What’s Left of Macondo?
Shaped by Latin America’s uneven and wildly unequal incorporation into the global market, Gabriel García Márquez’s literary project retains an eerie sense of foreboding today.
Spring 2025
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Honduras: The Deep Roots of Resistance
The National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) emerged out of the opposition to Honduras’s 2009 coup and quickly developed into the largest social movement in Honduran history. Will it be able to turn things around in a country known for having the worst poverty and inequality in Latin America?
Teachers, Education Reform, and Mexico’s Left
Mexican leftists have flocked to support teachers’ unions in their protests against proposed education reforms. But by overlooking the unions’ undemocratic features and lack of popular support, the left weakens the fight against neoliberalism.
From Chavismo to a
Democratic Left in Venezuela 
In April, Hugo Chávez’s handpicked political heir, Nicolás Maduro, was elected president of Venezuela in an unexpectedly close race. Maduro will try to continue the Chavismo revolution, amid accusations of electoral fraud and the extreme polarization of the political landscape. …
Demanding a Voice, Enduring Silence: Lessons from a Brazilian Women’s Movement
In the movement and in their town, Ivone and Vania learned firsthand the pain that comes from silence. They didn’t want to damage a movement that protected other women from this pain by demanding a space in the movement for themselves.
Mexico’s Youth Protest a Return to the Past
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 …
Dreams Diminished: Cuba on the Eve of an American Election
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.
Hugo Chávez as Postmodern Perón
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 …
In Chile, Explaining Massive Protests Entails Remembering the Past
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 …
Reply by Forrest D. Colburn and Alberto Trejos
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 …
Corn and Country: Nebraska, Mexico, and the Global Economy
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 …
Democracy Undermined: Constitutional Subterfuge in Latin America
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, …
Succession in Latin America and Poland
Michael Walzer: Succession Tests in Poland and Latin America
“They Love Us Here”: American Migrants in Mexico
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 …
Venezuela under Chávez: Some Truths Are Not All That Complicated
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 …
