South America

Hugo Muleiro, a journalist, head of the editorial staff for ANSA news agency, specialising in news relating to infancy and adolescence, leads a programme on Radio de las Madres (Mothers’ Radio) and is a member of Comuna (Comunicadores de la Argentina). He agreed to give Pressenza an interview and told us what this new organisation is about.

The Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, said on Monday that the expansion of the federal network of education will promote a big social change in the growth of the country.

With just 48 hours to the start of a nationwide strike, the number of participants called for by labour unions, students federations, and environmental and human rights organisations continues to increase. The mobilisation is supported by more than 80 social organisations, besides a number of opposing parties, said Arturo Martinez, president of the United Labour Federation.

Thousands of students marched through the rain on Thursday demanding far-reaching education reforms and dismissing the government’s latest plan to resolve the weeks-old crisis. For three months students have been taking to the streets to demand free public education and an end to for-profit schools, which are seen as fuelling high prices and disparity between the rich and poor.

At least 50,000 Brazilian rural workers called for increased social justice, especially for women, from President Dilma Rousseff’s government as they marched through Brasilia’s streets on Wednesday. “Brazil is a very socially unequal country and when it comes to women, that inequality is even bigger,” said Carmen Foro, who coordinated this year’s annual protest march.

The Venezuelan Minister for Energy and Oil, Rafael Ramírez, said bringing home the gold is a measure that will strengthen the economy and sovereignty. He also defended the government project to nationalise gold mining in the country. The Venezuelan executive announced on Wednesday that it will recover the gold deposited in countries such as the UK, the USA and Canada.

Despite the very low wintry temperatures and the heavy rainfall all day last Thursday in the city of Santiago, Chilean students went on with the massive social protest which has been described as the unprecedented “march of the hundred thousand umbrellas against profiteering in education”.

This was the prayer of the thousands of placards that, under continuous rain and a temperature close to freezing, were carried through the streets of Santiago today by almost 100 thousand people, obediently sticking to the new route outlined by the government in order to distance the protest and its conscience-raising role from the centre of the capital.

Ecuador’s first wind farm to generate electricity will begin to be built in September in the southern province of Loja, according to the Electricity Corporation of Ecuador (Celec). The project, worth 34 million US$, will provide a total of 15 megawatts to the national power system, and should be operational in 2012.

President of Paraguay Fernando Lugo regretted on Tuesday that the ability to recover ill-gotten lands is not only in the hands of the executive, and urged the judiciary and the Legislature to intervene to find a solution. Land reform is one of the country’s historic debts and it requires the involvement of all social sectors, Lugo said at the ceremony for Children’s Day.