The Brazilian state of Roraima is currently dependent for 70 percent of its power on Venezuela’s Guri hydroelectric dam. But socioeconomic chaos in Venezuela, and deteriorating political relations between the two nations, have caused Brazil to fast-track a 750-kilometer transmission line to replace the imported energy.General Otávio Rêgo de Barros, using a...
Charles Beach, in Cúcuta, witnessed Branson’s concert and the halting of the aid convoy
On 22 January Richard Branson came
to the Colombian border city of Cúcuta, a place that I’ve called my home and
PhD field site for the last year, to organize a
fundraising concert for the people of...
This post by Lisa Sullivan is from her own blog, Lisa's Venezuela.
February 27, Palo Verde. As the Humanitarian Aid Battle revved its engines on Saturday morning on the Venezuela/Colombia border, our group of young conuqueros (farmers)was gathering for our weekly work day.
This article is based on a letter submitted in February 2019 to the European Commission and to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The author is Victor Álvarez R., a Venezuelan economist and winner of the Premio Nacional de Ciencia 2013. He was Minister of Basic Industries and Mining during the Chavez presidency
The English translation...
This is a book of many voices (more than 70 of them, from 14 different countries): of anthropologists and archaeologists; urban planners and architects; artists and musicians; journalists and politicians; women and LGBT people trying to halt gender-based oppression and violence; indigenous activists fighting oil drilling on their territory; residents of favelas resisting evictions; students staking their claim to...
Only four days after Jair Bolsonaro's election, federal judge Sergio Moro, Lula’s nemesis, hurried to Rio to accept the president elect’s invitation to become his minister of Justice. Even Bolsonaro was impressed by the judge’s enthusiasm. “He accepted as eagerly as a student getting his diploma at graduation,” he said. The new minister will be boss of a greatly...
24 October 2018
Dear LAB Supporter and Friend,
Brazil on the edge
With all eyes on Sunday (28 October)’s second round of Brazil’s presidential elections, LAB has been trying to keep on top of the torrent of news and opinion sent to us. Jan Rocha, our regular São Paulo correspondent has done an extraordinary job. You can see her blog here,...
20 December 2017
Dear LAB Supporter and Friend,
The ghosts of elections past, present and future
Across the world, polls this year have been confounded as elections yielded surprising results (not least, for those of us in the UK, in the 2016 referendum on EU membership and the general election in 2017). These results have led many analysts to identify strands...
This article was first published in Revista Opera. You can read the original, in Portuguese, here.
October 23, 2017: The day begins at 8 o’clock. We arrive in Pacaraima, whose streets, in spite of being Brazilian, are filled with hispanic sounds on every side. As I get out of the car, a man comes up to me offering to...
Brigadier General Gustavo Moreno is sitting behind a wide desk in his air-conditioned office. It overlooks the parade ground of the police compound which sits vacant, belted by the midday sun. A receptionist brings in cups of weak, sugary coffee that Colombians call tinto.
As the police commander for ‘Region Five’, General Moreno is in charge of security for one...