Chile

La mirada incendiada (The Burning Gaze, 2021) attempts to work through recent trauma, yet risks sensationalising a catastrophic event remembered by many Chileans, not least the families of the aggrieved.

Chile's constituent process, which, led by the consistent work of social movements, seeks to dismantle the first laboratory of neoliberal capitalism, offers lessons to the left in the UK and worldwide.

Through one character's journey meeting everyday heroes of resistance and telling their stories, Luis Manuel Claps documents the wave of organised resistance to large-scale industrial mining that spread from from the south of Patagonia as far as the Amazon.

This is the first issue of Voz, LAB’s new series of guest-written quarterly dispatches, available exclusively to patrons (paid subscribers). Natalia addresses poverty and inequality under Pinochet’s lasting neoliberal economic model, the student uprisings that led to the estallido social, her traumatic eye injury and her political beginnings.

At Espinar in Peru and on Chile's Colina river, major international mining companies are once more in the spotlight, suspected of causing pollution, denying responsibility and failing to consult local communities

As the drive to expand renewable energy capacity speeds up, there is a rush for lithium and other materials around the world. What will the expansion of rare earth mining in Latin America mean for the indigenous communities and workers who have historically borne the harms of extractivism?

Victor Jara's 1982 album told the story of the población Herminda de la Victoria. It will be celebrated at this year's El Sueño Existe festival (on Zoom from Machynlleth, Wales). Malcolm Boorer tells the story behind the album.

It's not all plain sailing for mining companies. Communities at Cerro Colorado in Chile have put up stiff opposition to BHP, whose mine threatens water supplies from a key a key aquifer. And peasants in Huamachuco, Peru, staged a massive protest against mining in their province.

On 19 December, Chileans will vote in the second round of the presidential election. Currently ultra-right-winger José Antonio Kast is leading. Details of his programme are denounced.

LAB editor Emily Gregg reports from Concepción Chile on the historic night of Gabriel Boric' election victor