The Amazon

Chinese companies are behind rapid expansion of gold mining in the Mayaya region of Bolivia, and are invading the Madidi National Park. Bolivian journalist and LAB correspondent Sergio Mendoza travelled by canoe down the Beni and Quendeque rivers, witnessing how the illegal mining activity is hidden by Bolivian mining cooperatives and supported or permitted by the government.

Legislation being proposed in the Peruvian Congress would remove central government and environmental controls over indigenous lands and reserves. Indigenous organizations are vigorously opposing the change

With Bolsonaro AWOL and his supporters claiming electoral fraud, fomenting violence and trying to provoke a military coup, Lula and the PT face massive difficulties and levels of polarisation remain extremely high

Director Marcos Colón has made a remarkable film about the Amazon, charting how in three countries, Brazil, Peru and Colombia, 'modernity' means exploitation and destruction. He interviews indigenous leaders with a very different vision.

Peruvian coca farmers are actively recruiting Brazilian indigenous workers from the Alto Salimöes region to harvest and transport coca. Violence and exploitation are rife.

What is happening in the Amazon is a war -- against the rainforest, its original inhabitants, and also against the rest of the world. Perhaps this is the Third World War, the war to end all wars?

At least 58 indigenous people were killed in the Brazilian, Colombian, Ecuadorean and Peruvian Amazon between 2016 and 2021. In this article, Mongabay outlines the patterns, the involvement of state actors and the cloud of impunity surrounding these crimes

Murders of indigenous leaders in Peru continue, despite government promises to improve protections. Those who seek to defend their land and protect the local environment are targeted by illegal loggers, miners and drug traffickers.

The brutal murders of journalist Dom Phillips and indigenist Bruno Pereira took place in a region, the Javari Valley, beset by a profitable vortex of clandestine economies, resource plunder and land grabbing which the present government does almost nothing to discourage or suppress.

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were murdered in a remote area of the Amazon – almost certainly by or on the orders of those who run the illegal trade in fish, timber, drugs and minerals. President Bolsonaro has fuelled lawlessness by his rhetoric.