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The approval of the 2021 budget in Guatemala, at 5:30 in the morning of Wednesday, November 18, caused a massive protest in the country, with more than 10,000 protesters. The protest, initially peaceful, ended with fires in the Parliament building, in addition to 37 detainees and 22 people injured1. These mobilizations take place just five years after the massive demonstrations that removed then-President Otto Pérez Molina2 from power, and are a sample of what happens when austericidal recipes are followed … Read more

On November 10, the President of the Peruvian State, Martín Vizcarra, resigned after the Congress declared him “permanently morally incapacitated”1. Instead, Manuel Merino de Lama2 took office, generating the largest protests of the last 20 years in a country3 fed up with the maneuvers of the political class4. After only 5 days in office, forced by social protests, Merino resigned5. Finally, the politician of the Purple Party, Franciso Sagasti6, assumed the Headquarters of the State. The prime minister will be … Read more

Ethiopia is going through a complex political situation with external conflicts and strong internal racial tensions. The rise to power of Abiy Ahmed Ali1, leader of the Prosperity Party, seemed to initiate a democratic and peace process throughout the country, with the release of prisoners and the legalization of political groups2. However, two years later, this process could not be further from its objectives. The country has more than 80 different ethnic groups and religions, with great conflicts among them. … Read more

On November 22, an atypical G20 Summit ended, held virtually with the presidency of Saudi Arabia. Once again, it brought together the leaders of the main economic powers in the world and the European Union, as well as 14 international organizations. The summit ended without major progress beyond the commitment to fund vaccination against COVID19 of impoverished countries1. Despite the importance acquired in recent years by the G20 as a deliberative space in international politics and economics2, this year the … Read more

Once again Black Friday is approaching, that consumerism party imported from the United States that will take place on November 27 and whose limits are increasingly blurred, with “anticipated offers” advertised massively by all the media for several weeks in advance. As always, since its arrival in Spain in 2010, it will promote excessive and unnecessary consumption at the expense of the needs created for people and the well-being of the planet. This day generates a lot of expectation among … Read more

On November 3, the fifty-ninth presidential elections took place in the United States. The standoff was between the Republican candidate and outgoing president, Donald Trump, against the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, among others. The latter won, with 51% of the votes, compared to 47.1% for Trump1 (data as of 11/24/20). Trump’ presidency, in power since January 2017, was disastrous when it came to human rights. Some of his decisions, or consequences of these, were: Policies of separation of migrant children … Read more

The International Monetary Fund, which was born in 1944 in the Bretton Woods agreements, has been one of the main forces that imposed the neoliberal agenda on the entire planet1, since the 1970s, conditioning its loans on austerity measures. And the current health crisis has not meant any change in this regard. An analysis carried out by OXFAM of 91 loans made by the IMF to countries during the pandemic2 reveals that at least 76 of them were conditioned to … Read more

Repression has always been one of the ways in which governments, or any group that holds power, have acted against those who challenge existing power relations. It has been defined as the employment or threat of coercion by the powerful on those who oppose it in order to weaken resistance to their will1. In short, repression is any institutional activity that tends to inhibit collective behaviors. Repression is not the only mechanism for collective control. Talcott Parsons, in “The Nature … Read more

The people of Chile chose this October 25 to end the Constitution that governed the country since 1980 (approved by a questionable plebiscite1), with 78’27% of the affirmative votes2. Likewise, 78.99% of the citizens voted in favor of the new Constitution being drawn up by a Constitutional Convention3, formed in equal parts by popularly elected members and parliamentarians in office. The turnout was 51%4. However, this is just the beginning of a journey that is estimated to end in 2022. … Read more

The Movement to Socialism (MAS) won, with 55.1% of the votes, the general elections that took place this October 18 in Bolivia1,2. The president will be Luis Arce, who was Evo Morales’ economy minister throughout his term. The elections were mostly peaceful3  and its  results have been recognized internationally4,5. The holding of these elections was the consequence of the challenge of those in the year 2019 (to which Evo Morales was presented as president)6, due to the complaint of fraud … Read more