Na terceira de seis postagens, uma discussão sobre os problemas dos colonos (barragens, legislação ambiental, grileiros) e uma visita a uma fazenda “fantasma”. Tradução: Maria Luíza Camargo. A matéria original, em inglês, pode ser lida aqui no LAB ou aqui no Mongabay. Aqui, a primeira e a segunda postagem.  Publicado originalmente em inglês em 23 de março de 2016. Em janeiro de 2016, a jornalista britânica Sue Branford viajou ao Brasil pela Mongabay e pelo Latin America Bureau (LAB) para uma sequência de reportagens sobre a vida das comunidades na Terra do Meio, no Pará, uma das áreas mais remotas da Amazônia....

Na segunda de seis postagens, Sue Branford fala de uma área onde a criação de uma unidade de conservação ambiental coloca comunidades tradicionais sob o risco de perder o território onde vivem há gerações. Tradução: Maria Luíza Camargo. A matéria original, em inglês, pode ser lida aqui no LAB: ou no Mongabay.  Em janeiro 2016, a jornalista britânica Sue Branford viajou ao Brasil pela Mongabay e pelo Latin America Bureau, para uma sequência de reportagens sobre a vida das comunidades ribeirinhas na Terra do Meio, no Pará, uma das áreas mais remotas da Amazônia. Depois de passar por Altamira,...

São Paulo, May 25. A week is a long time in Brazilian politics, and President Michel Temer has revealed himself to be a stubborn survivor as he battles to stay afloat in the sea of sleaze accusations. He has just sacked  Justice Minister  Osmar Serraglio, himself accused of corruption, replacing him with Torquato Jardim,  a prosecutor well versed in dealing with the courts in whose hands Temer’s future may now lie. Jardim is also a critic of the Lava Jato corruption investigations. As such he is welcomed by the many politicians, including Temer, who, while in public heartily defending...

São Paulo, May 22. Few Brazilians were familiar with the name of Joesley Batista, who with his brother, Wesley, owns Brazil’s biggest meat packing industry, JBS, now part of the multinational holding J&F. But the revelations of his secretly taped tête a tête with President Michel Temer, alone in the Jaburu Palace late at night on March 7, off the official agenda, have placed a ticking time bomb under the government. In the barely audible conversation, Temer apparently agrees with the payment of a monthly bribe to the disgraced and imprisoned politician Eduardo Cunha to keep his mouth shut, and...

Sâo Paulo. April 19. The sheer scale and volume of the gigantic bribery operation that has been bankrolling the entire infrastructure of Brazilian politics over the last 30 years is breathtaking. The details, revealed by the declarations of over 70 executives of Brazil’s top construction company, Odebrecht, to teams of public prosecutors investigating the Lava Jato corruption scandal, would be enough to bring down the government and cause mass resignations of elected politicians in most countries. But President Temer didn’t see it that way. “Just because this or that happens, Brazil has to stop?” he asked, referring to what is...

April 11th 2017. In Rio recently ex-military officer and ultra rightwing deputy Jair Bolsanaro was applauded for his racist remarks at the Hebrew club, of all places, while a new survey showed that 73% of cariocas think human rights get in the way of fighting crime.  So two new books are a timely reminder of what unlimited power in the hands of men in uniform actually means. https://youtu.be/zSTdTjsio5g Jair Bolsonaro: “Where there is indigenous land, there is wealth beneath it. We have to change that.”  “The slightest Afro-descendant there weighed seven arrobas (An old unit of measurement mainly used for...

Bienvenido! Festival 2017 Bienvenido!  El Sueño Existe Festival of Latin American music and politics will take place in Machynlleth, 28, 29 and 30 July 2017. The spirit of Victor Jara in beautiful Mid Wales. To buy tickets click here For every festival we choose a different theme and this year we will be looking at Ecuador.  We seek to weave a tapestry of music, dance, progressive politics, poetry and drama here in the beautiful Dyfi Valley of Mid Wales. The music and life of Victor Jara of Chile is  the source of inspiration for the festival and we seek to bring the...

