Only the maquilas are benefiting from our demographic dividend
2015 Julio Nicaragua
The information shared here was obtained in meetings, forums and focus groups held by the María Elena cuadra Movement of Employed and Unem¬ployed Women...

Notes for a debate about cooperation and the “logframe”
2012 Octubre Honduras
While recognizing international cooperation’s enormous service in channeling funds from donor agencies in various—especially European—countries for development,...

New clothes for the emperor... or is ALBA naked in Nicaragua?
2012 Octubre Nicaragua
In a lively bustling city there lived an emperor who used to spend all his money on elegant clothes. Not even his soldiers or meetings of the Council...

A Letter to all the Left
2011 Octubre Internacional
I don’t doubt that there’s a future for the Left but it won’t be a linear continuation of the past. To define what the different Left expressions have...

The four horsemen of neoliberalismo in the vacuum left by waged work
2011 Junio Centroamérica
Remember the 1970s and 80s? The military in Honduras, the death squads in El Salvador, the bloody death rattles of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua...

The lights of ALBA on El Salvador’s horizon
2011 Mayo El Salvador
In the first discussions in 1993-1994 to organize an alternative integration project for Latin America—originally called the Bolivarian Alternative for...

The ecological crisis goes global: Gaia’s revenge
2011 Mayo Internacional
Serious and ever more conspicuous implications of globalized capitalism’s renewed, increasingly disproportionate monetary-financial aspect are adding...

A Model City for a Society in Tatters
2011 Abril Honduras
A committee led by President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, made up of some 50 members of his administration visited Southeast Asia between February 18 and March...

The Ecological Crisis Goes Global: The Development We Want Is Unsustainable
2011 Marzo Internacional
In the first half of the 20th century, the still very incipient global ecological crisis didn’t attract institutional interest much less the oratory...

The “Hidden Transcript” of the Powerful in WikiLeaks
2011 Marzo América Latina
Like many other years, 2010 was packed full of political events critical for the region. One of the most important and stunning phenomena on the international...

Civil Society’s Representation In the Association Agreement
2010 Julio Nicaragua
The talks leading up to the Association Agreement between Central America and the European Union hasn’t been of general interest to our population,...

Cargill: In the Belly of the Beast
2010 Mayo Nicaragua
Cargill is a privately held transnational company that has grown out of all measure to become one of the US corporations with the biggest profit volume...

Maquilas, Fast Food, Casinos, Cells: Serpents in Paradise
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
Over a century ago, in his novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens described the thoughts of the businessman Bounderby: “Now, you have heard a lot of...

The Narrow Road to the Globalization of Solidarity
2005 Abril Internacional
Now that we have entered the third millennium, the idea of “the end of history” as the only economic alternative has entered into internal crisis and...

What Is Morally Unjust Cannot Be Economically Correct
2005 Marzo Internacional
What can this generation, working together, each and all of us, do? We are not powerless individuals; acting together, we have the power to shape history,...

Clean Up Your Computer
2005 Enero Internacional
Computers are an integral part of everyday life. Thirty years ago, it would have been hard to imagine their centrality in everyday life. Now, it’s...

Are Free Trade Agreements Free? Are They Development Strategies?
2004 Noviembre Internacional
Is the liberalization of international trade a desirable goal in principle? Opinions abound and are contradictory, but it would unquestionably be desirable...

Internationalize the Amazonia?
2004 Abril Internacional
During a debate in a US university over four years ago, a young US ecologist asked Cristóvão Buarque, then the Workers Party governor of the Federal...

Globalization and Development Seen from Below
2004 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaragua cambia—Nicaragua’s changing—was President Arnoldo Alemán’s slogan during his five-year administration (January 1997-January 2002), and...

A Central American at the World Social Forum
2004 Marzo Internacional
I didn’t know exactly what I was going to. I imagined that it would be like the congresses organized by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA),...

Enron et al—The Fiasco of the New US-style
2004 Marzo Internacional
From the late 1990s until 2001, American capitalism was held up as the model. The US President and the chairman of the Federal Reserve did not hesitate...

