Situated only 60km from Brumadinho, where a massive tailings dam collapse killed 270 workers and local residents on 25 January 2019, is the small town of Barão de Cocais, home to around 30,000 people. Just 1.5 km away lies the Gongo Soco mine, owned by mining giant Vale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eGlQ_meTlY
Video: FalaBrasil 28...
A new manifesto by eight of Brazil’s past environment ministers has accused the rightist Bolsonaro administration of “a series of unprecedented actions that are destroying the capacity of the environment ministry to formulate and carry out public policies.”The ministers warn that Bolsonaro’s draconian environmental policies, including the weakening of environmental licensing,...
Parintins, site of Brazil’s big annual indigenous festival, is typical of towns in the Brazilian Amazon. The Sateré, and other indigenous groups living or working there, often endure discrimination and work analogous to slavery. Civil rights are few and indigenous populations inhabit the bottom rung of the economic ladder.Now more than ever,...
Dear LAB Supporter and Friend,
27
March 2019
Voices versus the new
populism
Alzira de Fátima Venâncio Barbosa, who lives by the Paraopebas River. Alzira’s income was dependent on the river, as she would fish and cook for fisherman. Photo: Rodrigo Zaim/Christian Aid
Voices of Latin
America:...
Spanish journalist Samanta Villar Fans spent 21 days working in an artesanal tin mine in Bolivia in 2009. She filmed it for her programme 21 Days.
The full programme can be seen on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/samantavillarfans/videos/1183636485105974/UzpfSTM2Njc2NzkxNjk4NzU5NjpWSzoyNjk2Nzk1MjkzNjY5NDM3/
On 25 January 2019 a huge tailings dam at the Feijão iron ore mine, near Brumadinho, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, collapsed suddenly and catastrophically. The resulting wave of toxic sludge engulfed part of the mine workings, a packed workers' canteen, and rushed down into the Paraopeba river, washing away houses, cattle, mine personnel and people living close...
A project called 'Talking to Goliath' has mapped social and environmental conflicts across the length and breadth of Mexico, caused by the development, expansion or operation of mining, oil exploration and drillling, wind-power and hydroelectric projects.
FLACSO Mexico, in partnership with De Montfort University, Leicester, UK has produced a detailed map of Mexico with...
New Minister of Mines and Energy Admiral Bento Albuquerque announced on 4 March that he plans to permit mining on indigenous lands in Brazil, including within the Amazon. He also said that he intends to allow mining right up to Brazil’s borders, abolishing the current ban along a 150-kilometer (93-mile)-wide swath at ...
Rogelio Ustate recalls (in a poem) the day when his community (Tabaco, a township of Alto Nuevo in Guajira) was displaced by public officials in Colombia to make room for the expansion of a massive open-air coal mine, Cerrejón.
Video: Rogelio Ustate, May 2014 (in Spanish, with English subtitles)
The documentary "Las Huellas Del Cerrejón" recounts the experiences of some of the people living near the largest coal mine in the world: El Cerrejón. The 'company responsible' as it likes to call itself, has dried up the watercourses of the area and plunged the inhabitants into sadness and desperation. They, however, remain strong and united...