Published on 4 August 2016 by teleSUR.

Defence of the Spanish Republic during Spain’s civil war is probably the most well-known modern European example of a highly organized and committed progressive solidarity movement. Currently, international solidarity activity in the Americas and in Europe remains closely associated with progressive political movements and governments working to defend their peoples against NATO country aggression of one kind or another. They do so despite determined efforts at co-option by Western governments and corporations along with their media and NGOs.

Selfless people in solidarity with grassroots resistance from Palestine to Mexico have made huge sacrifices trying to defend vulnerable communities from aggression and abuse. In Palestine, Rachel Corrie’s supreme valour put the US government and its NATO country allies to shame for their abject collusion in Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people. In Oaxaca, activist reporter Brad Will was murdered covering yet more repression by systemically corrupt, violence-addicted authorities in Mexico. Recently in Honduras, international solidarity activists bravely confronted the notoriously violent Honduran security forces in order to commemorate Berta Caceres and defend her legacy of resistance.

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Published on 26 August 2016 by Granma.

Lima:  Around 20 leftist parties from Latin America will come together today to review their experiences, neoliberal attacks against progressive governments and the development of a common agenda.

The Meeting of Communist and Revolutionary Parties of Latin America will be inaugurated in a ceremony set to take place in the auditorium of the Derrama Magisterial, with the participation of representatives from around 20 political organizations from the region.

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Published on 3 August 2016 by teleSUR.

The 10 kilometre-long wall separates luxury houses with large gardens and pools from makeshift homes without clean water services or electricity.

Unlike other infamous barriers, the "wall of shame" does not divide nations or separate the colonized from colonizers, like the one between Israel and Palestine. It separates rich and poor people of the same country.

The wall started being built in 1985 and now separates one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in the country, Casuarinas, from one of the poorest, Pamplona Alta. It was built at the request of those on the wealthy side, who say they need protection from crime committed by the poor. Pamplona Alta suffers extreme poverty, lacking most basic services.

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Published on 24 July 2016 by teleSUR.

Today, progressives throughout the world could learn many lessons from the July 26 1953, Moncada attack led by Fidel Castro, writes Arnold August.

In 1953, when virtually all the progressive and revolutionary forces in Cuba offered no viable solution to oppose the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, Fidel Castro and his comrades did indeed work out a path. It was a route characterized by game-changing statements inexorably coupled with exceptionally courageous deeds, out of which emerged the July 26 Movement.

This movement, supported by allies who later rallied to the cause, led to the January 1 1959 triumph of the revolution. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. However, history is still being made today as Cuba endures major challenges.

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Published on 3 August 2016 by teleSUR.

Evo Morales said the Pacific Alliance trade bloc is a neo-colonial tool intended to cripple regional trade initiatives that exclude the U.S.

Bolivian President Evo Morales issued a scathing criticism Wednesday of the Pacific Alliance Trade Bloc referring to it as a “political, military and financial arm of the empire.”

“It seeks to put an end to the regional integration initiatives of MERCOSUR, UNASUR and CELAC,” President Morales wrote on twitter.

Over the last decade and a half several regional integration mechanisms have emerged such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which was formed with the goal of strengthening domestic and regional sovereignty.

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Published on 29 July 1016 by teleSUR. 

teleSUR correspondent Iain Bruce spent a day with one of the doctors trying to build a new kind of medical service in Venezuela, the community health program known as Barrio Adentro, or Inside the Neighborhood.

"Betty Martinez remembers how a baby boy died in her arms in 2003, during the bosses' oil lockout against President Hugo Chavez, because his mother couldn't get him in time to the hospital where she was a junior doctor. “My world changed, and the medicine I practiced changed.” She has just been taking me round as she visits some of her patients in Buenavista, a low-income neighborhood in the west of Caracas.

