Latin America is not the United States’ “backyard.” It’s the training ground, historian Greg Grandin argues, for periods of imperial retrenchment and regroupment. But it’s also a region where radical movements have consistently refused to be crushed by US imperial power.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration used Central America as a testing ground to rehabilitate US imperial "hard power" after defeat in Vietnam. The results were predictable: death squads, massacres, and murderous repression of left-wing movements.
The ripple effects of the disastrous Iraq invasion still course through the Middle East and domestic US politics decades later. Yet there’s little evidence those in power have learned anything from it.
A UN-sponsored international force has been deployed in Haiti with a mandate to clamp down on gang violence. But the strength of the gangs is inextricably linked to the character of the Haitian state and its ties to economic elites at home and abroad.
Seth Harp’s best-selling The Fort Bragg Cartel exposes the degree to which America’s drug trade and attendant violent crime are connected to its foreign wars. It’s a timely read as Donald Trump uses both to justify radical new expansions of military power.
The US and Cuba have finally resumed diplomatic relations. But what will the restored ties mean for immigration policy?
Syriza was elected a year ago today, only to retreat in the face of European pressure. Is there a way forward for the Greek left?
Today's Sandinista leaders are a far cry from the revolutionaries who once inspired the international left.
On September 21, 1976, the US-backed Pinochet government assassinated a leftist Chilean dissident on the streets of Washington, DC.
The failure of Colombia's peace deal will only benefit the forces of violent right-wing repression.
Three years after his death, British trade union leader Bob Crow continues to provide an example of militant working-class leadership.
The Pink Tide governments’ efforts to break from the tyrannies of world market dependence are not new. Neither are their failures to do so.
The Latin American left was on life-support in 1990. A decade later, it was in power.
As Argentina's right consolidates power, an activist's disappearance at the hands of the police has unearthed memories of the dictatorship.
The recent protests in Nicaragua began as a response to austerity reforms. They've snowballed into something much bigger.
Leftist candidate Gustavo Petro's success shows that whatever happens in Colombia's elections today, change has come to the country.
Jair Bolsonaro’s chief foreign policy architect is combining rabid nationalist rhetoric with pathetic submissiveness to the United States.
Cristina Kirchner just announced a surprise presidential ticket that has the potential to defeat Macri’s neoliberal government. But the victory she offers won’t be for the Left.
By granting asylum to Julian Assange in 2012, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa made clear his country would no longer bow to US diktats. The decision this spring to allow Assange's arrest shows how far Ecuador's challenge to empire has faded.