Interview with LAP Coordinating Editor Dr. Miguel Tinker Salas on The Crisis in Venezuela

Dr. Miguel Tinker Salas, a Coordinating Editor of Latin American Perspectives (LAP), discusses the recent crisis in Venezuela and how the US media has covered the crisis, often leaving out coverage of the large number of demonstrators in support of Venezuela's socialist programs. He is a professor of Latin American History and Chicano/a Latino/a Studies at Pomona College in Claremont, California, US.

Book, Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know

:::::: Book ::::::

Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know

by Miguel Tinker Salas

Among the top ten oil exporters in the world and a founding member of OPEC, Venezuela currently supplies 11 percent of U.S. crude oil imports. But when the country elected the fiery populist politician Hugo Chavez in 1998, tensions rose with this key trading partner and relations have been strained ever since. 

Meet LAP Editor, Miguel Tinker Salas, PhD

Meet LAP Editor, Miguel Tinker Salas, PhD

Miguel Tinker Salas, PhD is one of the nation's foremost authorities on political and social issues confronting Latin America. He is the author of The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture and Citizenship in Venezuela (Duke University Press, 2009); co-editor with Steve Ellner of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and the Decline of an Exceptional Democracy, (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007); co editor with Jan Rus of Mexico 2006-2012: neoliberalism, movimientos sociales y politica electoral, (Miguel Angel Porrua and Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, 2006) and author of Under the Shadow of the Eagles, The Border and the Transformation of Sonora During the Porfiriato, University of California Press 1997. 

His expertise includes:  contemporary Latin America, society and politics in Venezuela and Mexico, oil, culture and politics in Venezuela, the drug war in Mexico, Mexican border society, Chicanos/as and Latinos/as in the United States, and Latin American immigration. 

Miguel Tinker Salas is currently a Professor of Latin American History and Chicano/a Latino/a Studies at Pomona College in Claremont, California.

Observations from Venezuela: July 31, 2009: by LAP Editor Miguel Tinker Salas

Observations from Venezuela: July 31, 2009 

by Miguel Tinker Salas

LAP Editor 

I would submit that events in Honduras are not isolated, but rather part of a right wing counterattack taking shape in Latin America. I have been arguing for sometime that the right is rebuilding in Latin America, and has decided to act with Obama / Clinton in the White House. Bush / Cheney and company did not give them any coverage and had become of little use to them. A “liberal” in the White House, with extensive ties to the conservative forces gives them the kind of coverage they had hoped for. It is no coincidence that Venezuelan right wing commentators applauded the naming of Clinton to the White House indicating “now we have an ally in a position of power.” The old cold-warrior axiom that the best antidote against the left is a liberal government in Washington gains new meaning under Obama with Clinton at the State Department.