By Rodrigo Acuña
September-October 2013
Canadian Dimension
With the recent protests in Brazil over a number of social grievances leading up to 2014 FIFA World Cup, and the NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden possibly making his way to Ecuador or Venezuela so as to seek asylum, Latin America has recently captured global media attention. In Brazil, as protestors originally took to the streets over a 20-cent hike in public transport fares, reporting by some of the major corporate media has often been surprisingly sympathetic to protestors.
By Rodrigo Acuña
ON LINE Opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate
8 March 2013
I always expected to see video images of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Havana Cuba delivering a passionate speech at the ex-Cuban leader Fidel Castro's funeral amid other leftist heads of state from Latin America and the Caribbean. The news of Chavez's declining health due to cancer over the last two years was well known, as were his repeated statements that cancerous cells no longer inhabited his body.
At times these announcements on the surface appeared accurate. In public the former-lieutenant colonel always tried to project an image of being strong, confident and joyful. Chavez loved to be seen on television, often inaugurating a new school or clinic in a shanty town surrounded by his supporters. But after winning a convincing fourth presidential election in October 2012 by 55% to 45%, and then in November declaring that he needed to return to Cuba for more surgery, it seemed clear Chavez was not well.
By Rodrigo Acuña
Eureka Street
2 July 2012
The recent questionable removal of Paraguay’s left-wing president Fernando Lugo probably broke some type of world record.
With just two hours for Lugo’s lawyers to prepare his defence, the former Catholic clergyman, once known as ‘Bishop of the Poor’, was ousted in a 39-4 vote by the Senate within twenty-four hours of his original impeachment.
Denouncing his removal from the presidency, in which he still had a year left to serve, Lugo summarised the event as a 'parliamentary coup d’état'. He has a point.
By Rodrigo Acuña from Havana, Cuba
ON LINE Opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate
5 January 2012
I recently travelled to Havana, Cuba. I went there not as a political analyst or to practise journalism, but to get away from the difficulties of carrying out research in Caracas, Venezuela – one of Latin America's most overcrowded, violent and hostile cities, despite the efforts of its current administration to reduce poverty.
By Rodrigo Acuña from Caracas, Venezuela
New Matilda
10 October 2011
Since the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez announced in late June he had a cancerous tumour, media around the world have gone into a frenzy of speculation over his health and upped their attacks on his government. And since Chavez has a tendency to confuse support for a state's right to sovereignty in the face of foreign aggression with open support for its regime (such as Iran, Libya and Syria), it is easy for some journalists to distort the reality of events here in Venezuela.
By Rodrigo Acuña
New Matilda
3 December 2008
The former Cuban leader Fidel Castro once said that when it came to Washington, he preferred the Republicans in power because with Democrats it was difficult to know who he was dealing with.
Despite Castro's semi-favourable comments on US President-elect Barack Obama, who he described before the election as "no doubt more intelligent, educated and level-headed than his Republican rival", his past remarks on the unpredictability of Democratic administrations may still be relevant for Latin American countries.
By Rodrigo Acuña
The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
15 July 2009
Last week's military coup in Honduras highlights the limits of democracy in Latin America.
The coup's leaders complained that the country's president, Jose Manuel Zelaya, was attempting to extend his presidency with a referendum on the constitution which, if passed, would have facilitated his potential re-election.
Much of the mainstream media have repeated this view but it is simply false.
By Rodrigo Acuña
The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
3 February 2009
Recent reports in the media have indicated that the former Cuban leader Dr Fidel Castro Ruz is perhaps at the end of his life. On January 1, marking the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Cuban revolution, Castro, in an unusually short statement, wrote one sentence to mark the occasion. Over a week ago, the President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez claimed that his Cuban ally would not make a return to public life.
By Rodrigo Acuña
The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
30 September 2008
Despite the lack of in-depth coverage by the international media, the recent political crisis in Bolivia has made two things clear.
For a start, it seems the government of Evo Morales still has the backing of the majority of the population and, until now, most of the rank and file of the armed forces.
Secondly, the crisis has allowed South American countries to rally behind Morales through the new Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in contrast to the U.S. led Organisation of American States (OAS) - traditionally the forum to discuss such matters.
