Mike Gatehouse

The assassination of Fernando Villavicencio, one of the leading candidates in the 20 August presidential elections, has plunged Ecuador into deep uncertainty. The Correístas might benefit were some of them not suspected of complicity in the crime.

The Amazon Summit in Belém, Brazil, brought together 8 out of the 9 countries of the Amazon Basin. There were agreements, calls for western countries to share the burden of conserving the forest. But no explicit target on halting deforestation and no willingness to halt oil extraction.

Indigenous communities in Azuay, Ecuador, are fighting Canadian gold mining company Dundee Precious Metals, whose Loma Larga mine threatens to pollute the Kimsakocha moorlands and its rivers.

South America's largest coral reef will be at risk of destruction if drilling for up to 30 million barrels of oil off the coast of Maranhão is authorised. Also under threat will be the longest continuous stretch of mangrove in the world, which runs from the Maranhão coastline to the northern state of Amapá

Ecomemoria's mission is to create an ecological reserve, a site of historical memory, through the planting of a tree for each of the disappeared and politically executed victims of state terrorism in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship.

Glencore, owner of the vast Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia, is using the grotesque Investor State Dispute Settlement process to prevent the Colombian government from protecting its own citizens and environment. Jen Moore was part of an international delegation to study this problem.

Chileans of the North is an exceptional documentary which charts the experiences of Chilean refugees who arrived in Sheffield in the 1970s, their reception by and impact on the local labour movement and the importance of solidarity for refugee resettlement.

When large mining companies such as TerraEarth withdrew from gold mining in Ecuador's Napo province, they paved the way for smaller scale illegal miners to move in in force, financed by cocaine money, with terrible consequences

Chinese owned TerraEarth started mining for gold in Ecuador's Napo province. After numerous instances of pollution of water sources, encroachments and other violations, court and regulatory action eventually forced the company to withdraw -- for now.

Paco Ignacio Taibo II, is famous for his crime fiction and his popular historical writing; including biographies of el Che Guevara , and Pancho Villa, narratives like Patria about social and political movements, and the anecdotal books about those agents of history who never became famous, like Arcangeles or La libertad. He has donated parts of his archives to CAMeNA.