São Paulo, March 22nd. With their usual fine sense of irony, the Federal Police named their latest operation, launched on Friday 17th,   “Carne Fraca” – the Flesh is Weak. The targets were Brazil’s biggest meat companies, all household names, exporters of billions of dollars worth of beef, chicken and meat products to over 150 countries. The two-year investigation, involving over a thousand agents, began when a whistleblower inside the Ministry of Agriculture revealed that corrupt officials were taking bribes to turn a blind eye to adulterated and unsafe meat. 27 people, including two regional superintendents of the Ministry, were arrested,...

São Paulo, 15 March. Despairing of  finding justice in Brazil, cacique Ladio Veron of the Guarani Kaiowá indigenous people in Mato Grosso do Sul,  has set out on a 3 month trip to 10 European countries to appeal for help in reclaiming the lands taken from them by successive Brazilian governments, and now occupied by ranchers, farmers and sugarcane industries. He will speak at universities, meet parlamentarians, and seek support for the besieged and persecuted Guarani Kaiowá. Ladio Veron will be in Britain from April 17-21. Final dates and venues to be confirmed, but the schedule includes: April 18 - Public...

Main image: police family members protest in Vitória. Their placard reads: We've had no wage increase since 2013 - 40% inflation. The coffin is for Paulo Hartung, the state governor. São Paulo. February 12. A series of moves by President Michel Temer, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies are being interpreted as attempts to block the investigations into Brazil’s biggest ever corruption scandal, involving Petrobras and all of Brazil’s major construction companies, and prevent the arraignment of government ministers, deputies and  senators who have been accused of taking bribes by those already under arrest, who are collaborating in plea...

24 January. With the new year in Colombia came a new sentence from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, holding the state responsible for human rights violations committed in the context of ‘Operation Orion’. In this Operation, the army, together with the ‘Cacique Nutibarra’ bloc of the AUC paramilitary organisation, stormed the marginalised slum neighbourhood ‘Comuna 13’ in Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city. The operation took place over four days in October 2002, under Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s presidency, within the framework of his heavily-criticised ‘democratic security’ policy which promised to eliminate the insurgent threat. The operation ostensibly sought to take...

Brazilians began the New Year in the most terrible way, with images of piles of headless, dismembered corpses, the result of a savage massacre in an Amazon prison. The photos were put on social media by the murderers themselves, in boastful celebration of their bloody crimes. On New Year’s Day, 56 prisoners died in the Anísio Jobim prison on the BR174 highway near Manaus, the Amazon capital, at the hands of fellow prisoners armed with guns smuggled into the jail. Another four were killed at another prison. Four days later, 33 prisoners in the Monte Cristo prison near Boa Vista, the...

São Paulo 11 Dec 2016. Another turbulent week in Brazilian politics. As Brazil lurches from crisis to crisis, it seems more like a country grappling to stay in the present than the country of the future. The first revelations of the promised “end of the world” plea bargain have been published, exposing a vast and shocking scheme of kickbacks and bribes totalling millions of dollars, paid to many of Brazil’s leading politicians, including President Michel Temer, in exchange for lucrative contracts, tax favours, and laws and government measures tailored to their interests.  Politically, it is a bombshell, weakening an already...

As rain-soaked soldiers carried coffin after coffin into the football stadium in the small city of Chapecó, in a procession which seemed as though it would never end, Brazilians were mourning not only the loss of sons, husbands, brothers and idols, but the loss of a dream.   “Even God is crying, “said Chapecó’s mayor, as the heavens opened and the rain poured down. The crash on a Colombian mountainside near Medellin which killed almost the entire Chapecoense soccer team, an up and coming David among the Goliaths of Brazilian football, has plunged Brazil into sadness. Never have the words of the...