CAFTA: “We’re Defining Whether We’ll Commit Suicide or Die a Natural Death”
2003 Octubre Nicaragua
The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is testing our economic organizations’ capacity to make technical and political proposals that can...

"We're Saying No to CAFTA With Arguments and Conditions"
2003 Octubre Nicaragua
In UNAG we have analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the United States—which we’re already...

The Information Age: Understanding our World
2003 Mayo Internacional
Manual Castells, a Catalan sociologist and Professor of Sociology and City and Regional Planning at both the University of California, Berkeley, and...

World Trade Rules: Rabbit and Tiger in the Same Cage
2002 Diciembre Internacional
Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, the first between developed nations and a developing one, the price Mexican...

Realities and Appearances In the Fight against Corruption
2002 Octubre Internacional
Corruption has been high on the political agenda for some time now, although it has been accentuated in recent years. All observers agree on the seriousness...

A Global Ethic
2002 Octubre Internacional
The question of the soul or the spiritual dimension of Europe cannot be ignored in the process of European political and economic integration. In 1992,...

Cyberculture: Challenges and Unknowns
2002 Marzo Internacional
Like it or not, we are immersed in a revolution whose outcome is virtually impossible to foresee. The main instigator of all this change is a new technology...

Dual Societies: A Ticking Bomb
2001 Octubre Centroamérica
In recent visits to Nicaragua and El Salvador, I have come to understand more keenly than ever that the problem of many Latin American countries is that...

Who’s Rescuing the South’s Shipwreck: NGOs or the State?
2001 Septiembre Internacional
At the beginning of this year I shared with envío readers some reflections on the work of NGDOs, the nongovernmental organizations dedicated to...

NGOs: Somewhere between Compassion, Profitability and Solidarity
2001 Agosto Internacional
The development NGOs from the countries of the North are performing an increasingly important role in the international system. They handled nearly US$6...

The War Against Market Monotheism
2001 Julio Internacional
The market is where the whole of society exchanges things, given the underlying division of labor. Markets have always existed, from the prehistoric...

Globalized Civil Society: From Below or from Above?
2001 Mayo Internacional
The concept of civil society is very fashionable at the moment. It is so widely accepted as to allow all kinds of interpretations, while at the same...

Porto Alegre The Strength of Being Together
2001 Mayo Internacional
Thousands of people from all over the planet, moved by a great common objective—repudiation of the current neoliberal model and the conviction that "another...

Porto Alegre On the Road to Post-Capitalism
2001 Mayo Internacional
The World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre offered an unprecedented opportunity to bring together diverse grassroots forces from countries in both the...

The Matrixes, Traps and Tricks of the Development Discourse
2001 Abril Nicaragua
For some months now a document known as the "Estrategia Reforzada de Reducción de la Pobreza" (Reinforced Poverty Reduction Strategy) has been...

The War against Coca: A View from Bolivia
2001 Abril América Latina
In its fight against drugs, the US government has declared war on coca and thus on the peasant families who grow this prodigious plant in the valleys...

Shipwreck: NGOs to the Rescue
2001 Enero Internacional
Such disasters occurred from time to time, and when ever they did thousands of people drowned. The news began to reach the North as journalists managed...

Defining Left and Right
2000 Noviembre Internacional
The current climate of ideological uncertainty is largely due to the fact that the Right is employing a progressive discourse and the Left a conservative...

Development Aid In Crisis: Donor Fatigue
2000 Agosto Internacional
Cooperation in the process of developing impoverished countries is a multifaceted task involving both the private and public sectors. Given the lack...

Transgenic Crops: Critical Voices from the South
2000 Julio Internacional
There is talk in the world about a second "green revolution." Two elements characterized the first one, which translated into the boom of fruit cultivation...

Transgenic Foodstuffs: Gateway to a Controversy
2000 Julio Internacional
Emotions and feelings are unquestionably important in human life. They are also important in approaching the ethical dilemmas resulting from the extraordinary...

Latin America and International Cooperation
2000 Julio América Latina
Latin America and the Caribbean—"Our America," as Cuban patriot José Martí called it — is a region of the world whose face is presented to you daily...

Seattle: First Fruit of a Changing Epoch
2000 Abril Internacional
If there is an ideological leitmotif for the end of the last century (how strange it feels to type those words about one’s own century!), it undoubtedly...

