Latin America & the Caribbean

After a long campaign of community resistance to the project, the Nicaraguan government has declared that the Canadian company B2Gold's bid to open a gold mine is “unviable” due to its environmental impacts.

Statue of Guaicaipuro. Photo: Correo del Orinoco. A statue of Caribe indigenous resistance hero Guaicaipuro was unveiled on October 12 by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to commemorate the Day of Indigenous Resistance. Guaicaipuro, an indigenous chief of the Caribes, led one of the most successful resistance campaigns against invading Spanish colonial forces throughout the 1560s and is revered by many of Venezuela’s grassroots movements.

FMLN supporters celebrate election victory. March, 2014. Thirty-five years after its founding, El Salvador's historic Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is set to hold its first national congress at the end of October.

Evo Morales. Bolivia is calling for investigations into cables leaked by WikiLeaks that reveal the US had plans in 2008 to topple the left-wing government of President Evo Morales, including potentially backing his assassination. “This requires an in-depth investigation,” said Bolivia's minister of the presidency, Juan Ramon Quintana. “We need to do an investigation to subsequently take decisions with regard to the United States government.”

South America’s largest country, Brazil, has been rocked in recent months by a political crisis, partly fuelled by mass protests calling for the removal of centre-left President Dilma Rousseff. The protests come as the country officially moves into recession, with Brazil’s economy expected to contract by 2% this year. Brazil has been governed by a Workers’ Party (PT)-led coalition for over a decade, firstly under Luiz Ignacio “Lula” da Silva and now Dilma, as she is commonly known.

Austria, as well as Serbia and Croatia, have joined other European countries in temporarily closing their borders. On September 21, Croatia closed its last checkpoint for trucks on the Serbian border where thousands of refugees are waiting to cross in the hope of a better life.

Day care centre for Colombian refugees in Ecuador. Governments across the world are erecting walls and tightening laws to keep refugees out, but one country is taking a radically different approach based on the simple premise that “no one is illegal”. The Andean nation of Ecuador, with a population of 15.7 million people, is no stranger to the challenges of dealing with refugee crises.

A World to Build: New Paths Toward Twenty-First Century Socialism Marta Harnecker Monthly Review Press, 2015 US$19, paperback The emergence of diverse, complex and popular social projects in Latin America — several of which have involved winning governmental power —- is arguably the most important phenomenon shaping radical politics in the 21st century. The political practices of popular movements and political parties engaged in these revolutionary projects can inspire and educate radicals and activists all over the world.

Land reforms are essential to achieving a long-standing peace after half a century of conflict, said Colombian academic Alejandro Reyes on September 10 during a forum on agrarian issues in Bogota.

Not even Brahma, the Brazilian multinational beer company, stood a chance. Brahma’s plant in the northern Venezuelan city of Barquisimeto was left to be occupied by its workers, who did not accept being fired when the factory closed, after its shares were sold to billionaire Gustavo Cisneros. The beer business in Venezuela was strategically designed so that only three brewing companies could become part it, which with the passing of time became two: Empresas Polar, owned by the Mendoza family, and Cerveceria Regional, owned by the Cisneros Group.

Venezuela and Colombia recalled their ambassadors for consultations on August 26. The move came after a meeting between the two nations’ foreign ministers failed to calm diplomatic tensions over Venezuelan border closures and Colombian smuggling activities.

Just hours after an arrest warrant was issued against him, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina announced he would step down from office on September 2, in the face of a worsening corruption scandal and huge anti-government protests. The next day, a judge sentenced Perez Molina to a provisional jail sentence while the charges against him are heard.