Abstract, Geopoetics, Geopolitics, and Violence: (Un)Mapping Daniel Alarcón’s Lost City Radio

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Geopoetics, Geopolitics, and Violence: (Un)Mapping Daniel Alarcón’s Lost City Radio

by Tamara L. Mitchell

Daniel Alarcón’s 2007 novel Lost City Radio positions post-civil-conflict Peru in relation to episodes of violence from across the globe by deploying two opposing cartographic impulses. First, the unnamed fictional nation of the novel shares historical, topographical, and sociopolitical traits with modern Peru. At the same time, the text refuses tidy association with Peru, principally by folding violent conflicts from a host of geopolitical spaces into the fictional nation via journalistic ekphrasis. This results in a unique geopoetics that serves to catalyze the localized reality of postconflict Peru as a means of interrogating the efficacy of human rights discourse in the neoliberal era on a global scale and bringing into focus the current inequity of responses to the global refugee crisis.

Political Report # 1345 How US Civil Law Is Being Used to Bring Human-Rights Abuses to Court

By Linda Farthing, The Nation Linda is also a LAP editor

Two weeks after the verdict in a landmark human-rights case in Fort Lauderdale, Thomas Becker was still excited. “This is a historic victory,” the attorney said. “This case shows that you can be a poor person and stand up for human rights, justice and social change. And you can win.” Becker was talking about the early April jury decision in a civil trial that has significantly boosted the reach of US human-rights law against foreign government officials.  The events in the case took place 15 years ago and thousands of miles away from the US district federal courtroom in downtown Fort Lauderdale where the trial played out. For three weeks in March, the families of people killed by the Bolivian military during a 2003 country-wide uprising testified against former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and his minister of defense Carlos Sánchez Berzaín. The verdict finally came back on April 3: The case marks the first time that an ex-head of state was forced to face his accusers in a US court for human-rights abuses. The tragedy began with a government proposal to construct a pipeline: The plan was to increase exports of the landlocked country’s immense natural gas reserves-at the time the second largest in South America-by piping the gas through Bolivia on to Chile, the country’s long-time adversary. Across the country, large swathes of the population saw the proposal as one more instance of a long and painful history of foreigners stealing the country’s natural resources and territory. Protests were most intense in the highlands, where the largely indigenous city of El Alto blocked food and fuel destined for the city of La Paz, which sits in a basin below. The coalition government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, popularly known as Goni, who had won his second term with the help of US Democratic Party election consultants, declared a state of siege and militarized El Alto and surrounding areas. Once the dust settled, around 60 people had been killed and over 400 wounded, almost every one of them working class people of Aymara indigenous heritage. All of the case’s plaintiffs lost family in the uprising; many of them lost elderly parents or young children. “Even though it took 15 years, we never gave up hope that we would get our day in court,” said Teófilo Baltazar, one of the nine plaintiffs. His wife who was five months pregnant was shot to death through the wall of their home. Felicidad Rosa Huanca Quispe, from a small community south of La Paz where protestors were blocking roads, was preparing lunch for her five children on October 13, 2003, when her 69-year-old father Raúl Ramon headed to a nearby corner shop to buy a soft drink. On the stand in the Fort Lauderdale courtroom, dressed in the wide skirts that characterize Aymara women, she began to sob uncontrollably as she told the court, “the military shot him in two places and killed him.”

Political Report # 1341 The Mapuche Indigenous Struggle in Chile Continues Centuries of Resistance

