havoc in his people’s mountainous, Portugal-sized territory. “Mother Earth is angry,” Kopenawa told the Guardian, urging Lula to re-escalate an anti-mining campaign critics say has been allowed to fade.

On Tuesday, almost a year after his Yanomami crackdown started, Lula summoned more than a dozen top ministers, as well as military and federal police chiefs, to review their progress in dislodging miners blamed for a surge in child mortality and diseases such as malaria.

“This meeting is about deciding – once and for all – what our government’s going to do to make sure Indigenous Brazilians no longer fall victim to massacres, hooliganism, mining, and to people who want to invade preserved areas that belong to the Indigenous people and cannot be used [by outsiders],” Lula told his cabinet, vowing to tackle the Yanomami crisis with “the full force of the government machine”.

“We cannot lose a war to illegal miners, we cannot lose a war to illegal loggers [and] we cannot lose a war to people who are breaking the law,” Lula added.

The president’s remarks come amid growing frustration from Indigenous and environmental activists over how the anti-mining offensive waned after its initially positive impact. Despite a flight ban imposed last April, “illegal aircraft are flying as normal” within the Yanomami territory, a government source admitted last month. No permanent river blockades have been set up to cut off the supply routes of miners.

“My sense is that the battle [against the miners] has gone back to square one – and that in some areas the situation is even worse than before,” the source warned.

Writing on social media, Lula said his government was planning “new, even more serious actions targeting the invaders”. Lula’s chief of staff, Rui Costa, told reporters “permanent incursions” by security forces would replace “sporadic actions” in the Yanomami territory. The role of the armed forces would be rethought.

Despite exasperation that miners continue to torment Yanomami communities, overall Lula’s administration made major environmental progress during its first year. Last week Brazil’s national space agency announced that Amazon deforestation had fallen by 50% in 2023 compared with 2022, the last year of Bolsonaro’s government.

On the 7th of january in 1919, the "Semana Trágica" began in Argentina when police attacked striking metalworkers in Buenos Aires, killing five, after workers set the police chief's car on fire. The city was quickly placed under martial law.

The "Semana Trágica" (Tragic Week in English, not to be confused with the Spanish Tragic Week) was the violent supression of a general workers' uprising, beginning with the attack on January 7th. In addition to the actions of the police and military, right-wing vigilantes launched pogroms against the city's Jews, many of whom were not involved, in order to suppress the rebellion.

The conflict began as a strike at the Vasena metal works, an English Argentine-owned plant in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. On January 7th, workers overturned and set fire to the car of the police chief Elpidio González. Militant workers also shot and killed the commander of the Army detachment protecting González. Following this, police attacked, killing five workers and wounding twenty more.

On the same day, maritime workers of the port of Buenos Aires voted in favor of a general strike for better hours and wages. After the police attack at Vasena, a waterfront strike began: all ship movements, and all loading and unloading, came to a halt.

Rioting soon spread throughout Buenos Aires, and workers battled with both state and right-wing paramilitary forces. Police utilized members of the far-right Argentine "Patriotic League", who targeted the city's working class Russian Jewish population, which they associated with the rebellion, beating and murdering many uninvolved civilians.

On the 11th, the city was placed under martial law, and the military restored control over the city over the next several days. Estimates of the death toll range from between 141 to over 700. The United States embassy reported that 1,500 people were killed in total, "mostly Russians and generally Jews"

La Semana Trágica - el historiador

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On the morning of June 12, 2022, Ángela Astudillo, then a law student in her mid-20s, grabbed her water bottle and hopped into her red Nissan Juke. The co-founder of Dress Desert, or Desierto Vestido, a textile recycling advocacy nonprofit, and the daughter of tree farmers, Astudillo lives in a gated apartment complex in Alto Hospicio, a dusty city at the edge of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, with her husband, daughter, bunny, and three aquatic turtles.

Exiting the compound, Astudillo pinched the wheel, pulled over next to a car on the side of the road, and greeted Bárbara Pino, a fashion professor, and three of her students, who were waiting inside.

They headed toward a mountain of sand known as El Paso de la Mula. Less than a mile from her home, squinting into the distance, Astudillo saw a thread of smoke rising from its direction. With her in the lead, the two vehicles caravanned toward the dune, the site of the second-largest clothes pile in the world.

As they got closer to El Paso de La Mula, the thin trail of smoke had expanded into a huge black cloud. Astudillo stopped the car and texted the academics behind her.

It looks like it’s on fire. Hopefully, it’s not there. :( :( :(

She then dialed them directly and asked, “Do you still want to go?”

read more: https://grist.org/international/burn-after-wearing-fashion-waste-chile/

I'm going to Costa Rica, specifically traveling to San José and the neighboring cities for a study abroad hosted by my university (for about 9 days) I'll be staying with a host family while there for the first half.

Any advice for a first time traveler to Central America? I'm a spanish major but I've only traveled to Madrid before in high school for another study abroad. Any tips for navigating Costa Rican culture compared to other países hispanohablantes?

