Brazil: Nothing by Accident
Alistair Clark reviews Damian Platt's book about organized crime in Rio de Janeiro and asks whether it reflects Brazil more widely.
El Salvador: the Water Defenders
In The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved A Country from Corporate Greed, Robin Broad and John Cavanagh tell the harrowing, inspiring saga of Salvadorans' fight — and historic victory — to save their water, and their communities, from Big Gold.
Quesera – El Salvador’s forgotten massacre
El Salvador's civil war featured a number of brutal massacres by the army, especially the one at El Mozote in Morazán. Much less well-known is the butchery of peasants and children at Quesera in Usulután, on the River Lempa, carried out by the Army's US-trained Atlacatl Batallion.
Peru: teachers and social justice
A prolonged and bitter teachers' strike in Peru in 2017 was about much wider social discontents and eventually brought militant strikers' leader Pedro Castillo victory in the country's presidential elections.
Nicaragua: no contest
The result of the Sunday 7 November presidential and congressional elections in Nicaragua is a foregone conclusion. Current president Daniel Ortega and his vice-president wife Rosario Murillo are certain to win a landslide victory, and the Sandinistas will continue to dominate the National Assembly. Yet this result comes with a substantial cost: the arrest of opposition leaders and outlawing of many NGOs.
No quiet evening in Chile
LAB editor Emily Gregg reports from Concepción Chile on the historic night of Gabriel Boric' election victor
Brazil: timber export boom under Bolsonaro
Police investigations implicated then Brazilian environment minister Riacrdo Salles in illegal exports of high-value timber from the Amazon to consumers in the US and Europe.
Chile: on Boric, the constitution and the future
Natasha Tinsley interviews a cross-section of young Chileans about the recent elections and the victory of new-left candidate Gabriel Boric. They express their hopes, fears and expectations for the future.
Brazil: a gift of honey
At the Monument to 500 Years of Resistance by the Indigneous Peoples of Brazil, Braga, a Pataxó chief, imagines a gift of honey for senators as they debate PL490, which threatens indigenous land rights. It is a gift 'to disarm the media, touch the people, enchant the world'.
Nicaragua: a contested election
William Robinson in NACLA argued that the recent Nicaraguan presidential election was a 'sham'. Here two journlists examine his arguments in detail and offer a very different view.