AMLO’s genius lay in taking the neoliberal bogeyman out of the shadows, exposing its ugliness for all to see. When the people understand fully the mechanics that deliver what belongs to them into the hands of the wealthy few, they get clear about which side they’re on.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Money is speech. Corporations are persons. Not just any persons — persons more powerful than nations. As we find out in today’s interview with Manuel Perez-Rocha, single corporations, mostly from the US, can influence the entire economy of another country.
When Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the presidency in 2018, we were jubilant! But we weren’t sure whether he could turn the ship of state. After all, Mexico had sailed in one direction for 70 years under the same flag, that of the PRI. Then Morena, only a 4-year-old, wrested the wheel from the old captains. But with all the navigation settings locked in place, could they actually chart a different course?
The conflict between the owning class and the working class is nowhere so up close and personal as in the workplace, and the owners hold all the cards. When the door to your workplace shuts behind you, you leave your rights outside...
What do people need to be healthy? Ask anyone, and you’ll get the same answers. Clean water. Clean air. A home. Food. Safety. We can’t get these by ourselves. It takes government to provide sanitation systems, environmental protections, housing policies, living wages and security.
In today’s world, 16% of the human population — 1.3 billion people — have some form of physical disability. In Global South countries, the numbers are proportionately higher.
“We have Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, RC Cola, every kind of Cola,” a woman from the global South fumed way back at the 1995 Beijing Women’s Conference, “but there’s no water coming from the tap!” In México, more than one drought has stopped the flow of our world’s most essential liquid — and residents demanding adequate water have regularly come up dry.
The Spanish conquistadors brought the first Africans to New Spain, later to become Mexico, as part of the global slave trade. But the history of Africans in Mexico is very different from the history of Africans and their descendants in the US.
