In the villages of Tabatinga, Amazonas, Ticuna midwives work according to ancestral traditions, honing their skills generation after generation. However, they remain unrecognised by the state. Translated for LAB by Tom Gatehouse. You can read the original (in Portuguese) here. This is the first in what we hope will be a series of articles by […]
In 2013, during the building of the Teles Pires dam in the Brazilian Amazon, the Teles Pires Hydroelectric Company (CHTP) dynamited Karobixexe (Seven Rapids), a sacred site of the Munduruku, Apiaká and Kayabi peoples. Located just outside an indigenous reserve, it received no government protection. Also during construction, the firm removed funeral urns from a […]
Banner image, above. From the website of the Ministry of Justice and Institutional Transparency: “Investigations will proceed into 592 former government officials and their relatives to recover deposits made abroad.” Some weeks ago nobody would have imagined that the Bolivian Prosecution Service would issue an arrest warrant against the former president, Evo Morales, whose government […]
President Michel Temer issued a presidential decree in 2017 to open up the vast 4.6 million hectare (17,800 square mile) RENCA preserve in the northern Amazon to mining. Meeting with a firestorm of criticism he abandoned the effort. Sources now say the Bolsonaro administration is poised to quietly revive plans to open RENCA in 2020. […]
While the media focused in 2019 on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s incendiary remarks, or on the Amazon fires, he has quietly instituted new policies likely to aid land grabbers and do great harm to Amazon forests, indigenous and traditional peoples. “Death by 1,000 Cuts” parts 1 and 2 reviews those policies. Executive decree MP 910 […]
Immediately following the military coup in Chile on September 11 1973, the Pinochet dictatorship set about destroying as much as they could lay their hands on of the hugely popular wave of commited art and culture which had supported and given a voice to Popular Unity, its supporters and to millions of ordinary Chileans. That […]
In 2013, Potássio do Brasil, a subsidiary of the Canadian merchant bank, Forbes & Manhattan, began drilling exploratory wells for a giant potassium mine — a highly profitable venture that would allow transport of potash along the Amazon and Madeira rivers. Potash is a vital fertilizer for Brazil’s rapidly growing soy agribusiness industry. One big […]
Potássio do Brasil, a mining company; Autazes municipal authorities; the federal and Amazonas state governments; and large-scale soy growers all want one thing: to open a potash mine in the town of Autazes that would supply soy producers with Brazilian fertilizer, so as not to buy and pay for imported potash. All stand to profit. […]
Conversing with Goliath is a research project carried out by FLACSO-Mexico and De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, sponsored by the British Academy (2017-2020). The project aims to understand why violence in Mexico persists in the design and implementation of projects in the extractive industry when a wide range of participatory institutions exist in law and […]
Two months have passed since Bolivia’s disastrous October 2019 presidential elections. During this time, Evo Morales resigned from the presidency, sought asylum in Mexico, and arrived in Argentina on 12 December, two days after Alberto Fernández assumed the presidency there. Argentina has granted him refugee status. In Bolivia, an interim government has been formed, both […]