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The Americas Uncovered: Revolution in Development (LISTEN)

By |2/March/2023|

In the latest episode of our podcast, Peter Watt interviews Christy Thornton about her book Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy.

Uou can now listen to episode four of our podcast, The Americas Uncovered, hosted by Dr Peter Watt of Sheffield University in the UK. In this episode, Peter speaks to Christy Thornton, Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, about her book Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy, which explores the Mexican Revolution’s influence on international economic institutions.

Presented by Dr Peter Watt (University of Sheffield, UK)

Produced by Pablo Navarrete and Nick MacWilliam

Artwork by Simon Díaz-Cuffin

Music by Peter Watt

Listen to the podcast here or below.

The Americas Uncovered: Revolution in Development (LISTEN)

By |2/March/2023|

In the latest episode of our podcast, Peter Watt interviews Christy Thornton about her book Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy.

Uou can now listen to episode four of our podcast, The Americas Uncovered, hosted by Dr Peter Watt of Sheffield University in the UK. In this episode, Peter speaks to Christy Thornton, Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, about her book Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy, which explores the Mexican Revolution’s influence on international economic institutions.

Presented by Dr Peter Watt (University of Sheffield, UK)

Produced by Pablo Navarrete and Nick MacWilliam

Artwork by Simon Díaz-Cuffin

Music by Peter Watt

Listen to the podcast here or below.

Chile: 50 Years of Solidarity and Struggle (LISTEN)

By |22/February/2023|

Listen to a podcast of our recent ‘Chile: 50 Years of Solidarity and Struggle’ panel at a Latin America solidarity conference in London.

In London recently for the Latin America Adelante Conference, Alborada organised the panel ‘Chile: 50 Years of Solidarity and Struggle’. The panel was organised in association with Chile 50 Years UK.

For more information on the panel including the list of speakers, click here.

Panel recorded by Peter Watt, host of the Alborada podcast The Americas Uncovered.

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Listen to the panel here or below.

Challenges for the Chilean Left (LISTEN)

By |22/February/2023|

Listen to our podcast interview with Chilean writer, academic and activist Melany Cruz on what the Chilean Left should do to advance a progressive agenda under Gabriel Boric’s government.

In London recently for the Latin America Adelante Conference, Melany Cruz, a Chilean writer, academic and activist, spoke to Peter Watt about the challenges facing the Chilean Left under Gabriel Boric’s government.

Melany Cruz is Lecturer in Politics of the Global South at Leicester University and has written on Chilean politics for a number of media outlets.

Peter Watt teaches on Latin America at Sheffield University and is the host of Alborada’s podcast, The Americas Uncovered.

Listen to the interview here or below.

Nicaragua & International Solidarity with Latin America (LISTEN)

By |21/February/2023|

Listen to our podcast interview with author and activist Dan Kovalik on the importance of standing with Latin America’s progressive governments and social movements.

In London recently for the Latin America Adelante Conference, Dan Kovalik, US author, lawyer and activist, spoke to Peter Watt about international solidarity with Latin America.

Dan Kovalik is the author of several books on the region, including his most recent, Nicaragua: A History of US Intervention and Resistance. Dan is also a longtime campaigner for human rights and social justice in Latin America and elsewhere.

Peter Watt teaches on Latin America at Sheffield University and is the host of Alborada’s podcast, The Americas Uncovered.

Listen to the interview here or below.

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The Secret History of the CIA Hollywood Doesn’t Tell You (WATCH)

By |20/February/2023|

Alborada co-editor Pablo Navarrete spoke to Vijay Prashad with Double Down News in Chile last year for their new video about the secret history of the CIA.

Watch the video interview here or below. Watch it on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

This interview with Prashad also features in the Double Down News documentary ‘The Other 9/11: How to Make a Nation Scream’. Watch the film here.

Watch a Double Down News interview by Pablo Navarrete with Bolivia’s president Luis Arce here.

What’s Driving ‘Irregular’ Cuban Emigration to the United States?

By |6/February/2023|

Until the United States alleviates the punishing blockade that is suffocating the Cuban people, economic hardship will continue to drive Cuban emigration.

