The Americas

Tariq Ali’s Pirates of the Caribbean

Review of Tariq Ali, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pluto 2006

Tariq Ali is a prominent man of the left who long ago gave up on the working class movement and on socialism. As he expresses it in this book, it is no longer possible to be “a man of 1917” (p.3)

His “street fighting years” far behind him...

Latin American news: Socialist woman challenges Lula, Venezuelan strikes repressed

Brazil By Michael Löwy Brazil is one of the countries with the highest level of social inequality in the world. The country has been described as a sort of “Swiss India”, where the rich live as though in Switzerland, while the lives of the poor are similar to those of their counterparts in India. The electoral victory of Lula, the candidate of the Workers’ Party (PT), in 2001, raised immense popular hopes that this condition of “social apartheid” would change and that that a new orientation towards the needs and aspirations of the poor would be implemented. These hopes were, to a large extent...

Student protests educate Chilean government

By Mickey Conn Over the last month, Chile has entered the stage of the social struggles sweeping Latin America, with hundreds of thousands of secondary students striking and occupying their schools. All Chile's main cities have seen big demonstration clash with the police, and university and other education workers have struck in support of the students. These include not only immediate reforms to improve students' quality of life, but a change in the whole way the education system functions. Under the Pinochet regime, a large part of the school system was privatised and schools put under...

Bachelet and the Latin American left

The election of leftish governments in Latin America continues with the recent Presidential victories of Morales in Bolivia and Bachelet in Chile. Other left candidates are likely to win in Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela this year. The trend is largely a reaction to the neo-liberal polices pursued by Latin American governments for over two decades, which has led to huge increases in poverty and unemployment, and disillusionment with the formally democratic regimes that replaced military governments. Not all these governments have the same political complexion or roots. Most still implement neo...

“The only thing I hate in this world is the police”

Ricardo, Montevideo, Uraguay I am 16, but not for much longer. My birthday is soon, although I have never received a birthday present in my life. I’ve been living on the street for the last six years. My parents are living but not together. My mother ran off with my father’s brother, though not before having nine children with my father. Now my father has a new woman who is pregnant with a new brother or sister for me. It was my choice to live on the streets and not with my family. There were too many of us living in the small house in the cantigrill [slum]. I did not get on with my sister...

Ecuador: banana workers strike

Banana workers in Ecuador are continuing with strike action to defend their right to organise, in the teeth of repression. The National Federation of Agricultural Industry Workers, Farmers and Indigenous People of Ecuador (FENACLE) is calling for international solidarity. Workers were attacked on two separate plantations in May whilst striking. At the San José plantation in the Guayas province, workers went on strike after 44 of them were sacked when they formed a union and presented a list of demands to their employer. Police broke down doors and attacked workers with tear-gas. And workers at...

Allende and the church

David Broder reviews Machuca Machuca is a Chilean film, on limited release in the UK, therefore I’ll depart with convention and tell you what happens at the end. But you know already, because this film depicts the 1973 downfall of Salvador Allende’s leftist government. Told from the perspective of an upper-middle class boy, Gonzalo, who attends a Catholic school in Santiago, it portrays a society riven by a class division, between those who live in the capital’s shanty towns and the middle class who fiercely resist Allende’s social reforms. The film begins with the introduction of working...

Workers demand justice for pesticide victims

Thousands of Nicaraguan rural workers have been camping in front of the National Assembly for over two months to demand job security and justice for the victims of the pesticide Nemagon. At least one thousand Nicaraguans have died and over 100,000 suffer from the effects of Nemagon, including dermatitis, reproductive disorders and cancer. Workers are committed to maintaining their encampment until the government takes action to compensate workers. Multinationals Dole and chemical companies Dow and Shell owe compensation but have failed to pay a penny. Tens of thousands of plantation workers...

Organising in the maquilas

Evangelina Argueta comes from the Central General de Trabajadores in Honduras and co-ordinates a project to organise the workers in the maquilas — factories which assemble goods for export. The maquilas are found in Mexico and Central America. They offer cheap labour, few labour or environmental regulations and low taxes. Products include clothes, electronic products and car parts. In Honduras 127,000 workers are employed in this sector.

What’s wrong with the left?

By Peter Tatchell* Has the left lost the plot? On a number of issues sections of the left have abandoned the principles of universal human rights and social justice. Over a number of years I have done solidarity work with Zimbabweans struggling for democracy, socialism and human rights. They have not had much support from the mainstream left. Why Zimbabwe? I have a copy of ZANU’s 1970s political programme: its goals were a socialist democracy with a free press and workers’ rights. That is why I supported Mugabe and ZANU in their liberation struggle. It is also why I now oppose the present...

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