Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalThe Anonymous Women Who Embroidered the Cruel History of the Chilean Dictatorship
The arpilleras narrated the course of Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship through bold colors, broad stitching, and striking imagery, often incorporating fabrics from their disappeared children’s clothes.
Rosa Boshier February 21, 2020
Arpillera from Arte, Mujer y Memoria: Arpilleras from Chile at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach,
California (all images by the author for Hyperallergic)
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Memory slips between our fingers, settling somewhere between fact and fiction. However, the fearless resistance conveyed through the arpilleras — small traditional quilts sewn upon burlap — on display at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) does not leave the memories of Chile’s brutal military dictatorship (1973–1990) up for interpretation. Curated by MOLAA’s director of education, Gabriela Martínez, Arte, Mujer y Memoria: Arpilleras from Chile features 30 arpilleras, by mostly anonymous female artists, that depict the cruelty of Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship.
On September 11, 1973 Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, was overthrown by CIA-backed Chilean armed forces, prompting almost two decades of political persecution under the rule of Augusto Pinochet, who held the presidency until 1990 and oversaw the military until 1998. Alleging economic crisis and social unrest, Pinochet’s newly instated military government set about undoing social programs, suspending the constitution, and enforcing violence against Chilean citizens deemed disloyal. Under Pinochet, men with long hair were shaved in public. Books considered antagonistic to the Pinochet regime were forbidden. Hunger in the general population reached 60%. More than 3,000 Chileans “disappeared” in clandestine ways, and tens of thousands more were abducted and tortured.
Arpillera from Arte, Mujer y Memoria: Arpilleras from Chile at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach,
California
Arpilleras from Arte, Mujer y Memoria: Arpilleras from Chile at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach,
California
The women left behind — many of them mothers of those murdered — came together to demand justice through both protest and art-making. Chilean author Marjorie Augosín maintains that these women often found and recognized each other while searching for their loved ones in hospitals and morgues. Common Thread (2019), a documentary by Anthony Rauld featured in Arte, Mujer y Memoria, informs viewers that on the second day of the new military takeover, women started organizing movements to resist. One of those movements was the establishment of arpillera workshops. The arpilleras narrated the course of Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship through bold colors, broad stitching, and striking imagery, often incorporating fabrics from their disappeared children’s clothes.
As the majority of disappeared people were men, women began looking for alternative modes of income. Beginning in March 1974, the Chilean Catholic Church, which opposed the Pinochet regime, provided materials and meeting space to the arpilleristas, as well as avenues to sell their works internationally. Pinochet later denounced the arpilleras, forcing the women to work in secret. According to the organization Forging Memory, the church smuggled the arpilleras out of the country once their production became illegal, using special diplomatic pouches that the government troops and police could not touch. By the late 1970s, the arpilleras had become a major industry.
More:
https://hyperallergic.com/542850/arte-mujer-y-memoria-arpilleras-from-chile-molaa/
Fringe religious party gains power in crisis-stricken Peru
February 18, 2020 8.55am EST
Peru’s Jan. 26 special election was exceptional.
Not only did voters elected 130 new legislators, replacing their entire Congress; they also brought into the fold a messianic religious group called the Israelites of the New Universal Pact.
After 40 years of failing to qualify for a national election, the political party of the Israelites – called the Agricultural People’s Front of Peru, or Frepap – won 15 congressional seats. In a fragmented Congress with nine parties, that makes the Israelites the third-largest legislative bloc.
The line between religion and politics has long been blurry in Peru. Both its mainstream parties – Acción Popular, the first-place vote-winners; and Alianza para el Progreso, with the second-most seats– have historical ties to Christian Democracy, a Catholic movement that gained popularity in 1950s Latin America with its centrist approach to economic development and conservative social values at a time of divisive Cold War rhetoric.
. . .
The Israelites of the New Universal Pact at a religious ceremony in Cieneguilla, Peru, in 1995. MARIE HIPPENMEYER/AFP via Getty Images
More:
https://theconversation.com/fringe-religious-party-gains-power-in-crisis-stricken-peru-130679
Ivan the Illegitimate? Colombia's Supreme Court, Congress and election authority looking into electi
by Adriaan Alsema February 21, 2020
The very legitimacy of Colombia’s government came into question on Thursday when both the Supreme Court and election authorities began looking into claims the 2018 elections were rigged.
Colombia’s Supreme Court opened a new criminal investigation into a member of one of the country’s most powerful clans for his alleged participation in the jailbreak of former Senator-elect Aida Merlano, who was convicted of election fraud in the 2018 congressional elections.
W Radio reported on Thursday that the National Electoral Council (CNE) was looking into magistrate Luis Guillermo Perez additional request to investigate Duque’s campaign, which allegedly took part in rigging the presidential election that same year.
