Project Steev

What Makes Latin America So Special?

I just read an excellent article in Counterpunch about Bolivian social movements and the unique way that the indigenous Aymara there organize. It's the first thing I've read that really gets into the details of how people do things in El Alto, a basically DIY city composed of and built by rural poor who moved toward La Paz from the countryside over the last few decades.

I also just saw a nice little piece by Rebecca Solnit called "Fire in the South," about Latin America in general and the wave of resistance to neoliberal oppression there in the last few years. ( I've been consistently impressed with Solnit's activist writing in the last few months, especially a piece in September's Orion called "The Asanas of Denial," about the little excuses, the mental poses, that progressives use to short-circuit real positive work toward a better world, in others and even in themselves. Can't seem to find that online, but it's great.)