latin america

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[English at http://links.org.au/node/2122.]

Por Tim Anderson

En este mes de enero, el Sindicato de Trabajadores Australianos (AWU—Australian Workers Union) escribió una carta insultante al nuevo embajador cubano en Australia, Pedro Monzón. El documento del sindicato revela la dominación ideológica que Estados Unidos mantiene sobre las partes más débiles y dóciles del movimiento sindical australiano.

El embajador Monzón, llegado a Australia a finales de 2010, invitó a varios dirigentes sindicales para un intercambio. Paul Howes, como Secretario Nacional del AWU, le replicó de manera innecesariamente ofensiva: ‘Estaría encantado de aceptar su oferta de encuentro, pero, desafortunadamente, sólo podrá llevarse a cabo cuando el gobierno cubano cese la represión de los sindicatos independientes y libere los numerosos dirigentes sindicales actualmente encarcelados en su país.’ En la carta se menciona a cinco encarcelados.

By Tamara Pearson, Mérida

January 24, 2011 — Venezuelanalysis.com — On Janurary 21, 2011, over one thousand members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) met with President Chavez and decided on five key strategic lines for the next two years. The discussion included recognition of important weaknesses in the party and steps for activating the Patriotic Pole coalition.

Chavez, president of Venezuela and also of the governing PSUV, presented the document, Strategic Lines of Political Action of the PSUV for 2011-2012 to the “National Assembly of Socialists” in Vargas state, where around 1440 party leaders were present.

Chavez originally proposed the strategic lines in a draft document in December last year to a meeting of the national PSUV leadership.

PSUV legislator Jesus Farias, speaking to YVKE, said the idea of the “Socialist Assembly” was to “relaunch the project that the PSUV represents, in unity with other political organisations and social groups”. He said the “reflection and establishment of new lines of action for the PSUV is related to a need to strengthen the party as a great machine of agitation and propaganda”.

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More than a million Cuban workers mobilise each year on May Day, organised by the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba trade union federation.

[See also "Cuban trade unionist: `Workers are key participants in the Cuban revolution'".]

By Tim Anderson

January 26, 2011 -- This January the Australian Workers Union (AWU) wrote an insulting letter to the new Cuban ambassador to Australia, Pedro Monzón. The union’s response shows the tight ideological hold that the US has over the weaker, more compliant sections of the trade union movement in Australia.

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The following article was recommended by Raj Patel. Patel writes:

Want to know what a sustainable climate-change-proof agricultural system might look like? Here’s an example from Cuba, in an academic paper written by my friend, comrade and former boss, Peter Rosset, together with folk from Cuba’s peasant agriculture movement. The article’s free to download (for now), but the key parts from the abstract are:

Our key findings are (i) the spread of agroecology was rapid and successful largely due to the social process methodology and social movement dynamics, (ii) farming practices evolved over time and contributed to significantly increased relative and absolute production by the peasant sector, and (iii) those practices resulted in additional benefits including resilience to climate change.

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Protest against fuel subsidy cut, El Alto, December 30.

By Federico Fuentes

January 24, 2011 -- Green Left Weekly -- On December 31, the Bolivian government of President Evo Morales repealed a decree, passed five days earlier, to remove subsidies for fuel. The repeal came after protests and discontent at the resulting price increases from many of the government’s poor supporters.

“Why is the government making us suffer during these days … I don’t understand, I don’t understand”, Carla, a housewife in El Alto told Radio Atipiri on New Years Eve. An elderly woman expressed the shock of many supporters of Bolivia’s first indigenous president: “We are poor, we don’t have anything, what are we going to now, Evo has betrayed us, he must go.”

They were among the many that came out against the government’s decree, which sent petrol and diesel prices up by 73% and 83% respectively. It also caused spikes in the price of transport and food.

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January 9, 2011 -- Socialist Voice -- Of all the commentaries and interviews coinciding with the anniversary of Haiti’s earthquake, none are likely to exceed in significance the interview granted by Organization of American States representative to Haiti, Ricardo Seitenfus, to the Swiss daily Le Temps on December 20, 2010.

The critique he delivered to the newspaper is especially significant for Latin America and the Caribbean because Seitenfus is Brazilian. Sensitivity is running high in the region over the evident failure of the international relief effort led by the big powers – the United States, Canada and Europe – whose interventionist policies had already done so much harm to Haiti before this latest catastrophe.

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December 31, 2010 -- Cuba's Socialist Renewal -- Coinciding with the beginning of the three-month-long public debate on the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines of the Party and Revolution, the following two-page interview with Dr Joaquin Infante, one of Cuba's veteran economists, appeared in Juventud Rebelde. It's a fascinating and revealing interview