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Today's Stories January 12 / 13, 2008 Saul Landau January 11, 2008 Dave Lindorff Paul Craig
Roberts Andy Worthington Kenneth Couesbouc Jeff Ballinger Christopher
Brauchli Manuel Garcia, Jr. Andrew Silverstein Marwan Bishara Robert Weissman Patrick Irelan Website of
the Day
January 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Bob Wing Michael Donnelly David Macaray China Hand Ayesha Ijaz Khan Rannie Amiri Website of the Day
January 9, 2008 Cockburn /
St. Clair Dave Lindorff John Chuckman James Bovard Alan Farago Russell Mokhiber William S. Lind Peter Morici Josh Reubner Mike Roselle Website of the Day
January 8, 2008 Paul Craig
Roberts Russell Mokhiber Robert Fantina Dave Zirin Shamako Nobel John Ross Brenda Norrell Laura Carlsen Patrick Irelan Evelyn J. Pringle Jonathan M.
Feldman Michael Dickinson Website of
the Day
January 7, 2008 Chris Floyd John Blair Uri Avnery Andy Worthington Binoy Kampmark David Macaray Ralph Nader Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Gideon Levy Dave Lindorff Website of
the Day
January 5 / 6, 2008 Douglas Valentine Kevin Young Richard Rhames Saul Landau Marc Lynch Robert Fantina Donna Volatile Jelle Bruinsma Bob Sutcliffe Harvey Wasserman Missy Beattie David Swanson Jacob Hornberger Shepherd Bliss Ron Jacobs Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
January 4, 2008 Cockburn /
St. Clair Jonathan Cook Paul Craig Roberts Stan Goff Dave Lindorff Niranjan Ramakrishnan Allan Nairn Joshua Frank Peter Morici Mary McInnis Website of the Day
January 3, 2008 Fatima Bhutto Pam Martens Joanne Mariner Zoltan Grossman David Domke Norman Solomon Nikolas Kozloff Jacob G. Hornberger Martha Rosenberg Russell Means Website of the Day
January 2, 2008 Jeff Taylor M. Shahid Alam Gary Leupp Paul Craig Roberts Heather Gray Fred Gardner David Macaray Benjamin Dangl
January 1, 2008 Iain A. Boal B. R. Gowani Shahid Mahmood Linn Washington,
Jr. Harvey Wasserman John Ross Website of the Day
December 31, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Tariq Ali Liaquat Ali Khan Wajahat Ali Robert Fisk Ajai Sahni Marwan Bishara Uri Avnery Mark T. Harris Brenda Norrell Website of the Day
December 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Tariq Ali Fawzia Afzal-Khan Gary Leupp China Hand Jacob Hornberger John Chuckman Missy Beattie Ralph Nader Fidel Castro Robert Fantina Greg Moses Catherine Lutz Kristin Van
Tassel Kim Nicolini Phyllis Pollack Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
December 28, 2007 Farzana Versey Wajahat Ali Binoy Kampmark Ayesha Ijaz
Khan Anthony DiMaggio Ray McGovern Jim Goodman Ron Jacobs Russell Hoffman John Murphy Website of the Day
December 27, 2007 Dilip Hiro Murtaza Shibli Stephen Soldz Bill Quigley Paul Craig Roberts Omer Subhani Marjorie Cohn Allan Nairn Jacob G. Hornberger Norman Solomon Patrick Irelan Ben Tripp Website of the Day
Charles Tripp Paul Armentano Rannie Amiri Stanley Heller John Walsh Martha Rosenberg Norman Madarasz Website of
the Day
December 25, 2007 Patrick Cockburn December 24, 2007 Andrea Peacock Tariq Ali Uri Avnery Jill Jameson Steve Melendez Mike Whitney Chuck Munson John Walsh Farzana Versey Richard Neville Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Ralph Nader Andy Worthington Ahmad Faruqui Bill Moyers Rev. William
E. Alberts Timothy J. Freeman Anthony DiMaggio Fred Gardner Paul Krassner Seth Sandronsky William Loren
Katz Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs David Vest Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
December 21, 2007 John Ross Jacob Hornberger Dick J. Reavis Jeff Cohen
Peter Morici Jack McCarthy Raúl Zibechi Steve Early David Macaray Patrick Bond Lakota Freedom Delegation Website of
the Day
December 20, 2007 David Rosen Alan Farago Laura Carlsen Ashley Dawson Wayne Smith Website of
the Day
December 19, 2007 Saul Landau Paul W. Lovinger Norman Solomon Dave Zirin Marjorie Cohn Sen. Russell
Feingold Sonja Karkar Anthony Papa Christopher Ketcham Davey D Website of
the Day
December 18, 2007 R. F. Blader George Wuerthner Steven Higgs Vijay Prashad David Macaray Ralph Nader Eva Liddell Martha Rosenberg Dave Lindorff Peter Morici Website of
the Day
December 17, 2007 Mike Whitney Tom Barry Uri Avnery Greg Moses Allan Nairn Patrick Bond Stephen Lendman Charles Jonkel Laray Polk Stephen Fleischman December 15 / 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Howard Zinn Standard Schaefer Raymond J.