In 2022, an unprecedented number of Cubans arrived in the United States through irregular, or ‘illegal,’ channels. Historically, the United States has encouraged and weaponised Cuban emigration. Cuban migrants fuel US propaganda about the failure of socialism and about political persecution and the lack of freedom and human rights on the island. However, it is an issue which can spiral out of control, forcing US administrations into dialogue with the Cuban government in the past. The current surge is creating political problems for President Biden as his opponents exploit the issue for electoral gain. As a result, in January 2023 the administration introduced legislation that it hopes will halt the wave of ‘illegal’ Cuban entrants and that threatens to undermine the blanket privileges granted to Cubans in the United States. However, until the United States alleviates the punishing blockade that is suffocating the Cuban people, economic hardship will continue to drive Cuban emigration. The United States’ policy towards Cuban migrants is characterised by paradox and contradictions.

In 2022, over 313,000 Cubans arrived in the United States, most of them without visas and entering from Mexico. This is more than double the previous peak of Cuban migration during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. They were admitted after claiming asylum. However, these are economic migrants. Once settled, like many of the Cubans who preceded them, most will return to the island when possible to visit their families without the slightest fear of retribution from Cuban authorities.

Pull factors: Cubans are drawn to the United States by the unique privileges that Cuban migrants receive there; one year and one day after arrival, Cubans can petition for permanent residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act, whether they arrived legally or not and without needing to claim asylum or refugee status. Although formally discretionary, permanent residence is systematically granted. Cubans are the only nationals to receive this privilege in the United States. They resort to irregular channels and long, complicated journeys because from 2017 to 2022 legal channels for Cubans to travel to the United States for any reason or duration (study, work, family reunification or residence) were effectively closed. In November 2021, the Nicaraguan government removed the visa requirement for Cuban travellers. This gave Cubans an alternative route: instead of risking the perilous Florida Straits seaborne, they could fly to Nicaragua and risk the journey north through Central America and Mexico, treading the same path as millions of Latin Americans en route to the United States. In the last fiscal year, more than two million people were arrested trying to cross into the United States, a 24 per cent increase on the previous year. For many, the journey subjects them to human traffickers and criminal gangs who make a lucrative trade from migrant desperation.

Push factors: Those Cubans leave behind an economy in crisis as a result of suffocating US sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic. The resulting scarcities

The Americas Uncovered: Mexico’s Spectres of Revolution (LISTEN)

By |6/February/2023|

In the latest episode of our podcast, Peter Watt interviews Alexander Aviña about his book Specters of Revolution.

You can now listen to episode three of our podcast, The Americas Uncovered, hosted by Dr Peter Watt of Sheffield University in the UK. In this episode, Peter speaks to Alexander Aviña, Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University (ASU) in the USA, about his book Specters of Revolution: Peasant Guerrillas in the Cold War Mexican Countryside.

Presented by Dr Peter Watt (University of Sheffield, UK)

Produced by Pablo Navarrete

Music by Peter Watt

Artwork by Simon Díaz-Cuffin

Listen to the podcast here or below.

Colombian State Responsible for ‘Extermination’ of UP Political Party

By |4/February/2023|

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has found the Colombian state participated in an intense campaign of violence that killed thousands of members of the leftwing Patriotic Union (UP) party in the 1980s and 90s.

For more than two decades, the Colombian state participated in intense human rights abuses against the leftwing Patriotic Union (UP) party in a campaign of ‘extermination,’ a landmark ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has declared. From 1984, more than 6,000 UP activists, members and supporters were targeted. The ruling reaffirms the state’s role in atrocities committed against civil society during the armed conflict.

The UP was founded in 1985 under the terms of a peace agreement between the then-government of Belisario Betancur and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). It brought together former guerrillas and other leftist groups as they pursued political change through electoral means, a major shift from the armed struggle that the FARC had previously enacted.

However, after the UP made electoral gains at regional and local levels, state forces colluded with paramilitaries, politicians and business groups to carry out brutal violence against the party, in a campaign commonly referred to as a ‘political genocide’ in Colombia. The objective was simple: to prevent the UP’s emergence as a credible alternative to long established power structures and, as the ruling finds, ‘to counteract the UP’s rise in the political arena.’

