Posts tagged #USA

Settling Accounts: Latin American rage reaches the US

By Rodrigo Acuña

The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

20 August 2008

Despite the best spin on the benefits of neoliberal accords such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by sections of the U.S. press, large numbers of Mexicans and Latin Americans have been illegally heading north due to poor employment opportunities at home.

In 2004, after ten years of the NAFTA agreement, open unemployment in Mexico "reached an all-time high" according to one expert, while "there are more illegal immigrants pouring into the United States than ever."

Cuban detainees' hope for fair trial

By Rodrigo Acuña

Eureka Street

3 October 2007

Outside the alternative media, last month saw nearly no coverage of the incarceration in the United States of Cuban agents Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando Gonzáles and René Gonzáles.

Now into their ninth year of imprisonment, the Cuban Five — as they are otherwise known — are serving a variety of sentences that include convictions for conspiracy to commit espionage and homicide. By most credible accounts, the Cubans are in prison — some on life sentences — for political reasons and not because they have broken any serious laws, other than overstaying their visas.