Mining

As the drive to expand renewable energy capacity speeds up, there is a rush for lithium and other materials around the world. What will the expansion of rare earth mining in Latin America mean for the indigenous communities and workers who have historically borne the harms of extractivism?

At Espinar in Peru and on Chile's Colina river, major international mining companies are once more in the spotlight, suspected of causing pollution, denying responsibility and failing to consult local communities

Josefina Tunki and Tania Laurini, two leaders of the Shuar Arutam people in Ecuador have received explicit death threats from Federico Velasquez, senior official at Lowell-Solaris, a Canadian owned mining company. The Shuar are opposing a gold and copper project at Warintza in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

Through one character's journey meeting everyday heroes of resistance and telling their stories, Luis Manuel Claps documents the wave of organised resistance to large-scale industrial mining that spread from from the south of Patagonia as far as the Amazon.

The Guapinol Eight have been in detention for close to two years now, a situation denounced as illegal by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. ‘There is no legal basis for having detained the defenders and even less so for continuing to detain them’.

Local communities in Andalgala, Argentina have been fighting mining companies for 11 years. Now they are being criminalised. US investment giant Blackrock is continuing to finance Anglo American and other miners laying waste the Amazon territories of the Munduruku and others

Communities awaiting compensation from the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history say they’re being stymied by a convoluted legal process that favors those responsible.

Residents of Cuenca, in Azuay province, voted overwhelmingly in a 'consulta popular' to ban mining that would affect key water resources. Incoming president Guillermo Lasso may find it hard to ignore this result.

The iniquitous ISDS system allows mining companies to sue Latin American governments for massive amounts of 'compensation' every time their mining activities are blocked by local community opposition or environmental concerns.

Munduruku people on the Tapajós tributary of the Amazon are engaged in a struggle for survival against the long-term effects of mercury poisoning from gold mining, a new influx of illegal miners and the Covid infection they bring with them.