Latin America

Shot by both sides says:

Go and read this spectacularly ignorant article on Latin America. Key lessons: democracy and being-opposed-to-the-USA are incompatible; democracy and socialism are incompatible; and the USA has every right to tell Latin Americans what they ought to be doing.

The final quote is also a classic of sorts: "South America's past...is a nightmare of repression. The Bush administration has prescribed democracy as the cure". Right, now remind me who was responsible for the repression in the first place...?

Perfect.co.uk says:

The Democracy Center completely takes apart the Washington Post’s editorial on how Bolivia is being taken over by “a radical movement opposed to foreign investment and free-market capitalism”.

"The Post says, “The insurgents, who claim to represent the country’s indigenous population, drove one democratically elected president from office 18 months ago; now they are working on his successor, Carlos Mesa…”

Fact: The popular demands in October of 2003 were all about stopping President Gonzalo Sànchez de Lozada’s gas export deal, which people didn’t trust would deliver for Bolivians. The demand for his resignation didn’t come until the President’s repression against the protests resulted in fifty-three deaths and the call for his resignation came not just from the so-called “radicals” but from mainstream leaders in the church, the legal community and academia."

This is a grotesque distortion of the truth from one of America’s most influential newspapers.

Other links

UK Indymedia Anniversary of the MST and EZLN

The communiques of SubComandante Marcos.

ZNet Bolivia Marxism and Indigenism in Bolivia: A Dialectic of Dialogue and Conflict