On February 11, 2019, Ariel Dorfman published an article in the Nation, in which he imagined the advice of the late Chilean president Salvador Allende would supposedly offer Nicolás Maduro in order to confront successfully the challenges of the current Venezuelan conjuncture. This is Allende’s fictional reply to Dorfman. | more…
Indigenous peoples of the Americas are on the frontlines of resistance to the environmental and social costs of the unthinking drive for capital accumulation. From the United States and Canada to Brazil and Chile, that resistance has been met by state surveillance, repression, and criminalization. | more…
In an idyllic canyon near Santiago, a group of twelve women were electric with emotion from sharing personal stories and experiences, and, of course, from singing. Deep bonds were forged among participants, few of whom knew each other prior to the workshop. They were there to compose women-identified songs in a setting that alternated between individual and group composition. | more…
Latin Americans are not born-criminals nor did they invent drugs.
The Aztecs, Maya and other pre-Columbian human groups in Mexico and Central America, for example, were excellent farmers and didn’t even know about growing coca.
The Quechua and Aymara were capable of producing nutritious foods on perfect terraces that followed the mountain level curves. On the high plateaux that often exceeded three or four thousand metres in altitude, they grew quinua, a cereal rich in protein, and potatoes. | more…
Yesterday was a long day. From midday I paid attention to Obama’s vicissitudes in Chile, as I had done the day before with his adventures in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In a brilliant challenge, that city defeated Chicago in its aspiration to host the 2016 Olympics, when the new President of the United States and Nobel Peace laureate seemed to be an emulator of Martin Luther King.
Nobody knew when he was arriving in Santiago de Chile and what a President of the United States would do there, where one of his predecessors had committed the painful crime of promoting the defeat and physical
Seven days ago I wrote about one of the great men in history: Salvador Allende, a man the world remembered with deep emotion and respect on his first centennial. However, no one quivered or even recalled the date of October 24, 1891, when the Dominican despot Rafael Leonidas Trujillo was born, eighteen years before our admired Chilean brother. | more…