January 1 should have been a day of triumph for Mexico's ruling party (PRI or the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution) and the North American boosters of globalization and free trade. For on New Year's Day Mexico, Canada and the United States were to inaugurate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), long heralded as an unambiguous marker of Mexico's exit from the camp of Third World Nations. Signing NAFTA, Mexicans had been told, meant…
At the end of 1980 the inhabitants of the Peruvian capital, Lima, woke up to the extraordinary sight of dead dogs hanging from lamp posts and traffic lights. Attached to the animals were signs announcing 'Deng Xiao Ping. Son of a Bitch'. This extraordinary incident is just one example of why Peru's Shining Path guerilla movement is so difficult to fit into the neat categories used to classify the revolutionary Left. Originating as a Maoist…
