Latin America

Ecuador undergoing soft Coup – says Correa

The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, is facing the fourth week of protests in Ecuador. Citizen marches have been convened since the start of June as a way to show people’s rejection of bills that promote inheritance taxes and extraordinary Money confiscation measures from the sale of properties. Protesters have joined opposition politicians such as Jaime Nebot, mayor of Guayaquil, and former presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso. Given the growing ...Read full article...

Dilma Rousseff bows down to Obama in Washington

Brazil may be the next BRIC to unofficialy adopt Transpacific Partnership policies. When President Dilma Rousseff was asked Tuesday in Washington on intelligence that the US National Security Agency conducted in 2013 on her personal phone, she answered that from now on, “if President Barack Obama wants to know something about Brazil, he can call me directly.” Her answer caused the US President to smile. Relations between leaders of ...Read full article...

Don’t look for Freedom of Expression in Ecuador

Two years ago Ecuador declared the end of Free Speech after passing a new law called the Communications Act, which allows the government to establish what information is allowed in the media and this information can be published. SInce the passing of the law, the Superintendency of Communication, the official agency that oversees alleged media violations has sanctioned 198 media outlets. This agency has also passed 506 reslutions and take on 313 ...Read full article...

Evo Morales authorizes drilling for oil in protected lands

Morales lashed out at what he called the American Empire’s desire to have “untouchable, intangible” territories in the third world to make up for their own crimes against the environment. The need to discover new oil reserves has been the camouflage for the Bolivian Government to allow oil exploration in protected areas. Despite the fact that such areas have been reserved for environmental conservation, the Evo Morales administration decided ...Read full article...

Lula, Dilma and Brazil sink deeper into the hole

WIth no clear leadership, no public confidence on the country’s institutions or its leaders, Brazil seems to be getting deeper and deeper into a political and economic hole. However, in the middle of all the mud, there is still the ocassional joke to lighten up the mood. The last one was that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is now considering a new presidential run in 2018. Sadly for Lula, ...Read full article...

Obama Wants Regime Change in Ecuador

Obama is no man of the people. He never was throughout his political career. He serves powerful monied interests exclusively. As an Illinois state senator, he represented Chicago real estate interests at the expense of Black communities they wanted gentrified. He disgraces the office he holds. He remains a front man for wealth, power and privilege. Earlier, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund executive director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard called the “defining ...Read full article...

Brazil announces investment of $66 billion to revive its economy

The plan presented by Dilma Rousseff intends to provide Brazil with highways and railways, but its success will depend on heavy investment through the BNDES. Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, has decided to launch a plan for major infrastructure renovation and construction across the country in an attempt to revive a plunging economy. The government’s plan will mean a preliminary investment of nearly 200,000 million reais. Dilma’s plan envisages the ...Read full article...

GDP is an insufficient measure of true economic growth

High levels of economic growth are not enough to eradicate poverty. Economic growth has bee at zero percent or lower for two or three years in a row in most of the western world. Cooked government numbers say that most so-called western powers have grown at 0.2% and that the recession that began in 2009 is over. In Europe, the Spanish government has been short of organizing a parade, ...Read full article...

Latin America adrift

Not too long ago, Latin America was one of the regions with the best economic perspective on the planet. After the crisis of 2009, recovering and booming economies in the south looked for Asian partners to establish business opportunities with China, India, and even Russia. Those partnerships were established enthusiastically with the signing of new bilateral and multilateral agreements between China and individual commercial partners as well as among ...Read full article...

Paper currency becomes worthless in Venezuela

Venezuelans have begun to feel as if the cash they carry in their wallets is as valuable as Monopoly money. The local currency, the bolivar, tumbled even further this week, falling through the threshold of 400 bolivars per dollar, which is double as low as the value of the so-called Marginal System. That threshold had been established three months ago by the government in an effort to stop the ...Read full article...

Ecuador socializes Private Pension Funds

Workers will be obligated to surrender their life savings to the government. Teachers and other unionized workers have had to provide the Bank of the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security (Biess) savings they have accumulated on their own to improve their lousy public pensions. The teachers’ pension fund is the most significant, with $405 million saved in 23 years by 126,000 teachers. That is why they are the ones ...Read full article...

Big Brother in little Nicaragua

The Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, is sponsoring a law whose goal is to give his government complete control over the Internet. That control will be exercised through the creation of a state company that will manage broadband services in the Central American country, and that will decide who will receive licenses or permits to offer such services. The initiative is promoted by the Executive branch as a policy to ...Read full article...

Chile’s government falters

Michele Bachelet ‘fires’ her cabinet to regain the people’s confidence What is a president to do when her government is not running smoothly? Common wisdom says that she should evaluate her mandate, make some self-criticism and eventually, if she cannot handle the heat, perhaps she needs to step aside leaving her post to someone else who does not have approval levels as low as hers, especially when her popularity ...Read full article...

U.S. soldiers raped Colombian girls near Tolemaida Air Base

At least 53 Colombian children were raped years ago by soldiers and security employees of the United States stationed in Colombia. Soldiers and employees recorded the abuses and sold the videos as pornographic material. This is the conclusion of a report titled “Report of the Historical Commission of Conflict and Its Victims” that denounces abuses carried out by US forces in the South American country. This study of 809 ...Read full article...

Lula being investigated by Brazilian Federal Prosecutor

The former president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, may have entered the spotlight of the Brazilian prosecutor leading the corruption investigation at Petrobras. After the scandal of the so-called operation “Lava Jato”, reports on Brazilian media state that the Prosecutor’s Office in Brasilia has opened an investigation against the former president for influence peddling to facilitate the creation of contracts related to construction projects with foreign governments ...Read full article...