INDIGENOUS Purepecha communities in Mexico marked Columbus Day on Monday by blocking roads into their territories, while police clashed with Mapuche demonstrators in Chile.
The day — known as Dia de la Raza, or Day of the [Ibero-American] Race, in Spanish — is deeply controversial as a holiday because it signifies the European conquest of the Americas.
Purepecha leaders in Mexico’s Michoacan state released a statement saying: “We were not ‘discovered:’ our lands were invaded and looted.”
Latin America is being swept by a series of right-wing electoral victories. But behind that shift to the right lies less of an ideological conversion than anger, fear, insecurity, and a deep crisis of democracy, asserts MARC VANDEPITTE
DAVID RABY explains the background of the recent upheavals in Mexico
Far-right forces are rising across Latin America and the Caribbean, armed with a common agenda of anti-communism, the culture war, and neoliberal economics, writes VIJAY PRASHAD