Lawrence Alan Farago Saul Landau Jenna Orkin Ahmad Samih
Khalidi Robert Fantina Missy Comley
Beattie Ramzy Baroud James L. Secor Elijah Wald Website of
the Weekend
December 14, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski John Ross Jacob Hornberger Andy Worthington Allan Nairn Dave Zirin Dave Lindorff Misty MacDuffee Ben Terrall Dr. Mustafa
Barghouthi Website of the Day
December 13, 2007 Paul Craig
Roberts Mike Whitney Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Peter Morici Sandy Mayes Franklin Lamb Jacob Hornberger Nadim Rouhana Dave Zirin Website of the Day
Allan
Nairn Alan
Farago Ray
McGovern Winslow
T. Wheeler Evan
Jones James
Petras Joel
Hirschorn Joshua
Frank Sherry
Wolf Dan
Bacher Website
of the Day
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Weekend
Edition Why Re-Enacting the Past is Not a Good OptionImagining An/Other Latin American LeftBy DAVID DÍAZ-ARIAS Some years ago, Walter Mignolo pointed out that Latin America was "a consequence and product of the geopolitics of knowledge, that is to say, a consequence of the knowledge produced and imposed by Modernity in its auto-definition as Modernity" (C. Walsh, "Las geopolíticas del conocimiento y colonialidad del poder. Entrevista a Walter Mignolo," Indisciplinar las ciencias sociales: geopolíticas del conocimiento y colonialidad del poder: perspectivas desde lo andino, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, 2002). Following Mignolo's statement, one can argue that the dependency on concepts, theories, and modern Western thoughts has been the main problem when Latin American social scientists and politicians have tried to explain the political, economical, and historical experience of their region. The result has been that Latin American politics and economic development theories have developed under the shadow of concepts and interpretations coming from outside. Although the Latin American Left (LAL) has historically taken an anti-imperialistic line against cultural, economic and political interventions, LAL's different interpretative traditions reproduce the problem quoted above. If we pay attention to some leftist attempts to examine Latin America during the 20th century, it is clear that their analysis used foreign perspectives instead of local ones. This includes the adaptation of Marxism to the Latin American experience. Thus, in the 1930s Peruvians intellectuals José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930) and Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre (1895-1979) analyzed Latin American capitalism arguing that a local perspective was necessary if structural problems were going to change. Drawing on Marx and Lenin, Mariátegui believed revolution to be the only route to social transformation. Haya de la Torre relied on a process of soft transformation controlled by the State. The main problem with those perspectives was their strong dependence on a theoretic framework that forced the Latin American experience to resemble the European and/or Russian experiences. Mariátegui even argued that Latin American indigenous people were waiting for their Lenin. In the 1950s, social movements who fought against dictatorships became a bridge between the 19th century revolutionary traditions, liberal ideas, and new left claims. The rebels were able to merge Simón Bolívar's and José Martí's images with anti-imperialist ideas and the post-World War 1 revolutionary tradition. Most of those who dreamt of a change in Latin America were doing it within a liberal-democratic-nationalistic framework. This fight involved, for instance, giving power back to the people, confronting dictators often supported/imposed by the United States, reforming Constitutions to include social guaranties, enacting Labor Codes, creating a welfare state, and producing agrarian reform. These reforms were not communist per se. On the contrary, similar policies were taken in the USA and Europe during the 1930s and 1940s in an effort to combat the Great Depression. However, in Latin America things changed dramatically after 1959. The Cuban Revolution and the spread of the revolutionary sentiment built the foundation for a new, critical social philosophy. This vision, known as the dependency theory (DT), tried to "seek a global and dynamic understanding of social structures instead of looking only at specific dimensions of the social process opposing the academic tradition which conceived analytically independent of one another, and together independent of the economy, as if each one of these dimensions corresponded to separate spheres of reality". In that sense, dependency theory stressed "the socio-political nature of the economic relations of production, thus following the nineteenth-century tradition of treating economy as political economy. This methodological approach, which found its highest expression in Marx, assumes that the hierarchy that exists in society is the result of established ways of organizing the production of material and spiritual life. This hierarchy also serves to assure the unequal appropriation of nature and of the results of human work by social classes and groups." So, DT proponents attempted "to analyze domination in its connection with economic expansion" (F.H. Cardoso & E. Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America, University of California Press, 1979). Finally, the DT proposed the total separation of the Third World countries from those powerful economies that had controlled them. The idea was to attain better economic conditions by creating a local path to progress. Therefore, although it appeared radical, this theory repeated the vision of time and progress created by Modernity. Recently, many of the afore-mention ideas have returned to the Latin American political arena with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's program, "Socialism of the 21st century." The real problem for this proposal is to overcome populism by consolidating a new political option different than Latin America has experienced. For this, it must solve the two historic problems for Latin America: poverty and social inequality. Yet Chavez's attempt to concentrate power resembles that bitter experience of 'Socialismo Realmente Existente' for the 20th century world. On the other hand, political experiments of unification involving leftist parties carrying out neoliberal reforms, such as that of Chile, do not really guarantee the LAL a specific identity within the political system. If the Latin American Left does not learn anything from the history of the last century, poor people will be the ones to suffer. Ramón Grosfoguel has pointed out that Latin American social scientists have not overcome the system of representations created by Modern Europe (R. Grosfoguel, "Developmentalism, Modenity, and Dependency Theory in Latin America," Nepantla, 1:2, pp. 347-374). The leftist theories I have briefly summarized here integrate their interpretations into the totality and unity of Modernity and thereby limit their conception of Latin America to a foreign framework. I do not propose we separate Latin American studies from Modern theories of analysis. However, these theories have proved to be limited if we want to understand this region and its political culture. For the LAL this seems to be pivotal. Therefore, imagining a different Latin America also means that the LAL must imagine itself differently from the past. Reenacting the past is not a good option if the LAL wants to play a key role in transforming Latin America in this century. If the LAL does not re-imagine itself, it will be doomed to disappear. David Díaz-Arias is a Professor of History at the University
of Costa Rica. He can be reached at: ddiaz@fcs.ucr.ac.cr ![]()
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