Author: Armando Chaguaceda

Recent protests in Ecuador refer to three analytical dimensions: a home-based genesis (the combination of historic legacy and political circumstances), a certain foreign influence (of Venezuelan governments and allies) in their development, and in the crossfire, an incalculable impact on democracy in the continent.

One of the problems [we have] in Mexico—given that the archetype of what some call the “long neoliberal night” still holds weight, as well as the effect of our own cultural, geopolitical or ideological parochialisms—is to label as “neoliberal” any policy that either excludes, alienates or dominates American territory (as in the continent, not the US).

Different analyses and testimonies about Cuba’s new constitutional reform have recently been published on official and alternative media platforms throughout the country. I would like to write about what is likely to happen with this process, instead of what I wish for.

Ariel Ruiz Urquiola is a young scientist being held prisoner here in Cuba, the victim of a rigged trial revealing a country’s impunity where State law supersedes its people’s rights. A renowned biologist and dedicated environmentalist, Ariel has been denouncing Cuban officials’ poor management for a few years now.

Five years ago, many Russians took to the streets to demand that the government respect their right to freely elect their authorities. Since then, social movements demanding different social, civil and political rights have figured in the news arriving from the Eurasian country.

We public intellectuals work by denouncing and arguing our point at the same time. In our reports, we have to condemn every form of abuse by any concrete power (regardless of where it takes place). Because the victims of this abuse, without discrimination, need our solidarity and not our complaints or relativisms because of ideological and pragmatic reasons.

On November 26th, tributes on the first anniversary of Fidel Castro’s death and voting (a more exact term than “elections) at a local level of the so-called People’s Power, coincided in Cuba.

He is a Cuban lawyer and an indigenous peoples’ rights defender who works for a well-known Mexican human rights NGO. She is a Salvadoran activist devoted to defend her countrypeople under threat. Both have a clear history of commitment with just social causes and have paid a high personal price for it.

Reliable sources informed me that certain magnates and Cuban-American and US lobbyists met with members of the president’s staff to try and temper the tone of Obama’s speech on the island dealing with the support for democracy and human rights.

They say that Cuba’s Citizen Insecurity apparatus – i.e. State Security – has threatened to put an end to the Sunday rallies organized by a group of government opponents. Could we be about to witness a kind of (less intense) Black Spring?