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Tag: Pink Tide

  • Under Left and Right-Wing Leaders, the Amazon Has Burned. Can Latin America Reject Oil, Ranching, and Mining?

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    fitzdon

    The chapter in Latin American history that opened in 1998 with celebrations in Venezuela has ended with a coup and violence in Bolivia. As with all tidal waves, the “pink tide” recedes to reveal a terrain transformed. The left movement landscape that produced variously striped socialist governments in a dozen countries is fractured and disillusioned.…

  • Ecuador’s Dilemma

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    fitzdon

    The main lesson of correísmo is that no project of transformation, if it wants to sustain and even deepen social change, can weaken the people who propel it forward. The Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa (2007–2017) stirred hopeful expectations in the continental and global lefts. Although the young economist did not have a record of…

  • Criminalizing environmental activism

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    by

    fitzdon

    As threats to the environment increase across Latin America, new laws and police practices take aim against the front line activists defending their land and resources. Berta Cáceres, assassinated in her home on March 3, 2016, was just one of hundreds of Latin American environmental activists attacked in recent years. At least 577 environmental human…

  • Digging Free of Poverty

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    by

    fitzdon

    On March 8, 2012, a few hundred marchers set out from Pangui, Ecuador, a town in the southeastern Amazon, near the construction site of the massive, open-pit Mirador Mine. Just days earlier, a consortium of Chinese state-owned companies had signed a contract to exploit the mine’s copper reserves, the first agreement of its kind in…

  • What Happened to the Pink Tide?

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    by

    fitzdon

    When the “pink tide” of left-leaning governments first rose to power on the back of anti-neoliberal protests across Latin America in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the initial reaction from the Left was euphoric. Striving to move beyond the “there is no alternative” mantra, many pinned their hopes on what seemed to be a…