By Jeff Abbot, Toward Freedom

The indigenous communities of southern Chile have seen the dispossession of their lands for private interests for centuries. Their resistance has been met by a systematic criminalization by the Chilean state. Recently, this long struggle entered a new phase in one struggling Mapuche community. On March 28, Alejandra Araneda and Violeta Araneda went before a judge in the municipality of Concepción for charges related to their 2016 occupation of roughly ten acres of land owned by one of Chile’s most powerful logging companies. “For years we have suffered from persecution,” said Elvira Sánchez, the spokeswoman for the activists’ land occupation. Sánchez herself also faces charges for the theft of lumber related to the occupation of land. The three are part of the recuperation of land in the Curanilahue area of Bío Bio region, which was once home to the Huilliche peoples - which is a branch of the Mapuche peoples of southern Chile - before business interests displaced them. The activists occupied land owned by the Chilean logging firm Forestal Arauco S.A, which is a subsidiary of the powerful Angelini Group. Over 60 families formed the community on the occupied land. Member named their new community Construyendo Futuro (Constructing the Future). Since the recuperation began, the community has greatly expanded, with families constructing numerous houses. Since the occupation began, the community has faced consistent intimidation from the Chilean police and armed forces. “We are asking nothing else from the government [of right-wing President Sebastián Piñera], we are only asking for the land,” said Sánchez. “There is no place to consturuct housing or terrain to live a dignified life. Because of this we launched the recuperation of the land.” As the activists went before the judge, other members of the resistance filed an appeal to the charges. On April 23 of this year, the Chilean police arrived at the occupation to announce another investigation into the number of families living in the growing community. The residents fear that this could lead to their eviction. For centuries, the indigenous peoples of Chile have struggled for their land. According to Sánchez, the challenges facing indigenous communities were exasperated by the 2010 earthquake. “We saw things get worse after the earthquake,” said Sánchez. “There is a demand of more than 1,500 families for housing. We have yet to see a solution, so we are taking up our right to housing. We only want the government to be aware of the great necesity that there is for our people and with our recuperation.”

Abstract, Whose Rights? Freedom-of-Expression Critiques of Ecuadorian Media Democratization

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Whose Rights? Freedom-of-Expression Critiques of Ecuadorian Media Democratization
 by Christian Tym

Despite its media reforms designed to democratize the country’s media landscape, the Ecuadorian government has been subject to constant condemnation from major U.S.-based human rights organizations on freedom-of-expression grounds. A close examination of these critiques and the Ecuadorian media reforms to which they correspond and a comparison of the Ecuadorian government’s and critical human rights organizations’ positions with liberal scholarship on the right to freedom of expression leads to the conclusion that Ecuadorian media reform is consistent with liberal social-democratic principles and, by contrast, human rights organizations uphold an early-modern interpretation of liberalism that is marginal within scholarship on freedom of expression.

Political Report # 1339 How US Civil Law is Being Used to Bring Human Rights Abuses to Court

by Linda Farthing, The Nation

Two weeks after the verdict in a landmark human-rights case in Fort Lauderdale, Thomas Becker was still excited. "This is a historic victory," the attorney said. "This case shows that you can be a poor person and stand up for human rights, justice and social change. And you can win." Becker was talking about the early April jury decision in a civil trial that has significantly boosted the reach of US human-rights law against foreign government officials. The events in the case took place 15 years ago and thousands of miles away from the US district federal courtroom in downtown Fort Lauderdale where the trial played out. For three weeks in March, the families of people killed by the Bolivian military during a 2003 country-wide uprising testified against former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and his minister of defense Carlos Sánchez Berzaín. The verdict finally came back on April 3: The case marks the first time that an ex-head of state was forced to face his accusers in a US court for human-rights abuses. The tragedy began with a government proposal to construct a pipeline: The plan was to increase exports of the landlocked country's immense natural gas reserves-at the time the second largest in South America-by piping the gas through Bolivia on to Chile, the country's long-time adversary. Across the country, large swathes of the population saw the proposal as one more instance of a long and painful history of foreigners stealing the country's natural resources and territory. Protests were most intense in the highlands, where the largely indigenous city of El Alto blocked food and fuel destined for the city of La Paz, which sits in a basin below. The coalition government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, popularly known as Goni, who had won his second term with the help of US Democratic Party election consultants, declared a state of siege and militarized El Alto and surrounding areas.

Abstract, Indigenous Peoples’ Right to Communication with Identity in Argentina, 2009–2017

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Indigenous Peoples’ Right to Communication with Identity in Argentina, 2009–2017
 by María Magdalena Doyle and Emilse Siares

Argentine Law 26.522 on Audiovisual Communication Services recognized, among other things, the right to communication for indigenous peoples. The cases of three indigenous radio stations in northern Argentina reveal the limits and possibilities of this normative transformation and the challenges to indigenous media posed by the changes in communications policy since the 2015 change of government.

