Mike Gatehouse

Jan Rocha, author of LAB's widely-read Brazil blogs, has just published a new history of  Clamor, the group which took in refugees from the South American dictatorships and denounced the crimes of Plan Condor. The book, Solidariedade Não Tem Fronteiras, with a foreword by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, is launched on 10 July in São Paulo, at the Bar Tubaína, Rua...

About 600 indigenous people living in eight villages located in the city of Peruíbe, on the coast of São Paulo state, are at risk of losing their lands. After decades of living in a territory that has 6 km of beach, popular with tourists and people from the city, indigenous people of the Tupi-Guarani ethnic group won approval to...

On Sunday 17th June Colombians headed to the polls to vote for their new President. As of 5.30pm the results pointed to a clear victory by the candidate Ivan Duque with around 55% of the votes. The candidate through his political campaign has pledged to do substantial adjustments to the peace agreement between the Government and the guerrilla group,...

Over the last month, we have seen a brutal escalation of institutional violence in Nicaragua. A recent report by Amnesty International highlights the country’s strategy of repression, excessive use of force, extrajudicial executions and control of the media. Most recently pro-government armed groups have been used to halt protests in the streets and as a result, at least 81...

São Paulo, 29 May 2018: A week-long strike by hundreds of thousands of lorry drivers, blockading highways and interrupting deliveries of petrol, food, medical supplies and livestock, paralysed Brazil. Without fuel, planes were grounded, buses were unable to run, and cars were stranded. Without medicines and blood, hospitals cancelled operations and turned patients away. Schools and universities closed down....

May 14, 2018.How did recent protests over social security cuts in Nicaragua turn into a nationwide grassroots mobilization against President Daniel Ortega? This article was first published by NACLA. You can read the original here. Over the last two weeks, tens of thousands of people—university students, pensioners, environmentalists, feminists, religious leaders, black and Indigenous activists, journalists as well as left-wing and...

Like Cuba’s Ladies in White and Argentina’s Mothers of the May Plaza before them, Colombia’s Mothers of Soacha continue to do the slow and painful work of human rights defence in one of the world’s riskiest countries. According to civil society estimates, Colombia is perennially the most dangerous country in the world for human rights defenders, and since the...

Colombia: an election which will determine the fate of peace By Thomas Mortensen, Colombia Country Manager, Christian Aid As Colombians head to the polls on the 27th May, the internationally recognised peace agreement signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in late 2016, hangs in the balance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGh4F_AlWxA&feature=youtu.be Edited highlights of a debate between Colombian presidential candidates Ivan Duque and Gustavo...

In the last two weeks the Brazilian scholar Matias Spektor of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas has brought to light documents which take us back to the dark depths of the country’s military regime which governed from 1964 to 1984. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaiFvx6lNSU Matias Spektor comments on the discovery of the CIA documents. Interview by Pedro Bial, Video: Fatos Incríveis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2mP3XbFZPY Jair Bolsonaro defends Reserve General...