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an autonomous tribunal tasked with carrying out investigations into human rights violations across the Americas. Some of these investigations cannot easily be held in the countries where they are alleged to have taken place.

The ruling says that among the acts of ‘systematic violence’ suffered by victims and carried out on a nationwide scale were forced disappearances, massacres, extrajudicial executions and murders, threats, physical attacks, stigmatisation, legal persecutions, torture, forced displacement and others. This was facilitated by investigations which, if carried out at all, were woefully ineffective and characterised by ‘high levels of impunity which operated as forms of tolerance on the part of authorities.’ Aligned with the active collusion of authorities in the violence, the absence of repercussion enabled the killings and other abuses to continue unimpeded.

Additionally, the Court found the state responsible for violating victims’ rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association. This manifested through ongoing stigmatisation of a party depicted as an ‘internal enemy,’ a discourse which legitimised persecution against the UP. High-ranking state officials were most prominent in feeding the climate of aggression through political discourse, which had the effect, in the words of the Court, of ‘aggravating the situation of vulnerability … and generating a motive to promote attacks against them.’ As well as impacting their physical safety, this generated a severe psychological impact on many UP members and supporters.

Victims’ rights remain violated today, as the state has failed to properly investigate the violence, to prosecute those responsible or to uphold the right of victims to the truth.

In its ruling the Court issued several forms of state reparation:

  • Ensure rigorous

Why Brazil’s Fascists Should Not Get Amnesty

By |19/January/2023|

The 8 January riot by far-right Bolsonaristas should close the doors of Brazilian institutions to fascism forever.

From all the excited cries echoing from the red tide that took over Brasília during Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s (known as Lula) inauguration as the Brazilian president on 1 January 2023, the most significant – and challenging, especially from the institutional stance of the new government – was the call for ‘no amnesty!’ The crowds chanting those words were referring to the crimes perpetrated by the military dictatorship in Brazil from 1964 to 1985 that still remain unpunished. Lula paused his speech, to let the voices be heard, and followed up with a strong but restrained message about accountability.

Lula’s restraint shows his respect for the civic limitation of the executive, standing in sharp contrast to former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s notion of statesmanship. After all, one of the characteristics that allow us to properly qualify ‘‘Bolsonarismo’ as fascism is the deliberate amalgamation between the institutional exercise of power and counter-institutional militancy. As a president, Bolsonaro went beyond mixing those roles; he occupied the state in constant opposition against the state itself. He constantly attributed his ineptitude as a leader to the restrictions imposed by the democratic institutions of the republic.

While Bolsonaro projected an image of being a strongman in front of cameras, which eventually helped him climb the ladder of power, he maintained a low profile in Congress and his three-decade-long congressional tenure is a testament to his political and administrative irrelevance. His weak exercise of power revealed his inadequacy as a leader when he finally took over as president. Bolsonaro catapulted to notoriety when he cast his vote for impeaching former president Dilma Rousseff in 2016.

Before casting his vote, Bolsonaro took that opportunity to pay homage to Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, ‘convicted of torture‘ during the military dictatorship, whom he jestingly referred to as ‘the dread of Dilma Rousseff!’; Ustra was responsible for systematically torturing the former head of state when she, then a young Marxist guerrilla, was jailed by the dictatorship. From that day until Bolsonaro’s last public appearance – after which he fled the country to make his way to Orlando, Florida, before Lula’s inauguration – the only opportunity he ever had to stage his electoral persona was by instigating his supporters through incendiary speeches. That combination led to an impotent government, run by someone who encouraged his supporters to cheer for him using the ridiculously macho nickname ‘Imbrochável,’ which translates to ‘unfloppable.’

By endorsing the need for accountability while respecting the solemnity of the presidency and allowing people to call for ‘no amnesty,’ Lula restores some normality to the dichotomy that exists between the representative/represented within the framework of a liberal bourgeois democracy. A small gesture, but one that will help establish the necessary institutional trust for fascism to be scrutinised. Now, the ball is in the court of the organised left; the urgency and radicality of the accountability depend on its ability to theoretically and politically

Which Government Does the US Recognise in Venezuela?

