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| From left, Pedro Gatos, Rag Radio’s Thorne Dreyer, and Val Liveoak, in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, Friday, April 26, 2013. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog. |
Rag Radio podcast:
Pedro Gatos and Val Liveoak on changes
in Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Global South
We discuss the legacy of Hugo Chavez, the state of the Cuban revolution, the landmark genocide trials in Guatemala, and the growing challenge to U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere.
By Rag Radio | The Rag Blog | May 1, 2013
Peace activists Pedro Gatos and Val Liveoak joined Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer in a discussion of recent developments in Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and the Global South on Friday, April 26, 2013. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas.
Listen to or download our interview with Pedro Gatos and Val Liveoak here:
Among the topics Gatos and Liveoak discussed on the show were the legacy of Hugo Chavez in Nicaragua and the recent narrow victory of Nicolas Maduro; Cuba in transition and the state of the continuing revolution; the landmark genocide trials in Guatemala of former head of state Efraín Ríos Montt and former military intelligence chief José Mauricio Rodríguez Sanchez; and the region’s growing challenge to U.S. hegemony.
Pedro Gatos (aka Pete Katz) is an activist, a specialist in Latin American politics and history, a radio show host, and a licensed chemical dependency counselor. He was employed in the Travis County Justice System in Austin, Texas, for 24 years.
He founded the Pedro Gatos Institute on Addiction, Health and Social Theory. He has facilitated workshops on subjects ranging from addiction and the War on Drugs to U.S. foreign policy and “The Bay of Pigs 50 Years Later.”
Gatos has visited Cuba five times since 2000 and has had exclusive interviews with then National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón and many others. Pedro hosts Bringing Light into Darkness Mondays at 6 p.m. on KOOP-FM in Austin.
Val Liveoak is the volunteer Coordinator of Friends Peace Teams’ Peacebuilding en las Américas program. An activist since 1971, she founded the Friends Peace Teams in 1993, and has been involved with many community organizations and nonviolent struggles.
For 21 years, she has been a facilitator with the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), working in Mexico, Canada, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, St. Croix, St. Kitts, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Val lives in San Antonio, but spends most of the year in Suchitoto, El Salvador, and travels throughout the region. She has been named a “Woman of Peace” by Womens’ Peacepower Foundation (2009) and Peacemaker of the Year by the Austin Peace and Justice Center (1986).
Listen to our December 9, 2011, Rag Radio interview with Val Liveoak here.
Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.
The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.
Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer.
Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.
Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, May 3, 2013: Free-form radio pioneer Bob Fass of Pacifica Radio’s WBAI-FM in New York, with filmmaker Paul Lovelace (Radio Unnameable).
Friday, May 10, 2013: Journalism professor & activist Robert Jensen, author of Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialog.
Friday, May 17, 2013: Political economist Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?
May 24, 2013 (RESCHEDULED): Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair, legendary founder of the White Panther Party and former manager of the MC5.
