LATIN AMERICA

MARTHA GREVATT—The courage of the masses has emerged in a country deemed the most dangerous in the world for union leaders — with an assassination rate the highest anywhere. Community and human rights activists are also frequent targets of right-wing paramilitary death squads with ties to the military and police. Since the signing of the 2016 peace accords, more than 777 activists, including 137 former FARC combatants, have reportedly been murdered in just the past year.

ANDRE VLTCHEK—Chileans have been fighting and dying, trying to depose a neo-liberal system, forced down their throats ever since 1973 by the Los Chicago Boys. The Bolivian socialist government, successful, democratic and racially inclusive, has been overthrown, by Washington and Bolivian treasonous cadres. People have been dying there, too, on the streets of El Alto, La Paz, and Cochabamba.

“With a few exceptions, all the presidents in Latin America are white,” notes Janvieve Williams Comrie, a pan-Africanist activist originally from Panama. “The racial dynamics are different,” said Comrie, but “the same racial structures exist” as in the rest of the hemisphere.

ANDREW KORYBKO—Bolivia, a lithium-rich landlocked socialist state just fell victim to a Hybrid War regime change operation that risks embroiling the country in a more intense civil war than it already unofficially is in. Considering the possibility that any worsening of the crisis there could lead to similarly disastrous socio-economic consequences as the years-long one in Venezuela, it can’t be ruled out that a significant number of refugees might flee into neighboring Brazil, which could destabilize that already sharply divided country even more.

EUAN GIBB—While Piñera was giving the orders to intensify repression in the streets, Chile’s National Institute of Human Rights reported a series of abuses and serious violations by the security forces throughout the country. “There are reports of excessive use of force at the time of detention, unfair harassment of children, mistreatment, blows to the face and legs, torture, stripping of women and men, sexual violations, among other violations.” The president’s response was to openly declare that Chile “is at war,” once again inflaming the population.