Silvia Viñas · July, 2013

Latest posts by Silvia Viñas from July, 2013

Colombia: Welcome to Downtown Medellín

  30 July 2013

Downtown Medellin, my home, is one of the most colorful places I have known in my life. It’s not the prettiest or safest place on earth, but it’s very interesting, vibrant and exotic. Adriaan Alsema writes about downtown Medellín, or “el centro”, in Colombia Reports. He lists reasons to love...

Denouncing Abuses via Social Networks in Mexico and Brazil

  26 July 2013

Cellular phone cameras have become a powerful tool for journalists and citizens in reporting requests for bribes and other excessive uses of power. In Mexico, cellular phones and social networks have also become a popular form to broadcast abuses of power, attempts at electoral fraud, and demonstrations of citizens against the police. In Brazil images...

App Tracks Argentina's Congress Voting Records

  23 July 2013

An app called “Década votada” (A decade in votes) [es] aims to help citizens understand “Argentina’s National Congress elections and the degree of each candidate’s allegiance to their party at the moment of voting,” as Knight International fellow Mariano Blejman writes in Source. Mariano, who specializes in data-driven journalism, interviewed...

Young and Old United in Nicaragua's #OcupaINSS Movement

  18 July 2013

Nicaragua's youth began using the hashtag #OcupaINSS [es] to show their solidarity with the senior citizens that were protesting to demand partial pensions from the government. Blogger Mildred Largaespada of 1001 Trópicos [es] explains what happened: And now the action movie begins: The senior citizens occupy the [Nicaraguan Social Security...

Honduran Indigenous Leader Killed

  16 July 2013

This is a story of exploitation of Honduras’ natural resources, and of popular opposition to their destructive effects, largely ignored outside activist media outlets. RAJ in Honduras Culture and Politics blogs about the murder of Tomás García, an indigenous Lenca COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras)...

The State of the Internet in Bolivia

  12 July 2013

In Bolivia we have 1.4 million Internet connections. […] 82.5% of Internet connections are concentrated in the ‘axis’ departments (La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz). Global Voices contributor Pablo Andrés Rivero worked with blogger and Internet activist Mario Durán Chuquimia [es] on a report regarding the state of the Internet...

Intra-urban Displacement in Medellín, Colombia

  10 July 2013

[…] ultimately, every one of the thousands of people displaced within Medellin faces the same grim choice: Lose your house, job, and community — or lose your life. James Bargent in In Sight Crime writes about intra-urban displacement -“when victims are displaced to a different part of the same city”-...

Immigrants on U.S Immigration Reform

  9 July 2013

As usual, the one thing the media aren’t covering is what the immigrants themselves think about immigration reform. In Upside Down World, David L. Wilson writes about a meeting held in New York where activists -some from Mexico and Central America- discussed “the forces that drive people out of their...

VIDEO: Eviction of a Chilean School

  4 July 2013

“The Eviction” is a documentary film about our fight against the chilean educational system. We want the whole world to see how the Chilean government is treating our students.

Economics Behind Colombia's Peasant Revolt

  3 July 2013

The agrarian problem explains the restlessness and open rebellion of the peasantry against the neo-liberal economic policies and the growing encroachments of rentier capitalism. In Cuadernos Colombianos, a blog from The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), Nazih Richani explains the motives behind a massive peasant mobilization in Catatumbo, North...

New Travel Blog ‘LatinAmericando’

  1 July 2013

Bloggers Edu (@ProyectosEdu) [es], Isa (@nscap) [es] and Mafi (@MafiViajera) [es] launched [es] a new travel blog called LatinAmericando [es], “a nomadic lifestyle open to whatever surprises us on the way.” You can follow the blog on Twitter [es] and Facebook [es].