Americas

Argentina marked the 31st anniversary of the nation's 1976 military coup on March 24 with a series of marches to commemorate 30,000 disappeared during the so-called dirty war. As the perpetrators face trial 31 years on, key witnesses are disappearing and terror is back on the streets. In the face of threats and attacks, demonstrators demanded an end to impunity for military personnel who served in the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

George W. Bush and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez crisscrossed Latin America on parallel tours recently, pushing opposing agendas. While Bush touted free trade, cooperative ventures and US aid programs, Chávez touched down in Bolivia, where his socialist ally, President Evo Morales, is dancing precariously with a divided population.

After having lunch with family and supporters, Cathy Webster of Chico, California turned herself in at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Facility today to spend 60 days behind bars and high security fences for a simple trespassing charge at last November's protest at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. 

"These Latin American political leaders and social movements are recuperating the meaning of democracy, freedom and what it means to be an American in a unified Americas against imperialism and corporate looting."

The state of Alto Paraná, Paraguay, sits on the triple frontier with Argentina and Brazil, an area which some Paraguayans know as the soy frontier. In the past 30 years, what was once jungle and small farms has become a vast sea of industrial soy plantations. On February 12, I spoke with three women who are working with ASAGRAPA to fight these corporations and the spread of industrial monoculture in Paraguay.

New social movements have emerged in Bolivia over the "price of fire"-access to basic elements of survival such as water, gas, land, coca, employment, and other resources. From the first moments of Spanish colonization to today's headlines, The Price of Fire offers a gripping account of clashes in Bolivia between corporate and people's power, contextualizing them regionally, culturally, and historically. Read the book's introduction here…