Covid-19

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.

A new project, ‘Archiving Real-Time Literary Responses to the Covid-19 in Latin America’, is housed at the University of Birmingham. aims to document some of this literary production in this exceptional period of global history. It will make a body of viral literature in Latin America available through open access for future researchers and the wider public before it is lost.

Chinese companies are behind rapid expansion of gold mining in the Mayaya region of Bolivia, and are invading the Madidi National Park. Bolivian journalist and LAB correspondent Sergio Mendoza travelled by canoe down the Beni and Quendeque rivers, witnessing how the illegal mining activity is hidden by Bolivian mining cooperatives and supported or permitted by the government.

Interviews with Brazilians resident in the UK, as they queue to vote in their country's second round presidential election on 30 October. Sharp polarization is in evidence here, as at home

For the Indigenous communities in pre-pandemic Chiapas, Mexico, weak health systems and even weaker trust in authorities had dangerous consequences.

The arrival of Covid-19 devastated Latin America. Across the region, there are calls to build a more just economy and society than the one that was left behind.

Alberto Gil makes sense of a new layered crisis in Cuba shaped by the pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Caribbean country's internationally lauded healthcare system, a new generation in power and a new culture of dissent.

A wave of protest paralysed Ecuador, with roads blockaded and food running short in some areas. The protests were led by indigenous organizations, but backed by students and trade unions. After various authoritarian actions and threats, Lasso has been forced to conciliate and the protests have subsided for now.

Former MiningWatch Canada researcher Jen Moore reports on Global mining companies which have used the pandemic to push unwanted projects on vulnerable communities, who are fighting back — and sometimes winning.