latin america
Cuba: Economic changes and the future of socialism -- interview with Cuban professor José Bell Lara
Urban organic food garden in Cuba.
Dr José Bell Lara, professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Havana (FLACSO-Cuba), interviewed by Johannes Wilm. Bell Lara has written essays such as "Globalisation and Cuban Revolution" (2002) and "Cuban socialism within Globalisation" (2007), and is part of the international advisory board of the journal Critical Sociology. This interview was conducted in Havana in September 2010.
[For more analysis and discussion on the economic changes in Cuba, click HERE.]
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Johannes Wilm: The Cuban government recently announced some changes. Among other things, it will be possible for more people to work independently. What is it that Cubans expect from these changes?
The self-employment sector in Cuba
[For more analysis and discussion on the economic changes in Cuba, click HERE.]
By Leticia Martínez Hernández
September 24, 2010 -- Granma International -- On August 1 Cuba's President Raúl Castro Ruz announced to the National Assembly the decision to extend the self-employment sector and use it as an another option for workers seeking alternative jobs after the necessary reduction of the country’s inflated employment registers in the public sector. Various restrictions will be eliminated to allow the authorisation of new licences and the marketing of certain products, and greater flexibility to hire a workforce for certain activities.
Many people have been waiting a solution that, far from being improvised or ephemeral, makes it possible to increase the availability of goods and services, while assuring an income to those who decide to do this work. It will contribute to the state being relieved of the burden of excessive subsidies, while placing in non-state hands the production of goods and services which it has provided for years in spite of the difficult economic context.
Click HERE
for official results.
[September 28, 2010 -- According to the United Socialist Party (PSUV) and opposition sources the PSUV and its allies, the Communist Party of Venezuela and Peoples' Electoral Movement (MEP) have won 98 seats, while the parties in the MUD opposition
alliance won 65 seats, the pro-oppositom PPT 2 seats and 2 seats went to Indigenous
independents. However, official results still give 95 to the PSUV and 62 to the opposition.]By Gonzalo Gomez, Caracas
Cuba: The drive for efficiency within socialism
Cuba's president, Raul Castro.
[For more analysis and discussion on the economic changes in Cuba, click HERE.]
By Helen Yaffe
Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it -- Karl Marx, 1875
Wages today are clearly insufficient to satisfy all needs and have thus ceased to play a role in ensuring the socialist principle that each should contribute according to their capacity and receive according to their work…the Party and government have been studying these and other complex and difficult problems in depth, problems which must be addressed comprehensibly and through a differentiated approach in each concrete case. -- Raul Castro, 2007
[We have] the dream of everyone being able to live on their salary or on their adequate pension… -- Fidel Castro, 2005
Venezuela criticises `market totalitarianism' at UN Millennium Development Goal summit
By Tamara Pearson, Merida
Venezuela: Opposition and media lies about lack of democracy exposed
September 23, 2010 -- Venezuela Solidarity Campaign (UK) -- Venezuelans vote on Sunday, September 26, for the South American country's 165-seat National Assembly – its national parliament. This is the 16th national election or referenda since Hugo Chávez was first elected president in 1998.
Venezuela’s last election, on February 15, 2009, was a referendum to remove presidential term limits. This was endorsed by 54% of the electorate. Sunday’s election is the first to take place against the backdrop of the world recession, which has been hit Venezuela hard, as it has in many other countries.
¡Viva la Revolución!: The 1910 Mexican Revolution (part 2)
A 1938 painting depicts Lázaro Cárdenas giv
Cuba: Exporting revolution, revolutionary models and historical facts
"I asked him [Fidel Castro] if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting". -- Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic blog, September 8, 2010
"In their ravings they pretend that Cuba is an exporter of revolutions. In their sleepless business and usurers' minds they believe that revolutions can be sold and bought, rent or lent, export or import as one more merchandise". -- Fidel Castro, February 4, 1962
`Orientalism' and Cuba: How Western media get it wrong
By Tim Anderson
Bolivia: Morales faces new challenges; Behind the ‘MAS crisis’
Problems and challenges face Bolivia's radical government -- led by President Evo Morales (above), the country’s first Indigenous head of state -- and the process of change it leads. Australia's Green Left Weekly has published two articles on the question, by Eduardo Paz Rada, editor of Bolivia-based magazine Patria Grande, and Pablo Stefanoni, editor of the Bolivian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique. Both were translated by Federico Fuentes. See also Fuente's "Bolivia: Warning signs as social tensions erupt" and the related comments.
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By Eduardo Paz Rada
September 5, 2010 -- Following the political and social transformations undertaken over the past five years by the Evo Morales government with the huge, active support of Bolivia’s popular sectors that have mobilised around their demands since 2000, the political map has radically changed.