Rios de Encontro, the eco-cultural and social education Project, based in the community of Cabelo Seco, Marabá, since 2008, is in quarantine. Dozens of children and young people have been asking the coordinators since the beginning of March, when the Owl Cinema, the Leaves of Life Library, the Rabetas Audiovisual courses and the AfroMundo dance company...
Forest degradation nearly doubled in the Brazilian Amazon last year, rising from 4,946 square kilometers in 2018, to 9,167 square kilometers in 2019. Experts say this is likely due to soaring illegal timber harvesting and export under President Jair Bolsonaro.To facilitate illegal harvesting of rare and valuable timber, like that of the...
The anthropologist
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro discusses indigenous resistance in the Amazon, the
indigenous leader Raoni Metuktire, and his pessimism about the climate crisis
Translated by Tom Gatehouse. You can read the original, longer interview, (in Portuguese) here.
This is the third in a series of articles written and published in Portuguese...
Illegal mining poisons the Amazon
A new film by Jorge Bodansky analyzes the mercury contamination
of Amazonian rivers as a result of illegal mining
Renowned Brazilian filmmaker Jorge Bodansky will preview his new film “Amazonia: the new Minamata?” on 1 February, during the International Colloquium “Amazonia: Rising...
Brazilian President
Jair Bolsonaro aroused global indignation in November when he affirmed: ‘Look,
you’re not going to do away with deforestation, or the burning – its cultural’.
But if he had said: ‘Look, you’re not going to do away with deforestation or
the burning, because they are supported by federal laws passed before I became
president’, he would have been closer to...
In the villages of Tabatinga, Amazonas, Ticuna midwives work
according to ancestral traditions, honing their skills generation after
generation. However, they remain unrecognised by the state.
Translated for LAB by Tom Gatehouse. You can read the original (in Portuguese) here. This is the first in what we hope will be a series of articles by LAB...
In 2013, during the building of the Teles Pires dam in the Brazilian Amazon, the Teles Pires Hydroelectric Company (CHTP) dynamited Karobixexe (Seven Rapids), a sacred site of the Munduruku, Apiaká and Kayabi peoples. Located just outside an indigenous reserve, it received no government protection.Also during construction, the firm removed funeral urns...
President Michel Temer issued a presidential decree in 2017 to open up the vast 4.6 million hectare (17,800 square mile) RENCA preserve in the northern Amazon to mining. Meeting with a firestorm of criticism he abandoned the effort. Sources now say the Bolsonaro administration is poised to quietly revive plans to open...
While the media focused in 2019 on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s incendiary remarks, or on the Amazon fires, he has quietly instituted new policies likely to aid land grabbers and do great harm to Amazon forests, indigenous and traditional peoples. “Death by 1,000 Cuts” parts 1 and 2 reviews those policies.Executive decree...
Potássio do Brasil, a mining company; Autazes municipal authorities; the federal and Amazonas state governments; and large-scale soy growers all want one thing: to open a potash mine in the town of Autazes that would supply soy producers with Brazilian fertilizer, so as not to buy and pay for imported potash. All stand...