Mexico oil privatization dispute rages
While the rest of Latin America moves left, Mexican President Felipe Calderon is pushing hard in the other direction with a thinly disguised plan to privatize PEMEX, the huge state oil company that provides 40 percent of the Mexican government’s revenues.
Indian peoples theater inspires workers
DELHI, India — Some evenings you will see a small jeep driving around this city, weaving its way through the impossible traffic. The driver and passengers are amateur actors dedicated to the education and rights of the working class. They are on their way to perform in slums, industrial areas and other sites where workers may be.
After elections, Nepal searches for a unified path forward
The surprise results of Nepal’s elections are now giving way to the next, perhaps more challenging, step of piecing together a coalition to write a new constitution and move toward abolishing the monarchy. In the recent election, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) won the most seats — 220 out of 601 — in the Constituent Assembly that is tasked with writing the constitution and deciding on the political framework for the Himalayan nation. Nepal has been ruled by a Hindu king for more than 200 years.
Separatist vote threatens Bolivias progress
In a blow to the revolutionary Bolivian government of President Evo Morales, overwhelmingly elected in 2005 as the nation’s first indigenous president, a much anticipated autonomy referendum in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz department gained approval by an estimated 80 percent of voters on May 4.
Zimbabwe opposition leads in close vote, faces runoff
Five weeks after casting their votes on March 29, Zimbabweans learned this month that their liberation leader and president for nearly 30 years, Robert Mugabe, lost the popular vote to opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai.
Story of a massacre
Colombian troops attacked inside Ecuador on March 1, destroying a camp occupied by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Ecuadorian soldiers later found 23 bodies, including those of five Mexican young people visiting the site. The dead included FARC leader and negotiator Raul Reyes.
25,000 march for public education in Puerto Rico
After showing its strength with a march of 25,000 teachers and their supporters Feb. 17, the Puerto Rico Federation of Teachers (FMPR) has been able to make progress toward a new labor agreement, averting for the moment a nationwide work stoppage that had been threatened for Feb. 19.
U.S. labor leaders to Bush: No trade deal with murderers
Top labor leaders ended a trip to Colombia Feb. 13 by telling that country’s president, Alvaro Uribe, American unions will not support the U.S.–Colombia Free Trade Agreement until the killing of union members by right-wing death squads there is put to a stop.
Fear of the German left affects defense policy
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, at the annual International Security Conference in Munich stepped up pressure on Germany to send more troops to Afghanistan and commit them to active fighting not only in the currently more peaceful north but in the battle-ridden south as well. US troops are in short supply
In sanctuary, Mexican mother fights for dignity
CHICAGO — Josué, 14, Juan, 11 and Paloma, 9, live with their grandmother in a small rural town in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. They have not seen their mother, Flor Crisostomo, 28, since she crossed the Arizona desert in June 2000, to find work in the U.S. so she could support them.
