Articles by Vijay Prashad

The Indian lobby in Washington has come into its own by playing a major role in shoring up India-United States ties in the business and strategic spheres. The lobby's work has dovetailed with and emulated the pro-Israel lobbies' role in the US.

At 8.48 am on September 11, 19 Arab men changed the nature of US life. These men, from Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, brought their various frustrations on to four planes, three of which struck the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, both symbols of US hegemony. The 19 men ended the American sense of remove from the world, the feeling that violence and terror take place elsewhere and not on the home front.

COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY MILITIAS Massacre at Chenalho Erasing Chiapas Uprising Vijay Prashad JUST before noon on Monday, December 22,1997, a detachment of almost 70 members of a landlordist paramilitary organisation entered the village of Acteal in highland Chiapas, Mexico and attacked the villagers. The attack killed at least 45 people (21 women, nine men, 14 children and one infant) in a 5-hour long bloodbath, witnessed by the local police who stood quietly at a distance of 200 metres, The Mexican government shortly afterwards issued a statement that called for an investigation' into the 'incident'. The tone of the official statement revealed that the 'investigation' will blame this 'incident' on either a religious (anti- Catholic) or ethnic (anti-Tzotzil Indian) conflict or else it will minimise it as a 'skirmish' that is said to periodically affect remote regions. Subcommandante Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) dispatched a communique to the international press in which he asked the Mexican government: "How was Christmas dinner, did it have a little taste of blood?" (Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee, December 26,1997). This short report on events in south-eastern Mexico asks the same question, not just to the Mexican state, but also to the agents of US imperialism that stand behind it (not simply to secure Mexico's flimsy economy, but also to keep its political system in fine balance).

widening the gap between the open market prices and the PDS prices, which has resulted in some recovery in off-take from the PDS. As was set out in 1996 Economic Survey, the sharper increase in food prices, compared to the general rate of inflation, is very much part of NEP, and is aimed at reducing the protection given to manufacturing sector and improving the terms of trade of agriculture by liberalising agricultural trade, thus helping to increase agricultural output and exports. However what has happened is a deceleration in the rate of growth of agricultural output though there has been some increase in agricultural exports. Basically those who argue that simply getting the prices right, while cutting down on input subsidies and public investment, will boost agricultural output have got it all wrong and are clearly innocent of any understanding about the sources of growth in our agricultural sector. The thrust towards agri-exports during the NEP has mainly led to a reduction in the area under all cereals, coarse grains and pulses while increasing the area under oilseeds, as may be seen from Table 4.

The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey around South America by Ernesto Che Guevara, Fourth Estate, London, 1996; pp 155, £5.99.