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."
By Rodrigo Acuña
The Diplomat
May 2008
The recent election of ex-Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo Méndez in Paraguay has seen another leftist leader take office in Latin America. With a ten-point lead over his nearest rival Blanca Ovelar, Lugo’s centre-left Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC) obtained a convincing 41 per cent of the vote seeing the end of the Colorado Party’s rule since 1947.
As one observer has noted, throughout Paraguay, Lugo’s victory has been celebrated as if the era of General Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship (1954-1989) were finally at an end.
By Rodrigo Acuña
The Diplomat
January 2008
The recent release of hostages by Colombia's largest rebel movement the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has again demonstrated the rebels' willingness to engage in peace negotiations with the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez.
And yet, if the latest reports that the FARC have kidnapped six tourists are correct, it also reveals that their leadership does not regard its international image - which is deservedly bad enough - high on its list of priorities. This is particularly the case after the successful mediating role played by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and the declaration passed by his country's National Assembly which stated that the FARC and the Army of National Liberation (ELN) - the country's second largest leftist guerrilla group - to be insurgents and not terrorists.
By Rodrigo Acuña
New Matilda
9 October 2007
It is 40 years since Ernesto “Che” Guevara - the Argentine revolutionary who had helped Fidel Castro overthrew the US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 - was captured with the aid of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and executed by the Bolivian military.
Ceremonies commemorating Guevara's death have been held throughout Latin America, with the largest taking place in Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua and, ironically, Bolivia - a country whose population once denounced Guevara to local troops as he attempted to ignite another revolution.
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.
By Rodrigo Acuña
New Matilda
27 September 2007
In his first feature film The War on Democracy, journalist John Pilger aims to expose Washington's foreign policy in Latin America, and does not pull any punches.
Through a series of interviews with activists, scholars and incumbent and retired Washington officials, and not the least with the “ordinary” people of Latin America, Pilger seeks to illustrate some of the current changes taking place in the region following the coming to power of current Left-wing governments.
By Rodrigo Acuña
New Matilda
18 April 2007
A recent article by Paul Richter and Greg Miller in the Los Angeles Times has again brought international attention on Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez. At the centre of the LA Times article is a leaked report from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which claims that Colombian army chief General Mario Montoya and a paramilitary group carried out an operation against Marxist rebels in 2002, that left 14 people dead and ‘dozens more disappeared in its aftermath’.
Given the nature of the activities of paramilitary groups in Colombia and Uribe’s ‘long and close association’ with Montoya, the revelation adds to a scandal which, Richter and Miller say, ‘already has implicated the country’s former Foreign Minister, at least one State Governor, legislators and the head of the national police’.
By Rodrigo Acuña
New Matilda
20 December 2006
It is a truism that all evaluations of history are tainted by one’s vision of how the world should work. Another truism is that a lack of primary sources can often leave certain grey areas in the historical record.
Sometimes, however, events or eras are roughly clear and some degree of consensus is achieved.
General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile (1973–1990) is one such case. In particular, the illegitimacy of his regime and its vast human rights violations against anyone broadly on the political Left or who opposed his regime. Most serious Latin American studies scholars and journalists would agree that Pinochet brutally overthrew a government which, despite many faults, was democratically and legitimately elected.
Dissent from a consensus, of course, always exists and on 15 December, The Australian published a strange article by James Whelan, a neo-conservative journalist who for many years has written works which present the Pinochet era in a favourable light. Whelan’s piece was revisionism of the worst kind.
By Rodrigo Acuña
New Matilda
13 September 2006
This week, one of the largest cities in Latin America is almost at a standstill as tensions rise over what many are calling a fraudulent election. Yet with notable exceptions, the international press have ignored the crisis.
Since the 2 July Mexican presidential election, which was won by National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderón under controversial circumstances, the historical Zócalo Plaza and other prominent areas of Mexico City have been occupied by hundreds of thousands of supporters of rival candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PDR).
Obrador's supporters claim that he was robbed of electoral victory through fraud, while Obrador himself has declared he will set up a parallel government if votes are not recounted in full.
