While the reelection of Rafael Correa may seem to be a foregone conclusion, the eight candidates competing for the office point to the ongoing fragmented and volatile nature of Ecuadorian politics.
Correa’s most serious challenge from the left comes from his former ally and fellow economist Alberto Acosta.
Behind the rhetoric of Peru’s economic boom and corporate social responsibility lies the struggle of indigenous communities to defend their land and their right to clean water. Máxima Acuña, one of the faces behind that struggle, walked from her rural community through the rain for 10 hours to hear the case that the owners of the Yanacocha mine in northern Peru have launched against her and her family.
A look at how the horrid history of the military base in Coban, Guatemala—and the impunity with which mass killings of men, women and children were carried out—provides a disturbing backdrop for present day “peacekeeping” operations.
Brazil’s Guaraní-Kaiowá people are no longer willing to wait quietly for the government to demarcate their land. The threat of mass suicide by native Guaraní-Kaiowá people in southwest Brazil brought to light a new formula for worsening conflicts over indigenous territory: the expansion of the cultivation of soy beans and sugar cane, two top export crops.
A California proposal would offset the state’s climate-altering emissions by paying for forest conservation in Chiapas. Could there be unintended consequences in a region with a history of human rights abuse and land grabs?“We are not responsible for climate change—it’s the big industries that are,” said Abelardo, a young man from the Tseltal Mayan village of Amador Hernández in the Lacandon jungle of Chiapas. “So why should we be held responsible, and even punished for it?”
For a viable model of “21st century socialism,” many progressives look to Latin America’s Leftward surge. But swept up in the continent’s “pink tide” are questions of indigenous land and resource rights, which often clash with state development priorities. From Venezuela to Bolivia to Chile, indigenous communities are charging that they have been betrayed by the populist presidents they helped elect.
Following the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010, the country’s small right wing has had a political comeback.
Adrian Elcuj Miranda, a judge in Buenos Aires, has ordered the seizure of Chevron’s assets in Argentina, to force the company to pay a $19 billion penalty for polluting the Amazon in Ecuador. The plaintiffs are seeking similar legal action in Brazil, Canada, Colombia and other countries.
Temacapulín, a town of 1,500 people in a kind of bowl surrounded by four hills, hosted a pre-hearing this week about dams by the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT), which has held sessions in this country since October 2011.
“We will lose the right to life, our culture, traditions, peace, happiness and freedom, our burial sites and our dead, the square, the Christ of Temaca that we love so much, the Agave temacapulinensis plant, the Verde river and 14 centuries of our people’s history,” said Maria Abigail Agredani.
The Ecuadorian government is accusing Harvard Medical School, the Corriell Institute for Medical Research, and oil company Maxus Energy Corporation of stealing DNA from an indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Researchers on the lookout for specimens indigenous to an area call this activity bioprospecting, The terms that activists for indigenous rights have created to describe the result of these activities are bio-colonialism and biopiracy: the theft of life from indigenous communities without prior information and consent.
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