The work of the Argentinean writer Tomás Eloy Martínez is intimately bound with the country’s modern history of political delusion and personal liberation. Ivan Briscoe reflects on a fiction-reality fusion that made a unique contribution to “inventing Perón”.
A successful, intimidating prime minister has moulded Italy’s public life in his own image. A fearful, supine opposition is paralysed by his achievement. But there is one source of hope, says Geoff Andrews.
The first round of the contest to succeed Álvaro Uribe as Colombia’s president produced one big surprise and five lessons, says Adam Isacson.
Bishkek’s bloody regime-change reflects the aborted hopes of the brief political flowering in 2005. But a key question of external agency remains, says Sureyya Yigit.
The doctrinal contempt of Islamist regimes for popular festivals such as the Iranian nowrooz (new year) extends to suspicion of every expression of spontaneous life. The result is to conjure the very rituals of resistance they fear, says Asef Bayat.
The Chinese authorities’ continuing demolition of the urban heartland of Uyghur society is also the outward face of a deeper dispossession, says Henryk Szadziewski.
The emotional and psychological impact on children of the political crisis in Iran is an important and neglected issue, say S Deghati & Linda Herrera.
The Iranian state has won a round in the battle against the opposition "green movement". But the war of survival continues, says Sanam Vakil.
The contest between Iran’s state and the opposition movement that arose after the presidential election of June 2009 is now at a critical point. How confident is the regime, where is the “green movement” going, and what should the international community do? openDemocracy writers examine the impas
Iran’s opposition movement must draw the lessons of its months of activism since the 2009 election and map a coherent political strategy, says Nazenin Ansari.(This article was first published on 17 February 2010)
Sebastian Piñera has ended two decades of centre-left rule in Chile. The new president now faces the tough challenge of creating a liberal and democratic right free from the negative associations of the Augusto Pinochet era, says Alan Angell.
The political projects of Latin America’s radical leaders have democratic rhetoric at their core. But their dynamics, as in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, often seem to pull in another direction. The tensions will come to a point of decision in this decade, says Ivan Briscoe.