By |9/January/2023|

Despite the Venezuelan opposition having dissolved Juan Guaidó’s ‘interim government,’ and as President Nicolás Maduro floats negotiations, the US is clinging to its failed strategy.

On 3 January 2023, Shaun Tandon of Agence France-Presse asked US State Department spokesperson Ned Price about Venezuela. In late December, the Venezuelan opposition after a fractious debate decided to dissolve the ‘interim government’ led by Juan Guaidó. From 2019 onward, the US government recognised Guaidó as the ‘interim president of Venezuela.’ With the end of Guaidó’s administration, Tandon asked if ‘the United States still recognise[s] Juan Guaidó as legitimate interim president.’

Price’s answer was that the US government recognises the ‘only remaining democratically elected institution in Venezuela today, and that’s the 2015 National Assembly.’ It is true that when the US government supported Guaidó as the ‘interim president’ of Venezuela, it did so because of his role as the rotating president in that National Assembly in 2019. Since the presidency of the National Assembly rotates annually, Guaidó should have left the position of ‘interim president’ by the end of 2020. But he did not, going against Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999, which he cited as the basis for his ascension in 2019.

Price said, ‘The 2015 National Assembly has renewed its mandate.’ However, that assembly was dissolved since its term expired and it was replaced – after an election in December 2020 – by another National Assembly. The US government called the 2020 election a ‘political farce.’ But when I met the leaders of Venezuela’s two historic opposition parties in Venezuela in 2020 – Pedro José Rojas of Acción Democrática (AD) and Juan Carlos Alvarado of Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI) – they told me that the 2020 election was legitimate and that they just did not know how to overrun the massive wave of Chavista voters. Since the members of the new assembly took their seats, the 2015 assembly has not set foot in the Palacio Federal Legislativo, which houses the National Assembly, near Plaza Bolívar in Caracas.

In essence, then, the US government believes that the real democratic institution in Venezuela is one that has not met in seven years, and one whose political forces decided –against the advice of AD and COPEI – to boycott the 2020 election.

Meanwhile, in early January 2023, Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro spoke with veteran journalist Ignacio Ramonet. Maduro told Ramonet that he is ‘prepared for dialogues at the highest level and with relations of respect.’ He hoped that ‘a halo of light’ would reach the office of US President Joe Biden and allow the United States to put its ‘extremist policy aside.’ Not only did Ned Price refuse this olive branch, but he also said that the US approach to ‘Nicolás Maduro is not changing.’ This is an awkward statement since members of Price’s own government went to Caracas in March and June of 2022 to meet with the Maduro administration and talk about the normalisation of oil sales and the release of detained US citizens.

Meanwhile, Tandon’s question hangs over the White House.

This article was produced by

Indestructible Podcast #16 – Operation Condor Through Film

By |24/December/2022|

In the 16th episode of Indestructible Rodrigo speaks to Argentinian filmmaker Rodrigo Vázquez about Operation Condor, a US-backed campaign of state terror in South America.

Indestructible: Latin America with Rodrigo Acuña is a podcast from Alborada bringing you monthly discussions with some of the most interesting voices working on and from Latin America.

In this 16th episode of Indestructible Podcast, Rodrigo interviews Argentinian filmmaker Rodrigo Vázquez about Operation Condor, a coordinated operation between the intelligence organisations of the dictatorships of the southern cone of South America during the 1970s and 80s.

The podcast is available on Spotify and other podcast streaming website.

Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon.

::: Episode 16:

Operation Condor Through Film. With Rodrigo Vázquez

Listen to episode 16 on Audioboom and a range of other podcast streaming websites

Watch the episode here or below. 

Click here to go to the Indestructible homepage.

Presented by Alborada contributing editor Rodrigo Acuña

Produced and edited by Pablo Navarrete

Music by Chylez Productions.

Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon.

Get in touch with the podcast: info [at] alborada [dot] net

Photography

Kiev, 26 May 2018

By |27/May/2018|

Liverpool supporters attending the Champions League final carry banners in solidarity with Brazilian former president Lula Da Silva and Catalan political prisoners. Polls show that if Lula ran in this year’s presidential election, he would win by a landslide and restore the Workers’ Party to government.

