What is The Heart of Our Earth?
Today, LAB is proud to launch a crowdfunding campaign for a brand new and very important LAB project: The Heart of Our Earth: Community Resistance to Mining in Latin America. But why mining? And why now?
Bolivia’s lithium coup
Almost 85 per cent of the world’s lithium reserves are concentrated in the Lithium Triangle along the borderlands of Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. Bolivia’s resources remain largely unexploited. Will Bolivia be able to industrialise Lithium production on its own terms?
Mining victims denounce ‘Genocide legalized by the state’
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.
Tottenham Hotspur owner takes over ancestral land in Argentina
British businessman and football club owner, Joe Lewis, has created resistance from the indigenous community by purchasing and developing their ancestral lands in Rio Negro, Argentina. Lewis blocks access to the land, where he has hosted Israeli soldiers and former right-wing President Mauricio Macri.
Water for life, not for death
Five years since the collapse of the Fundão tailings dam in Minas Gerais, Brazil, communities are still waiting for justice, compensation and the means of rebuilding their shattered lives
Chile: where water is a traded commodity
A small community takes on mining giant Anglo American which drains aquifers of water while households are forced to queue at water tankers ... just part of Chile's dictatorship legacy where water, like everything else, is a trade commodity
Latin America is Moving
A new online seminar series from the Latin America is Moving Collective will explore Latin American social movements before and after the pandemic.
Brazil: geomapping to protect Kalunga lands
Geomapping has enabled quilombola communities in Goiás state, Brazil, to demarcate their land, apply for titles and mount a defence against invading soya farmers, ranchers, miners and land thieves. They are now receiving international recognition.
Mining: Vale pays out but Antofagasta stalls workforce
Vale mining is finally forced to pay compensation to Minas Gerais state, but the victims of the Brumadinho disaster are not consulted. In Chile, Antofagasta mining faces strike action. From LAB's London Mining Network blog.
Participatory photography in the Andes
In 2017, a group of women activists in Cajamarca began documenting their perceptions of community, wellbeing and alternatives to extractivism through photography.