Abstract, Reification and the Human Commodity: Theorizing Modern Slavery in Brazil

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Reification and the Human Commodity: Theorizing Modern Slavery in Brazil

by Daniela Issa


Modern slavery in Brazil exemplifies the culmination of reification as theorized by György Lukács, characterized by the commodification and dehumanization of labor and the extreme objectification of workers, who become “human commodities” in the capitalist system—“commodities” that produce other commodities. The concept of reification was incorporated into the 2003 Brazilian law on slave labor, where equating a human being with a thing in the performance of labor is a crime regardless of whether a worker is confined.

Abstract, Migration and Trafficking of Persons for Labor Exploitation in the Textile Workshops of Buenos Aires under Neoliberalism

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Migration and Trafficking of Persons for Labor Exploitation in the Textile Workshops of Buenos Aires under Neoliberalism
by Debora Betrisey


The practices and political representations of the Argentine state with regard to trafficking in persons for purposes of labor exploitation, currently dominated by legal logic, treat immigrant workers as vulnerable victims. This robs them of any autonomy and ignores other aspects of their subjectivity, hindering the establishment of connections and solidarity with other social sectors in the national context that would allow them to contest the exploitation and domination to which they are subject.

Political Report # 1290 Puerto Rico Still in Crisis, Human Rights Violation

By Carol Schachet  Grass Roots Online

More than a month since Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, the island remains devastated. More than half the population remains without electricity, drinking water and basic sustenance, making it not only a catastrophe but also a human rights violation, according to Jovanna Garcia Soto, Solidarity Program Officer for Latin America at Grassroots International. She notes that water, food and tarps remain priority needs, especially in the central area of Puerto Rico. Jovanna flew to Puerto Rico to visit her family and to deliver much-needed funding support to organizations mounting a grassroots response, including grants from Grassroots International to support community-led just recovery efforts. The Situation on the Ground While the initial storm wreaked havoc for Puerto Rico's population and environment, the unfurling human disaster has less to do with weather than with political incompetence and willful indifference. Approaching the airport, the impact of the hurricane was visible in two ways - the swelled size of the island's rivers, and the blue tarps providing temporary roofs to homes. Most of those tarps have been provided by grassroots organizations rather than FEMA, whose presence Jovanna said has been "slow to non-existent" for most communities. Upon landing, the needs became immediate apparent. "The first thing I saw when we landed were around 25 people in wheelchairs waiting at the airport to flee the island. It is heartbreaking," Jovanna notes, commenting on the lack of basic services available to the vulnerable elderly population. Leaving the airport, extensive damage showed itself along the sides of roads, and even more so toward the interior of the island. "Trees lay flat on the ground everywhere," Jovanna noticed. In her hometown, most of the trees planted by her grandparents were uprooted, their trunks flat and leaves gone. The few that remained upright show wounds from the hurricane's fierce wind.

Introduction, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America

:::::: Introduction ::::::

Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America
by Daniela Issa

Very few scholars in Latin America deny the existence of modern slavery today, but when the literature began denouncing and analyzing it in the late 1990s1 as a practice very much present in the world the phenomenon was met with astonishment. Because of slavery’s being a historical practice, “vestiges” of it seemed a more plausible explanation than the purported reality of “modern slavery”—a construction seemingly leading to an oxymoron in the social imaginary. For one thing, this astonishment presupposed the incompatibility of slavery in any form with the promises of Post-Enlightenment modernity associated with emancipation and individual liberties. Further, modernity’s scientific and technical progress is invariably associated with the moral and ethical progress of humanity and the implication of a better world, a different stage of historical development. In the past couple of decades, however, the literature has come to be quite homogeneous in its acceptance of the phenomenon in spite of the apparent paradox of the modern, neoliberal world order: assurances of more freedom, in particular individual liberties, on the one hand and extreme exploitation of labor on the other.

Abstract, Reification and the Human Commodity: Theorizing Modern Slavery in Brazil

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Reification and the Human Commodity: Theorizing Modern Slavery in Brazil

by Daniela Issa


Modern slavery in Brazil exemplifies the culmination of reification as theorized by György Lukács, characterized by the commodification and dehumanization of labor and the extreme objectification of workers, who become “human commodities” in the capitalist system—“commodities” that produce other commodities. The concept of reification was incorporated into the 2003 Brazilian law on slave labor, where equating a human being with a thing in the performance of labor is a crime regardless of whether a worker is confined.

Abstract, Migration and Trafficking of Persons for Labor Exploitation in the Textile Workshops of Buenos Aires under Neoliberalism

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Migration and Trafficking of Persons for Labor Exploitation in the Textile Workshops of Buenos Aires under Neoliberalism
by Debora Betrisey


The practices and political representations of the Argentine state with regard to trafficking in persons for purposes of labor exploitation, currently dominated by legal logic, treat immigrant workers as vulnerable victims. This robs them of any autonomy and ignores other aspects of their subjectivity, hindering the establishment of connections and solidarity with other social sectors in the national context that would allow them to contest the exploitation and domination to which they are subject.

Introduction, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America

:::::: Introduction ::::::

Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America
by Daniela Issa

Very few scholars in Latin America deny the existence of modern slavery today, but when the literature began denouncing and analyzing it in the late 1990s1 as a practice very much present in the world the phenomenon was met with astonishment. Because of slavery’s being a historical practice, “vestiges” of it seemed a more plausible explanation than the purported reality of “modern slavery”—a construction seemingly leading to an oxymoron in the social imaginary. For one thing, this astonishment presupposed the incompatibility of slavery in any form with the promises of Post-Enlightenment modernity associated with emancipation and individual liberties. Further, modernity’s scientific and technical progress is invariably associated with the moral and ethical progress of humanity and the implication of a better world, a different stage of historical development. In the past couple of decades, however, the literature has come to be quite homogeneous in its acceptance of the phenomenon in spite of the apparent paradox of the modern, neoliberal world order: assurances of more freedom, in particular individual liberties, on the one hand and extreme exploitation of labor on the other.

November 2017 Issue, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America

Issue Editor: Daniela Issa

Issue 217 | Volume 44 | Number 6 | November 2017

 

Table of Contents

Modern slavery and human trafficking affect an estimated 1.8 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean today yet remain significantly understudied given their devastating human consequences. This issue addresses this gap in the slavery and trafficking scholarship by taking a critical look at it across the region and situating it within the transnational capitalist economy. Articles include theoretical analyses of the phenomenon as well as recruitment practices, populations susceptible to being enslaved/trafficking, and the role of violence. Additionally, it seeks to provide regional balance in the literature on slavery and trafficking in Latin America, which has disproportionately centered on Brazil; it highlights three underresearched areas—slavery outside Brazil, nonsexual slavery, and smugglers/traffickers rather than victims exclusively.

Abstract, The Araguaia Guerrilla War (1972–1974): Armed Resistance to the Brazilian Dictatorship

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The Araguaia Guerrilla War (1972–1974): Armed Resistance to the Brazilian Dictatorship
by Janaína de Almeida Teles    

The Araguaia guerrilla war (1972–1974) was an attempt to reconcile armed struggle and political awareness that became a sort of “guerrilla focus” with roots in the peasant population, which assumed a decisive role in the resistance to military repression. This period was characterized by the centralization of operations of information and repression, consolidating the tactic of “political disappearance” in Brazil. The military occupation terrorized the population to mitigate any multiplier effect of the insurgency, and its success reverberated throughout the continent. At the same time, denunciations of its human rights abuses helped to erode the dictatorship.

