Americas

In the hours following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center firefighters, police, and emergency medical technicians performed acts of enormous courage. Many of them died or were exposed to health-threatening substances while performing these heroic deeds. Unfortunately, while bureaucrats were unctuously praising these heroes, irresponsible and deceptive post-attack actions by some officials paved the way for more illnesses and deaths among workers and residents in Lower Manhattan.

Argentina's worker occupied factory movement is rallying across the country for a national expropriation law in the face of eviction orders and legal uncertainty.  At the forefront of the worker recuperated enterprise movement is the BAUEN Hotel, just one of the 180 worker-run businesses up and running in Argentina.  

Two soldiers in Paraguay stand in front of a camera. One of them holds an automatic weapon. John Lennon's "Imagine" plays in the background. This Orwellian juxtaposition of war and peace is from a new video posted online by US soldiers stationed in Paraguay. The video footage and other military activity in this heart of the continent represent a new style of militarism in Latin America.

National protests rock Peru as President Alan Garcia navigates through an increasingly tumultuous labor and teacher uprising. Rejections of a free trade agreement with the US and neoliberal economic policies are at the heart of the national uprising which has left three people dead and several wounded.

If the government-run water system is sufficient and affordable, people won't revolt. If farmers have access to land, if people see their mineral, oil and gas wealth used nationally, or going toward developments in healthcare, education and roads, there will be less conflict. If coca growers can expand their crops and produce in peace, without U.S.-funded military and police terrorizing them, then they won't protest as much. These advances are happening across the continent, with contradictions and problems, but heading in a positive direction.