Marta Harnecker
Encyclopedia
Marta Harnecker is a Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

an sociologist, political scientist, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 and activist. Harnecker, a descendant of Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n immigrants, was a Roman Catholic in her childhood. She visited Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

 in 1960

Early life

After studying with Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....

 in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 she returned to her native Chile. Upon her return to Chile in 1968, she got caught up in the fall of president Salvador Allende and the coup by General Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...

 and was forced into exile
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...

. In Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

 she founded and runs the research institute Memoria Popular Latinoamerica (MEPLA) and continues to write.

Publications

Harnecker has published over 60 books to date including The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism and The Left after Seattle. Her most recent books are Hugo Chávez Frias: un hombre, un pueblo, Venezuela: Militares junto al pueblo and Venezuela: una revolución sui generis which reflect her support of the Bolivarian revolution
Bolivarian Revolution
The “Bolivarian Revolution” refers to a leftist social movement and political process in Venezuela led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement...

. (Source: Zed Books, publisher of Rebuilding the Left (London, 2007)).

Commendations

To me, this is a book which speaks out to proponents of socialist revolution and ordinary people
Ordinary People
Ordinary People is a 1980 American drama film that marked the directorial debut of Robert Redford. It stars Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hirsch and Timothy Hutton....

... a book which could be very useful to everyone. In the chapter dealing with the organic crisis in the left, Harnecker analyzes what has happened and makes some very important proposals about political organization
. - Hugo Chavez
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...

, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

This book is an illuminating overview of the revolutionary left, particularly in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

, and its failings in the second part of the 20th century. Essential reading for all those who are trying to revive the left to meet new challenges
. - Samir Amin
Samir Amin
Samir Amin is an Egyptian economist. He currently lives in Dakar, Senegal.- Biography :Samir Amin was born in Cairo, the son of an Egyptian father and a French mother . He spent his childhood and youth in Port Said; there he attended a French High School, leaving in 1947 with a Baccalauréat...

 about Rebuilding the Left.

Full of observations, analyses and reflections which are extremely useful for the times we live in. Harnecker’s personal knowledge of so many social and political movements makes this book particularly important. - Francois Houtart
François Houtart
François Houtart is a Belgian marxist sociologist and Catholic priest.He studied philosophy and theology at the seminary of Mechelen and became a priest in 1949. He earned a masters degree in political and social sciences at the Catholic University of Leuven . He earned a degree at the...

 about Rebuilding the Left.

For Harnecker, politics is the art of discovering the potential in the present in order to make possible tomorrow what appears impossible today. In this book she does just this for Latin America and, in particular, Venezuela. But first she ditches the dogmas of the past with a disarming frankness. The result is an original and valuable contribution to rethinking left politics. - Hilary Wainwright
Hilary Wainwright
Hilary Wainwright is a British socialist and feminist, best known for being editor of Red Pepper magazine.-Personal life:Hilary Wainwright's father was the Liberal MP Richard Wainwright, and her brother, Martin, is the Northern Editor of The Guardian, to which she occasionally contributes.She...

 about Rebuilding the Left.

Friends and colegues

Peter McLaren
Peter McLaren
Peter McLaren is a Professor in the Division of Urban Schooling, the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles . He is the author and editor of forty-five books and hundreds of scholarly articles and chapters...

 is Professor of Education, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...

, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

. Nathalia Jaramillo is Assistant Professor of Education, Department of Educational Studies, College of Education, Purdue University
Purdue University
Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...

.

External links

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