São Paulo, 3 December: During the election campaign, president-elect Jair Bolsonaro boasted he would pare the number of cabinet ministers down from its present total of 29 to a mere 15, but he has been overtaken by reality and the number is 22 and counting. The new government includes generals (and an admiral), Cold War warriors, climate deniers and...
The recent death of the 24-year-old Mapuche activist and leader Camilo Catrillanca has sparked widespread condemnation and protests throughout Chile.
On Wednesday November 14, a newly created special ‘anti-terrorist’ unit of Carabineros, the Chilean police, known as Comando Jungla entered the Mapuche traditional community of Temukuikui near the town of Ercilla in the Araucanía region, approximately 370 miles south of...
The Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, is renowned for its extraordinary biodiversity and the vitality of its indigenous and riverine communities. But it is gradually being carved up by highways, hydroelectric dams and railways, built to allow agribusiness, the new powerhouse of the Brazilian economy, to export soya and other products though the Amazon River.
Amazon Besieged...
As LAB prepares to launch its new and powerful book*, co-author Sue Branford issues a stark warning of the implications of a Bolsonaro government for the river-basin and the indigenous and riverine communities who live there. Land-grabbers are already taking the law into their own hands – after January 1 the law will become their own.
Let us have no...
3. When in doubt, sue the lawyer
On July 10 2018, two courts, over 2,800 miles apart, came to diametrically opposite conclusions about one of the worst cases of environmental pollution in the twentieth century. In Quito, Ecuador, the Constitutional Court upheld a ruling that the giant US corporation Chevron Oil was responsible for the catastrophic pollution of a vast...
2. The Ecuadorian government: friend or foe?
On July 10 2018, two courts, over 2,800 miles apart, came to diametrically opposite conclusions about one of the worst cases of environmental pollution in the twentieth century. In Quito, Ecuador, the Constitutional Court upheld a ruling that the giant US corporation Chevron Oil was responsible for the catastrophic pollution of a vast...
1. Lago Agrio – Ecuador’s Chernobyl
On July 10 2018, two courts, over 2,800 miles apart, came to diametrically opposite conclusions about one of the worst cases of environmental pollution in the twentieth century. In Quito, Ecuador, the Constitutional Court upheld a ruling that the giant US corporation Chevron Oil was responsible for the catastrophic pollution of a vast area...
Film: Ex-Pajé (Ex-shaman) (80 minutes)
Directed by Luiz Bolognesi, 2018
With Perpera Suruí, Kabena Cinta Larga, Ubiratan Suruí and Agamenon Suruí… as themselves.
Films about Indians deep in the Amazon raise an expectation of denunciation and commitment. And not without reason, for as LAB friends and followers know, Indian populations in the Amazon face threats from infrastructure projects, from mining, from predatory...
BOOK REVIEW
Chris Feliciano Arnold, The Third Bank of the River. New York: Picador 2018
This book has been classified as ‘travel-writing’, but it is much more than that. The author, Chris Feliciano Arnold, born in Brazil and adopted into a middle-class California family, tells the story of the Amazon river and its associated port-towns near the headwaters on the frontier...
LAB correspondent Marilene Cardoso Riveiro has made a beautiful short video, entitled 'Costs', about the impact of hydroelectric dams in Brazil on the communities directly affected. Construction work, the destruction of villages, flooding of land, diversion of water courses, damage to fisheries...
https://vimeo.com/267872971
The video was shown at the Alternative World Water Forum in March 2018 in Brasilia; also at the...