Brazil: tread gently on the earth
Director Marcos Colón has made a remarkable film about the Amazon, charting how in three countries, Brazil, Peru and Colombia, 'modernity' means exploitation and destruction. He interviews indigenous leaders with a very different vision.
Cross-border traffic in coca and labour
Peruvian coca farmers are actively recruiting Brazilian indigenous workers from the Alto Salimöes region to harvest and transport coca. Violence and exploitation are rife.
The Amazon: is this the Third World War?
What is happening in the Amazon is a war -- against the rainforest, its original inhabitants, and also against the rest of the world. Perhaps this is the Third World War, the war to end all wars?
Dom and Bruno – Bolsonaro’s victims
Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were murdered in a remote area of the Amazon – almost certainly by or on the orders of those who run the illegal trade in fish, timber, drugs and minerals. President Bolsonaro has fuelled lawlessness by his rhetoric.
Brazil: letting the stampede rip
The Bolsonaro government's assault on regulations and indigenous rights has led to a stampede of land-grabbing by loggers, miners and cattle ranchers. They have let through the stampede (passar a boiada).
Pandemonium 3: resistance and recognition
Confronted with the denial of science, racism and land-greed of the modern 'colonisers', indigenous communities decided to resist and are receiving international recognition for their work.
Pandemonium 2: forest fires and pandemic
While the pandemic rages and Bolsonaro and his ministers ignore or belittle its effects, indigenous communities face renewed invasion by miners, loggers and land thieves who bring infection with them
Amazonas appeals for global help
In a letter describing pandemic conditions as “dire,” the government of Brazil’s Amazonas state is pleading for urgent medical assistance from the international community. The authenticated letter apparently bypassed the Bolsonaro administration which critics say has been ineffectual in dealing with COVID-19.
New threats to Brazil’s indigenous people
The city of Manaus made world headlines last April when a first wave of the coronavirus swept through the city. Now that city, and the entire state of Amazonas, is being swept by a second wave of the pandemic, which is shaping up to be far worse than the first.
Bolsonaro — the new Jim Jones
President Bolsonaro is the new 'Jim Jones', says Jan Rocha, comparing the Brazilian president to the cult leader who led his followers in a mass suicide in Guayana in 1978.