By LAZARO MONTEVERDE — VARPARAISO, Chile — Not many radicals from the U.S. know of the Winnipeg and the great poet Pablo Neruda’s role in the event, which is a shame. It is one of many instances of heroism and direct action on the part of the left before and during World War II. Pablo…
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE Like a chess master who move by move crushes a weaker opponent, the U.S. is again moving against Venezuela. At the urging of Washington., 12 of the 19 nations who are part of the Treaty of Rio, known by its Spanish acronym TIAR [Tratado Internacional de Asistencia Reciproca], voted to invoke the…
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE — VALPARAISO, Chile — It has been the driest winter in the central valley of Chile in 60 years. June, July, and August are winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and also the rainy season in Chile. Water shortages have been declared in 50 communities and agricultural emergencies in an additional 100 communities.…
By ERNIE GOTTA “Every day, folks now more than ever wake up daily with a new notion of politics that is not bound to a vote every four years but to direct action.” The recent protests in Puerto Rico, taken in the context of uprisings across the globe in Sudan, Hong Kong, and Algeria, paint…
STATEMENT FROM MEXICO “I don’t want flowers at my funeral, because I know they will be taken from the forest.” — Chico Mendes The defense of the Amazon is a fight for the future of the earth. Although the destruction of the Amazon rainforest was already an alarming issue for decades, with the acceleration of…
By WYATT MUND The island of Puerto Rico has been the site of massive unrest and protest for over the past two weeks. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in the largest demonstrations in the island’s history. After a fierce struggle, the initial call from the streets for the resignation of Ricardo Rossello…
By MARTY GOODMAN “We denounce these arrests, as the people inside were there with our permission, and we consider it a violation of the Vienna Conventions” — Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ron. I was in Washington, D.C., most of the time between May 7 to May 19 to support the Venezuela solidarity activists of…
By JEFF MACKLER (UPDATED FROM EARLIER REPORT) It took some 34 days for the Donald Trump administration to decide on May 18, 2019, to forcefully evict from the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C., four antiwar activist members of the Embassy Protection Coalition. The four were there with the formal and express consent of the Venezuelan…
By JEFF MACKLER “Nobody said regime change was going to be easy,” read the first line on the front-page New York Times article of May 2 entitled, “Pressure Rises After Failure In Venezuela.” The article, billed as “news analysis,” continues, “President Trump’s top advisers woke up Tuesday [April 30] believing that a rebellion in…
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE “The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup,” by Dana Frank. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018). Activist and scholar Dana Frank has given us a useful book to help us understand the present events in Honduras, at the U.S.-Mexico border, and elsewhere in Latin America.…
By BRUCE LESNICK When you corner a rat, it lashes out. The rats in charge of the U.S. empire are cornered by the contradictions built into their own system: increasing economic inequality, regular depressions and recessions, declining profit rates, perpetual austerity, and endless wars promoted to stave off increasing global competition. The current vicious U.S.…
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE “A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the working class shaped the guerrillas’ victory,” by Steve Cushion. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016.) This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Given its durability, revolutionaries should pay close attention to both its successes and failures. This is not always…
By JEFF MACKLER and BRUCE LESNICK The relentless U.S. imperial beast has embarked on a full-scale, openly declared, bipartisan regime-change war aimed at overthrowing Venezuela’s democratically elected government headed by President Nicolás Maduro. Top U.S. officials—from President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, National Security Adviser John Bolton and special envoy Elliot Abrams of Iran/Contra…
BY LAZARO MONTEVERDE A review of “What went wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution: A Marxist Analysis,” by Dan La Botz. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018.) When I visited Nicaragua in 1983 as part of a delegation of religious activists from the Central America Movement, I thought I was witnessing a miracle. The country was radically transformed both…
By BRUCE LESNICK Ruling elites have united behind the Trump administration in its illegal, unjust, and brutal attempt to meddle in the internal affairs of Venezuela. Democrats and Republicans alike have fallen in line, revealing the degree to which the two parties march in lock step when the geopolitical prerogatives of the one percent are…
Once again, the Wall Street-captured, war-promoting, servants of the one percent—who administer the U.S. government at the pleasure of, and solely in the interest of, corporate America—have deigned to command a sovereign nation as to how to handle its internal affairs. In a further escalation of the U.S. government’s long-running campaign against the elected Venezuelan…
By LISA LUINENBURG Over the last few weeks, eyes across the world have been following the human drama of the caravan of migrants making its way through Mexico toward the U.S. border. The caravan is made up of mostly young people from Central America, the majority from Honduras, who are trying to escape the grinding…
By ELENA ZELEDON — SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — The 8000 poor people marching together through the states of Central America towards the United States are another sign that the pillars of imperialist domination, already weakened by the blows of the global recession in 2008, are now shaken by the exploding social contradictions of this…
This statement was adopted by the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International on 28 October 2018. The Sandinista Popular Revolution The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was born as a “vanguard organization” with an anti-imperialist and revolutionary orientation, as established in its Historic Programme (1969), “capable of taking political power (…) establishing a social…
By MARISELA TREVIN After a day of nationwide protests on Monday [Sept. 24], Argentine workers participated in mass work stoppages on Tuesday. Many of the country’s streets and avenues were practically deserted as public transportation workers and private-sector employees stayed home. It was perhaps the most forceful of the four national strikes that have been…
By JEFF MACKLER Part II. (Part I appeared in August 2018.) In today’s epoch of worldwide imperialist intervention and war, real revolutions are hard to make, even harder to maintain, and sometimes difficult to define in their evolution or degeneration. Today’s antiwar movement debate on the still-unfolding dynamics operating in Nicaragua is a case in…
By CHRISTINE MARIE Since April, hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have taken to the streets in protest of the policies of the government led by FSLN President Daniel Ortega. The protests at one point escalated to road blocks and occupations and have been fiercely resisted by the government. Undoubtedly, Nicaraguan society is in crisis. Here,…
By JEFF MACKLER The unfolding events in Nicaragua over the past three months pose two critical questions for socialists and antiwar activists. Where do we stand on the critical issue of U.S. imperialist intervention and where do we stand with regard to the dynamics of the still-unfolding confrontations? That U.S. imperialism is intervening in Nicaragua…
By CLAUDIO KATZ Writing about Nicaragua is as painful and sad as it is absolutely necessary. Memories of the Sandinista revolution are still alive among the generation who knew this feat. Remaining silent would be an affront to those who participated in that memorable insurrection against Somoza. The events of recent months offer little doubt:…
By LIGA DE UNIDAD SOCIALISTA, PARTIDO OBRERO SOCIALISTA, and LA GOTA Two days after the elections in which he had secured a sweeping victory with more than 50 percent of the total vote, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) announced that he will back the government of Enrique Peña Nieto during the transition period prior to the…
