Chapter 7 - Mining and communities

When large mining companies such as TerraEarth withdrew from gold mining in Ecuador's Napo province, they paved the way for smaller scale illegal miners to move in in force, financed by cocaine money, with terrible consequences

A mining engineer with more than 40 years in the industry challenges the ESG frameworks used by mining companies to greenwash their activities

This impactful drama from Peruvian director Dorian Fernández Moris recounts life for women in the hellish La Pampa, an illegal gold mining site in the Peruvian Amazon.

The Heart of Our Earth: Community resistance to mining in Latin America tells the story of the unprecedented expansion of the mining industry across Latin America since the 1990s, and the massive social and environmental upheaval this has involved.

In January, a wave of outrage swept Brazil after photos and footage of sick and starving Yanomami were made public. Indigenous federal deputy is trying to speed up the vote of a new bill that establishes new rules for the gold trade in Brazil.

'The Government is responsible for these two murders, and Xiomara Castro must provide an explanation,’ declared ERIC-SJ researcher Joaquín Mejía Rivera, in the wake of the killing of two environmental defenders in Guapinol.

Five water defenders from Santa Marta, Cabañas, El Salvador have been arrested in connection with the 1989 murder of a woman in their community. However, their active membership of an organisation opposed to mining and strong signs that the government wants to subvert the country's mining ban suggest another motive for their persecution

The deliberate killing and starvation of indigenous Yanomami people in Roraima state is the direct result of the policies of the Bolsonaro government. As the new Lula administration rushes emergency aid to the area, calls are being made for Bolsonaro to be tried for genocide.

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.

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.