Immigration Reform Road Trip Kicks Off in New York City; Organizers Call for Comprehensive Law in 2010, Latin America News Dispatch, Feb. 16, 2010.
NEW YORK — With immigration reform losing impetus, reform advocates are not just taking to the streets — they’re taking to the road.
A group of twelve immigration reform advocates, suitcases and sleeping bags in hand, gathered for a press conference Monday before heading off on a five-day road trip organized by the New York Immigration Coalition. The caravan will visit ten cities throughout New York state, where the participants will meet with other reform advocates, community organizations and elected officials, hoping to convince them of the need to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill this year…
Haiti Must Build a Strong State to Recover from Earthquake, Experts Say; Call for Haitian “Marshall Plan,” Latin America News Dispatch, Jan. 29, 2010. (With Andrew O’Reilly and Mari Hayman).
NEW YORK — A Port-au-Prince school collapsed on a sunny day in Nov. 2008, leaving 80 children dead. The school, perched precariously on a hillside, had been built without a permit and with watered down concrete, its students crammed into overcrowded classrooms to increase tuition profits.
“Where was the state?” asked William O’Neill, a lawyer for Social Science Research Council, at a conference at New York University (NYU) Tuesday night…
In Run-Off, Chile Appears Likely to Vote for Change, World Politics Review, Jan. 15, 2010.
Chile has not voted a right-wing president into office since Jorge Alessandri campaigned and won as an independent, center-right candidate in March 1958.
But Sebastián Piñera may well break that precedent on Jan. 17. Having won the first-round election on Dec. 13 with 44 percent of the vote, Piñera fell shy of the simple majority required to avoid a run-off. He now faces Eduardo Frei, a former president representing the governing center-left Concertación coalition, who took only 30 percent of the first-round vote…
Cuban Musicians Resuming U.S. Performances, NYU Livewire, Jan. 13, 2010. (This article was syndicated to several other publications, including the Inter-Press Service and the North American Congress on Latin America.)
New York City recently hosted its first Cuban band in five years, after the group Septeto Nacional became the first to win a visa that allowed it to accept a booking there.
The group performed at the Hostos Center for Arts and Culture in the Bronx in early November. It was the first Cuban band to play in New York since 2004, when the Bush administration began systematically denying Cuban musicians cultural exchange visas. The concert kicked off a month-long tour that was taking the band to Puerto Rico, Chicago, Miami and California…
For Chile’s Left, Bachelet’s Legacy Not Enough, World Politics Review, Jan. 7, 2010.
Chile’s left-wing Concertación coalition might very well lose the presidency for the first time since the country’s return to democracy in 1990. But don’t blame outgoing President Michelle Bachelet.
With record-high approval ratings, Bachelet would be a shoe-in for a second term, if not for the constitutional prohibition on consecutive re-election. Instead, as the country’s first woman president and, before that, its first woman defense minister, Bachelet will undoubtedly be remembered for breaking the gender barrier to Chile’s most powerful positions. She also appointed equal numbers of men and women to her cabinet when she took office in 2005. Subsequent cabinet restructuring reduced the proportion of women slightly, but the strong presence of women in Chile’s cabinet remains notable…
The Embargo on Change, Foreign Policy Magazine, Oct. 28, 2009.
Every year around this time since 1992, the U.N. General Assembly has voted to condemn the U.S. embargo against Cuba. And every year, the U.S. government ignores the resolution. Last year Israel and Palau joined the United States in opposing the measure, which sailed through with 185 votes. Promises to pay greater attention to international institutions, embrace multilateralism, and begin a “new partnership” with the Americas notwithstanding, it appears that U.S. President Barack Obama will continue the tradition of spurning the U.N. resolution…
South America Wary of U.S.-Colombia Base Deal, World Politics Review, Sep. 2, 2009.
“Winds of war have begun to blow,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said early this month at a meeting in Quito, with his typical flair for the dramatic.
Chávez’s rhetoric may be more provocative than those of other South American leaders, but many of them clearly share his concern about an agreement that could grant the United States military greater access to seven Colombian bases. The polemical debate has pitted the majority of Latin America against the United States, highlighting the Obama administration’s failure to deliver on its promise (.pdf) for a “New Partnership for the Americas…”
Colombia’s Uribe Gains Access, Loses Credibility, World Politics Review, June 26, 2009.
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Barack Obama’s election as U.S. president last November signaled a defeat not only for his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, but also for the outgoing Bush administration’s strongest hemispheric ally, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.
When George W. Bush left office, Uribe lost his strongest ally for the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, whose ratification is one of Uribe’s key foreign policy goals. Uribe will now travel to Washington next Monday, June 29, to try to wrench a firm commitment from President Obama to push the deal through a hostile Congress. But Colombia’s continued human rights violations and an increasingly complicated constitutional bid for re-election promise to undermine Uribe’s credibility…
El Comandante’s Last Charge (Review of Fidel Castro’s La paz en Colombia), Foreign Policy Magazine, March/April 2009.
On April 9, 1948, an unknown assassin shot Colombian politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán to death. A populist hero, Gaitán’s murder catalyzed a chain reaction of events—beginning with a three-day riot known as the Bogotazo—that has left Colombia mired in a state of war ever since…
Going Public: Union’s Fight Brings Flagship Airline Back To Argentina, The New Internationalist, March 2009.
‘Today we are all Aerolíneas Argentinas,’ exclaimed Hugo Moyano, Secretary General of Argentina’s labour federation, from the steps of the National Congress. The crowd responded with a cacophony of triumphant cheers and drum-pounding. Moyano’s proclamation, delivered on 21 August last year, gave a sense of finality to the countless stickers and leaflets decorating Buenos Aires signposts and sidewalks with the assertion: ‘We are all Aerolíneas’. The House of Deputies authorized the Government to purchase the struggling airline several hours later…
Argentine Farmers Resume Protests With Six-Day Strike, World Politics Review, Oct. 8, 2008.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina’s four principle agricultural organizations declared a six day strike on Friday, Oct. 3. Facing the worst drought in a century and fearful of the potential for contagion from the American financial crisis, agricultural producers are demanding relief from the government, principally in the form of a reduction in export taxes…
Argentine Public Dubious Of Government Inflation Figures, World Politics Review, Aug. 20, 2008.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Last week, the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INDEC), the Argentine government’s statistics agency, released the official inflation figure for the month of July: 0.4 percent. Such a report would have caused jubilation among the Argentine public, had they believed it.
“It’s a lie,” responded Yamila, a local drama teacher, without hesitation when asked about the figure…
Between Black And White: Race And Status Among The Tejano Elite In Nineteenth-Century San Antonio (Historical Research), Journal of the Life and Culture of San Antonio, Feb. 2007.
In Spanish America, people of pure European blood stood at the highest point of the racial hierarchy since the conquest. In colonial Texas, however, a class of pure-blooded European settlers never emerged. The Spaniards who settled in the region were overwhelmingly mestizo. Despite the fact that few Tejanos could claim “untainted” Spanish blood, this did not stop them from doing so. In a resource-scarce area, the Tejano political elite used their racial self-identification as a status symbol and a tool of social differentiation. As the Tejano community merged with the Anglo immigrant community, the Tejano elite presented themselves as “white” in the Anglo sense of the word. With the creation of a new political order, Tejano elites attempted to extend this definition of themselves to the entire Tejano community. The Tejano elite’s contradictory claim to “whiteness” left a unique legacy for their community and contributed to a curiously ambiguous sort of racism in Texas…
