For more than a decade, the cities of Chihuahua and Juarez, near the US-Mexico border, have been killing fields for young women. Over 400 women have been murdered and an additional 4000 women have gone missing since 1993.

As relayed on the Juarez Project website,

“A significant number of victims work in the maquiladora sector - sweatshops that produce for export, with 90% destined for the United States. The maquiladoras employ mainly young women, at poverty level wages. In combination with lax environmental regulations and low tariffs under the North …

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is currently on a mission in Latin America, pushing forward a “Canadian-made” free trade model which he wants applied throughout the region. Harper has also been going to incredible lengths to improve Canada’s image in the South, making impressive statements claiming that Canada the perfect, Canada the majestic, Canada the awesome — seeks only to free Latin America from the evil scourge that is Latin America.

On the 15th he set out to Colombia, where he met with President Alvaro Uribe to discuss …

For the past 6 days, around 350 thousand teachers have been on strike in Peru, in protest of a new set of “Teacher’s Laws”, which are being imposed on them. Numerous actions have been take so far. to name a few, an airport was shut down, as well as one city. At this point, atleast 2 people died and an unknown number have been injured.

Amid this, the National Day of Struggle– a two day Peru-wide General Strike convoked by Peru’s National Federation of Miners, Metalworkers and Steelworkers began …

Utilizing excerpts from the award-winning non-fiction text “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, Life and Debt is a woven tapestry of sequences focusing on the stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agendas.

By combining traditional documentary telling with a stylized narrative framework, the complexity of international lending, structural adjustment policies and free trade will be understood in the context of the day-to-day realities of the people whose lives they impact.

Here’s an excerpted review of the film by Homa Khaleeli, originally posted on …

[translated for RA by Rosalind Gil. Links added by me. See here for the Declaration in Spanish]

Declaration of Durugubuti
Garífuna, Lenca and Vía Campesina representatives have come together as part of the Foro de Biodiversidad: Territorio y Cultura (Forum on Biodiversity: Lands and Culture) to declare that we honour the spirits of our ancestors who were massacred seventy years ago during the dictatorship of Tiburcio Crías and we declare that:

Faced with the offensive of the neo-liberal Plan Puebla-Panamá, a plan to reinforce neocolonialism amongst our peoples and to spread the powerful neo-liberal transport and maquila network, we …

El Enemigo Comun (the common enemy) scratches beneath the surface of neoliberalism, at some of the its most hidden atrocities in recent North American history. The film documents instances of paramilitary activity against indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico from 2002 through 2005 while including scenes from an international human rights movement in 2003, in Miami against the Free Trade Area of the America’s, and in Cancun against the World Trade Organization. The three locations in isolation expose the disparity of North American resistances, but together bring us closer to understanding the nature of an emerging common struggle.

Tear gas, rubber bullets, …

Declaration of Iximche’
III Continental Summit of Indigenous Nations and Pueblos of Abya Yala, March 26-30, 2007

We the children of the Indigenous Nations and Pueblos of the continent, self convened and gathered at the III Continental Summit of Indigenous Nations and Pueblos of Abya Yala realized in Iximche’, Guatemala the days of Oxlajuj Aq’abal, thirteen powers of the Spirit of the Dawn (26th of March) to Kaj� Kej, four powers of the Spirit of the Deer (30th of March, 2007):

We hereby affirm the Declaration of Teotihuacan (Mexico, 2000), the Declaration of Kito (Ecuador, 2004) and ratify our millennial principles of complementarity, …

Blacks and Immigrants: More Allies Than Adversaries
By Gerald Lenoir, urbanhabitat.org
Spring 2007

The year 2006 will go down as a watershed year for the immigrant rights movement in the United States. Bringing millions of immigrants and their families and supporters into the streets was a huge accomplishment. But much more needs to be done to consolidate a fragmented movement and bring on new allies.

Last April, a group of African Americans and Black immigrants in Oakland, California came together to form the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). “BAJI was founded to support the demands of the immigrant rights movement and to …

Venezuela’s Banco del Sur: The End of the IMF in Latin America
by Paul McIvor, www.upsidedownworld.org
March 21, 2007

Speaking to an audience at Columbia Business School in February, Rodrigo de Rato, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, sketched out his vision for Latin America. Optimistically titled “The Way Forward,” Mr. de Rato called on the countries of the region to stay the course laid out by the IMF – structural adjustments, trade liberalization and privatization.

He dismissed the shift to the left in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia as an “apparent inconsistency of economic and political developments,” suggesting that voter dissatisfaction has …

Activists Seek Alternative Model to ‘Neo-Liberal’ Trade Pacts
By Michelle Chen, newstandardnews.net
March 22, 2007

With two controversial trade deals awaiting ratification, Congress is taking stock of the White House’s free-trade agenda, and activists are seizing the moment to call for policies that respond to the social needs of all countries involved.

Lawmakers are considering trade deals with Colombia and Peru that encapsulate some of the most contentious aspects of so-called “free trade”: rules that critics say elevate corporate privilege over human rights, promote exploitation of workers, and destabilize economies.

At the same time, President Bush’s power to broker such deals with minimal congressional …