Every six years, Mexico goes through an extended period of political paroxysm called presidential elections. Campaigns hijack the routines of normal public life, the media are monothematic, political propaganda litters the streets of large cities and remote villages. In a …
Four years ago on the embargo-stricken island, Obama’s election fueled a wave of optimism for improved relations between the two countries, a development that some see as a necessary step to improving life on the island.
What benefits has Hugo Chávez’s populist administration brought to the Venezuelan people? In a controversial 2008 Foreign Affairs article, “An Empty Revolution,” Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez argues that the regime has not improved the quality of life in the country …
Let’s start with the numbers. On May 28, an estimated twenty thousand people flooded into downtown Santiago and marched on the presidential palace to protest the HidroAysén project, a plan to build a series of hydroelectric dams on two of …
We are surprised by Mark Engler’s criticism of our essay, “Democracy Undermined,” in the Summer 2010 issue of Dissent, in which we lament the heavy-handed use of the law to dismantle democracy in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, purportedly to build …
On June 21, residents of Fremont, a small meatpacking town just outside Omaha, Nebraska, voted by 57 percent to deny work and shelter to undocumented immigrants. Why Fremont, Nebraska, and why now? Some observers, not knowing the Fremont measure was …
Early in the morning of June 28, 2009, the president of Honduras, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, was rousted out of his bed by soldiers and sent out of the country in his pajamas. It was an old-fashioned coup d’état, evoking, seemingly, …
Michael Walzer: Succession Tests in Poland and Latin America
The town I was destined for is full of immigrants, and over the past decade they have arrived in increasing numbers. Most do not learn the local language and reside and socialize within an isolated cultural enclave. These immigrants practice …
The reality of Venezuela under the rule of Hugo Chávez Frias, Gregory Wilpert tells us, is a “complicated truth” (“Venezuela’s Other Path,” Spring 2005). Whereas many observers see in Chávez another Fidel Castro, an authoritarian caudillo pushing his nation toward …
It is difficult for casual outside observers to make sense of Venezuela. Most people who rely on mainstream media for their information will get contradictory accounts of the government of Hugo Chavez, its policies, and its confrontations with the opposition. …
Th Changing Grassroots Left in Latin America
The markets were pleased when Vicente Fox won Mexico’s presidential election in July: not because he had done what many still thought impossible—defeat the authoritarian machinery of the longest ruling party in the world—but because there had been no unrest, …
In the debate over the Mexican bailout last January, U.S. stockbrokers, the Mexico lobby, and the mainstream media pressed hard for the rescue package. Their argument rested on the premise that economics had replaced military action as the basis for …
Ten years ago I tried to interpret Mexico for Ilan and Irving Howe in a single day. I took them to Aztec ruins and to markets where indigenous customs live on virtually intact. We strolled through the center of Mexico …
