Marcos Colón

In an impassioned article, LAB author Marcos Colón denounces the double-standards afflicting the mainstream press in Brazil, prompt to condemn those who defend the Amazon, its rivers and people as radicals and vandals, while they hail the confidence, predictability and business-friendly character of projects to dredge rivers and construct massive ports for exporting soya.

Brazil's National Museum of Indigenous Peoples is struggling. Its funding has been cut to below 2015 levels; it is dependent on FUNAI; and institutional wrangling has left it unable to fulfill its mission. The crumbling museum building is closed to the public and important exhibits are left in limbo. Who will come to its rescue?

Marcos Colón reviews the Cannes and Golden Globe award-winning Brazilian film The Secret Agent, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, starring Wagner Moura. The film engages questions of state censorship, political repression, and surveillance not by following a reporter chasing a story, but, this time, by following a man hunted by a system terrified of memory.

The Amazon is a mirror reflecting the deep contradictions in our approach: development which is a monoculture of thought, authoritarianism disguised as progress, the extractive zeal that devours everything, including the future. The mirrors brought by the Xapiri to Yanomami shamans could help us to see, to listen, and to learn. Will the leaders who are gathering for COP30 in Belém be capable of looking into these mirrors?

The COP30 climate summit, to be held this year in Belém, the ‘capital’ city of the Brazilian Amazon, comes at a critical moment, providing an opportunity to depart from the path of climate colonialism, end fossil fuel expansion, confront agribusiness and mining, and see the Amazon as a warning, a teacher and a mirror. But it risks becoming a spectacle of exclusion, greenwashing and government ‘performance’.

As the world watches the United States gear up for another presidential election, the potential re-election of Donald Trump raises questions not only about the future of American democracy but also about the fate of global environmental policies.

In the early hours of Monday August 12, silence fell on the Amazon. Márcio Souza, writer, dramatist, director, novelist, 'emperor of the Amazon', passed...

This article, by Marcos Colón (Amazônia Latitude) and Katie Surma (Inside Climate News) was first published by Sumaúma on 8 August 2024. You can read...

In an extraordinary interview, Brazilian journalist Eliane Brum explains how language is fundamental to the life of the Amazon and its peoples

Brazilian Indigenous leader Ailton Krenak is made a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Meanwhile Samba schools at Carnival gave voice to Indigenous and Black peoples