Video

Chile’s Student Uprising (Documentary)

By |2/April/2020|

Watch this documentary on the student protest movement in Chile in 2011 (Director Roberto Navarrete, 35 mins, Alborada Films, 2014).

Mass student protests took place in Chile between 2011 and 2013 demanding a free and state-funded education system and radical change in society. The documentary puts these protests in their historical context of widespread dissatisfaction with the economic model put in place under the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), but that still remains largely in place.

The film’s director travelled to Chile between 2011 and 2013 to speak to then student leaders (now Members of Congress) such as Camila Vallejo and Giorgio Jackson, and also to other students, to explore why their protests had caused such effect in Chile and inspired others in the country and beyond.

“Roberto Navarrete’s is the most complete and compelling visual account of Chile’s student uprising to date. All the lessons from Patricio Guzmán’s path-breaking style of documenting in film are there: poetic visuals, an engaged narrative, the focus on personal feelings and stories combined with subtle and accessible analysis, plus a sense of the tragic tempered by the optimism of the will. Navarrete adds to it the passion and distance of the exile’s gaze, and a Latin American Beckettian flare for celebration while thinking. This is a must see for all those interested in the current sway of global rebellions that show us all the shape of things to come. Superb!”

Dr Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Professor in Law, Birbeck, University of London and author of ‘Story of a Death Foretold: The Coup Against Salvador Allende, September 11th, 1973’

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Video

Chile’s Student Uprising (Documentary)

By |2/April/2020|

Watch this documentary on the student protest movement in Chile in 2011 (Director Roberto Navarrete, 35 mins, Alborada Films, 2014).

Mass student protests took place in Chile between 2011 and 2013 demanding a free and state-funded education system and radical change in society. The documentary puts these protests in their historical context of widespread dissatisfaction with the economic model put in place under the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), but that still remains largely in place.

The film’s director travelled to Chile between 2011 and 2013 to speak to then student leaders (now Members of Congress) such as Camila Vallejo and Giorgio Jackson, and also to other students, to explore why their protests had caused such effect in Chile and inspired others in the country and beyond.

“Roberto Navarrete’s is the most complete and compelling visual account of Chile’s student uprising to date. All the lessons from Patricio Guzmán’s path-breaking style of documenting in film are there: poetic visuals, an engaged narrative, the focus on personal feelings and stories combined with subtle and accessible analysis, plus a sense of the tragic tempered by the optimism of the will. Navarrete adds to it the passion and distance of the exile’s gaze, and a Latin American Beckettian flare for celebration while thinking. This is a must see for all those interested in the current sway of global rebellions that show us all the shape of things to come. Superb!”

Dr Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Professor in Law, Birbeck, University of London and author of ‘Story of a Death Foretold: The Coup Against Salvador Allende, September 11th, 1973’

Chile’s Student Uprising (Documentary)

By |2/April/2020|

Watch this documentary on the student protest movement in Chile in 2011 (Director Roberto Navarrete, 35 mins, Alborada Films, 2014).

Mass student protests took place in Chile between 2011 and 2013 demanding a free and state-funded education system and radical change in society. The documentary puts these protests in their historical context of widespread dissatisfaction with the economic model put in place under the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), but that still remains largely in place.

The film’s director travelled to Chile between 2011 and 2013 to speak to then student leaders (now Members of Congress) such as Camila Vallejo and Giorgio Jackson, and also to other students, to explore why their protests had caused such effect in Chile and inspired others in the country and beyond.

“Roberto Navarrete’s is the most complete and compelling visual account of Chile’s student uprising to date. All the lessons from Patricio Guzmán’s path-breaking style of documenting in film are there: poetic visuals, an engaged narrative, the focus on personal feelings and stories combined with subtle and accessible analysis, plus a sense of the tragic tempered by the optimism of the will. Navarrete adds to it the passion and distance of the exile’s gaze, and a Latin American Beckettian flare for celebration while thinking. This is a must see for all those interested in the current sway of global rebellions that show us all the shape of things to come. Superb!”

Dr Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Professor in Law, Birbeck, University of London and author of ‘Story of a Death Foretold: The Coup Against Salvador Allende, September 11th, 1973’