Covid 19 will affect Brazil’s indigenous groups for many years, not only because of the number of lives it has taken but also because among those dead are many important indigenous leaders. LAB briefly profiles one important leader who recently succumbed to the disease.
Extraordinary history of groups of former slaves, indigenous and others in the Cerrado who have forged a sustainable lifestyle from gathering sought-after sempre-vivas flowers and selling them, with enormous care to preserve the environment. Now rewarded by the UN's FAO, they face encroachments from mining and a national park
A new report documents draconian budget cuts to Brazilian environmental monitoring and firefighting of 9.8% in 2020, and 27.4% in 2021 — reductions, analysts say that were inflicted by the Bolsonaro administration in “a clear policy for dismantling national environmental policies.”Brazil’s environmental agencies under Bolsonaro have also been subjected to nearly 600 administrative and rules changes, invoked by presidential...
Enrique Monteverde, a detached ex-dictator, is on trial for genocide. The Monteverde family, in lockdown, slowly loses control. With the help of a new maid, Alma, they must face up to the horrors they’ve continued to deny for decades - by recognising the dead.
Scarred by a brutal massacre which took place in December of 1997 and left 45 dead, the residents of Acteal, in the highlands of Chiapas, continue to remind the world never to forget. One woman is at the forefront.
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.
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.
This video essay from LAB partner Ojos Ilegales Red, Venezuela, tells the story of Leonardo Milian Ruiz, a member of the Pumé community. Milian left his territory Boca Tronador, on Riecito in Apure State, near the the Venezuelan border with Colombia, after cattle ranchers continually invaded their territory.
The short film El Silencio del Rio, ‘The Silence of the River’, by Peruvian director Francesca Canepa, won the Grand Jury Award at the Oscar-qualifying Calgary International Film Festival and is currently longlisted in the Best Short Film category for the 2021 Academy Awards. Mathilde Aupetit considers the film’s blurring of dream and reality in order to present an Amazonian perspective, and its representation of the narrative power of nature.
British businessman and football club owner, Joe Lewis, has created resistance from the indigenous community by purchasing and developing their ancestral lands in Rio Negro, Argentina. Lewis blocks access to the land, where he has hosted Israeli soldiers and former right-wing President Mauricio Macri.