A truer picture of Colombia’s recent history
Nick Caistor reviews Juan Gabriel Vásquez' new novel Volver La Vista Atrás, based on the extraordinary life of director Sergio Cabrera.
Colombia: the power of listening
Born from a UNLive initiative aimed at utilising culture as a tool for environmental change, the Colombia-based collective Vozterra channel grassroots responses to climate change and the decline of biodiversity.
Colombia: prospects of the legal cannabis market
The emerging Colombian cannabis market has a predicted value of $54 billion USD by 2025. Its potential to uphold the peace agreement, create jobs for rural farmers and boost the national economy is remarkable, although there are stubborn obstructions to progress.
Resisting state violence in Cauca, Colombia
Filmed over three years between 2017 and 2019, Bajo Fuego is an engaging, enraging portrait of a community’s struggle against state abandonment, economic collapse, and a rising tide of violence
Colombia: ‘We need to reach rock bottom before things change’
While public demonstrations effect social change around Latin America, violence in Colombia skyrockets. Must the country reach rock bottom before things can change?
Mining: Vale pays out but Antofagasta stalls workforce
Vale mining is finally forced to pay compensation to Minas Gerais state, but the victims of the Brumadinho disaster are not consulted. In Chile, Antofagasta mining faces strike action. From LAB's London Mining Network blog.
Bananas boom while workers pay the price
Despite Latin America having some of the highest COVID-19 death rates in the world, the ‘essential’ banana export industry has thrived, while workers have...
Afro-Colombian community leader assassinated
The orator and community leader was having lunch in La Apartada in Córdoba on January 15, 2021 when he was shot multiple times before being pronounced dead. His murder is being investigated.
The Rights of Nature Movement
A recent report, published by the Cyrus R. Vance Centre for International Justice, Earth Law Centre and International Rivers has found that the movement to grant legal rights to rivers and the natural environment is rapidly gaining momentum around the world.
‘Not true’ say Wayúu community
This is the second post in the new London Mining Network blog, a partnership initiative between LAB and LMN. Cerrejón’s ‘agreement’ with Wayúu community comes as news to them; Chubut communities mobilise again; updates from Brazil, Bolivia and Peru.