Indigenous Peoples

Peru’s official contender for the Oscars, Song Without A Name (Canción sin nombre) follows a young indigenous woman as she searches for her child, stolen at birth in a fake health clinic in Lima.

Residents of traditional communities in the Brazilian Amazon municipality of Barcarena, near the mouth of the Amazon River, say that their subsistence and commercial livelihoods, and their health, have been destroyed by an invasion of mining companies which began in the mid-1980’s. This story is the fifth in a series.

Ever since the arrival of Spanish Conquistadors in the 16th century, many outsiders have followed the example of these bold European adventurers along with the crown heads of Europe in seeing South America as a treasure house of mineral wealth.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.