Diaz-Canal making inroads with the Russian Federation.

This confused me:

Under the fidelist-inspired title Sowing Ideas, Sowing Consciousness, the program against cultural decolonization is one of the fundamental milestones of the year that is ending. It was launched last January 28, coinciding with the 170th anniversary of Jose Martí's birth. Representatives of our artistic and intellectual vanguard were involved in the elaboration of the theses and initial lines of action. In doing so, they responded to approaches, concerns, ideas and proposals debated over the last few years.

Do the Cubans not believe in decolonization, at least as it is known in the West, or do they think they have a better alternative?

It's likely that this is a mistranslation as I've heard quite the opposite about Cuba vis a vis decolonization.

The Haitian Revolution has often been described as the largest and most successful slave rebellion in the Western Hemisphere. Enslaved people initiated the rebellion in 1791 and by 1803 they had succeeded in ending not just slavery but French control over the colony. The Haitian Revolution, however, was much more complex, consisting of several revolutions going on simultaneously. These revolutions were influenced by the French Revolution of 1789, which would come to represent a new concept of human rights, universal citizenship, and participation in government.

In the 18th century, Saint Domingue, as Haiti was then known, had become France’s wealthiest overseas colony, generating more revenue for France than all 13 North American colonies for Great Britain. This wealth came largely because of the island’s production of sugar, coffee, indigo, and cotton generated by an enslaved labor force. When the French Revolution broke out in 1789 there were five distinct sets of interest groups in the colony. There were white planters—who owned the plantations and the slaves—and petit blancs, who were artisans, shop keepers and teachers. Some of them also owned a few slaves. Together they numbered 40,000 of the colony’s residents. Many of the whites on Saint Domingue began to support an independence movement that began when France imposed steep tariffs on the items imported into the colony. The planters were extremely disenchanted with France because they were forbidden to trade with any other nation. Furthermore, the white population of Saint Domingue did not have any representation in France. Despite their calls for independence, both the planters and petit blancs remained committed to the institution of slavery.

The three remaining groups were of African descent: those who were free, those who were enslaved, and those who had run away. There were about 30,000 free black people in 1789. Half of them were mulatto and many of them were wealthier than the petit blancs. The slave population was close to 500,000. The runaway slaves were called maroons; they had retreated deep into the mountains of Saint Domingue and lived off subsistence farming. Haiti had a history of slave rebellions; the enslaved were never willing to submit to their status and with their strength in numbers (10 to 1) colonial officials and planters did all that was possible to control them. Despite the harshness and cruelty of Saint Domingue slavery, there were slave rebellions before 1791. One plot involved the poisoning of masters.

Inspired by events in France, a number of Haitian-born revolutionary movements emerged simultaneously. They used as their inspiration the French Revolution’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man.” The General Assembly in Paris responded by enacting legislation which gave the various colonies some autonomy at the local level. The legislation, which called for “all local proprietors…to be active citizens,” was both ambiguous and radical. It was interpreted in Saint Domingue as applying only to the planter class and thus excluded petit blancs from government. Yet it allowed free citizens of color who were substantial property owners to participate. This legislation, promulgated in Paris to keep Saint Domingue in the colonial empire, instead generated a three-sided civil war between the planters, free blacks, and the petit blancs. However, all three groups would be challenged by the enslaved black majority which was also influenced and inspired by events in France.

Led by former slave Toussaint l’Overture, the enslaved would act first, rebelling against the planters on August 21, 1791. By 1792 they controlled a third of the island. Despite reinforcements from France, the area of the colony held by the rebels grew as did the violence on both sides. Before the fighting ended 100,000 of the 500,000 blacks and 24,000 of the 40,000 whites were killed. Nonetheless the former slaves managed to stave off both the French forces and the British who arrived in 1793 to conquer the colony, and who withdrew in 1798 after a series of defeats by l’Overture’s forces. By 1801 l’Overture expanded the revolution beyond Haiti, conquering the neighboring Spanish colony of Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic). He abolished slavery in the Spanish-speaking colony and declared himself Governor-General for life over the entire island of Hispaniola. Haitian control of Santo Domingo lasted until 1844.

By 1802 the Haitian Revolution had outlasted the French Revolution which had been its inspiration. Napoleon Bonaparte, now the ruler of France, dispatched General Charles Leclerc, his brother-in-law, and 43,000 French troops to capture L’Overture and restore both French rule and slavery. L’Overture was taken and sent to France where he died in prison in 1803. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of l’Overture’s generals and himself a former slave, led the revolutionaries at the Battle of Vertieres on November 18, 1803 where the French forces were defeated. On January 1, 1804, Dessalines declared the nation independent and renamed it Haiti. France became the first nation to recognize its independence. Haiti thus emerged as the first black republic in the world, and the second nation in the western hemisphere to win its independence from a European power.

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo revolution - C.L.R. James

Haiti’s Forced Payments to Enslavers Cost Economy $21 Billion, The New York Times Found

Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged The U.S. Obliged.

Revolutions Podcast S4: Haitian Revolution

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