By Rodrigo Acuña
Latin America Bureau
27 November 2018
The recent death of the 24-year-old Mapuche activist and leader Camilo Catrillanca has sparked widespread condemnation and protests throughout Chile.
On Wednesday November 14, a newly created special ‘anti-terrorist’ unit of Carabineros, the Chilean police, known as Comando Jungla entered the Mapuche traditional community of Temukuikui near the town of Ercilla in the Araucanía region, approximately 370 miles south of Santiago. Claiming to be in pursuit of local car thieves, the operation involved hundreds of police offices with two helicopters.
By Rodrigo Acuña
American Herald Tribune
20 July 2017
Images of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) firing tear gas at protestors in Venezuela cannot be provided to us in large enough quantities by the mainstream media. Look through the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or even the UK’s liberal Guardian and the government of president Nicolas Maduro is a dictatorship in all but name. As of the time of writing this article, with 103 people dead, television and print images of opposition protestors being tear gassed by police are what count and not any actual context of the violence taking place, or who, for that matter, is predominantly perpetrating it.
By Rodrigo Acuña
Progress in Political Economy (PPE))
Blog of the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney
20 December 2016.
Cuba’s nine days of national mourning for former leader and founder of the Cuban revolution Fidel Castro Ruz recently ended. Expectedly, cheers upon the news of Castro’s death at age 90 were heard around the world. In Miami, Florida the old guard of right-wing Cubans, many of whose parents worked for the Washington backed dictator Fulgencio Batista whom Castro overthrew in 1959, took to the streets.
By Rodrigo Acuña
ALBORADA
14 June 2015
In early December 2014, when the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) established its headquarters in the city of Mitad del Mundo in Ecuador, the Obama administration remained largely silent. At the International Monetary Fund (IMF) though a different position was taken as its director Christine Lagarde said that the integration processes taking place in Latin America resembled a ‘spaghetti bowl’ and needed to be rejuvenated.
By Rodrigo Acuña
New Matilda
23 April 2015
Given the roasting the United States recently received by numerous Latin American presidents at the VII Summit of the Americas in Panama, it may have been no coincidence Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano passed away shortly after.
In his acclaimed book the Open Veins of Latin America (1971), which was banned by several US-backed dictatorships in South America during the 1970s and ‘80s, Galeano passionately denounced the history of Spanish and US imperialism south of the Rio Grande.
By Rodrigo Acuña and Luis F. Angosto-Ferrandez
March 24, 2014
The Conversation
A wave of street protests, some violent, has been sweeping Venezuela. These attracted international media coverage, which often presented protests as the expression of a national crisis that anticipated the fall of president Nicolas Maduro and the collapse of his leftist Bolivarian project.
Several analysts rushed to draw parallels between Venezuela and Ukraine. They suggested the turbulent ousting of Víktor Yanukóvich in the latter foretold that Maduro’s days as head of state were numbered. This comparison was misguided.
So far, 34 people have died and more than 460 people have been wounded. These figures include bystanders and anti- and pro-government supporters.
By Rodrigo Acuña
25 February 2014
Latin America Bureau
The recent violence in Venezuela, which has left some 13 people dead, once again highlights how some sections of the political right in that country are unwilling to change their stripes. They have used force in the past and, as long as they continue to gain a sympathetic hearing in the mainstream media, violent protests can and will be used in order to project the image of an ungovernable country.
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.
