The perennial Bolivian quest for a sovereign Pacific port took a surprising turn in April 2013 when the Evo Morales administration instituted proceedings before the International Court of Justice at The Hague, calling on it to rule that Chile had an obligation to negotiate an agreement with Bolivia granting it sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean.
The three contingents of the Caravan in Defense of Water, of the Land, and of Work and Life converged in Mexico City on May 22. The Yaqui tribe led the caravans, heading out May 11, to traverse the entire country from three routes: northwest, northeast and the south.
Changes in the regional scenario are proceeding at a surprising velocity. At the opening of the first China CELAC forum in Beijing on January 8th, President Xi Jinping of China announced plans to double bilateral trade, to $500 billion in 2025.
Adenilson da Silva Nascimento, a 54-year-old indigenous man better known as Pinduca Tumpinambá, grew up and lived his entire life in his village in the region known as Serra desTempes, Olivença, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. This year, on the first of May, he was returning from a day’s work fishing with his wife and two of his six children – a one-year-old baby and a girl of 15 — when they were ambushed by three armed, hooded men who instantly killed Pinduca.
The farm workers of the San Quintin Valley have gotten the federal government to commit to facilitating negotiations for a wage hike. But movement leaders warn that the the agreement is still not a victory.
The seminar “Critical thinking against the Capitalist Hydra”, organized by the EZLN in San Cristobal de Las Casas (Chiapas) from May 3-9 raised issues of extractivism, elections, defense of the land and women’s organizing.
The millions the big growers make in profits contrasts sharply to the biting poverty of the men and women who work their fields in the San Quintin Valley of Baja California. A new movement has exposed the conditions they suffer– and their determination to improve them.
In Mexico a judicial process is beginning to decide whether genetically modified corn will be widely planted here in the center of origin of corn. There is every reason against permitting this.
“The United States is no longer our privileged partner. Now the privileged partner is China,” Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño stated at the close of the third summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Costa Rica on January 29th.
The ruling party (PRI) and its allies, the National Action Party (PAN), the Partido Verde and New Alliance, lost a battle when the General Water Law to privatize Mexico’s water resources was shelved in the Chamber of Deputies. Grassroots mobilization played a key role in the victory.
