Latin America

Dru Oja Jay interviews filmmaker Kevin Pina about Canada's role in the overthrow of Haiti's government.

This year's World Social Forum was the largest ever, attracting over 120,000 participants. Jennifer Besner describes the scene in Porto Allegre.

Canadian media present two pictures of Haiti: helpless victim and land of violent "gangs". Dru Oja Jay compares their story to the facts on the ground.

In this interview, The Take director Avi Lewis talks about the film, and the implications of "inverting the traditional labour action".

"Best hope for success" or imperial power grab? Jen Peirce reports on the Central American Free Trade Agreement from El Salvador.

In a rare exception to the Dominion's de facto lack of opinion articles, Yves Engler argues that Haitians are risking their lives to fight an illegal regime that the Canadian government is propping up.

Meribeth Deen visits Fair Trade coffee farms in Nicaragua.

Anthony Fenton shares his impressions from a ten-day trip to post-coup Haiti

The US is using a new approach to sidestep developing countries' unified demands

Last September saw the spectacular collapse of World Trade Organization treaty talks in Cancun, Mexico. Joseph Stiglitz, former Chair of Clinton's council of economic advisors and Nobel Prize winner described the talks as "the usual: hard bargaining, extreme positions, last-minute concessions, arm twisting, peer pressure, tacit threats of cutting off development assistance and other benefits, and secret meetings among a small number of participants are all designed to extract concessions from the weakest".

by Yuill Herbert

David Fuenmayor reports on Venezuela's deep political divide, US intervention, and issues surrounding a potential referendum.

Ben Sichel visits Chiapas, Mexico for the tenth anniversary of the Zapatista uprising.

The Right Whale Program of Peninsula Valdes

Each September, right whales gather off the coast of Peninsula Valdes in Argentina's Chubut province. Since 1971, researchers have gathered there, as well: an unlikely group of biologists, conservationists, and whale-lovers, engaged in one of the world's longest-running studies of a marine mammal population. This past September, photographer John Haney and I spent a week on Peninsula Valdes, and got a window into the history of this study, onshore and off.

by Amanda Jernigan
photographs by John Haney

An interview with Simon Helweg-Larsen on US intervention, labour relations, and inequality in Guatemala after the elections.

When Argentina's economy collapsed in January of 2002, thousands of Argentinians lost their jobs, and others lost their life savings when foreign banks closed suddenly. In the face of massive unemployment which existed well before the collapse, unemployed workers formed collectives to democratically petition the government for temporary employment ("plans"). After being consistantly ignored, the poorest of the unemployed, often starving, began to set up roadblocks (piquetes) on important Argentinian roads in support of their demands for work. They have also set up bakeries, bartering systems, and occupied abandoned factories and restarted business as usual--without the owners and with a radically democratic model of organizing.

A conversation between the Situaciones Collective and multiple members of the Unemployed Workers Movement of Solano. Translated by Ivan A. and eleusa.