Betty had been trained in the old school of hospital-based health care, where the aim of young doctors was to get a job in a big private clinic and then never leave the four walls of their office. “Yet when I attended an emergency during my rural placement, I'd have to send the patient or their family to buy all the supplies I needed, the drugs, the syringes, the cotton swabs. Without that I couldn't treat them.” That's what Venezuelan health care was like before the Bolivarian revolution.

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Published on 31 July 2016 by teleSUR.

Just days before the Olympic Games begin, thousands of members of various Brazilian social movements took to the streets against coup-imposed President Michel Temer and the impeachment process against democratically-elected President Dilma Rousseff.

Under the slogan of "Out Temer, the people should decide," the nationwide protests took place in 24 states to demand the resignation of Temer. The protests were called by the leftist grassroots organization People’s Fearless Front, which called on other activists, leftist movements and progressive organisations to join its protests.

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Published on 12 July 2016 by teleSUR.

The new program is designed to improve efficiency and transparency of production and distribution processes to increase supply of basic goods.

The Venezuelan government also announced it has seized a factory of the U.S. company Kimberly Clark Corporation — producer of numerous personal, feminine, and baby care brands including Huggies, Kotex, and many others — and handed it over to the workers to continue manufacturing after the firm said it couldn’t produce.

The move acts on a government pledge to take over foreign-owned facilities shuttered in the face of economic challenges in the country.

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Published on 13 July 2016 by teleSUR.

Legislation passed this week aims to reverse President Obama's policy of normalizing relations with the blockaded island nation.

The United States House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a number of clauses that seek to toughen U.S. sanctions on Cuba in the budget bill for 2017 financial services and general government services.

The new measures are at odds with U.S. President Barack Obama's policy of thawing relations with Cuba, which has been under a U.S. blockade for more than 50 years. To become law, the measures still need to pass the U.S. Senate and receive President Obama's signature, neither of which is guaranteed.

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Published on 13 July 2016 by Granma.

Full text of speech by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee and President of the Councils of State and Ministers, during the National Assembly of People's Power 8th Legislature's 7th Period of Ordinary Sessions, in the Havana Convention Center, July 8, 2016, Year 58 of the Revolution.

"Compañeras and compañeros:

This year, we have had an intense first six months, with the holding of important national and international events, in the first place, the 7th Congress of our Party, where a group of transcendental agreements were reached, in the interest of updating the Cuban economic and social model.

Since this past Monday, the National Assembly's 10 permanent commissions have met, a framework within which deputies have analysed the questions most relevant to the life of the nation.

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Published on 24 June 2016 by teleSUR.

The violence in Oaxaca is a result of neoliberal demands by the IMF, World Bank, and OECD to place Mexican education on the speculative market.

The reasons why the Mexican government wants to impose the education reform—even if it means killing people, as with the massacre in Nochixtlan by repressive state forces on June 19—are rooted in economic objectives guided by international financial organizations. The reform, proposed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, under the OECD-Mexico Agreement to Improve the Quality of Education in Schools of Mexico, aims to lay the groundwork to shift education from being a state responsibility to instead being resolved in the realm of the financial market.

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Published on 27 June 2016 by teleSUR.

Experts report that suspended President Dilma Rousseff did not cook the books like her rivals claim, but the impeachment process will continue.

Suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff got a boost in her fight against impeachment on Monday as a report prepared by analysts in the Senate found that there is no evidence to suggest she was personally responsible for fiscal wrongdoing. It remains unclear, however, how the findings will impact the impeachment process that has hinged on such allegations.

The 223-page report by three auditors found Rousseff did not cook the books in the lead up to her 2014 presidential re-election, dealing a blow to accusations from her rivals that she manipulated government accounts to hide a budget shortfall and delayed payments to public banks.

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Published on 27 June 2016 by Granma.

The Puerto Rican Mission in Cuba was founded March 8, 1966 with the aim of supporting the country’s pro-independence efforts and calling for the release of political prisoners, including Oscar López Rivera, incarcerated for over 35 years.

