Mike Gatehouse

1. Lago Agrio – Ecuador’s Chernobyl On July 10 2018, two courts, over 2,800 miles apart, came to diametrically opposite conclusions about one of the worst cases of environmental pollution in the twentieth century. In Quito, Ecuador, the Constitutional Court upheld a ruling that the giant US corporation Chevron Oil was responsible for the catastrophic pollution of a vast area...

Film: Ex-Pajé (Ex-shaman) (80 minutes) Directed by Luiz Bolognesi, 2018 With Perpera Suruí, Kabena Cinta Larga, Ubiratan Suruí and Agamenon Suruí… as themselves. Films about Indians deep in the Amazon raise an expectation of denunciation and commitment.  And not without reason, for as LAB friends and followers know, Indian populations in the Amazon face threats from infrastructure projects, from mining, from predatory...

BOOK REVIEW Chris Feliciano Arnold, The Third Bank of the River. New York: Picador 2018 This book has been classified as ‘travel-writing’, but it is much more than that. The author, Chris Feliciano Arnold, born in Brazil and adopted into a middle-class California family, tells the story of the Amazon river and its associated port-towns near the headwaters on the frontier...

After days of violent street protests, Haiti’s Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant and his cabinet resigned on Saturday July 14. The resignations followed a widespread backlash against the steep rise in fuel prices – a 38% hike on gasoline, 47% on diesel and 51% on kerosene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjFuJ7FIVOM Al Jazeera report published on July 8 (added by LAB). Buildings and cars were burned,...

Latin America and the Caribbean is a place of paradoxes. The region is usually depicted as relaxed, diverse, happy and open. But unfortunately, it also it stands close to the top of the international charts that measure violence against LGBTI people. According to the European advocacy organization TGEU, the region accounts for 78% of the world toll of trans...

LAB correspondent Marilene Cardoso Riveiro has made a beautiful short video, entitled 'Costs', about the impact of hydroelectric dams in Brazil on the communities directly affected. Construction work, the destruction of villages, flooding of land, diversion of water courses, damage to fisheries... https://vimeo.com/267872971 The video was shown at the Alternative World Water Forum in March 2018 in Brasilia; also at the...