By Elizabeth McKenna A flyer that circulated on social media platforms before the planned June 20 anniversary protest. Superimposed on an image of the 300,000-person march on that date one year earlier, the text reads: prepare your breath, no letting up, 2014 will be bigger. The protest was billed as “The Return of the Giant”... Continue Reading →
Pedro Peterson Pedro Peterson (left) with a fan of Chile's La Roja. Eduardo Galeano, the world’s greatest football fan-poet, once said that “football is not guilty of the sins committed in its name.” In Brazil’s World Cup, which is built on sins both shameless and grotesque, and which has been a spectacle of football both... Continue Reading →
By Julie Chavez Rodriguez Julie Chavez Rodriguez introduces President Obama. (Photo courtesy of The Obama Diary.) Since my days walking through Sproul Plaza as a proud Latin American Studies major, I always knew that I was walking down a path that was paved long before I was born. It was a path that people like... Continue Reading →
By Rucker Alex and Charlotte D. Smith, Ph.D. Roof top tanks store water in a Panamanian village without continuous water supply. Despite being surrounded — and bisected — by water, Panama struggles to meet its citizens’ water needs in both urban and rural areas. In 2013, 840,000 of the country’s 3.8 million people lacked 24-hour... Continue Reading →
By Rose Kagawa American society often views the children of teenage mothers as doomed to failure. New York City recently launched a billboard campaign aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy rates in the city. The billboards portray tearful children with captions like, “Honestly mom… chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” Another... Continue Reading →
By Rebecca Tarlau Rebecca Tarlau with two students who are protesting the closure of rural schools. On Sunday, February 9, 2014, hundreds of buses carrying thousands of peasant farmers from across Brazil arrived in the capital city of Brasília. These farmers travelled to the capital to participate in the Sixth National Congress of the Brazilian... Continue Reading →
by Justin West A conventional, overgrazed pasture, El Dovio, Colombia. In many parts of the tropics livestock such as cattle, pigs, and chickens are important sources of both food and income. However, the nutritional requirements of these animals often cannot be met by the marginal pastureland available. Typically, farmers make up the difference by purchasing... Continue Reading →
by John Landefeld and Katharine Burmaster There’s an economic revolution happening in a small apparel factory in the city of Villa Altagracia, in the Dominican Republic. Three years ago, the Alta Gracia factory became the first apparel factory in the developing world to pay their workers a living wage, one calculated to meet a family’s... Continue Reading →
by Guillermo Jaimes In Brazil, the problems of the developing world exist side-by-side with the problems of the developed world. The country has a high incidence of both infectious diseases associated with a lack of basic sanitation and so-called “first-world diseases” such as hypertension and heart disease. Collecting rat specimens to test for leptospirosis in... Continue Reading →
by Jonathan Peterson* Jonathan Peterson. On September 16, I had the opportunity to see Robert Reich's play Milton and Augusto, which gives one account of the mysterious meeting between Milton Friedman and August Pinochet right after the fall of the government of Salvador Allende in 1973. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the military takeover, making its... Continue Reading →
