Introduction: Over thirty year ago a savvy Colombian peasant leader told me, “Whenever I read the word ‘peace accords’ I hear the government sharpening its knives�. In recent times, ‘peace accords’ (PAs) have become a common refrain across the world. In almost every region or country, which are in the midst of war or invasion,... Read More

Introduction: Amid raging corruption, social pathologies and outright political thuggery, a new gang of vassal regimes has taken-over Latin America. The new rulers are strictly recruited as the protégé’s of US financial and banking institutions. Hence the financial press refers to them as the “new managers� - of Wall Street. The US financial media has... Read More

Currently, Washington is conducting operations against Latin American presidents who tried to represent their own peoples instead of American business interests and Washington’s foreign policy. Washington is trying to unseat and indict President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, President Evo Morales in Bolivia, President Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. Washington has... Read More

The role of the class struggle has been the most slighted dynamic dimension of Latin American development. The most influential writers have at best paid passing reference to the class struggle in discussing the capital accumulation process, while the high priests of underdevelopment, dependency and world systems have relegated it to the status of a... Read More

Introduction: Over the past three years Latin American leftist leaders, who presided over heterodox ‘free trade’ and commodity based welfare economies, lost presidential, legislative and municipal elections and referendums or faced impeachment. They fell because they lost competitive elections, not because of US invasions or military coups. These same leftist leaders, who had successfully defeated... Read More

Introduction:The post neo-liberal regimes which flourished in five Latin American countries in the first decade of the 21st century were a product of three inter-related historical processes. The breakdown of the neo-liberal development model, which in turn ignited mass popular movements for radical political-economic transformations; the incapacity of the mass movements to produce a viable... Read More

Introduction: Class conflict is always present, endemic, in Latin America. What changes, over time, is the character of the class struggle. By ‘character’ we mean, the principal classes and leaders, who direct in the struggle, set the political agenda and define the parameters of socio-economic changes. What is striking about the class struggle in Latin... Read More

Introduction: Everyone, from political pundits in Washington to the Pope in Rome, including most journalists in the mass media and in the alternative press, have focused on the US moves toward ending the economic blockade of Cuba and gradually opening diplomatic relations. Talk is rife of a ‘major shift’ in US policy toward Latin America... Read More

His book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent came out in 1971 and proved to be the first vampire thriller of our American imperial age. Its blood-sucker of a plot was too outrageous not to be mesmerizing: a country called the United States declares a “good neighbor� policy... Read More

Numerous prominent progressive US pundits, whose political pronouncements carry great weight in the alternative media, have proclaimed ‘Latin America’s decisive break’ with US domination and have gone on to announce the beginning of a new ‘post-imperial epoch’. “One of the most spectacular developments of this period is occurring in Latin America – For the first... Read More

The complexities of the new political relations in Latin America require that we breakdown what previously was the unified components of anti-imperialist politics. For example in the past, anti-imperialist regimes pursued policies which opposed US military aggression and intervention in Latin America and throughout the third world; opposed foreign investment especially in extractive sectors; and,... Read More

To approach the role of class struggle in a dynamic mitreux we will focus exclusively on Latin America over the past two and a half decades 1990 – 2014, a period of significant changes in economic models, political regimes and class structure. Introduction One looks in vain among the writings of historians and social scientists... Read More

This book “O Canto da Sereia� is a major contribution to the clarification of several important political and scholarly issues. In the first instance the essays critically analyze the new ideological, political and social instruments utilized by ruling classes to undermine the class struggle. Specifically the contributors focus on the ruling classes’ engagement in the... Read More

Introduction: Class struggle is central in framing the issues of political rule, the relations of classes, the economic structures and strategies and the distribution of wealth. Especially in the era of imperialist globalization, the class struggle takes on an internationalcharacter, as multi-national corporations, international financial organizations and imperial states, directly intervene, or act through proxy,... Read More

[Podcast] Professor James Petras of Binghamton University joins us to discuss the prospects for the Latin American economy in a global economy that is increasingly dominated by developing markets and emerging powers like China. We talk about the region’s links to the emerging Asian markets, internal trade, and deepening regional ties in bodies like MERCOSUR... Read More

Let's start with a bomb. Over 10 days ago a new brand of coup d'etat took place in Paraguay against elected president Fernando Lugo. It was virtually unnoticed by global corporate media. Anything unexpected? Not really. A March 2009 cable from the US Embassy in Asuncion, revealed by WikiLeaks, [1] had already detailed how oligarchs... Read More

Introduction: The leading agro-mineral exporting countries, including those engaged with the world’s leading mining and energy multi-national corporations(MNC) are also those characterized as having the most independent and progressive foreign policies. Apparently the primacy of “extractive capitalism� and commodity-export based economies are no longer correlated with ‘neo-colonial’ regimes. It can be argued that the concessions... Read More