Richard Gott

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de noviembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

MundoAmérica

The fate of Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela and the hope of progressive change in Latin America, lies in the balance. Last weekend he appeared on television to alert his people that his cancer, first diagnosed last year, had taken a serious turn for the worse, as he set off on a fresh journey to Havana for further surgery.

He was in obvious discomfort and admitted to extreme pain. Invoking the memory of his personal hero, Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century liberator of Latin America, he implied that he might not be around for the next stage of his Bolivarian revolution. He announced clearly that his successor, for whom everyone should vote when the time came, would be Nicolas Maduro, the vice-president since October and the foreign minister since 2006.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, ,

Half a century ago, in October 1962, the world woke up to the Cuban missile crisis. The Russians were unloading nuclear missiles on Cuba, and the Americans were demanding they be withdrawn. For some people, perhaps for many, it seemed the moment to drag out the old evangelical poster: The End of the World is Nigh. One prominent anti-nuclear campaigner fled noisily to the west coast of Ireland, imagining mistakenly that there she might be safe. It was a frightening time. Even today I can remember the chill in the air, something not just the result of autumnal bad weather.

I spent most evenings that week demonstrating outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica

The Cuban revolution began 50 years ago just as I was starting my second term at university. As history students we were obsessed by the Spanish civil war, a conflict that had ended just two decades earlier, and we were also fascinated by the contemporary struggle of the revolutionary forces in Algeria. Then along rolled the wonderful Cuban revolution, with its charismatic and bearded leadership descending from the hills, young men in their 20s brandishing guns and seizing the cities, and calling for land reform.

In a world dominated by ageing conservative leaders who had risen to power during the second world war or before - Macmillan, Eisenhower, De Gaulle, Adenauer, Khrushchev, Salazar, Franco - the radical and youthful guerrillas, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara especially, put Cuba on the map for students all over the world, and the unknown continent of Latin America suddenly emerged into view.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

The radical tide sweeping Latin America is moving into the obscurer creeks and backwaters of the continent. The isolated and unnoticed country of Paraguay is about to elect a red bishop as president, bringing to an end the rule of the Colorado party and its six decades of dictatorship and corruption. Fernando Lugo, the bishop of the northern town of San Pedro, is well ahead in the opinion polls and should remain so on polling day, April 20. He abandoned the priesthood last year, at 57, to forge a progressive opposition movement - the Patriotic Alliance for Change.

The Colorado party has been in power since a brief civil war in 1948, while the Liberal party and assorted groupings further to the left have been in permanent opposition, active only in prison or in exile.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica

After 10 days of rival protests in the streets of Caracas, memories have been revived of earlier attempts to overthrow the Bolivarian revolution of Hugo Chávez, now in its ninth year. Street demonstrations, culminating in an attempted coup in 2002 and a prolonged lock-out at the national oil industry, once seemed the last resort of an opposition unable to make headway at the polls. Yet the current unrest is a feeble echo of those tumultuous events, and the political struggle takes place on a smaller canvas. Today's battle is for the hearts and minds of a younger generation confused by the upheavals of an uncharted revolutionary process.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión Europea, , ,

Hace casi 40 años, en noviembre de 1968, viajé a las islas Malvinas con un grupo de diplomáticos en lo que fue el primer intento de los británicos (y el último) por desentenderse de ellas. Lord Chalfont, por aquel entonces ministro de Asuntos Exteriores, encabezaba la expedición. Su misión, poco envidiable, era tratar de convencer a los 2.000 isleños de que el Imperio británico, tal como estaba constituido entonces, no podía durar eternamente y de que debían empezar a tomar en consideración la idea de que podría ser mucho mejor estar a buenas con su casi vecina Argentina, que durante mucho tiempo había reclamado la soberanía en las islas.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocialEuropaUnión Europea,

In March, the British state will rightly celebrate the bicentenary of the end of Britain's part in the slave trade. Yet ordinary citizens, as well as schoolteachers and makers of television programmes who may find themselves caught up in the prolonged bout of self-congratulation imposed by government fiat (with the help of £16m from the Heritage Lottery Fund), will do well to reflect on aspects of this anniversary that are not so praiseworthy.

In the first place, when remembering the parliamentary vote in 1807, we should also recall that the slave trade was, for more than two centuries, the central feature of Britain's foreign commerce - endorsed, supported and profitably enjoyed by the royal family, and by the families of sundry courtiers, financiers, landowners and merchants.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

The red tide sweeping through Latin America, checked in Peru and Mexico, has achieved another memorable record this week in Ecuador. The substantial electoral victory of Rafael Correa, a clever, young, US-educated economist and former finance minister, marks a further triumph for Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his Bolivarian revolution, which has long sought to ignite Latin America's "second independence". Correa joins Chávez, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Cuba's Fidel Castro in what some have termed "an axis of hope" for the continent. He promises to call a halt to Ecuador's participation in the US-backed free trade area for the Americas, to close the US military base at Manta, and to join Opec, the oil-exporters' organisation.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, ,

The recent explosion of indigenous protest in Latin America, culminating in the election this year of Evo Morales, an Aymara indian, as president of Bolivia, has highlighted the precarious position of the white-settler elite that has dominated the continent for so many centuries. Although the term "white settler" is familiar in the history of most European colonies, and comes with a pejorative ring, the whites in Latin America (as in the US) are not usually described in this way, and never use the expression themselves. No Spanish or Portuguese word exists that can adequately translate the English term.

Latin America is traditionally seen as a continent set apart from colonial projects elsewhere, the outcome of its long experience of settlement since the 16th century.…  Seguir leyendo »