Opposition politicians filed criminal charges against the president before the Accusations Chamber of Congress on Thursday while the runner up in the elections, leftist Senator Gustavo Petro, called on his supporters to take to the streets.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombias-supreme-to-investigate-duque-ally-over-fugitive-politicians-jail-break/
Malpaso Dance Company brings Cuban energy, verve to Pittsburgh
Malpaso Dance Company brings Cuban energy, verve to Pittsburgh
MARK KANNY | Thursday, February 20, 2020 12:00 a.m.
Chosen names can reveal a lot. Take the Malpaso Dance Company of Havana, Cuba, which is now on tour and coming to Pittsburgh.
Malpaso is a funny name for a dance company because it means misstep in Spanish. It’s the opposite of what dancers try to do.
On one level, the name reflects the warnings that two of the three founders heard from friends that leaving secure jobs as dancers to found their own troupe could be a misstep for them.
Malpaso is also a rejection of the pretentious names some performing groups take – Lords of this or Kings of that.
More:
https://triblive.com/aande/malpaso-dance-company-brings-cuban-energy-verve-to-pittsburgh/
Colombia's teachers strike over murders, death threats and stigmatization
by Adriaan Alsema February 20, 2020
Colombia’s teachers began a two-strike on Thursday in rejection of the ongoing killings of colleagues, death threats and stigmatization by the far-right.
Teachers union Fecode announced the strike earlier this month after one of their regional coordinators survived an assassination attack in central Colombia, a teacher was assassinated in the northeast and dozens were sent death threats in multiple towns.
The teachers are additionally fed up with the ongoing stigmatization by the far-right party of President Ivan Duque, the Democratic Center, which accuses the teachers of “indoctrinating” public school children with leftist political thought.
Earlier this week, supporters of Duque’s political patron, former President Alvaro Uribe, called on Twitter to “finish off with Fecode” they on Wednesday called “bums.”
More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombias-teachers-strike-over-murders-death-threats-and-stigmatization/
US Blockade Prevents Public Health Supplies From Reaching Cuba
February 18, 2020
Havana, February 17 (RHC)– Cuba is currently forced to purchase medications in distant markets. It has to deal with the increase in import prices of medicines, medical instruments, disposable material, equipment, and spare parts.
Young engineer Solainy Fajardo Araujo, Director of Imports of the Import and Export Company of Medical Products of the Ministry of Public Health (MediCuba S.A.), knows the drill very well.
She told Juventud Rebelde that not only has the blockade against the island intensified during the government of President Donald Trump. Its extraterritorial nature has increased even more.
“It is not enough for the U.S. government to apply the blockade directly against Cuba; it also sanctions or severely fines entities from other nations that carry out commercial operations with our country, for which we receive more and more refusals, not only from trading companies and factories but also from banks, shipping companies, and even airlines during the negotiation process,” he said.
More:
https://orinocotribune.com/us-blockade-prevents-public-health-supplies-from-reaching-cuba/?fbclid=IwAR1LuFt8fcsOZULGMRmD-409TQz-vQeQtTogFNFOaiMSKh-Kwt56guCx3Q4
How to steal land the size of a small country Part V: the Medellin elite
by Adriaan Alsema February 19, 2020
Medellin‘s elite and friends of Colombia’s former President Alvaro Uribe were among the main beneficiaries of the dispossession of more than 3 million hectares of land, an area the size of Belgium.
According to Jairo Bayuelo, a middleman in the gigantic land heist, wealthy families and corporations from Medellin and the surrounding Antioquia province embarked on a land-buying binge in the Montes de Maria region after the military killed FARC commander “Martin Caballero” in the region in 2007.
The Democratic Security land heist
The rebel leader’s death was “part of the first phase of a new war plan to consolidate the Democratic Security plan, the banner of the government of Alvaro Uribe,” military sources told newspaper El Pais.
The military offensive and the paramilitary threats were a goldmine for Bayuelo’s “investor friend” Alvaro Echeverria, a close friend of Uribe and well connected with the rest of the “Paisa” elite.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/how-to-steal-land-the-size-of-a-small-country-part-iv-the-medellin-elite/
Colombia's war crimes tribunal keeps finding corpses in army mass grave
Colombia’s war crimes tribunal keeps finding corpses in army mass grave
by Adriaan Alsema February 18, 2020
Colombia’s war crimes tribunal said Monday that it had found another three corpses in one of multiple mass graves dug by the army to bury executed victims who were reported as combat kills.
According to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), forensic investigators have so far found the remains of 20 people at the cemetery of Dabeiba, Antioquia.
The investigation in Dabeiba is part of a larger investigation into the executions of thousands of people who were falsely reported as killed members of guerrilla or paramilitary groups.
Additionally, the Special Unit for the Search of Disappeared Persons hopes to identify the victims of the army’s mass murder practices while searching for allegedly 120,000 people who went missing during the armed conflict.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombias-war-crimes-tribunal-keeps-finding-corpses-in-army-mass-grave/
The high-stakes fight over Bolivia's lithium
Bolivia has the largest known resources of lithium. Can it build an industry to supply the world's growing demand?
Maddie Stone February 16, 2020
Nearly 12,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean in the Bolivian Altiplano, the crystalline remnants of ancient lake beds form odd geometric patterns that sprawl, with unearthly flatness, to distant, mountain-studded horizons. This is the Salar de Uyuni, a salt flat, or salar, so large it's visible from space. Beneath its surface: Earth's largest known deposit of lithium, a metal critical to the lightweight, high-performance batteries found inside laptops, smartphones, electric cars and renewable power storage facilities.
For more than a decade, Bolivia has labored, unsuccessfully, to commercialize its lithium riches through an ambitious state-run project championed by former President Evo Morales. When Morales was forced out in November amid accusations of election fraud, the project's future was thrown into question. Some, including Morales himself, speculated that nefarious U.S.-backed lithium interests were a driving force behind the socialist government's collapse.
The truth, it turns out, is far more complex. And — with elections looming this spring — so, too, is the future of Bolivia's lithium.
Will the government continue pursuing Morales' dream of a state-run lithium industry that lifts the entire nation out of poverty? Or will it fling open the doors to foreign investors? It's a local political fight, but these questions reverberate far beyond Bolivia's borders. According to industry experts, Bolivia could yet become a lithium powerhouse with the right technology and under the right leadership — and if that were to happen, it would reshape an industry at the very center of the green energy revolution.
More:
https://www.protocol.com/bolivia-lithium-morales
Bolivia's Coup in Practice
17.02.2020
By
Guillaume Long
In the months since the coup d'état in Bolivia, the Añez government has aligned itself with hardline right-wing forces across the region – and made a mockery of Western 'democratisation' narratives.
Foreign policy, an area very much in the hands of the executive branch, has afforded Bolivia’s de facto president Jeanine Añez, who does not hold a parliamentary majority, an ideal outlet for her radical program. Within days of taking power, the Añez government had cut off relations with Venezuela, expelled its diplomatic staff, recognised instead the self-proclaimed government of Juan Guaidó, and swiftly abandoned the ALBA group of states to join its right-wing counterweight, the Group of Lima. Bolivia soon re-established diplomatic relations with Israel and rekindled close ties with the United States that had been seriously eroded since the US ambassador to Bolivia had been caught having secret meetings with key opposition figures in the midst of a violent separatist movement aimed at ousting Morales’s government in 2008.
Añez, a little-known senator whose party obtained a mere 4 percent of the vote in the last legislative elections, was ushered in after a coup toppled democratically elected president Evo Morales on November 10. It was soon clear that her lack of democratic legitimacy would not stop her from behaving as if she had a popular mandate to lead the country into a new era. She refused to personify the role of the prudent caretaker (as pro-coup spin termed it) seeking to guarantee the functioning of institutions required for the holding of elections in the shortest delay possible; and chose instead to rule.
After repeatedly pledging not to run in the elections, Añez finally announced her candidacy on January 24. Presidential candidates Carlos Mesa and Jorge Quiroga, among others in the Bolivian elite establishment, have expressed their disgruntlement with Añez’s change of heart. Her presence on the ballot will further divide the right in the context of an overcrowded race in which the candidates of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), Morales’s political party, are front-runners. Supporters of the November coup, both inside and outside Bolivia, are concerned that Añez’s political ambitions discredit the argument that the coup plotters were selfless political actors, dedicated to the cause of “democratisation” and not their own aggrandisement.
The Internationalisation of Domestic Politics
In Bolivia’s conservative restoration, there is an inseparable connection between foreign policy and the domestic persecution of the MAS and its leadership. The coup government seeks to arrest Morales on charges of “terrorism” and “sedition.” Dozens of Morales government officials and MAS leaders have either fled the country, sought asylum in diplomatic missions, or have been arrested. Within 24 hours of the MAS announcing that its presidential candidate would be former finance minister Luis Arce, the de facto government announced “corruption” charges against Arce, and when he returned to Bolivia last week he was subpoenaed before even getting through airport immigration. A former minister and vice minister, to whom the Bolivian Foreign Ministry had granted safe passage so they could leave the Mexican embassy, proceed to the airport, and leave the country, were detained and manhandled. Only an international outcry denouncing this extraordinary violation of international law ― and the astonishing duplicity of granting asylees safe passage before detaining them once out of their diplomatic sanctuary ― finally led the Bolivian government to let them go.
More:
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/02/bolivias-coup-in-practice/
President Piranha
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