The Amazon

"CreAction Amazónica" - a virtual caravan against the climate crisis. Appeal to join, send in your own video. Results to be broadcast on 24 September on YouTube and Facebook.

There’s still time to catch a number of short films from indigenous Latin American filmmakers at Native Spirit Festival: the UK’s first and only annual independent festival to promote indigenous filmmakers, media and artists.

Residents of traditional communities in the Brazilian Amazon municipality of Barcarena, near the mouth of the Amazon River, say that their subsistence and commercial livelihoods, and their health, have been destroyed by an invasion of mining companies which began in the mid-1980’s. This story is the fifth in a series.

Ever since the arrival of Spanish Conquistadors in the 16th century, many outsiders have followed the example of these bold European adventurers along with the crown heads of Europe in seeing South America as a treasure house of mineral wealth.

A recent report, published by the Cyrus R. Vance Centre for International Justice, Earth Law Centre and International Rivers has found that the movement to grant legal rights to rivers and the natural environment is rapidly gaining momentum around the world.

The short film El Silencio del Rio, ‘The Silence of the River’, by Peruvian director Francesca Canepa, won the Grand Jury Award at the Oscar-qualifying Calgary International Film Festival and is currently longlisted in the Best Short Film category for the 2021 Academy Awards. Mathilde Aupetit considers the film’s blurring of dream and reality in order to present an Amazonian perspective, and its representation of the narrative power of nature.

Covid 19 will affect Brazil’s indigenous groups for many years, not only because of the number of lives it has taken but also because among those dead are many important indigenous leaders. LAB briefly profiles one important leader who recently succumbed to the disease.

A new online seminar series from the Latin America is Moving Collective will explore Latin American social movements before and after the pandemic.

Brazil's land grabbers are posting the plots they’re selling on Facebook because the lawbreakers say they have virtually no fear of prosecution. Facebook said that it was “ready to work with the local authorities” to investigate the alleged crimes but that it would not be taking action on its own.

By letting Covid multiply Brazil's president endangers the whole world. As do his policies which promote the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Lula has been exonerated. Will he now run in 2022?