discussion of immigrants
gueststudent
discussion.zipdiscussion/discussion1.docx
Disaster Capitalism and US Mexico Border Crisis
Disasters and crises are good for big businesses. In disaster capitalism the vulnerable are the new valuable commodity. Multinational corporations like privatized detention centers or militarized private security firms can cash in on human misery. Disaster capitalism is a combination of political and economic policies that can create a shock or that are always in the ready to take an advantage of a disaster or a crisis in order to impose a radical economic overhaul that results in certain elites and U.S. multinational corporations making bank. Today in the news cycle the current crisis is the influx of migrants at the U.S. Mexico border. President Trump shut down the government in January to draw attention to this issue and used his recent State of the Union address to highlight the "disaster" occurring at our southern border with Mexico. Take a look at one or all of the links below and share your opinion about disaster capitalism and the U.S. Mexico Border Crisis!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG9CM_J00bw
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/11/us/politics/trump-border-crisis-reality.html
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/5/18212671/state-of-the-union-2019-border-immigration
discussion/discussion2.docx
The Fight for Venezuela
One of the points that Juan Gonzalez makes in our text Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America is that the history of Latinx migration to the U.S. is directly linked to U.S.' involvement in the political and economic affairs of Latin America. Recently, the Trump administration openly called for the overthrow of the Venezuelan socialist government of Nicolas Maduro. A regime change, Trump's economic advisers say, would greatly benefit U.S. oil companies.
In 2016 Venezuelans became the top U.S. asylum seeker as thousands fled poverty and violence brought on by the drop in international oil prices. Venezuela sits on one of the largest oil reserves in the world. Exporting oil has been its primary means of generating funds but currently Venezuela is in the midst of a national crisis (made far worse by the implementation of US sanctions in 2017) where food and medicine are scarce and inflation has skyrocketed. Venezuela is politically polarized but that polarization cleaves along the lines of race and class. Supporters of Maduro tend to be black, brown, and poor, while supporters of the opposition party are whiter and from more middle class and affluent backgrounds. Click on one or more links below and share your opinions about the fight for Venezuela.
https://theconversation.com/venezuelas-long-history-of-racism-is-coming-back-to-haunt-it-82199
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-20664349
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/world/americas/venezuela-support-maduro-guaido.html
discussion/discussion3.docx
The U.S. Colony of Puerto Rico
Many of the problems in Puerto Rico stem from the fact that it is a US colony. Colonies are satellite feeder economies from which the colonizers extract wealth. Puerto Rico benefits US corporations because the island is a captive market for mainland commodities. On an island that has rich farmland Puerto Rico imports over 90 percent of its food from the US mainland. On an island that would be ideal for alternate forms of energy (like wind and solar power) it imports 80 percent of its energy in the form of fossil fuels from the US mainland. For a while it had its own form of weak democracy but this ended with the passage of PROMESA (Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act) in 2016. With this law, US Congress established an unelected Fiscal Control Board (FCB) to deal with Puerto Rico's debt crisis. This board meets in New York City and decides all fiscal and policy related matters pertaining to Puerto Rico with no input from the people who live on the island. Click on one or all of the articles below and share your opinion on this topic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/puerto-rico-promesa-debt/489797/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/harvard-study-estimates-thousands-died-in-puerto-rico-due-to-hurricane-maria/2018/05/29/1a82503a-6070-11e8-a4a4-c070ef53f315_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.20a80214f75f
https://www.workers.org/2018/10/16/wanted-posters-target-puerto-rico-fiscal-control-board-mercenaries/
discussion/discussion4.docx
Brazil's Swing to the Right
Brazil (Latin America's largest country) recently elected the far-right former army captain and congressman, Jair Bolsonaro, who promised to fix Brazil's economy by opening up both the Amazon and indigenous lands to agribusinesses, by rolling back environmental regulations and by pulling out of the Paris climate agreement. However, it was his inflammatory rhetoric prior to the election that includes numerous misogynist, racist, and homophobic remarks that was particularly unsettling and can only draw comparisons to Trump. Below are several links to news articles regarding Brazil's election, new leader and the imprisonment of his primary political opposition. After reading one or all of the articles, share your opinion about Brazil's turn to the right below.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/01/heres-how-jair-bolsonaro-wants-to-transform-brazil/580207/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/world/americas/brazil-attacks-bolsonaro-haddad.html
https://www.thenation.com/article/brazils-most-popular-leader-has-been-convicted-of-corruption-on-flimsy-evidence/
discussion/discussion5.docx
Argentina and the Disappeared
The future is history or least that is the fear that many of us see in the proliferation of center right regimes in both the Americas and in Europe. Argentina's current president is center-right Mauricio Macri. Elected in 2015, Macri's administration alarmed many Argentinians when Macri met with several right wing groups that defined the Disappeared as terrorists rather than genocide victims. Residents of Argentina were further alarmed when Macri then suggested that human rights activists and the Mothers of the Plaza had exaggerated the number of desaparecidos who perished between 1974 and 1983. Click on one or several of the links below to read up on this issue and share your opinion below.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/28/mothers-plaza-de-mayo-argentina-anniversary
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/argentina-denial-dirty-war-genocide-mauricio-macri
http://www.irinnews.org/analysis/2014/02/05/argentinas-forensic-anthropology-finding-disappeared-ones
