The most advanced political struggles taking place in the world today are in Latin America where, breaking the trend of 30 years of defeats for the international left, mass socialist movements have won elections and used government to drive back US imperialism on the continent and to make substantial improvements in the living standards of the majority. (For more see Latin America and socialism of the 21st Century)
Thursday 1 December 2011, 6pm-7.15pm
US Embassy
Grosvenor Square, London
(Bond St tube)
with special guests from Cuba – the mothers of the Miami 5:
Mirta Rodriguez Perez
Irma Sehwerert Mileham
Magali Llort Ruiz
By Stephen MacAvoy
The huge youth student protests that have shaken Chile in recent months have shattered the myth that it is Latin America’s neo-liberal success story and underlined how mass protests are key to forcing concessions from politicians who argue “there is no alternative”.
The students, whose demands are free education and an end to profit-making in education, have organised six months of resolute protests involving prolonged occupations of hundreds of schools some for months at time, regular demonstrations attracting as many as 1m people (as shown in this video report) in a country of just 16 million people and civil disobedience in the form of direct action, such as this occupation of Parliament (seen here).
By Stephen MacAvoy
The victory of Ollanta Humala in Peru’s presidential election on Sunday (5 June) marks a further consolidation of the left in South America, a defeat for the right-wing current cited as the alternative by those opposed to the continent’s leftwards shift and a further weakening of the United States’ influence in the region.
The following extracts are from an interview with Professor Jose Bell Lara, of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Havana. The full interview first appeared on Links: international journal of socialist renewal.
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