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…
By CLAUDIO KATZ In the middle of his term, Argentinian president [Mauricio] Macri cannot hide the monumental abyss between his promises and reality. The promise was of an influx of dollars to lower inflation, with high growth, job creation, an entrepreneurial boom and eradication of social assistance. A drastic reduction of the fiscal deficit and…
By DEWITT KENNARD The total number of the world’s displaced people is at an all-time high. Fear of persecution caused by war, race, religion, or political affiliation is a force that drives these people from their homelands. El Salvador, a country that lost about 25 percent of its population to migration during its civil war, is…
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE Declining empires are dangerous, and the U.S. is an empire in decline. If the U.S. ruling class can avoid the Thucydides Trap with China (the tendency for a declining empire to go to war with a rising empire), they still must face their own decline as the center of the capitalist system.…
Marielle Franco ¡Presente! Socialist Action condemns the March 14 assassination of Marielle Franco, a city councilor in Rio de Janiero, and a militant of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSol) in Brazil. Anderson Pedro Gomes, the driver who accompanied Franco, was also the victim of this drive-by killing. Marielle was a frequent and vocal critic…
By CELESTE MURILLO and ANDREA D’ATRI The authors are members of Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses), a feminist organization in Argentina. This article was written in 2017 and first appeared in Left Voice. We are re-printing it on March 8, 2018, as a contribution to the discussion on the goals and strategy of the…
By WAYNE DELUCA On Jan. 27, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández is scheduled to be inaugurated for an unprecedented second term. Elections held Nov. 26 were disputed as both Hernández and challenger Salvador Nasralla claimed victory, and the Organization of American States has called for a new election. Hernández’s government cracked down on unrest in…
