Feature Archives

On June 5th, Peruvian national police attacked a roadblock near the city of Bagua in northwestern Peru, killing at least sixty people. Several thousand indigenous protesters had been blocking the main road to protest measures the government has taken to sell their ancestral land to energy companies. On June 16th, over 30 people converged outside the Peruvian Consulate in San Francisco to amplify their concerns with the Peruvian and US Government's complacency in protecting indigenous rights.

The Home Depot in Capitola was targeted on May 3rd with hundreds of stickers and handbills to publicize the company's involvement in a controversial development project in Patagonia, Chile. The HidroAysen project involves three dams on the Pascua River and two dams on the Baker River that would flood globally rare forest ecosystems and some of the most productive agricultural land in the Aysen region.

In recent years, attacks against the Peruvian Army have escalated by a new formation of the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso). Long believed to have faded away after the capture of its leader Abimael Guzmán (Presidente Gonzalo) and other top leaders, the Shining Path has recently gained forces and weapons. According to the Defense Minister of Peru, Shining Path rebels killed thirteen soldiers on April 9th in two ambushes in the southeast region of the country.

Peter Herlihy and Jerome Dobson, professors of Geography at Kansas University, received funding from the Foreign Military Studies Office, located at the Fort Leavenworth U.S. Army base in Leavenworth, Kansas, to map communally held indigenous land in the states of San Luis Potosi, and in Oaxaca, Mexico. The project, named the Bowman Expeditions or México Indígena, began mapping in 2005 in an indigenous region known as La Husteca, which is partially located in the state of San Luis Potosi, and then moved their operation to the state of Oaxaca amidst the statewide popular uprising of the Oaxacan Peoples’ Popular Assembly (APPO) in 2006.

When vote totals came in from the Salvadoran presidential election Sunday, the winner by a slim but significant margin was the candidate of the FMLN, Mauricio Funes. The FMLN website said “Hope won over fear.” The FMLN fought fascism in Central America with a military effort that went on for twelve years. A truce was called in 1992, but the extreme right wing remained in power until now. A San Francisco celebration of the FMLN victory is planned for March 21 at 7:00 p.m. at the Women’s Building.

For almost two months, the teachers union in the Mexican state of Morelos rose up against the "Alliance for Quality Education", a neo-liberal plan akin to "No Child Left Behind" that would pave the way to the privatization of education, among other things. They were supported by the people of Morelos in their marches, encampments in public plazas, and blockades of interstate highways. On October 7, 8, and 9, the army and state and federal police were sent in to brutally smash the movement.

Several hundred protesters, mostly students, took to the streets of Tijuana, Mexico October 4 in remembrance of the 1968 massacre of leftist students in Tlatelolco Plaza. At that time hundreds, perhaps thousands of students were killed when troops opened fire on a demonstration protesting the Mexico City Olympics. In Tijuana, the demonstrators chanted “ni perdon, ni olvido” (no forgiveness, no forgetting).