During a UN Special Committee on Decolonization session Cuba once again demanded independence for the Free Associated State of Puerto Rico, subjected to 118 years of neo-colonial domination by the United States, a status which prevents it from adopting measures to resolve its difficult economic situation.

Poverty, unemployment, and the local government’s inability to pay off a debt in excess of 7.2 million dollars, are putting strain on the Caribbean island, which decades ago was intended to become the great showcase of the Caribbean, with monopolies based there exploiting the island’s natural resources and importing all the country’s consumer goods.

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Published on 23 June 2016 by Granma.

Remarks by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, President of Cuba's Councils of State and Ministers, after the signing of agreements on a bilateral, final ceasefire and the cessation of hostilities, the laying down of arms, and guarantees of security in Colombia.

There is no going back in this peace process, said Cuban President Raúl Castro Ruz referring to the peace talks underway in Havana to end the armed conflict in Colombia, the continent's longest. He spoke during the signing ceremony (June 23) for the recent agreements reached by the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP).

After greeting the many heads of state and other dignitaries in attendance, he stated:

"On November 19, 2012, the Table Talks between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army started to work in Havana.

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Published on 10 June 2016 by Granma.

Caracas, 8 June — Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla called on the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba-TCP) to strengthen strategies to confront imperialist intervention and coup plots on the continent, according to AVN.

In his comments, during the Alba-TCP Political Council meeting to discuss common strategies to defend the region, PL reported, Rodríguez likewise called on social movements to defend progressive governments facing attacks orchestrated by foreign powers, as is the case in Venezuela, which was subjected to an attempt by the Organization of American States (OAS) to justify intervention via the application of the bloc's Inter-American Charter, as well as Brazil, where a parliamentary coup and media campaign are currently underway against the country's legitimate President, Dilma Rousseff.

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Published on 13 June 2016 by teleSUR. 

Without an executive order, it is left to a Republican Congress to close the military prison.

U.S. President Barack Obama has been talking about closing the military-run Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba since before he ran for president in 2008, but despite years of promises he's now saying he won't use his power as commander-in-chief to unilaterally shutter the detention center.

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Published on 12 June 2016 by teleSUR.

The opposition wants the vote to be held this year in order to force snap elections.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro told a massive crowd of supporters Saturday that the recall referendum will definitely take place in 2017, against the wishes of the opposition who want to see the vote held this year.

“If (the opposition) meet the requirements, the recall referendum will take place next year. Period,” Maduro told a crowd in a large stadium in Caracas.

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Published on 31 May 2016 by teleSUR.

Venezuelan authorities are conducting an internal investigation into the assassination of retired Army Major General Felix Velasquez, which is the latest case in a surge of killings targeting pro-government public officials and activists.

In recent months, Western mainstream media outlets have remained silent regarding the violence waged against government supporters, left-wing activists and public servants, which many believe is an attempt to undermine the future of the Chavista movement in the country.

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Published on 31 May 2016 by teleSUR.

Agustin Otxotorena, a Basque executive living in Caracas, grew tired of constant calls from friends and relatives in Spain telling him that there was no food in Venezuela, so on May 20 he began publishing photos on Facebook of supermarkets in upscale sectors of Caracas filled with goods.

In addition to showing evidence of an abundance of food stuffs, Otxotorena also analyzed the situation. He concluded that there are two countries in Venezuela—one where "there are many people having a hard time, who don’t have the money to live,” and another where there is "an upper class that has a living standard higher than Europe."

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Published on 4 June 2016 by Granma.

Full text of speech by Raul Castro Ruz, President of Cuba's Councils of State and Ministers, opening the 7th Association of Caribbean States Summit.

Distinguished Heads of State and/or Government,

Esteemed Ambassador Alfonso Munera Cavadia, Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States,

Distinguished delegates and guests,

For the seventh time, we are meeting as Heads of States and/or Government, alongside other high representatives of the States and territories of the Association of Caribbean States, ACS. On this occasion we have gathered for a deep exchange on the theme “Together to confront the challenges of sustainable development, climate change and peace in the Caribbean”.

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