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Latin America: Dangerous Baby Boom (3/99)

STEPHANIE BOYD May 27, 2005 STEPHANIE BOYD

Carla works nights at a beeper answering service. At 29, like most of Peru’s young people, she doesn’t earn enough money to move out of her mother’s home in a lower-income neighborhood of Lima, the capital city. Without post-secondary training, she has few prospects of finding a good job in the future and her boyfriend can’t find work, but Carla says life could be much worse – she could be struggling to feed, clothe, and raise a child.

When she was just 19 and pregnant, Carla’s mother took her to a doctor who was a friend of the family and known in the community as "safe." read more

Argentina: Barter Clubs (03/04)

ELIZABETH L. SAD May 27, 2005 ELIZABETH L. SAD

Before the Spanish conquest of the Americas, many pre-Columbian civilizations were organized economically on the basis of barter. If a family harvested a certain type of food, they traded it with another clan that had a different kind, or perhaps swapped it for lands, cattle, or garments. Today, in the midst of a dramatic economic crisis in Latin America, that wise approach has apparently revived.

In Argentina, more than 50 percent of the population is poor, and unemployment is above 40 percent. Barter clubs began to appear in 1995, but expanded enormously two years ago during a social and economic crisis, at about the same time that President Fernado de la Ra was ousted from power following a massive popular uprising. According to a study by Centro de Estudios Nueva Mayor’a, more than 6 million people were part of the barter economy in 2001. Barter has also encouraged many people to become small entrepreneurs, developing production systems by exploiting their best skills. read more

Nicaragua, De-mining the Border (6/02)

CHRISTINA HOAG May 27, 2005 CHRISTINA HOAG

Growing up in the remote mountains along Nicaragua’s border with Honduras, it was Neyrin Rivera’s job to mind the cows. When one wandered off, he knew he had to fetch it, or else face a hiding when he returned to the one-room, mud-brick shack he called home. But he didn’t know that he was following the errant cow into a minefield.

When the ground exploded beneath him, the seven-year-old had no idea what had happened. His leg had become a pulsating stump of blood, torn flesh, and protruding bone. “I didn’t know anything about mines, even what a mine was,” says Neyrin, now 11 and an old hand at riding a bicycle and playing football with the plastic prosthesis that replaced his right leg below the knee. read more

Ideas Are Also Weapons (11/00)

SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS May 27, 2005 SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS

The world is not square, or so we learn at school, yet, on the brink of the third millennium, it is not round, either. I do not know which geometrical figure best represents the world in its present state but, in an era of digital communication, we could see it as a gigantic screen – one of those screens you can program to display several pictures at the same time, one inside the other. In our global world, the pictures come from all over the planet. But some are missing – not because there is not enough room on the screen but because someone up there selected these pictures rather than others. read more

Latin American Arms Race (2/98)

GREG GUMA May 27, 2005 GREG GUMA

Twenty-one years ago, responding to concerns about human rights abuses in Latin America, President Carter banned the sale of attack jets and other high-tech items to governments in the region. Other suppliers eventually followed the US lead; as a result, Latin America currently has one of the world’s lowest levels of military technology. But last year, at the insistence of military contractors, the Pentagon, and members of congress who received aerospace PAC funds, the Clinton Administration abandoned this relatively successful moratorium and made plans to sell $1 billion in jet fighters to Chile. read more

Secrets R Us (3/02)

GREG GUMA May 27, 2005 GREG GUMA

It was classic spin. When NATO’s US and British troops in Macedonia began evacuating Albanian rebels in June, officials claimed they were merely attempting to help Europe avert a devastating civil war. Most media dutifully repeated that as fact. But the explanation only made sense if you ignored a troublesome contradiction, namely US support for both the Macedonian Armed Forces and the Albanians fighting them. Beyond that, there’s a decade of confused and manipulative Western policies, climaxing with NATO bombing and the failure to impose “peace” through aggression in Kosovo. Together, these moves have effectively destabilized the region. read more