Andy Brown

Evo Morales, the first indigenous person ever to be elected as president in Latin America, is today in political asylum in Mexico. He has been forced from office by the Bolivian armed forces higher command, the police and a cabal of right wing politicians, who have claimed irregularities in the recent presidential election and mobilised against him.

In the discussion of Jair Bolsonaro’s election victory in Brazil, the role of the Workers’ Party (PT) in its own downfall is worthy of deeper analysis. The left has tended to shy away from this, focusing on the brutality of the right, but not looking hard enough at the conduct of both Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in office. This is a common problem in describing the experience of the Pink Tide governments, not only in Brazil but also in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and other countries.

This is an excellent short history of Brazil’s economic, political and social development since the 1930s. The account is explicitly grounded on Marxist political economy. It bases its analysis on an examination of the systems of accumulation which have dominated the period and the battles between the political elites and the mass of the Brazilian population.

The refugee crisis has not gone away and the need for solidarity and aid is as great as ever. The destruction of the the “Jungle” last autumn, however, has meant that the issue has drifted down the news agenda. Now as winter approaches thousands of refugees face the prospect of sleeping in the woods around Calais and Dunkirk, under the motorways of Paris and in the parks of Brussels.

We visited these sites with Care4Calais in August and September. This is what we found:

We can only guess at the extent of Donald Trump’s knowledge of Latin America, Enlightenment philosophy and Russian revolutionary history. Nonetheless it would be nice to think that the election of the superbly named Lenin Voltaire Moreno Garces as president of Ecuador will have raised a few eyebrows in his administration.

Fidel Castro’s death at the end of last year has provoked two basic reactions. One is the bitter and utterly hypocritical version of the right. Donald Trump said, “Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.”

We on the left need take no lessons from those whose practice and associates are perfect illustrations, in the past and the present, at home and across the world (in Latin America especially), of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.

Eighty years ago Spain was in the first months of a desperate struggle. The army, backed by every reactionary element in Spanish society, had rebelled against the elected Republican government. The Spanish working class rose, both to defend the Republic and to create a new and better society. It was the start of a bitter civil war, described by many as the first confrontation of the Second World War.

The rise of Podemos as an electoral force in the Spanish state is tremendously important. It has existed for a mere 18 months and in that time has rocked the political system to its very core.

The duopoly of the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the Socialist Party (PSOE) at a national level has not only been challenged but effectively broken.

Local and regional elections in the Spanish state on 24 May saw a significant battering for the mainstream conservative Popular Party (PP) and Socialist Party (PSOE), as well as significant advances for anti-austerity and social movement forces.

The PP vote dropped from 37 percent in the last equivalent elections to 27 percent. It lost 2.5 million votes.

It was also the political reference point for many Catalans, who looked north to the more exciting, progressive and forward looking Paris rather than the artistically and politically conservative world in Madrid.

In an exhibition at the Galerie Vollard - from which several exhibits are on display here - Picasso showed works revising many of the themes of Post-Impressionism. He also echoed the styles of great painters before him, from Manet and Renoir through Degas, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec.