Two thousand and eleven was a year of global protest and revolt. The Arab Spring, the indignados movement of Spain and southern Europe, and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States captured the world’s attention. Latin America also played a role in this global tumult: with the student upheaval in Chile, the Gandhian-like citizens’ campaign against state and narco terrorism in Mexico, the indigenous led uprising in the mining regions of Peru, and the grassroots agitation in the Bolivian social movements that brought Evo Morales to power. These movements are highly diverse in their social and political composition, and they are anti-systemic, raising fundamental questions and challenging the existent order.

At the tip of the South American continent, Chilean youth rocked the country with massive demonstrations starting in May. The largest social mobilization since the fall of the Pinochet regime in 1990, the student movement is demanding “free and quality education” for everyone. Under the dictatorship much of education was privatized and today 70% of university students attend private institutions.

The students are part of a broader movement that is calling for the transformation of Chile. During the past year, copper mine workers have gone on strike, massive mobilizations have taken place to stop the construction of a huge complex of dam and energy projects in the Patagonia region of southern Chile, gay rights and feminist activists have marched in the streets, and the Mapuche indigenous peoples have continued to demand the restoration of their ancestral lands. Faced with the intransigence of the conservative government of billionaire president Sebastián Piñera, the movement is calling for a national plebiscite.

“If the government is not capable of responding to us, we will have to demand another non-institutional solution: the convocation of a plebiscite so that the citizens can decide on the educational future of the country,” asserts Camila Vallejo, part of the leadership of the Student Federation of the University of Chile and also a member of the Communist party.

Forty-two social organizations grouped together under the banner “Democracy for Chile” have rallied to back the student movement. Their manifesto proclaims: “The economic, social and political system is in a profound crisis that has compelled the communities to mobilize . . . An unprecedented and historic movement of citizens is questioning the bases of the economic and political order that were imposed in 1980” by the Pinochet constitution. The coalition supports the students’ call for a referendum, and argues that it should be “multi-thematic” and allow voters to decide whether to convene a constituent assembly that would have the power to draft a new constitution.

At the other end of Latin America a very different movement has emerged in Mexico to confront the violence of the drug cartels and the state. The drug war, launched by Mexican president Felipe Calderon shortly after he took office in 2006, has lead to an ever increasing spiral of violence that has taken the lives of upwards of 50,000 people. The United States, under Presidents Bush and Obama, has fully backed Calderon’s war and is sending hundreds of Drug Enforcement Agency agents deep into Mexico, some of which engage in direct combat.

Javier Sicilia – a renown poet and essayist whose son was a victim of the drug war – launched the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity with an open letter to Mexican politicians in May titled, “Estamos Hasta la Madre,” Mexican slang roughly translated as “We’ve had it up to Here.” The movement’s caravans have travelled across the country, drawing tens of thousands. Adhering strictly to non-violence, their objective is to galvanize the national consciousness with an awareness of the deaths and disappearances of both the innocent victims and the criminals. Movement supporters believe their struggle is rooted in the recent history of Mexican mobilizations, including the 1968 student uprising and the 1994 Zapatista rebellion in southern Mexico. Like these earlier movements, the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity is focusing attention on the poverty and economic despair that breeds violence in the cities and the countryside.

Time Magazine listed Sicilia as one of the global protestors that it declared “Person of the Year” in 2011. While acknowledging the transcendent importance of the Arab Spring and the indignados movement in an interview, Sicilia sees the Mexican peace and justice movement as having its own particular dynamic: “The movement’s success surprised me quite a bit. My intention at the beginning was just to signal the horror of the crimes committed as well as the government’s faulty reaction to it.” He concludes by saying that the broader concepts of “a community, a nation,” have helped reclaim “a public space for us and not the criminals.”

Under its broad umbrella, the peace and justice movement has also spawned two major occupations in Mexico City, one in front of the Mexico City Stock Exchange. People in these camps see themselves as part of the indignados and the Occupy Wall Street movements and practice horizontal decision-making at general assemblies.

Receiving scant attention are the protests against the extractivist model of economic development in Latin America. This model undergrids the centre-left governments as well as the more traditional regimes of Latin America. Oil and gas, minerals, and agricultural commodities comprise the bulk of the region’s exports, and even Brazil, the predominant manufacturing country of South America, receives over half of its export revenue from raw materials and agricultural commodities. While the region has weathered the more severe effects of the current global Great Recession, the growing extraction of these trade goods has often led to community and environmental protests over the abuse of lands and water resources that destroy the livelihood and even sometimes the very lives of the local populace.

As 2011 drew to a close the state of Cajamarca in northern Peru was shaken by demonstrations against the U.S.-based Newport Mining Corporation, which plans to make a $4.8 billion investment in a new gold mining operation. The company had first come to the state in 1993 to open up the nearby Yanacocha gold mine, the largest in Latin America, covering 535 square miles. Its operations there have contaminated the local water resources and lagoons. A large spill of mercury along a 45-kilometer stretch led to the contamination of over 1000 local residents with a number of infant deaths and deformities attributed to the spill.

Just before his inauguration in July, the left-of-centre president Ollanta Humala proclaimed his opposition to the new mining project, saying, “the lagoons of Cajamarca are not for sale, because you can’t drink gold, and you don’t eat gold.”

Yet a few months later he was giving the green light to Newport’s new mining project, leading to large-scale protests by the residents of the nearby communities and a strike by the mine workers. Confrontations occurred between the police and militant demonstrators leaving dozens injured. Humala then proclaimed a 90-day state of emergency in parts of Cajamarca. His prime minister Salomon Lerner resigned, Newport suspended its operations and when the demonstrators agreed to talks, Humala lifted the state of emergency. For the moment, the communities of Cajamarca had won a victory.

Humala also faces unrest in the southern state of Puno. Last March 25,000 demonstrators mobilized against the Big Bear Mining Corporation of Canada over its plans to develop a silver mine. Highland indigenous communities near the town of Huacullani insisted that they had not been consulted about the project and that the mine would ruin their lands and their subsistence livelihoods based on farming quinoa and potatoes and rearing alpacas. They proclaimed “¡Agro sí, mina no!” (Agriculture yes, mining no!) Humala has temporarily suspended the mining project but he has given no indication of what he will do next.

In much of Latin America a transformative and radical dialogue is taking place at the grassroots that questions the very process of development. The increasing clashes between the social movements and many of the new left governments is over how best to improve the lot of the indigenous communities and the rural poor. In Bolivia the dispute over linking the country into a transoceanic transportation corridor by tearing up the heart of the lowland Isiboro-Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS) has raised fundamental questions about development and who benefits. When roughly 1000 marchers set off on the 360-mile trek from the park to La Paz on August 15, Morales called them “tourists” beholden to foreign interests. They were in fact marching to stop the destructive capitalist development of their homelands and calling for an alternative based on collective aspirations and respect for the natural world and the human beings who share it.

In Ecuador, many of the social movements are denouncing President Rafael Correa for following traditional extractive policies to exploit the country’s petroleum and mineral resources. CONAIE, the major indigenous organization in Ecuador is openly challenging Correa’s developmentalist policies in mining, water rights, and the exploitation of oil reserves in one of the most bio-diverse areas in the world. About 180 people are charged with terrorism and sabotage after participating in demonstrations against the government’s water and mining laws.

This marks a new phase in the advance of the social movements that were central in the rise of a string of Latin American left-of-centre governments from Venezuela and El Salvador to Argentina and Paraguay. In the particular cases of Ecuador and Bolivia the social movements participated in the drafting of new constitutions that “refounded” their nations around participatory and community values. Both constitutions call for the people to live in concord with “Pachamama” (Mother Earth), and for Abya Yala, Buen Vivir or Good Living. This is a holistic cosmovision of the world in which people strive for harmony.

As the governments are found reverting to policies that reflect the interests of the old order, the indigenous and social movements have once again mobilized to demand more profound changes in their economies and societies. If there is a common theme that is driving the global upheaval – be it in the Middle East, Europe, the United States, or Latin America – it is the search for new values and participatory ways of living that will replace the old systems of domination and exploitation that are destroying our world.

La Pascualita or Little Pascuala is a bridal mannequin that has ‘lived’ in a store window in Chihuahua, Mexico for the past 75 years. That is quite a long time for a bridal gown shop to retain a mannequin, but then the dummy has a rather strange history behind it. According to an urban legend, La Pascualita isn’t a dummy at all, but the perfectly preserved corpse of the previous owner’s daughter.

For years, the story of La Pascualita has been drawing loads of visitors, including media personalities, from all over Mexico to Chihuahua. Now, people from South America, the US and Europe have also started paying visits to the corpse bride. People smudge their noses up against the shop window, staring at the dummy, trying to figure out if she is real or not. They are taken in by her mesmerizing gaze and realistic-looking features. Most people walk away convinced that she has to be real.

La Pascualita was first installed in the store window on March 25th, 1930, dressed in a spring-seasonal bridal gown. The effect was instantaneous. People simply could not tear their sight away from this new mannequin, with the wide-set glass eyes, real hair and blushing skin tone. Soon, they realized that the mannequin closely resembled the shop’s owner at the time, Pascuala Esparza. It didn’t take long for them to come to the conclusion that the dummy was in fact the embalmed body of her daughter, who had died recently on her wedding day after being bitten by a Black Widow spider. This revelation did not go very well with the locals, and they started to express their disapproval. But by the time Pascuala could issue an official statement denying the rumours, it was too late. Nobody was willing to believer her. The daughter’s name has been lost over time, and ‘La Pascualita’ stuck through the years.

Of course, the speculated presence of a corpse must naturally be accompanied by supernatural happenings as well. Several odd incidents have been reported around the dummy, none of which have been confirmed, of course. It is said that a love-sick French magician would arrive at night and magically bring it to life, taking her out to town. A few others believe that her gaze shifts and follows them around the store. At night, she is also believed to shift positions in the window. These tales are pretty scary to some, perhaps most of all to the shop workers who have to see Pascualita every single day. The ones to leave the shop last are definitely not a happy lot. The dummy’s outfits are changed twice a week behind closed curtains. Sonia Burciaga, a shop worker says, “Every time I go near Pascualita my hands break out in a sweat. Her hands are very realistic and she even has varicose veins on her legs. I believe she’s a real person.” Now, an account like that coming from a person who has actually changed the mannequin’s clothes seems very believable. Could Pascualita really be a 75-year-old corpse?

But although most Chihuahua locals are convinced La Pacualita is actually a well preserved corpse, the Internet is full of explanations as to why that couldn’t possibly be true. The Museum of Hoaxes, for example, states that “it would be impossible to embalm someone and have their flesh be preserved that perfectly. For some reason, people tend to think that it’s easier to preserve a body than it actually is,” while one commentator adds “Yeah, bodies really go bad pretty darned fast unless you take some rather heroic measures to keep them from doing so. Both Lenin and Mao have basically been rendered to a state much like rubber, and are kept under extraordinarily monitored conditions. Most of the stuff that undertakers and whatall do is with the aim of making the corpse look good until burial. Anything over a couple weeks, and things start going very, very bad. A taxidermist might manage something, but it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

A new Reuters-Ispos poll shows that 10% of the global population believe the following statement:

The Mayan calendar, which some say ‘ends’ in 2012, marks the end of the world.

Of course, the Mayans themselves didn’t believe the world would end in 2012.

Indeed, archeologists have just found a cache of
Mayan calendars which goes thousands of years past 2012.

I guess the flaky new age writers and Mexican tourist agencies will have to come up with another angle.

If you’re a Brazilian living in the UK, you certainly didn’t come for the weather and you don’t want to stay for the high property prices.

Officially, there are about 50,000 British-based Brazilians, although some community groups say the true number could be four times as high.

Generally, they moved here when economic times were tougher in their homeland, braving the inhospitable climate for the chance of better job prospects.

But now that Brazil has overtaken the UK to become the world’s sixth-biggest economy, many of them are feeling “saudades,” or homesickness for Brazil.

In the Willesden Junction area of west London, Brazilian-run businesses are flourishing. But it seems as though everyone you meet there is either planning to return to Brazil or knows someone else who is.

Behind the counter of a butcher’s shop that sells Brazilian-style cuts of British meat, 44-year-old Antonio Luz is one of them.

He came to Britain from his home city of Goiania six years ago, but dreams of being his own boss back home.

“I think I will stay two years more and then I will open a small shop or restaurant in Brazil,” he says.

Mr Luz is not the only one who is paying attention to the latest shifts in the global balance of economic power.

The UK’s latest dip into recession is likely to be short-lived, but the International Monetary Fund reckons the country’s economy will grow just 0.8% this year.

Contrast that with Brazil, which is expected to notch up a rather healthier 3% growth.

“I hear a lot of people saying ‘I’m going back to Brazil’ because there’s a lot of job opportunities there and an economic crisis in the EU,” says Simone Pereira, who is the press officer for the local Brazilian association, Abras.

“But Brazilians are still coming to England, particularly from other countries such as Portugal and Spain, where the economy is worse.”

The association that Ms Pereira works for was the first of its kind in the UK when it was created in 2006.

It now represents 7,000 families who pay £50 a year to benefit from its services, which include legal advice, help with various kinds of British bureaucracy and even psychological counselling.

Her job makes her well attuned to current trends in the Brazilian community – and she, too, has seen people go back home in search of a better life.

Most recently, a friend of hers from the southern city of Florianopolis, who had spent 13 years in the UK running his own painting-and-decorating business, decided to make the return journey.

“He came here with his wife and two children, not speaking a word of English,” she says.

“But now his daughter is living in Brazil and going to university, and he thought things would be better there.”

But while growth may be surging back in Brazil, so is the cost of living.

According to the IMF, consumer price inflation in the UK is forecast to be 2.4% for the whole of 2012. But in Brazil, it is set to come in at 5.2%, and has rarely dropped much below that level in the past decade.

Of course, that is nowhere near as bad as the 2,000% to 3,000% annual inflation that plagued Brazil during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

But it is still enough to give expat Brazilians pause for thought before saying goodbye to life in the UK.

“I was in Sao Paulo in December and I was really surprised by the prices,” says Ms Pereira. “I found things quite expensive.”

That includes Brazilian house and flat prices, which have risen sharply over the past five years.

Research consultancy Capital Economics says that although detailed figures are hard to come by, available evidence suggests that residential property prices have more than doubled in Sao Paulo since 2008 and nearly tripled in Rio de Janeiro.

The sheer scale of those increases may come as a shock to Brazilians who have been living in the UK during that time.

For instance, one woman thinking of moving back to Sao Paulo after six years in London gives high UK property prices as one of her reasons for going.

The last straw, for her, was finding out that a two-bedroom flat in her chosen area of London would cost £300,000 ($484,000).

“For that money,” she says. “I could buy a four-bedroom home in Alphaville” – a luxury gated community in the greater Sao Paulo area.

She may well be disappointed. Judging by estate agents’ ads on the internet, only the smaller apartments in that area would fit her price range.

And whereas British property prices appear to be stagnating at present, Brazil’s house price bubble is still growing.

“Our best guess is that Brazilian property is, on average, overvalued by around 30-50%,” says Capital Economics’ Neil Shearing.

Other countries with large concentrations of Brazilian residents have seen a similar exodus.

In particular, many Brazilians of Japanese descent who moved to the country of their ancestors in the 1990s have now made the reverse journey.

Since 2008, the number of Japanese-Brazilians living in Japan has fallen from 300,000 to 210,000.

But in west London, at least, there are still new arrivals from Brazil who are looking for economic opportunities.

In the Emporio Brazil shop across the road from the Abras offices, Lorena, a student who has been in the UK for just four months, is serving behind the counter.

Her stock includes items such as Havaianas flip-flop sandals and bottles of guarana-flavoured soft drink alongside fruit and vegetables. “As if you were there!” proclaims a sign over the door in Portuguese.

She admits that working in a Brazilian shop isn’t exactly helping her in her efforts to learn English. “But not all the customers are Brazilian – there are lots of English people too,” she adds.

Lorena is following the classic pattern of many Brazilians who have come to the UK. But nowadays, as Ms Pereira of Abras points out, not every Brazilian you meet in London is actually a resident.

“In the past, all the Brazilians here were studying or working,” she says.

“But in the last four or five years, there are more tourists. A lot of Brazilians are coming to Britain for tourism, because they can afford more than before.”

So it looks as though the UK will continue to be a popular destination for Brazilians in future – but they may well choose just to visit, not stay.

The Bolivia Information Forum (BIF) is a UK-based organisation that provides regular news and analysis from Bolivia with a focus on development and human rights issues. The BIF was set up in 2006 after a group of people interested in the country identified that there was a need for good-quality English-language news from Bolivia which could help explain developments in that fascinating but also highly complex country. The BIF produces regular bulletins and updates which you can sign-up to receive through their website here or by emailing enquiries@boliviainfoforum.org.uk. These could be valuable resources during volunteer placements to provide an English language explanation of the wider social context, as well as being a great way to stay in touch and informed about the country when you return.

As well as their information, the BIF also organises public events and activities in the UK, including talks by Bolivian visitors, academics and Bolivia experts and thought-provoking cultural events such as the national tour of photographic exhibition of Bolivian miners, which they organised last year with the Durham Miners’ Association, or film screenings such as “Even the Rain” – set in Cochabamba, Bolivia – and starring top Latin American actor Gael Garcia Bernal. These events and activities can also be a great way to meet other people who have experience of Bolivia or are carrying out work or study of the country.

Seventeen months after an American-registered DC9 airliner was busted with 5.5 tons of cocaine, a major international scandal is brewing over a second drug trafficking incident in Mexico’s Yucatan involving an American-registered jet owned by a dummy front company of the kind usually associated with the CIA.

A weekend visit to “Donna Blue Aircraft Inc” of Coconut Beach FL., the company which FAA records show owned the Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA) which crash-landed with 3.7 tons of cocaine aboard in Mexico’s Yucatan two weeks ago, has revealed that the company’s listed address is an empty office suite with a blank sign out front.

There was no sign of Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc., at the address listed at the Florida Dept. of Corporations, 4811 Lyons Technology Parkway #8 in Coconut Beach FL. ……. However, there were, oddly enough, a half-dozen unmarked police cars parked directly in front of the empty suite.

The men flying the plane have disappeared – including one woman, the CIA refuses to comment, and the mainstream press don’t want to touch the story.

Now can you guess who is transporting the heroin out of Afghanistan? Afghanistan now supplies over 90 percent of the world’s heroin, generating nearly US$200 billion in revenue. Since the U.S. invasion on 7 October, 2001, annual opium production rose from 185 tons to 5,800 tons. Last year alone, it increased by 61 percent. Common sense suggests that such prolific trade over an extended period of time is no accident, especially when the history of what has transpired in that region is considered. While the CIA ran its operations during the Vietnam War, the Golden Triangle supplied the world with most of its heroin. Capturing a new, abundant source for heroin was an integral part of the U.S. “war on terror.”

When the history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is written, Washington’s sordid involvement in the heroin trade and its alliance with drug lords and war criminals of the Afghan Communist Party will be one of the most shameful chapters.

When the heads of both Americas met for their Sixth Summit in Colombia, a key issue was finally put squarely on the table: either Cuba is invited to the next Summit or… there will be no next Summit.

Officially sponsored by the Washington-based OAS – Organization of American States – these “Summits” are held every three years or so since 1994.

For the most part, they have been instruments promoting US hegemony over its “backyard” South of the Rio Bravo.

As with most multilateral political, economic and financial institutions – the UN, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, NAFTA, or the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) – the OAS is one of many instruments used by the Global Power Masters deeply embedded inside the public and private power structures of the United States, to wield political, financial, even legal control over all of the Americas.

During this Summit in Colombia, however, at least some key issues were addressed which is why no final official declaration could be agreed upon by all participants, mainly because the United States and its few regional allies fully oppose even addressing these issues.

Cuba

Cuba had been barred from attending because it was thrown out of the OAS back in 1963 at the height of the Cold War – right after the Kennedy-Khrushchev Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the Bi-Polar World of yore as close to nuclear confrontation as it ever got.

During the cold war years, the US imposed regional security strategies on Latin America centered on “the fight against communism;” today this has shifted to the region’s role in the “global war on terror.”

The fact that there is a British nuclear military base on the Falklands since 1982, or that George W. Bush reactivated the US Fourth Fleet in the South Atlantic in 2008 or that for decades, there are official and un-official US, British and Israeli military operatives in Colombia, Paraguay, Mexico and Argentina, is completely ignored.

As the heads of state of the Americas met for the sixth time, things are not looking so well for the US in the region: to begin with, hosting President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia – a traditional US ally – opened the Summit saying that “it would be unacceptable to have any future Summit in which Cuba is not present.” A long throw from Colombia’s staunchly pro-US President Alvaro Uribe who opened up his country to US military operations.

Sadly, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez who has been the rallying voice in the region when it comes to openly speaking out against illegitimate US bullying was absent while he continues medical treatment for cancer in Cuba. Presidents Daniel Ortega and Rafael Correa of Nicaragua and Ecuador respectively, both boycotted the Summit over the Cuba issue.

Democracy

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said that before Cuba can rejoin the OAS, “there should be an opportunity for a transition to a full democracy in Cuba.”

“Full democracy?” No one denies that Cuba does not have an ideal democracy (whatever that is), but then again neither does the US. Does the US (or the UK, or Europe, or Argentina, Brazil or Mexico) have a “full democracy,” when election of all their presidents, vice presidents, governors, senators, representatives and mayors is systematically, directly, and proportionally linked to how many hundreds of millions – even billions – of dollars go into their electioneering and campaigning? What kind of “democracy” is that?

Even President Barack Obama is feeling the heat of ‘Money Power’ this election year when he will measure himself against Mitt Romney whose greatest virtue is to have amassed a formidable personal fortune of over 250 million dollars. Clearly, political clout is not about ideas, but about huge amounts of money sloshed around Washington and New York halls of power and boardrooms – whether your personal money, as with Romney or the Bushes, or corporate money from the coffers of Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Enron, AIG, JPMorganChase coffers; or both. Is that what US “full democracy” is all about?

As the case of Argentina clearly shows, US-style “democracy” more often than not results in grossly corrupt governments peopled by crooks and thieves. Is the best thing that Clintonite “full democracy” can offer just “government by the rich, for the rich and of the rich?” Clearly, US “full democracy” is nothing but “the best democracy that money can buy.”

In the case of Cuba, if you consider almost half a century of US aggression against Cuba – which includes military invasion and repeated assassination attempts against Fidel Castro – then one can understand the highly defensive national security strategy of that island-country, limiting all hope for Democracy.

Can we really say that Cuban “democracy” is less “full” than US “full democracy.” Actually, many would add strong adjectives as to what US “democracy” is really “full” of…

When it comes to sins against True Democracy, who out there can throw the first stone?

War on Drugs

And it’s not just about the unjust and irrational exclusion of Cuba. It’s also about key topics like the regional security threat posed by British (and US) militarization of the South Atlantic in the Falkland/Malvinas, or worsening social problems arising from poverty, hunger, unfair and lob-sided trade relationships, or perverse cultural domination and the so-called “war on drugs.”

Narco-violence has gripped drug-producer countries like Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and most others throughout the region. The US approach is to tackle these as military, policing and security problems inside producer countries, thus justifying US “military and security assistance” to client regimes in Colombia or Mexico. They play down, however, the fact that the key problem lies with gigantic US, UK and European demand for drugs. All coupled with huge mega-banker profits as they recycle and regurgitate trillions of dollars through their global financial system.

This not only reflects how very sick US, UK and European societies really are, but also how their so-called “soft power” – Hollywood flicks, TV series, rap music, MTV and other instruments of global Psychological Warfare – promote and install a global pro-drug culture, particularly amongst the young.

Latin America’s Sovereign Debt

Take hunger, poverty and related social problems, for example. In Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Mexico – even Brazil – they are intimately linked to the many decades of gross exploitation by the global mega-banking financial structure that engineered, consolidated and macro-managed enormous unnecessary and illegitimate Sovereign Debt frauds. They have thus skimmed hundreds of billions of dollars from the region, thanks to local puppet and caretaker governments, financed into power through US-style money-controlled “democracy” that ensures that nothing ever changes; nothing is ever resolved.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

Venezuela’s national minimum wage is to rise 32.25% this year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said last week.

In a televised address from Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Chavez said the wage rise would take place in two phases, – first on May 1 and then a further rise on September 1.

The wage rise means that, in dollar terms, Venezuela will have the highest minimum wage in Latin America. Including legally guaranteed monthly food tickets, now valued at US$223, the wage rise will represent a gross minimum income of almost US$700 a month for formally employed workers in Venezuela.

The measure looks set to rise above inflation. The government is on track to meets its target of 20%–23% annual inflation for 2012.

Chavez said the wage rise will cost the Venezuelan state US$4.66 million which will be paid for with oil income and taxes. “This leap forward in favour of the workers forms part of the project of redistribution of national income to achieve substantive equality,” he said.

The rise will benefit 3.9 million public sector workers, as well as private sector workers and Venezuela’s 2.5 million pensioners through the social security system and new “Greater Love” social program.

Chavez also cited figures that demonstrated that the number of workers receiving the minimum wage in the country’s formal economy had fallen from 65% in 1999, when his administration entered office, to 21% in 2010.

Venezuela’s National Institute of Statistics said, of those employed, 41% work in informal employment, down from 55% when Chavez entered office.

In his address, Chavez said: “Every year without fail the revolution has decreed a rise in the minimum salary, as a way of solidly constructing social justice. It is one of the reasons why Venezuela is the country with the lowest indicator of inequality in this continent.”

Chavez also outlined advances in drafting the new labour law, which is expected to be passed by presidential decree on May 1.

Chavez said the law will contain provisions for a new Social Benefits Fund, which will guarantee that money destined for benefits payments to workers is not diverted to other ends.

The fund will be supported by Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, through a new body PDVSA Social, which will receive 4% of PDVSA dividends.

Venezuela’s pro-revolution umbrella union the National Union of Workers (UNT) said the 32.25% wage increase is close to their own suggested rise of at least 33.59%.

UNT coordinator Marcela Maspero stated that the rise does not solve all issues regarding salaries in Venezuela: “It is necessary to do more to give workers a salary that allows them to live with dignity and cover basic material, social and intellectual necessities.”

The wage rise comes among various government policies to guarantee living standards and combat inflation in Venezuela, including the introduction of regulated prices for 19 basic household and bathroom items on April 1.

Travel into the depths of the Amazon Rainforest with Google Streetview. Although the Amazon is out of the reach of most of us, Google has now made it possible for armchair adventurers to experience it. Take a trip into the Amazon via Google Streetview.