Abstract, Economic Extractivism and Agrarian Social Movements: Perspectives on Low-Intensity Democracy in the Face of the Colombian Conflict

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Economic Extractivism and Agrarian Social Movements: Perspectives on Low-Intensity Democracy in the Face of the Colombian Conflict
by Leila Celis

During the mid-1980s, Colombia joined the neoliberal global economy in two ways: (1) by implementing a “low-intensity democracy” made up of reforms intended to institutionalize the social protests as a response to the crisis of governance and to promote investor security and (2) by exchanging a protectionist industrialization economic model for an extractivist neoliberal one. The new progressive legislation created inclusive institutions and recognized multiculturalism and social and political rights, but these very rights are denied by the neoliberal economy, which favors big transnational capital and the physical and legal coercion that this model requires. These two pivotal elements of neoliberalism (governance and the economy) are pragmatically incompatible. The dominant class has favored the interests of powerful transnational elites and employed both legal and military avenues. Consequently, 30 years later, the social movements have been only partially and temporarily institutionalized. Active rejection of the economic model is growing. Social organizations have appropriated the concept of human rights and adapted it to their social project, the construction of a peasant economy that opposes the neoliberal one.

Abstracts, Resisting Neoliberalism in Colombia: The Role of Human Rights

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Resisting Neoliberalism in Colombia: The Role of Human Rights
by Paul A. Chambers

The Colombian government’s noncompliance with the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement’s Labor Action Plan calls into question not only the government’s intentions but also the efficacy of human rights activism and discourse for social resistance to neoliberalism. Colombia has managed to adjust the narrative on human rights and improve its international image, paving the way for U.S. ratification of the free-trade agreement despite the fact that the human rights situation continues to be very serious. Its success in this is due to the way in which the debate on the agreement and human rights was framed—with a very narrow focus on trade unionists’ rights and a discourse that did not link civil and political rights to economic and social rights—and to the ideological affinity between neoliberalism and the dominant liberal discourse on human rights.

Abstract, Coercive Inclusion in the Mexican War on Drugs: A Field Study of Human Rights and the State in Michoacán

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Coercive Inclusion in the Mexican War on Drugs: A Field Study of Human Rights and the State in Michoacán
by Philipp Wolfesberger

Qualitative ethnographic study of the human rights violations committed in the course of the militarized combat against drug trafficking organizations in rural Michoacán unmasks state practices of coercive inclusion. The violation of human rights and the subsequent processing of human rights claims paradoxically bind the marginalized population to the formal state and foster its subordination. The practical configuration of the current arena of human rights is not the lever for a democratic, inclusive Mexico but a curtain that conceals the repressive practices that it makes possible. In the processing of human rights complaints, the legal rights of physical integrity and private property become moral rights with no effect of legal justice.

Abstract, Canadian Human Rights Policy toward Guatemala: The Two Faces of Janus?

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Canadian Human Rights Policy toward Guatemala: The Two Faces of Janus?
by Marc-André Anzueto

During Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war (1960–1996), Canada’s role in response to the conflict diverged from the United States’ realpolitik. In contrast to U.S. policy objectives during the cold war, the Canadian distinctiveness in Guatemala was prevalent in the realm of democracy and human rights policy. The Canadian government and civil society condemned human rights violations in Guatemala, supported the various phases of the peace process, and participated in international efforts to strengthen the rule of law. However, since 2003–2004, the Canadian government has promoted mining investments to the detriment of human rights and its relationship with civil society has deteriorated both at home and in Guatemala. This shift can be linked to a securitization process of human rights within the neoliberal order in Latin America and a change in the identity-based interest of Canadian foreign policy during Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s era (2006–2015).

Abstract, Canadian Human Rights Policy toward Guatemala: The Two Faces of Janus?

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Canadian Human Rights Policy toward Guatemala: The Two Faces of Janus?
by Marc-André Anzueto

During Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war (1960–1996), Canada’s role in response to the conflict diverged from the United States’ realpolitik. In contrast to U.S. policy objectives during the cold war, the Canadian distinctiveness in Guatemala was prevalent in the realm of democracy and human rights policy. The Canadian government and civil society condemned human rights violations in Guatemala, supported the various phases of the peace process, and participated in international efforts to strengthen the rule of law. However, since 2003–2004, the Canadian government has promoted mining investments to the detriment of human rights and its relationship with civil society has deteriorated both at home and in Guatemala. This shift can be linked to a securitization process of human rights within the neoliberal order in Latin America and a change in the identity-based interest of Canadian foreign policy during Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s era (2006–2015).