200,000 Protest Unemployment in Spain

With a 38% unemployment rate after the construction boom busted as a result of the global financial crisis, Spain is at a turning point:

Last Saturday 12 December, 200,000 people attended a mass demonstration in Madrid organised by Spain’s biggest trade unions, the UGT and CCOO. The demonstration represented the first opportunity for the working class and young people in Spain, a country devastated by the crisis, with over 4 million unemployed, plummeting living standards, to give a national expression of the boiling anger that has developed in the last period. Despite a relative blackout in the capitalist media in the build up to the demonstration, the massive turnout, with thousands-strong delegations from all of the Spanish state’s regions, was an impressive show of strength. However, a striking feature of the demonstration was the veritable gulf separating the protest’s participants from the union leaders, as far as militancy and the willingness to fight is concerned.

14-Dec-2009. Byrne, Danny. 200,000 take to the streets in Madrid. Socialist World.Net

Evo Morales Reelected in Bolivia

President Evo Morales of Bolivia, the first indigenous president elected in the post-Columbus Western Hemisphere, has been reelected to a second term. His MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) party also captured a two-thirds majority in the Bolivian congress, according to the Los Angeles Times. In light of the turmoil caused by the para-military resistance by the Bolivian elite minority, and forces of international capitalism, this election is a true victory for democracy and the people of Bolivia, Latin America, and the world.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez congratulated his Bolivian counterpart Evo Morales for his landslide electoral victory on Sunday saying it was a victory for all of Latin America.

“Yesterday there was jubilation throughout the continent,” Chavez said Monday during his speech at the First International Conference celebrating 10 years since the adoption of the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela.

Chavez said he was sure Morales would continue “fighting without rest to diminish poverty” and improve the welfare of his people, “based on indigenous philosophy.”

Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, was re-elected with 63% of the vote, 35% ahead of his nearest rival Manfred Reyes Villa.

8-Dec-2009. Janicke, Kiraz. Chavez: Morales’ Electoral Victory in Bolivia, a Victory for Latin America. VenezuelaAnalysis.com