Ecuador’s Sarayaku: first the floods, now the plague
Main image: Sarayaku under water during the flooding of the Bobonaza River. The community of Sarayaku lost 30 houses, 7 bridges and plantations of...
Buenos Aires: the virus reaches the ‘villas miseria’
Main image: Without water, the virus spreads. Image: Facebook profile of Barrios de Pie
Ramona Medina, one of the community leaders of Villa 31,...
Coca and Covid in Argentina
Closure of the border with Bolivia in response to covid-19 has exposed a legal vacuum in Argentina surrounding the consumption, importation and cultivation of...
Brazilian court orders 20,000 gold miners removed from Yanomami Park
The Yanomami Park covers 37,000 square miles in the Brazilian Amazon on the Venezuelan border; it is inhabited by 27,000 Yanomami. Soaring gold prices...
Ecuador: urban reopening threatens rural communities
In recent weeks, Ecuador has accelerated its plan to reopen the economy by loosening guidelines on provincial travel and other social activities.
‘We are going...
MRN’s Amazon mine leaves pollution and poverty
Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN) arrived in the Trombetas River basin in the 1970s with plans to mine bauxite on a gigantic scale. Today,...
Coronavirus prefers ‘the poor crooked scythe and spade’ — LAB Newsletter:...
Coronavirus prefers ‘the poor crooked scythe and spade’
LAB Newsletter: 19 July 2020
Covid-19 targets the poor
Infections in the US today reached 3.7 million, with...
Colombia: lessons of the pandemic
8 July 2020. In Colombia, children from the Chocó Robotics Club located in one of the remotest, poorest, and most violence-scarred departments, have used...
Covid-19 in Latin America – Update 11, 23 July
By Emily Gregg, edited by Mike Gatehouse.LAB has put together this eleventh overview of the spread of coronavirus across the region and the reaction...
Rio: football helps favela children survive Covid
From the football pitch perched precariously on a hillside in Penha, you can see thousands of small brick homes stretching to the mountains in...