An Ethics for the New Millennium: The Just Measure and Essential Caring
2000 Marzo Internacional
Once a tree has fulfilled its intrinsic potential, it is said to have reached its peak. It then dies and falls. When people have consumed their personal...

A Rebel in the Cause Of African Renaissance
1999 Agosto Internacional
A struggle for political power is dragging the Kingdom of Lesotho towards the abyss of a violent conflict. The Democratic Republic of Congo is sliding...

What Should Change in Central America?
1999 Enero Centroamérica
Honorable Presidents: Hurricane Mitch has battered your countries, leaving in its wake a scene of desolation and misery. We have seen the spirit of collaboration...

From North to South: Travel Tips for Cooperants
1998 Noviembre América Latina
By Sergio Ferrari, a Latin American journalist in Geneva, Switzerland. Talking with Leonardo Boff is like a "cosmic learning experience," especially...

Putting Life Before Debt
1998 Junio Internacional
International debt is a dangerous obstacle to Human Development, forcing the world's most impoverished countries to use scarce resources to pay their...

Central America's Granary: Reflections from Europe
1998 Mayo Centroamérica
...

Multilateral Investment Agreement: Friend of the Rich, Enemy of Nations
1998 Marzo Internacional
FROM THE MOMENT IT STOPPED BEING A "SECRET," the proposal for a Mltilateral Investment Agreement (MIA) was questioned from all sides. From the South,...

Multilateral Investment Agreement: A World Alert
1998 Febrero Internacional
THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM WAS HELD IN DAVOS, SWITZERLAND, from January 19 to February 3. This forum is the private club of the planet's...

Archeology of the Idea of Development
1997 Septiembre Internacional
Fallen buildings hide their secrets under mountains of earth and rubble. and mental structures are often erected on foundations covered by sand for years...

What Remains of Socialism?
1997 Agosto Internacional
Social philosophy would have a hard time avoiding one of the crucial issues of our time: the foundering of the socialist projects of social transformation....

Relations with the United States: A Two-Way Street
1996 Noviembre Nicaragua
Ten years have passed since the international court of justice handed down its decision in the case of the "Military and Paramilitary Activities in...

Democracy and Markets in The New World Order
1996 Julio Internacional
The conventional picture of the new era we are entering and the promise it holds was formulated clearly by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake when...

A Society With Room for Everyone
1996 Enero Internacional
A conviction predominated in the 1950s and 1960s that the First World was showing the Third World what its future would be. Today we see the opposite;...

Roots of the Colombia-Nicaragua Territorial Dispute
1994 Diciembre Internacional
Atiny and anomalous document from 1803, which was only in effect for a scant three years and never had any practical consequences, has served right up...

World Bank and IMF: Guilty as Charged
1994 Diciembre Internacional
The session of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal was convoked by the International Lelio Basso Foundation for the Liberation and Rights of Peoples, in...

World Bank and IMF to the Stand
1994 Octubre Internacional
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), two institutions targeted by growing...

The New Transitions: Where are they Headed?
1993 Octubre Internacional
Recounting the experience of the Paris Commune, Marx noted that when the time comes to make revolutions, the moment of the greatest need for creativity,...

Somalia: Lessons for the South
1993 Agosto Internacional
To begin with, television screens around the world were inundated with daily images of emaciated children and entire populations dying of hunger. Next,...

Liberation Theology: Theology of the South
1993 Junio Internacional
Liberation theology is a theology of life and hope that seeks to reestablish a sense of God and the Gospel in society and in the Church itself. It does...

The Crisis of Socialism Highlights the North-South Fight*
1991 Noviembre Internacional
I would like to develop several theses about the change in the relationship between first and third world countries, a change heavily affected by the...

The World Court Decision: An Historic Case
1991 Octubre Centroamérica
Augusto Zamora, who served on Nicaragua's legal team in its case against the United States in the World Court until 1990, reviews the key stages of...

North-South Conference At Cancun
1981 Noviembre Internacional
The highly publicized North-South conference between representatives of developed and underdeveloped nations was held in Cancun, Mexico’s luxurious Caribbean...