Abstract, The Fall of the Alberto Fujimori Government: New Evidence and Interpretations

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The Fall of the Alberto Fujimori Government: New Evidence and Interpretations

by Carlos Ugo Santander Joo and Carlos Federico Domínguez Avila

New evidence and interpretations regarding the end of the authoritarian Alberto Fujimori regime and the Peruvian democratic transition of 2000 suggest that preexisting electoral and institutional rules intrinsic to the authoritarian regime contributed to a process of regime change. Thus Peru can be seen as one of the few Latin American nations in which the transition was caused by a rupture in contrast to the pacted-reform/rupture transitions most common in the region.

Political Report # 1245 Amazon rainforest's final frontier under threat from oil and soya

By John Vidal, The Guardian

Celso Carlos has made a modest living for 10 years growing manioc and coconuts and rearing poultry on a few hectares of lowland in Brazil's northern Amazon. But three years ago, out of the blue, Carlos was told by an Amapá state judge that he had to move because his land had been bought by a businessman living more than 1,500 miles away in São Paulo. Within months, fences had been put up, and Carlos and other assentados, or settlers, had been forced off their land. Carlos's land - along with hundreds of thousands more hectares across Amapá state - is the new frontier of global agribusiness. It lies unused for now but will almost certainly be sold on and used for soya production. The ubiquitous crop, which is part of most western diets and feeds billions of animals, will most likely be shipped as animal feed to the UK from a new Amapá port. Having swept through Brazil and much of Latin America, causing ecological and social devastation by displacing people, ripping up the savannah and driving forest destruction, soya is now poised to do the same in Amapá, Brazil's least developed and most forgotten state, says Sisto Hagro, a Catholic priest. Hagro, who works with the Brazilian Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) to defend peasant farmers' rights, blames government corruption and greed for what he calls a massive land grab. The state, he says, is illegally redistributing land bestowed on it by the federal government and moving existing smallholders to promote large-scale agribusiness. It is then legitimising its actions by changing its laws, he claims.

Political Report # 1241 El Salvador Becomes First Country to Ban Metals Mining

By Sandra Cuffe, Mongabay

Legislators in El Salvador made history Wednesday, passing a bill to ban all metallic mining activities in the country. The results of the much-anticipated vote were unanimous: 69 in favor, none against, and no abstentions. Fifteen of the country's 84 lawmakers did not show up for the vote. The result "makes tiny El Salvador the unlikely hero in a global movement to put the brakes on a modern day 'gold rush'," MiningWatch Canada wrote in a statement Thursday. The Central American nation is the first country in the world to ban mining for gold and other metals, according to the industry watchdog group. With the exception of a transition period for small-scale artisanal gold miners, the law provides for an immediate, definitive, and permanent ban on all metals mining, including exploration activities. No old permits or license applications will be grandfathered in, according to the succinct 11-article bill. It will take effect one week after its publication in the official government gazette. "Today's a historic day, thanks to all the struggle over the years for a ban on metallic mining," FMLN legislator Guillermo Mata said during the discussion in the legislative assembly Wednesday, shortly before the bill was put to a vote. Francis Zablah, a legislator from GANA, one of the three main political parties in the country together with the FMLN and ARENA, lauded the multi-partisan commission on the environment and climate change for rising above inter-party political divisions to advance the bill.

Political Report # 1185 Is Trump an Aberration?,The Dark History of the "Nation of Immigrants"

By Aviva Chomsky, via Tom Dispatch

Liberal Americans like to think of Donald Trump as an aberration and believe that his idea of building a great wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent immigrants from entering the country goes against American values. After all, as Hillary Clinton says, "We are a nation of immigrants." In certain ways, in terms of the grim history of this country, they couldn't be more wrong. Donald Trump may differ from other contemporary politicians in so openly stating his antipathy to immigrants of a certain sort.  (He's actually urged the opening of the country to more European immigrants.)  Democrats like Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton sound so much less hateful and so much more tolerant.  But the policies Trump is advocating, including that well-publicized wall and mass deportations, are really nothing new.  They are the very policies initiated by Bill Clinton in the 1990s and -- from border militarization to mass deportations -- enthusiastically promoted by Barack Obama.  The president is, in fact, responsible for raising such deportations to levels previously unknown in American history. And were you to take a long look back into that very history, you would find that Trump's open appeal to white fears of a future non-white majority, and his support of immigration policies aimed at racial whitening, are really nothing new either.  The policies he's promoting are, in an eerie way, a logical continuation of centuries of policymaking that sought to create a country of white people. The first step in that process was to deport the indigenous population starting in the 1600s.  Later, deportation policies started to focus on Mexicans -- seen by many whites as practically indistinguishable from Indians.  Except, white settlers found, Mexicans were more willing to work as wage laborers.  Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Mexicans have been treated as disposable workers.  As Europeans were invited to immigrate here permanently and become citizens, Mexican workers were invited into the country to work -- but not to become citizens.