Peru

A local fishing community does not feel adequately compensated and Repsol must do more to repair the damage, write researchers. This piece by Rocío...

In this interview with LAB contributor Maozya Murray, Túpac Amaru activist Marisol discusses Kichwa resistance to the Cordillera Azul National Park and what it...

El «tío COVID», un hombre que sobrevivió tras ser enterrado en un cementerio colectivo secreto de Iquitos se ha convertido en un símbolo macabro del desastre en que se vio sumida la ciudad de Iquitos, en la Amazonía peruana, donde el 70% de los habitantes habían sido infectados por el COVID-19 en julio de 2020. Un sistema sanitario decrépito, una aguda falta de oxígeno médico, la pobreza, la corrupción de las élites locales y el poder de las bandas criminales conspiraron para agravar esta catástrofe.

'Uncle Covid', a man who survived interment at a secret mass-burial site in Iquitos, has become a macabre symbol of the disaster that engulfed the Peruvian Amazonian city of Iquitos, where 70 per cent of the inhabitants had been infected with Covid-19 by July 2020. A decrepit health system, an acute lack of medical oxygen, poverty, the corruption of local elites and the power of criminal gangs conspired to aggravate this catastrophe.

Members of the ‘uncontacted’ Mashco Piro tribe left several loggers dead as they defended their ancestral lands in the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru, revealing growing tensions between Indigenous rights, conservation efforts, and the political and economic drivers of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon.  

In the second of two articles, mining engineer Laurence Morris describes how the oligarchy of the 'Big Five' mining companies operates and the negative consequences of their monopoly of power, influence and resources.

Mining engineer Laurence Morris shows how the world's 5 largest mining companies constitute an oligarchy, with serious consequences for mine workers, communities, the environment and the countries which depend on their corporate 'largesse'

Peru’s complicated history is mirrored in the controversies affecting the Peruvian National Police (PNP). The violent treatment of Indigenous anti-government demonstrators illustrates the prevalence of racialised discrimination in Peru’s society, whilst recent revelations about the PNP’s disciplinary crisis provide an insight into the nation’s internal divisions.

An article in The Economist seriously misrepresents the Indigenous people affected by the Camisea drilling project for gas in the Peruvian Amazon. It reads like corporate PR for Argentine-Dutch oil consortium PlusPetrol

A chance discovery of a gold mining dredge in Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon led observers to a wretched miners' camp where youg girls were chained in a hut and used for sex.