Mining

A Facebook advert for an Amazon farm led Subsolo journalist Ruan Martins to Ivanildo Canuto Soares, a convicted murderer with a history of drug trafficking who faked his own death. Mining records showed gold sales attributed to a permit area where satellite images revealed no visible signs of extraction. Martins follows the buyers and refiners into the supply chains reported by major international companies.

The verdict of a federal court in Belo Horizonte, capital of Brazil's largest mining province, Minas Gerais, finally brought some justice to the victims of one of Brazil's worst mining disasters. In November 2015 a tailings dam at the Fundão iron ore mine near Mariana collapsed, killing 19 people and devastating downstream communities, farms and fisheries. A similar collapse at Brumadinho, three years later, killed 272 people. At last a court has found some of those directly involved at Mariana guilty, punished and fined one of the companies and sentenced three engineers to prison.

Join us to discuss the Rights of Nature in Latin America with Jan Schulz, author of LAB's new book 'Disputed Territories', and "Barrister for...

A  Canadian-owned mining company is moving on Maya Chorti communities in Western Honduras. The community is resisting, and courts have intervened, but the future of Cerro Los Hornillos remains unclear. This is the first of two linked articles by Anna Ortiz on indigenous communities in Honduras defending their rights.

Competition for critical minerals and trade routes is drawing the Amazon deeper into global struggles over resources and military power. Writing in March 2026, Bruno Malheiro examines how US imperial ambitions, trade with China, and Brazil’s political choices put Amazonian territories under pressure. He argues that defending the region requires both national sovereignty and the right of Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities to determine the future of their territories.

STOP PRESS: Mónica Feria Tinta will be speaking in London on 17 November, at the launch of LAB's new book Disputed Territories, the Rights...

ATRATO by Juan Covelli runs until 22 February 2026 at the V&A Photography Centre in South Kensington, London. Admission is free.

In the Bolivian highlands, the Indigenous community of Cala Cala is waging a battle to defend the headwaters of its river from mining. What...

For nearly four decades, residents of Arica, Chile, have lived with the toxic legacy of imported industrial waste. After repeated legal defeats and government...

Nearly 40 years ago, 20,000 tonnes of Swedish mining waste were dumped on the edge of Arica, Chile. Laced with arsenic, lead, and mercury,...